Michelle Marsh, 32, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, seems like the perfect dieter.
she says), could be the poster girl for an unrecognized epidemic among women: disordered eating.
“I weigh myself every morning, and if the scale goes up a pound, I exercise more.
If I gained 5 pounds, I’d be very upset.”
It should: Sixty-five percent of American women who responded to a national survey by SELF are disordered eaters.
And it’s everywhere, afflicting women like your sister, your friend, your coworkeror you.
Others may shift between categories over the years, ricocheting from restricting to bingeing to purging, for instance.
“As a society, we don’t see the problem.”
A few eat nutritiously and exercise moderately.
The result is failure; extreme measures don’t work.
“A neighbor and I tried to see how long we could go without eating,” she says.
“We lasted three days.”
“The freshman 15 was more like the freshman 80,” she says.
“I inhaled everything.”
Two decades of dieting followed.
“I did the grapefruit diet, the cabbage soup diet, Atkins, everything,” Kathie says.
I felt doomed to be fat."
Kathie is finally on the road to a healthy weight, but not due to dieting.
She opted for gastric bypass surgery four years ago and has lost 110 pounds.
(She weighs 192.)
“I’m raising my kids differently,” she says.
“I put food down, and if they’re hungry, they eat it.
If not, that’s OK. We have cookies out.
The last thing I want is for them to battle their weight their whole life.”
The fact is, Kathie might never have been able to permanently lose weight by restricting her food intake.
“For many women, dieting is about trying to exert control,” Kronberg says.
Malnutrition can also cause hair loss, brittle nails and even nerve damage.
Dieting can be psychologically harmful, too.
How many of us live in a state of misery because of the size of our thighs?
A lot: Thirty-nine percent of women say concerns about what they eat or weigh interfere with their happiness.
“If I eat dessert, I run 20 more minutes.
I don’t have time for my family and friends,” she says tearfully.
“It’s an issue I deal with every day.”
“I don’t want anyone to see me,” she says.
So she hits a drive-through, eating two cheeseburgers, fries and a Coke in her car in minutes.
“I’m numb while I do it, and I feel guilty afterward,” she says.
“I think about food 20 percent of the time.”
Four percent think about it nearly every waking moment.
But if you’re dieting, you’re free to’t think about anything else.
But even moderate-sounding plans can make you miserable.
“But I’m always on a diet.”
“It’s a cycle,” Dr. Brewerton says.
“Women diet to feel and look better, but they inadvertently make themselves feel worse.”
More worrisome, withholding calories can lead to another disordered behavior: repeated binges.
Everybody has inhaled too many cookies at one sitting now and then.
Eating an unusually large amount of food quickly and feeling out of control while doing it.
One in four women binge.
I’ll eat until I feel sick."
Jamie, a 31-year-old in Bremerton, Washington, doesn’t know what used to push her to overeat.
“An entire cake would be gone.
I’d feel horrible afterward and wouldn’t eat for the rest of the day.
I never got on a scale because I didn’t want to know how much I gained.”
Despite her struggle, Jamie is lucky.
Often, bingeing causes weight gain and anxiety, in turn leading to calorie restricting, fasting and purging.
Even frequent overeating, if not technically bingeing, is risky.
“I used to eat anything I wanted,” she says.
“I’d eat when I was happy, sad; it didn’t matter.
I felt awful all the time, and one day I realized I can’t do this anymore.
I’ve made little changesexercising three times a weekand already lost 15 pounds,” she says.
“I still eat chocolate, but in smaller amounts, and I use olive oil instead of butter.
Now I think life is great.”
That’s a happy mind-set we can all aspire to.
Photo Credit: Bill Diodato
