Eating Disorders: Aware, But Not Over

Hi everyone, so I’m back for my final post for this project about eating disorders. For an overview about what they are, see my first and second posts. To review, eating disorders are a medical issue when a person’s diet and relationship with food is severely damaged in some way. There are four types of eating disorders: Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Binge-Eating Disorder, and Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorders (OSFEDs). They can cause a person’s body to rapidly deteriorate to the point of death, if not treated. I did a survey within SLA’s student body to see what people knew about eating disorders, and the answers were not positive. People didn’t really know much, and agreed that they aren’t talked about enough.

Before going into what I did to make a change in the world of eating disorders and awareness, I’m going to talk about what things are already being done. There’s an organization known as the NEDA, the National Eating Disorders Association. They provide a lot of information about eating disorders to raise awareness, and give a helping hand to those who are going through the process of getting better. They give free eating disorder screenings, host walks and other awareness events, suggest good treatment facilities, have support groups, and even have their own “NEDAwareness Week”. During the NEDAwareness Week this year, the NEDA’s goal was to get as many people as possible screened and to talk about their experiences with eating disorders using the “#NEDAwareness” hashtag. The NEDA also has a program called “The Body Project”, where they get a few groups of candidates and give them weekly workshops on body acceptance. Results show that these people tend to feel less unhappy with their body.

Now that this project is over, it’s time to reflect. Overall, I feel like I did well on this project, and I feel good about it. I learned a lot about myself, and how I feel about talking about my experiences. I also learned a bit about eating disorders in general, especially OSFEDs, and about how people’s brains work. If there are things I could do better, it’d definitely be being more organized with time. There were times when I procrastinated a lot, and other times where I felt I was doing so much my head might explode. However, I do feel like I’ve learned a lot and made a change by making others learn a lot. There is still a lot left to do to have eating disorders no longer exist, and it’s a long road, but it’s one that may eventually happen. What’s left is for people to feel good about their bodies and to not feel that food is a way to cope with life, not all the time, anyway. Unfortunately, that may be an idealistic view, but one can hope. I sincerely hope that you’ve learned from reading my blog posts, and have a great summer!