By Sondra Rodriguez, Student Reporter
About 150 freshmen girls will attend the annual Christmas party in the West Lobby of Gardner Residence Hall at 10 p.m. Monday, and like any Christmas party, food will be everywhere.
“If just one person out of those 150 isn’t eating, or is overeating and then just walks away, they’re going to go unnoticed,” said Katherine Lewis, junior social work major from Wichita, Kan., and former resident assistant in Garnder Hall. “I never entered into those activities with the mindset of I should be watching people to make sure everyone is emotionally stable tonight.”
The holiday season can be the most difficult time of year for a student dealing with an eating disorder. This struggle, often unnoticed, forces students to face the challenges of going home for the holidays, the portrayal of food as a form of celebration and the capability of the season to act as a trigger into a relapse.
According to the National Eating Disorders of America, NEDA, the two most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Anorexia is a condition characterized by self-starvation and excessive weight loss. Bulimia is characterized by a cycle of binge eating, consuming an unusually large amount of food quickly and to the point of physical discomfort, followed by purging or self-induced vomiting. This is done to compensate or undo the effects of binge eating. Both are triggered by an extreme concern with self-image and by the intense fear of being “fat” or becoming “fat” after eating. The severity of both is intensified over the holiday season.
Cara Flanders, therapist in the University Counseling Center, treats students struggling with eating disorders on campus and said holidays are a challenge because students must go home and face any changes that have happened since they left for school.
“Let’s say a freshman gained weight their first semester,” she said. “They know they’re going to see old friends so they think ‘okay, I need to get this off,’ so they may experiment with some ways of doing that.”
Experiments include bringing and purging which can rapidly become a habitual cycle.
“That cycle starts to control them,” she said. Lewis said this cycle goes unnoticed.
“I would say 10 percent of the girls on my hall struggled with some sort of eating disorder,” Lewis said. “And I’d say most RA’s have no idea.”
Going home for the holidays also means students will struggle to keep their disorders hidden from parents, said Steve Rowlands, director of the University Counseling Center.
“You can come to college and hide the stuff you’re struggling with,” Rowlands said. “But when you go home, your mom’s cooking the food you used to like and she’s wondering why you aren’t eating as much.”
Rowlands said students struggling with a disorder also are faced with any stresses left behind when he or she went to college.
“You may go home and be confronted with some emotional things you haven’t had to deal with all semester,” he said. “There’s a correlation between these eating disorders and social pressures.”
Flanders said family stress is a primary factor, and as a result, “that disorder can be magnified.”
A student with a disorder also may struggle with the fact that food is everywhere during the holidays.
“You can’t think of any place where there’s not food,” Rowlands said. “For someone concerned about their body image or eating habits, whether it is anorexia or overeating, those are both grounds that would be challenged that time of year.”
In an article by Dr. Randy Hartman at the Center for Change, a Utah based rehabilitation center for young women struggling with eating disorders, he said the holiday season is the worst time of the year for sufferers.
They are “trapped in the private hell of anorexia or severe bulimia. Thanksgiving and Christmas magnify all the personal demons and cause great internal pain and turmoil,” he said.
Flanders said a single bite or even the presence of food can cause such anxiety.
“Some people have an issue realizing that food is not evil,” she said. “But eating a bite of that really nice pie can trigger them to purge because they feel like they ate too much.”
Flanders said many people do not struggle with an actual eating disorder but are diagnosed with disordered eating.
According to NEDA, this is a condition that means people’s attitudes about food, weight, body size and shape may be causing them to have strict eating and exercise habits that jeopardize their health, happiness and safety.
This attitude can easily spiral out of control and develop into an actual disorder.
Flanders said it is important to be aware of the differences in disordered eating and eating disorders-disordered eating may balance off after the holidays, but anorexia and bulimia are year round.
Lewis said people do not realize how many students struggle with an eating disorder on campus.
“I think since we’re on a Christian campus, a person with an eating disorder is really stigmatized,” she said. “Being able to talk about disorders openly on this campus boils down to the fact that we have to be more loving and accepting. Then, people would be more willing to talk about it, but right now it’s so hidden and closed off.”
Late one night as the fall semester came to an end, Lewis heard a knock on the door of her third-floor hall. She opened it to see a freshman girl sobbing.
“She told me that she was struggling with an eating disorder,” Lewis said. “She told me it was something she dealt with in the past and she thought she was doing better since coming to school, but already felt herself slipping back into it.”
Eating disorders exist on this campus, and the stresses of the holiday season have the potential to amplify their severity.
If anyone thinks he or she may be struggling with any disorder, Flanders recommends scheduling an appointment in the Counseling Center located in the basement of McKinzie Hall.
“You just have to get enough of the right factors together, and a disorder can start,” she said.
An appointment will allow a student to talk to someone, explore these factors and learn skills to handle them. “Don’t blow it off, but don’t blow it up,” she said.
