Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time women were praised for being voluptuous – not just in their chest or buttocks – but all over. Extra weight was viewed as ideal and preferred.

 

Once upon a time women wrapped and bound their chests to flatten and hide their breasts – in an effort to be called beautiful.

 

Once upon a time women did everything they could to minimize their waistline, even breaking ribs to shrink a few extra inches.

 

Once upon a time women cut their hair short, and wore webbed girdles to lose their feminine curves and make themselves look like boys.

 

Once upon a time women powdered their faces to be as pale as possible.

 

Once upon a time women would avoid eating, vomit their meals, and have expensive surgeries to mutate their bodies into what the ideal woman is expected to look like. Oh wait, never mind, that’s true. That’s where we are now.   

 

It may be hard to believe, but once upon a time, all these statements were true. Every one of them describes an era in the short history of humanity in which certain attributes were endlessly chased by women in an effort to meet societal standards and expectations of “beautiful”. Women would take drastic and dangerous measures to meet the body image stipulations of society.

 

Does this scare you? It should. This means that women currently are, and always have been, sacrificing their health to become look-a-like soldiers of a “beautiful” army, rather than celebrating the uniqueness and individuality of the miracle they’ve been blessed with – their body and their life.

 

Women spend so much time worrying and stressing over their appearance that they forget that their health is a blessing, one that should NOT be sacrificed to become something that they’re not. Instead, women should learn to appreciate their own natural and unique body image, and make the decision to see themselves – how they naturally are – as their own ideal.

 

I’ve mostly been talking about women, but the same goes for men. Perhaps not as drastically, but expectations have shifted throughout the years. From the thin, slender, and toned runner’s body, to the massive muscle bulging body builder, the media has consistently exploited the male physique in advertising, just as much as it does women, putting extreme pressure on men to live up to what is “manly.”

 

I had the unique opportunity to pick the brain of one of these “ideal” men. Anyone that sees James Timberlake will immediately think, that’s a big dude – and not because he’s had “too many cheeseburgers,” as he might say – but rather because of the sheer amount of muscle on his body. Put any young man next to James, and it’s likely he’ll start thinking about how he needs to hit the weights a little harder next time.

 

James is a body builder. He competes for the love of weight lifting, the love of his health, and the love of competition. While he’s always been an athlete, and thus had the body type of such, taking the natural next step towards body building post-college sports has magnified the “ideal body image” that he embodies.

 

The interesting thing about James, though, is that while body building is a competition of muscles, it’s not really about that. It’s about the fun of the mere competition of seeing how you size up (literally and figuratively) to all the other men. It’s about eating right and working out – placing health as the number one priority. James allows his Catholic faith to enrich his competitive nature, knowing that his body is a “gift from God, and a temple of the Holy Spirit.” Keeping this in mind, he maintains his passion for bodybuilding in a way that keeps the dieting and weightlifting as a means of taking care of his body, and keeping it healthy.

 

We can all learn something from James. He knows “that if you put forth the effort you can train your body to perform in any way you would like it to.”  He understands the importance of keeping your body healthy, because after all, it is a gift from God.

 

I wish we would all learn a little lesson from James and realize that when people advocate “loving yourself for the body you have,” they aren’t saying “go ahead and have that cookie, and love yourself anyways.” They’re saying be conscientious of your health, eat well, exercise, and be sure that you’re placing your health as a top priority. Just DON’T sacrifice your health to be something you’re not.

 

I wish we could break the cyclical carousel we’re riding. We’re on patterned path, deep-seated in history, in which the media feeds us unattainable images of “perfection,” and we in turn encourage the media by employing dangerous technologies and techniques to reach said “perfection.” This routine has become a frightening norm. It’s heartbreaking to know that people are ignoring the blessings of where and how they do and can live, and are forgoing the health that many in this world just don’t have, simply to subscribe to a prescribed image of “beautiful.”

 

If we all took a step back and remembered that the definition of “beautiful” is in fact “excellent of its kind,” and realized that each of us are a unique kind of our own, perhaps we could add a refreshing twist to the timeline of body image. Maybe, just maybe, we could begin to define an era in which body image wasn’t so much about what your body looks like, but rather about celebrating who you are, and what your body can do.

 

Erin Swiatek

Meet Your Doctor

Psychologist and Eating Disorder Specialist Q&A

Thanks for the information providing by Dr. Robson & Dr. Romand

Q: what’s anorexia or eating disorders in general?

A: Eating disorders are illnesses, not character flaws or choices. Individuals don’t choose to have an eating disorder. You also can’t tell whether a person has an eating disorder just by looking at their appearance. People with eating disorders can be underweight, normal weight or overweight. It’s impossible to diagnose anyone just by looking at them.

Anorexia and bulimia are not  the only forms of eating disorders. There are also non-classified eating disorders, which are just as serious. In fact, someone can die from a short-term eating disorder. They’re caused by a complex combination of factors, including genetic, biochemical, psychological, cultural and environmental. While researchers haven’t been able to pinpoint the specifics behind these causes, they can identify various factors that make individuals susceptible to eating disorders.

Unfortunately, because of the media, eating disorders sometimes seem as though they are almost encouraged and admired. Yet this is unfortunate as they’re serious, devastating illnesses that need to be treated. A person can lose their health, their family, their motivation for living and ultimately their life.

Q: what are some factors that may contribute to eating disorders?

Genetics

Genetics has a significant contribution and may predispose individuals to eating disorders. Researchers have found that eating disorders tend to run in families. Also, there seem to be higher rates of eating disorders in identical twins than in fraternal twins or other siblings. In addition, specific chromosomes have been linked to both bulimia and anorexia.

Biochemistry

Individuals with eating disorders may have abnormal levels of certain chemicals that regulate such processes as appetite, mood, sleep and stress. For instance, both people with bulimia and anorexia have higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Some research also suggests that individuals with anorexia have too much serotonin, which keeps them in a constant state of stress.

Psychology

Various psychological factors can contribute to eating disorders. In fact, eating disorders are common in individuals who struggle with clinical depression, anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Other factors include:

• Low self-esteem
• Feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy 
• Trouble coping with emotions or expressing your emotions 
• Perfectionism 
• Impulsivity

Culture

Dieting, body dissatisfaction and wanting to be thin are all factors that increase the risk for an eating disorder. Unfortunately, our society encourages all three. You can’t walk by a cash register without seeing a magazine that encourages rapid weight loss, calorie counting or feeling guilty after a meal. Here are some aspects of our culture that contribute to eating disorders:

• An over-emphasis on appearance, at the expense of more meaningful attributes
• Societal beauty standards that promote an unrealistically thin body shape 
• Associating thinness with positive qualities like attractiveness, health, success and love 
• Media’s focus on dieting and striving for a slim and toned silhouette 
• Messages that perpetuate a fear of fat and food; viewing fat as undesirable or foods as “good,” “bad” or “sinful”

Environment

Your environment can also play a major role in developing an eating disorder. These factors include:

• Family or other relationship problems
• Difficult or turbulent childhood
• History of physical or sexual abuse
• Activities that encourage thinness or focus on weight, such as gymnastics, dancing, running, wrestling and modeling
• Peer pressure 
• Being bullied because of weight or appearance in general

Q: What are some underlying issues beside eating disorder?

A: There are many misconceptions in our society about what causes eating disorders. Although the symptoms of anorexia largely surround food and eating, the truth is that at its core, anorexia and other eating disorders do not solely have to do with food and weight. Instead, sufferers use food and unhealthy behaviors like dieting, starving, binging and purging to cope with unpleasant and overwhelming emotions and stressful situations. Eating disorders can be part of an overall picture of the struggle in a person’s life. Often we find that people with eating disorders are experiencing underlying emotional distress, relationship or psychological conflicts, difficult life transitions or past trauma. At least in the short term, these behaviors relieve anxiety and stress. Long term, however, they actually increase anxiety and stress and create other serious complications.

Q: What are some key points about anorexia in overall populations?

A: Anorexia does occur in males! There is a common stereotype that anorexia is a female illness; however, that is not the case. We know that 10% to 15% of anorexia cases are diagnosed in males, and those are just the cases that go reported. Experts feel the rate may be significantly higher; however, many men feel a greater stigma about eating disorders, so they may not seek treatment. Male athletes have a higher reported rate of eating disorders than the general population, due in part to the belief that weight loss is a necessary requirement for peak athletic performance in their sports, and a higher rate of anorexia has also been reported in homosexual and bisexual males. Body image dissatisfaction is fairly stable across the age span. For example many of the same risks of eating disorders in younger women can be precursors for older women as well.

Q: What are some treatments for someone with an eating disorder?

A: When combined with genetic and biological factors, these struggles can sometimes be a precursor to eating disorder symptoms. For some people, anorexia serves as a complex distraction from other painful, seemingly uncontrollable feelings or life events. Part of the recovery process from anorexia is learning other, healthier ways of coping with life’s challenges.  

Psychotherapy Individual psychotherapy can help you learn how to exchange unhealthy habits for healthy ones. You learn how to monitor your eating and your moods, develop problem-solving skills, and explore healthy ways to cope with stressful situations. Psychotherapy can also help improve your relationships and your mood. A type of psychotherapy called cognitive behavioral therapy is commonly used in eating disorder treatment, especially for bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder. Group therapy also may be helpful for some people.

Family-based therapy is the only effective treatment for children and adolescents with eating disorders. This type of therapy begins with the assumption that the person with the eating disorder is no longer capable of making sound decisions regarding his or her health and needs help from the family. An important part of family-based therapy is that your family is involved in making sure that your child or other family member is following healthy-eating patterns and is restoring weight. This type of therapy can help encourage support from concerned family members.

Weight restoration and nutrition education If you're underweight due to an eating disorder, the first goal of treatment will be to start getting you back to a healthy weight. No matter what your weight, dietitians and other health care providers can give you information about a healthy diet and help design an eating plan that can help you achieve a healthy weight and instill normal-eating habits. If you have binge-eating disorder, you may benefit from medical supervised weight-loss programs.

Hospitalization If you have serious health problems or if you have anorexia and refuse to eat or gain weight, your doctor may recommend hospitalization. Hospitalization may be on a medical or psychiatric ward. Some clinics specialize in treating people with eating disorders. Some may offer day programs, rather than full hospitalization. Specialized eating disorder programs may offer more intensive treatment over longer periods of time.

Medications Medication can't cure an eating disorder. However, medications may help you control urges to binge or purge or to manage excessive preoccupations with food and diet. Medications such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications may also help with symptoms of depression or anxiety, which are frequently associated with eating disorders

Be(YOU)tiful

BeYou(tiful) 

by Yumi Kao

Recently, I was reading a report about the statistics of eating disorders. I was shocked that people can develop eating disorders in very young age. The data shows that kids as young as five are being treated in hospital for eating disorders. It seems like that the patients with eating disorders are getting younger, and older patients are being diagnosed with greater frequency as well. The emphasis on thinness in our culture has only gotten stronger in the past decade. Children are exposed to greater amounts of media and role models, including children’s role models, are themselves feeling a greater pressure toward thinness. Parents also feel that pressure to a greater degree and perhaps unwittingly transfer their own body image concerns to their kids through their actions and words. A recent study found that more than 40% of girls who were undertaking a diet were doing so because their mothers told them to. If a parent tells their child to diet or lose weight, they are planting the seeds of negative body image. When a mother or father treats a child in such a way as to make them feel inferior, there’s a significantly greater chance of that child developing an eating disorder. For instance, a mother’s unhealthy body image and obsessed with calorie counting is easily transferred to her teenage daughter. From some of the researches I have done, there are some top causes of eating disorders:

First is the Stress around us. As humans, we are not always taught how to communicate well, how to express feelings, and how to resolve inner and outer conflicts. Usually, eating disorders are the body’s symbolic way of coping with a world that is overwhelming us.

Second is Family of origin. Like the top report I discussed earlier, the attitudes of parental figures are incredibly important in the development of a child’s psyche. When a parent has an unhealthy relationship with food, they reflect that way of thinking of their child.

Third is History of Abuse. Eating disorders can often be a coping mechanism that young people develop as a way to symbolically address difficulties at home, and challenges in their relationships. Between one- and two-thirds of girls and women who seek treatment for eating disorders have been the victims of sexual or physical abuse in their lives. When someone is abused at an early age, they may use eating as a way to take control over their own body, or feel the need to punish themselves and their bodies because of lingering guilt or shame.

Forth is the Culture. We are constantly hit over our heads by the media idea of “physical perfection”. We are told that how we should look. Seeing such unattainable “perfection” nearly everywhere we look has a profound effect on our self-esteem. Our goals become unrealistic and unhealthy. Medias also give us a falsified image, and this misguided focus on unreachable beauty and self-control is a major contributing factor of eating disorders in both women and men today.

In a call for growth and transformation, the wisdom of our body, and the wisdom of the universe speaking to us in a hidden language. Our challenges around food and health are here asking us to grow. They are actually messengers of insight and wisdom that ask us to take a deeper look at our inner and outer worlds. In essence, our task is to remove the viral beliefs that infect our minds around perfection and its attainment when it comes to food and weight. Most people understand this concept, but cannot truly feel and experience the powerful way that our minds are programmed to lead us down a road of self-attack around body image.

There is only one person’s opinion you should be concerned with when it comes to your body and that is you. No one person determines what the “correct” body type is. If you are comfortable in your own skin, and you are healthy, then that should be the only thing that matters. Do not let others tell you that you are not beautiful because if you believe you are, then you are.