Body Dysmorphism

Body dysmorphic disorder is a mental condition where people are convinced they are ugly because of a minor, sometimes even imagined, flaw in their appearance. It's not limited to sufferers of eating disorders, but it is frequently a symptom.

If you watch documentaries on eating disorders, you'll see victims saying that they're fat, or drawing themselves in a distorted way. One example of this is in the documentary Thin. A girl is asked to draw what she believes her outline to be. She then stands inside this and someone draws her real outline, which is considerably smaller.

For a long time, I didn't really accept or understand this. I couldn't conceive that an anorexic might look in the mirror and not be able to see the bones sticking out as a sign that there wasn't enough fat and muscle. This half-blindness seemed a ridiculous concept.

I still don't understand it, but I'm forced to accept the ugly truth of its existence.

When I was younger, I used to take part in a village show put on every year. I did this between the ages of seven and fourteen. Looking back on my life, I consider that my eating disorder starting somewhere between the ages of fourteen and fifteen, but I have some distinct memories of the last village show I was in.

I wondered if part of the reason I hadn't got the role of the princess was because I was too fat.

I hated having my measurements taken for the costumes. I was convinced that the lady who made the costumes would look at what she was writing down and think I was some fat pig.

I was horrified because one section of the show required me to wear a really skimpy costume. I was terrified of the idea of going out on stage with my huge stomach on view to hundreds of people. I nearly quit the show because of it.

The show was recorded and all the cast got a video of it. My dad recently spent ages transferring videos onto DVD and yesterday I watched the show again. I wasn't skinny, but I certainly wasn't fat.

I was thinner than the girl who was playing the princess (which is a blow to my ego regarding my acting abilities :) ). In the part I was concerned about showing my stomach to the world, there was barely any difference between my size and that of the girl standing next to me, in an equally skimpy costume.

Looking back, it's clear that I was already in a disordered mindset. At that point in my life, there were no real binges, there were no drastic attempts to lose weight, but I was obviously well on the way to becoming disordered. The mental patterns set in long before the behavioural ones.

I think that's one of the main problems with curing eating disorders; we can't catch them soon enough. By the time the physical signs are noticeable, the mental patterns have been in place too long and they've formed an addiction. Eating disorders are going to continue to be a problem, no matter how many health centres and support groups there are, until we can find a way to prevent the disordered mindset forming in the first place.

With our society getting more and more bogged down in calorie counting and recommend amounts of carb and fat, I think we're heading in the wrong direction.

This is another video of my experiences with eating disorders. I may make this a regular weekly feature, but I might run out of songs.

This video shows the way I used to behave, not how I currently do. It shows the methods of purging I used: mainly diet pills, skipping meals, throwing away food, eating only vegetables and excessive exercise. It also includes vomiting. This was a very rare occurance for me, but I felt it worth including. Every time I threw up after a binge, I swore it would be the last time. That promise was rather difficult to keep.



I show myself reading a novel at one point. This is Perfect by Natasha Friend. It's an excellent story of a girl suffering from bulimia.

The next clip shows me with a DVD. This is the movie Sharing the Secret, which is based on a true story. It deals with a bulimic girl being discovered by her mum and her journey towards recovery.

I took a lot of comfort from stories like this because it helped me feel less alone.

There are also clips of me looking at websites. These are Food Focus, which is a site for calculating calories eaten and burned, Anorexics Advice, a site aimed at wannarexics but helpful to those with eating disorders, Why We Hate Anorexia and my own blog.

Blame

I read a piece on another blog about blame. The author there felt that she was pressured into pointing fingers and blaming parents or the media or biology. She felt that we don't need to blame anyone.

Her piece got me thinking about my circumstances and who I should blame for my own disorder.

One scapegoat a lot of people point fingers at are pro-ana sites. These are definitely not to blame in my case. I didn't these sites. I never even considered joining a group discussing eating disorders because I didn't believe I had one. I never looked for tips on how to hide food or to burn off more calories. So the pro-ana cult is completely innocent, at least as far as my history is concerned.

Another common scapegoat is the media in general, with magazine printing pictures of super skinny models and stories about how this actress has that eating disorder. Never read them. I couldn't care less about actors' social lives and I never fussed about the fashion pages. The only magazines I ever bought were ones to do with writing, and I don't think they ever mentioned the subject. So I didn't feel pressured to be thin by pictures of celebrities.

Then you get to bullying and abuse. Nope. I've never been abused physically, sexually or emotionally. I was never bullied at school. The school I went to was a good one which encouraged respect and where getting good grades was a thing to be proud of, not a cause of bullying (at least for most of the pupils, including me). None of the other kids at school ever made comments about my weight. It helped that the friendship group I was in wasn't openly fussed about that sort of thing. They weren't into fashion and trying to date every other guy in the boys' school down the road. They would have accepted me no matter what.

So we get to parents. Another very common subject for blame. Do I think my parents played a part in my eating disorder? Certainly. Do I blame them for it? No.

When I was in my early teens, I was a bit overweight. I wasn't hugely fat, but it was enough to be noticeable. My family has a history of diabetes and one of the factors that can affect whether someone develops diabetes is their weight. My mum advised me to be careful and to start thinking about weight. Genetics plays a huge part in whether or not we're predisposed to be thin and my family certain aren't. My mum thought it would be easier to start thinking about weight then and being careful than becoming seriously fat and then trying to diet it away. She was of the opinion (and generally, I believe her) that keeping weight off was easier than losing it once gained.

She was always nice about it. She didn't talk about it in terms of how I needed to lose weight, but suggested that we both get a bit more exercise (she was suffering from middle aged spread). She wanted us to support each other, help each other and encourage each other in a sensible diet.

So, yes, my mum called me fat and that made me self-conscious about my weight, but I can hardly hate her for it. She was concerned about diabetes which is, at best, a life-altering condition and, at worst, a life-threatening one. She was trying to ensure I had a healthy future, as well as looking good and not being a risk of being teased for being overweight. She only ever had my best interests at heart and I think her encouragements were sensible. I don't want to have to worry about insulin injections or maybe lose a limb to a condition, so I'm happy to have received that advice.

Then consider my sister. There were plenty of times through my teenage years when I hated her for merely existing. She's three years older than me, thinner than me, pretty and has always done extremely well academically. To top it off, she's an excellent musician, good at art and gets near-perfect grades. I know my parents never compared us, but it was hard, when I fourteen and fifteen, for me to see it that way. I struggled to see me good points and just saw all the talents that my sister had that I hadn't.

I couldn't sing a note. She reached grade three in piano in less time than it took me to reach grade one.

My pencil sketches were mediocre at best and my paintings worse. She had a painting framed in the kitchen.

I did well at school. She'd been there before me and had a list of A's, so even if I got good results, it would be nothing special.

When I was doing my GCSE's, she was doing her A-Levels and doing well. She was applying for university and getting offers from Oxbridge.

My parents never pushed us to compete or favoured one of us more. I know the competition was all in my mind, but it was there nonetheless. I wanted so badly to be as good as my perfect sister, but I didn't believe I ever would be. She never bragged. She didn't try to encourage me in my belief that she was better. She's told me since that she hated me for a portion of her teenage years because I did well at school, shone in maths and could write better stories than her. It seems that each of us had a competition going on in the privacy of our heads and the each of us found ourselves to be the losers.

But can I blame my sister? No. The need to be perfect came entirely from me, not from her. My sisters grades were something I fixated on but I should hardly expect her to do less than what she was capable of, simply to appease me own ego. She did well and that's great for her. A large part of my problems back then stemmed from my desire to compete with her, but she didn't know about it and she isn't to be blame. I created the competition not her. I was the one who set myself standards of perfection I could never reach.

School played a huge part in my depression that led to my binge eating, which lead to everything else.

The school I went to was an excellent one, with helpful teachers who encouraged us to achieve our potential. My parents never told me I had to get the best marks. They never sat me down and forced me to do my homework. They never put excessive pressure on me. But still, I knew I was expected to do well. I come from a family of high achievers and it was generally accepted that I would be one too. I felt that a lot as I was working for GCSE's, and later A-Levels.

I felt that anything less the perfect marks would lead to my parents being disappointed in me. I wanted to please my parents. I loved them, they'd given me the best that they could, and I wanted to live up to their expectations. So I pushed myself into believing that I had to get straight A's.

I know now that my parents would still have loved me had I done badly in those exams, but it was hard to believe it at the time.

I would like to blame school for my eating disorder. I would love to blame exams, which sort us out and rank us so that the world can see who's better. The exam boards slot us into categories so that getting a B at a school full of A's and A*s feels like a crime.

Yeah. Please can I blame exams?

But I should be honest with myself. I was the one who put so much meaning on these little letters. I was the one who cared so much and felt that the world would come crashing down if my marks weren't good enough. I was the one who stressed so much that the only way to feel calm was in that numb period where I was shoving food in my mouth without thinking.

I'm running out of scapegoats.

Can I blame biology? Probably. In the end, everything comes down to biology.

I watched a documentary on eating disorders. It said when they look at the families of eating disorder sufferers, there's usually a family history of anxiety conditions (and often other eating disorders). My mum jokes about chocolates being anti-depressants, so I know that food can be a comfort for her.

My grandmother on my dad's side is a worrier. She plans everything to the tiniest detail and then panics if things don't go 100% right. I'm no psychologist, but I'd say she has an anxiety condition. I wouldn't have said the same was true of my maternal grandmother, but she did like everything to be in its place. I can't comment on my grandfathers because I barely remember one and never knew the other.

I know my mum has problems with anxiety. Apparently, it used to be even more severe, but she's got passed the problem and managed to build herself a life she can be proud of.

I think there's a decent case for my family being predisposed to anxiety and passing on those genes to me. So I guess I can blame my parents, since they're the ones who gave me these genes. But it's not fair on them to do so. They had no choice when they gave me an anxious disposition than when they gave me brown hair or type A blood.

There's a lot of evidence to support the theory that eating disorders are influenced by biology. I'm willing to believe that I was born with a natural tendency that made me susceptible to developing bulimia. The pressures from school, my parents and my sister only gave me a slightest nudge, but I was born standing on the edge of the precipice, so that nudge was all that was needed to send me spiralling into disordered eating.

Everything else, all the other pressures, were dreamt up by me. I can only really blame myself for the things I did.

But that goes both ways. I may have caused my own condition, but I shouldn't focus on blame.

I was also the one who cured myself and I should be proud of myself for that. And I'm the one who'll keep fighting for the rest of my life if I have to, and I'm pleased with that determination. I won't focus on the fact that I can drive myself into despair. I'll focus on the fact that I crawled my way back out of the depression and into happiness.

I did that.

Me.

And that's a good part of myself that no one can take away.