Students share experiences

Maren DeMargel Social Media Manager

CONTENT WARNING: contains mentions of eating disorders, vomiting, anxiety and weight gain.

“I am unable to concentrate on anything other than the way my body feels,” an anony mous sophomore female said.

“It consumes all of my thinking and makes it hard to focus on any thing else,” she said of her anorexia, an eating disorder cat egorized by restric tive eating in an effort to reduce body weight.

According to Claire McCarthy, MD, senior faculty editor of Harvard Health Publishing, “One in seven men and one in five women experiences an eating disorder by age 40, and in 95% of those cases, the disorder begins by age 25.”

In a survey done of 83 Webster Groves High School students, 31% said that they had suffered from an eating disorder at some point.

Types of disorders experienced by students included anorexia, binge eating disorder, restrictive food intake and more.

An anonymous student suffered from bulimia, an eating disorder where one self-induces vomiting or purging after meals. After quitting a sport that required frequent physical activity, the student experienced weight gain.

“My self confidence and body image hit an all time low,” the student said, “and I began Googling ‘lose weight fast tips’’ and eventually decided to start counting calories, which led to me making myself throw up if I’d go over my limit.”

The student’s overwhelm ing desire to lose and maintain a low body weight began to disrupt their health and life.

“I lost weight fast, which made me proud of myself. This pride became an addic tion quickly and with a cost. My hair started falling out; I would often feel faint and even sometimes pass out. Even though in the mirror I looked skinny, I was the least healthy I’d ever been,” the student said.

Not only was the student’s physical health af fected, but their mental health began to de cline as well.

“Disordered eating added a new layer of anxiety I had never experienced, anxiety that I would eat too much or anxiety that I would regain the weight,” the student said. “I began resenting people who had the body that I wanted. Many of my close friends are very skinny or had perfect bodies, at least in my eyes, and I became a very vain and envious version of myself I barely recognized, inside and out.”

Disordered eating even affected this student’s experience at school, as they would leave the class after lunch each day to purge themselves of what they had just eaten.

“This took time out of the classroom and also would leave me shaky and often distracted in classes,” the student said.

This student is not the only student who has had their lives completely altered by disordered eating. An anonymous senior female suffered from binge eating disorder, a disorder characterized by consuming large amounts of food in one sitting and feeling a lack of control surrounding this behavior.

This senior began experiencing changes to her eating habits during the COVID-19 lockdown in the 2020-2021 school year.

“I was bored, and I was upset, and I was sad, so I turned to eating to cope,” the senior said. “All my other friends were taking this time to workout, so I was super driven to eat healthy and not