The Battle of Living with EDNOS
When I was 16 I was a perfectly normal, healthy, teenage girl. I played sports, I ate like a normal person, and I was happy! I am aware that there are many, many contributing factors as to why I developed an eating disorder, but I can recall the exact moment when my disordered eating began. A girl in school, who I had always gone out of my way to be nice towards, started saying behind my back that I was fat and ugly. I was neither – but try getting a 16 year old girl to see that, when one of her peers has informed her otherwise! I was so hurt, and remember thinking “Oh my gosh! I’m fat?! Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?”.
That week marked the start of my exercise compulsion. Twice a day, every day, before and after school, I would spend hours in the gym, meeting very specific guidelines. If I didn’t meet them, the guilt would be too overwhelming to cope with. This was in addition to hours spent at dance/gymnastics practice and physical education classes in school.
Next came the idea that if I went to the gym and then ate, I was somehow undoing everything that I had done during my exercise. I slashed my calorie intake drastically and began compulsively researching the nutritional information of virtually every food. By the time I reached grade 12, I had become quite an “expert” on nutrition, and so decided to pursue an undergraduate degree in foods and nutrition.
My body was so run down, and every day my distorted body image became worse and worse. I looked in the mirror and felt that I could see myself growing larger as time ticked by. I had raging insomnia, and would stay up all night, eager for 5 am to roll around so that I could get to the gym. Then, later in the day, I would pass out from exhaustion and would sleep during my university classes. My marks dropped from all 90s to all 70s, 60s or 50s, but I didn’t gain a sense of achievement from marks anymore, only from things that were related to my exercise or weight.
You can only keep that up for so long, and eventually I couldn’t maintain the compulsive exercise anymore and my eating habits became worse. I cut out entire food groups, citing intolerances or disgust because they were too unhealthy. I took an over the counter oral purgative on a regular basis, which is the type used by doctors when they need patients to completely clear out their colon before colonoscopies. I purposefully drank the vilest liquid, and then would sit around my apartment alone because the hours of diarrhea that ensued made me physically unable to leave the house. Sadly, I am far from the only person to subject himself or herself to that sort of treatment.
I was ashamed to tell people that I struggled from disordered eating because I was a university nutrition student, and therefore should have known better. My poor diet and purgative abuse has wrecked havoc with my gastrointestinal tract and I now struggle with irritable bowel syndrome and am physically ill when I consume some foods.
I was diagnosed with EDNOS (see the “Eating disorders” tab for diagnostic information), but my struggles with compulsive over exercising and my orthorexic tendencies went unrealized. The only reason my EDNOS was “discovered” was during a questionnaire performed by a psychiatrist who had diagnosed me with depression. I couldn’t hold it in any longer and I told her my biggest, deepest secret. She put me on anti-depressants, told me I needed to eat carbohydrates to stimulate the release of the “feel good hormone”, serotonin, and asked me during subsequent appointments if I had been eating. That was all, and that contributed to the feeling that my eating disorder had been a mild experience, not even something worth sharing. But it wasn’t, and it is, and I hope that by doing so I have encouraged some of you to realise that no experience with disordered eating is too small to warrant seeking help.
When people ask me what sort of eating disorder I battled with, I generally say “Oh, just EDNOS, the kind that’s not specified”, but if there’s one thing I can stress from this story, there is no such thing as “just” or “merely” or “only a little” when it comes to eating disorders. I did not meet the criteria for anorexia nervosa, and I didn’t have regular bulimic tendencies, but my eating disorder was far from “just”. It stripped me of my outstanding academic drive. In high school I was piled with scholarships and recommended as “girl of the year” by my teachers. By my fourth year university, I had gotten a name for being unreliable, uninterested and not dependable. People who have met me since disordered eating crept into my life have missed out on the vivacious and determined girl that was 16 year old me. I have missed out on the vivacious and determined 17, 18, 19 and 20 year old that I was meant to be. You are an incredible person – don’t let disordered eating or poor body image strip you of your talents and abilities. If you need help, get it now, no matter how big or small you view your problem as being.
That week marked the start of my exercise compulsion. Twice a day, every day, before and after school, I would spend hours in the gym, meeting very specific guidelines. If I didn’t meet them, the guilt would be too overwhelming to cope with. This was in addition to hours spent at dance/gymnastics practice and physical education classes in school.
Next came the idea that if I went to the gym and then ate, I was somehow undoing everything that I had done during my exercise. I slashed my calorie intake drastically and began compulsively researching the nutritional information of virtually every food. By the time I reached grade 12, I had become quite an “expert” on nutrition, and so decided to pursue an undergraduate degree in foods and nutrition.
My body was so run down, and every day my distorted body image became worse and worse. I looked in the mirror and felt that I could see myself growing larger as time ticked by. I had raging insomnia, and would stay up all night, eager for 5 am to roll around so that I could get to the gym. Then, later in the day, I would pass out from exhaustion and would sleep during my university classes. My marks dropped from all 90s to all 70s, 60s or 50s, but I didn’t gain a sense of achievement from marks anymore, only from things that were related to my exercise or weight.
You can only keep that up for so long, and eventually I couldn’t maintain the compulsive exercise anymore and my eating habits became worse. I cut out entire food groups, citing intolerances or disgust because they were too unhealthy. I took an over the counter oral purgative on a regular basis, which is the type used by doctors when they need patients to completely clear out their colon before colonoscopies. I purposefully drank the vilest liquid, and then would sit around my apartment alone because the hours of diarrhea that ensued made me physically unable to leave the house. Sadly, I am far from the only person to subject himself or herself to that sort of treatment.
I was ashamed to tell people that I struggled from disordered eating because I was a university nutrition student, and therefore should have known better. My poor diet and purgative abuse has wrecked havoc with my gastrointestinal tract and I now struggle with irritable bowel syndrome and am physically ill when I consume some foods.
I was diagnosed with EDNOS (see the “Eating disorders” tab for diagnostic information), but my struggles with compulsive over exercising and my orthorexic tendencies went unrealized. The only reason my EDNOS was “discovered” was during a questionnaire performed by a psychiatrist who had diagnosed me with depression. I couldn’t hold it in any longer and I told her my biggest, deepest secret. She put me on anti-depressants, told me I needed to eat carbohydrates to stimulate the release of the “feel good hormone”, serotonin, and asked me during subsequent appointments if I had been eating. That was all, and that contributed to the feeling that my eating disorder had been a mild experience, not even something worth sharing. But it wasn’t, and it is, and I hope that by doing so I have encouraged some of you to realise that no experience with disordered eating is too small to warrant seeking help.
When people ask me what sort of eating disorder I battled with, I generally say “Oh, just EDNOS, the kind that’s not specified”, but if there’s one thing I can stress from this story, there is no such thing as “just” or “merely” or “only a little” when it comes to eating disorders. I did not meet the criteria for anorexia nervosa, and I didn’t have regular bulimic tendencies, but my eating disorder was far from “just”. It stripped me of my outstanding academic drive. In high school I was piled with scholarships and recommended as “girl of the year” by my teachers. By my fourth year university, I had gotten a name for being unreliable, uninterested and not dependable. People who have met me since disordered eating crept into my life have missed out on the vivacious and determined girl that was 16 year old me. I have missed out on the vivacious and determined 17, 18, 19 and 20 year old that I was meant to be. You are an incredible person – don’t let disordered eating or poor body image strip you of your talents and abilities. If you need help, get it now, no matter how big or small you view your problem as being.
