by Madison Peck
In high school at least 3 in 5 teenage girls have eating disorders or know someone who has one. Girls with eating disorders obsess about what they look like and how much they weigh. Sometimes starving themselves, obsessing over the calories they intake or overexercising.
“I eat only foods with negative calories, and I exercise like crazy,” says one girl who has an eating disorder. Eating foods with negative calories means that your body uses more calories digesting it than what it has inside the food. By doing this it starves your body of nutrients.
“This affects your grades and your relationships with family and friends,” says School Psychologist Jamie Gravelle. Eating disorders are the hardest things to overcome.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever done was to start eating again,” says one freshman girl.
For girls who think they are fat, the battle with food is not an easy one to win. “They are so focused on here and now,” says Gravelle. The girls don’t think about the horrible things they are doing to their body.
“When you stop eating, your brain stops working, and it gets really hard to pay attention and focus,” says a freshman girl.
It also affects students in other ways, such as mood swings, substance abuse, lack of focus in class and unhealthy relationships.
“Eating disorders cause 24 hour pain. From the minute they wake up it impacts friends and family, every part of their life,” says Guidance Counselor Melissa DiFonzo.
Girls with eating disorders have a negative body image. A lot of girls are called fat, which is a trigger. For each person, the triggers are different.
“The hardest thing about having an eating disorder is figuring out how you’re going to hide it and what are people going to think,” says one freshman girl. Most girls hide it and try not to get help.
These are the ones that are mostly in denial. “Girls are so afraid of what people think of them and what will they say if they found out,” says a freshman girl.
Most teenage girls who have eating disorders hide it from everyone; most of the girls who are in treatment have had a close friend go to get help for them.
More and more girls each day are having negative thoughts about their body image, and they are trying to change that. In a survey of 71 students in grades nine to twelve, 24 of them do not know anyone with an eating disorder and don’t have one themselves. Twenty-eight girls know someone who has an eating disorder; this can go from starving herself to bulimia to anorexia. There are even girls at Hudson High who have eating disorders. Out of the 71 students surveyed, fifteen of them have an eating disorder.
Most girls don’t get help; most girls are embarrassed. “It’s something that is really hard to overcome, and it’s NOT something for attention. We try really hard to hide it, and people shouldn’t judge. They should think about their words and how what they are saying is going to make people feel,” says a freshman girl.
Eating disorders are a hard thing to overcome. Eating disorders affect your body, mind and personality.
“The breaking point was when I realized I didn’t control the number on the scale. The number on the scale controlled me,” says one freshman girl.
