I Wish Someone Had Taught Me About Eating Disorders
By: Ellie Johnno
Tags: Mental Illness, Body Image, Bulimia, Mental Health Education, Eating Disorders

While this is not a journal entry about my eating disorder, it does discuss bulimia quite frankly. Please do not continue reading if you think it might be a trigger.

There’s a particular sense of unease that hits the pit of my stomach when people joke about eating; when they hashtag about how ‘fat’ they are for enjoying food. When websites and magazines force upon us an acceptance of guilt for indulging in the holiday season. When TV shows make a punchline of eating too much — or not eating at all.

What’s worrisome is how much of this we consume without even realising; how often these thoughts leave our mouths without understanding that there is a level of unhealthy thinking behind them. Jokes and hashtags that normalise dangerous thoughts for the benefit of clicks and sales. Memes that teach young people that their alarming focus on weight is common enough that they don’t have the rationale to see there is seldom a difference between diet, detox, and disorder.

I’m a university educated person, granted every opportunity to learn — academically or otherwise — a privilege I’m aware not everyone in afforded. I’m emotionally intelligent and self aware enough to know that making myself sick was not a healthy habit to pick up; that counting calories was a dangerous game. That I was hurting myself. But there was a disconnect between my rational thought and my inherent feelings of inadequacy; between my intelligence and my understanding that my value was in my appearance.

Intelligence didn’t save me from mental illness. Lack of understanding didn’t help.

It’s been a minute since I was in school, maybe things have changed, but I was never taught about the real dangers of eating disorders. I don’t recall a health class on the vast and various symptoms of disordered eating. No one sat me down and explained them, the way they blossom inside your mind like some type of poisonous flower; evil dressed up as something simple, something pretty. What I learnt in school was to feel unwanted and unworthy because my uniform was the wrong size.

My limited knowledge of eating disorders didn’t teach me that overexercising was bad, it didn’t teach me that abusing laxatives was a behaviour typical of someone who suffered.

My eating disorder education came from what I saw in films and television, what I knew from celebrities; it told me that I still ate, so I wasn’t that sick. It told me that if I told someone, they’d impart the wisdom I needed to be better — interventions cured Miranda’s disordered eating on Lizzie McGuire, didn’t it? In only one episode! It told me that I didn’t look sick, so I wasn’t. Not successfully, anyway. It told me all I was doing was getting down to my ‘goal weight’ and then I’d stop. Then I’d be happy.

My ED education didn’t tell me I would carry the struggle of this mental illness well into my twenties; that I’d ruin my teeth, my digestive system, the strength of my heart — physically. Mentally that girl is the toughest I’ve met. So I binged and purged and swallowed laxatives like candy; delved into deep anxiety about the necessity to exercise for hours a day — skipped work, skipped university, in favour of my treadmill — certain that only one of these counted as having a quote-unquote Eating Disorder.

Now, with unfathomable access to minds much younger than mine had been, companies are capitalising on the insecurities of young people; employing their favourite reality star or music sensation to market meal suppressants and detox teas. As if they even use them — as if they don’t have an army of people assisting in their ‘perfect’ frames. As if their weight outshines their talent, their integrity.

If what I knew about eating disorders came from celebrities before Instagram even existed, what are we teaching kids now?

Businesses are providing teenagers with a curriculum on how to hate themselves and destroy their insides with guest lectures from all their favourite TV personalities and musicians, courtesy of Flat Tummy Tea et al.

It’s not the responsibility of Khloe Kardashian or Cardi B or whichever influencer is in on it next to teach us what eating disorders are but it should be their responsibility to be realistic about health and fitness; it should be their responsibility to actively work against the corrupt social media system that prays on the insecurities of people. It should be their responsibility to speak out against glorified laxatives masquerading as health supplements.

It should be their responsibility to be honest, to recognise the toxic cycle of destroying women — people — we exist in, encouraging them to engage in behaviours that have the potential to set off disorders that have significant long term implications.

More than 20% of eating disorder sufferers remain chronically ill. Imagine if they’d understood what they were getting into, imagine if they hadn’t been taught that their value was in a number on a scale or a dress size and not their wit, their creativity, their empathy; their mind over their matter. I think it might’ve helped me.

It’s not the responsibility of any celebrity to teach us what eating disorders are — not even Jameela Jamil. But it needs to be somebody’s. We need to stop expecting after school specials and Netflix series to do the hard yards. No one on television is looking in the mirror after purging with burst blood vessels in their eyes or waking up 4 times a night from laxative induced stomach cramps.

Eating disorders exist in forms as varied as the bodies they convince us to hate and if there’s anything I’ve learned in the 7 years I’ve lived with bulimia, it’s that I wish someone had taught me that sooner.