My personal experience with this eating disorder lasted for one year. I was lucky.
My second experience with anorexia was with our youngest daughter. She was about 15 – only this time we knew the word for her condition.
She looked terrible – no muscles on her arms and hardly any on her legs even though she was running and was on the cross country team. I could have strangled her dance teacher. I asked her if she thought our daughter was too thin and she said ‘no’ in front of our daughter who was by now wearing layers of clothes.
We took her to a physician to make certain she remained well physically which she did because her menses never did stop. That’s one of the sure signs for women and girls when they go over the line. Their bodies become protective and do whatever they can to take care of themselves rather than becoming fertile for a possible pregnancy.
We asked friends who were psychologists what to do and learned there wasn’t much we could do. They told us she was a classic case: an achiever, active in extra curricular activities, an excellent student and good looking. Believe me my husband and I were not comforted by these words.
As luck would have it, and we were lucky, our daughter was planning on going to camp as a junior counselor. We told her she couldn’t go until she weighed at least 85 or 86 (she was 82 pounds at 5 feet.) She ate chocolate candy bars for 3 days and put on the weight. A very good sign. It meant she wasn’t completely entrenched in her eating disorder.
When she returned home from camp she hadn’t lost any more weight. Our conclusion was she was enjoying herself. She had lots of girl friends. Soon after school started in the fall, she met a boy, a romance ensued and she started eating normally – as normally as a teen age girl eats.
The whole episode lasted a year (similar to mine).
She’s an adult now with children and she watches her weight but you wouldn’t call her skinny. She jogs just about every day. She claims she does it so she can eat her ‘m & ms’ . She looks good.
We are so fortunate. It worked out and I can’t take any credit.
I hope some of you reading this were also fortunate.
My best, Ruthan Brodsky
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