Just another typical day at work, you know the typical
ritual of answering emails, talking to students and teaching, or so I
thought. Ten minutes into my last class of the day, a
female student who was seated at her desk turned towards the floor to get the books
she had dropped, however she never came back up. She had passed out in class, right there
right then. So what? That has happened before to many of us,
students pass out for many different reason in many different classes. But this one student in my class today did
not surprise me at all when she passed out.
See, this female student has been dealing with eating disorders for
about 7 years and what is even worse is the fact that she is only 17yo.
I had noticed her facial expressions when we talked about
certain topics in class, and even when she walked out of class when we were watching
a video about anorexia. I knew that she
was struggling with the “horrible” thought of being fat; however I had no idea of
how much suffering she was going through.
Why does this bother me so much???? Why does it devastate me so much????
Four days ago, as I was driving my 6yo daughter back home after
her indoor soccer practice, she said she was hungry. I opened my purse and I handed her a small
bag of chips because that was the only thing that I had at the time. She got excited and after a few minutes of
eating the chips she handed me the bag and said:
“Here mommy, I am done, I don’t want to eat all of it because
I don’t want to be fat”
What???? My baby, my
daughter, my 6yo daughter is hungry and doesn’t want to eat because she is afraid
of being fat!!! All of a sudden I felt
angry and replied, “Mel you don’t need to worry about that!” Yes I was angry! I was very angry that my
baby was already afraid of being fat, that she was already concerned about not
eating too much, that she was already worried about what she looks like, but
most of all, I was pissed for the fact that she is only 6 and this worry should
not be anywhere close to her head right now!
Soon that anger turned into sadness and fear.
Then very calmly I said, “Mel honey, you just played soccer
and you are hungry, it is ok to eat!”
What she said next was even more shocking to me: “but mom when I move my
legs it jiggles,” while pointing to her inner thighs, “do your legs jiggle too
when you move?” “Oh yea Mel, my legs
jiggle too, everyone’s leg jiggles.” “But
Mel, why are you thinking about that?” I asked. “I don’t know mommy, I just see people and I
don’t want to be fat.”
I didn’t know what else to say, do I make it a big deal and
keep asking questions? Do I talk about
it as a matter of fact? What do I
do???? “Mel you need to eat to grow, to
have strong muscles, to be able to learn at school, to be able to play sports
and not be tired, you need to eat to be healthy.” And that was the end of the conversation.
So, today I come to work and have my 17yo student pass out
in class because of her eating disorder and now I am more than afraid, I am terrified
by the idea that my child may be its next victim.
I am writing this post asking for support, advice, ideas,
anything to help me figure out what to do now to prevent her from being that
17yo girl. Can I do something? Anything?
Can WE do something about it????
The only thing I can think of is make sure that Mel understands the difference between certain types of food. I know she is too young to be concerned about that; however it is already a fact, right? So why not make it a lesson about healthy food? Why not use it as an opportunity to explain to her about chips and carrots? I am sorry if I cannot help too much but...
ReplyDeleteI am not ashamed to admit, that I do not want to be fat, but I think I have a healthy understanding of what "fat" actually means, and beyond that I am working toward loving my body. I have always accepted the body I have with all its human imperfections, but accepting one's body and loving it are two entirely different things. Loving our bodies requires us to take action eating healthy and exercising regularly.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what we can do, but we definitely need to have a healthier understanding of our bodies. Most of the time I see two extremes: average size or even skinny women who think they are fat and women who are actually obese who "love their bodies the way they are." Neither of these is healthy. To contradict and countermeasure stereotypes of beauty, there is this idea that we should love our bodies. I agree. The problem is that people don't know what that means. A person who loves his or her body does not feed it poison (a tone of fats and sugars--primarily refined sugars, which encompass far more foods than most people realize including breads, pastas, salad dressings, etc.). A person who loves his or her body, works to make that body healthy and strong. S/he feeds it lots of fruits and veggies and gets some sort of regular exercise. If you eat the right foods, the foods that actually give your body the nutrition it needs, you can eat as much as you want. Monday, I ate a whole pound of raspberries and half a bag of pistachios for lunch. I washed it all down with a very large glass (about 24 ounces) of freshly juiced papaya, apple, kiwi, spinach, carrots, and ginger root. That is a huge meal. I was stuffed. I felt great. I fed my body like I loved it instead of like I used to (and sometimes still do) with greasy fried fast food, breads, pastas, processed dairy products, and other incredibly unhealthy processed foods. Regularly ingesting these foods is treating your body like you hate it. These foods are poisons, and they are killing us.
I agree with you. Exercise is good to keep you healthy, eating healthy is good for your body, but we usually think of these things when we are talking about weight loss. We talk about exercising to lose weight and not to have a healthy heart. At home we try to model this behavior of healthy eating and healthy thinking, and it makes me so sad and scared that my 6yo is getting this other message from someone somewhere else. :(
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