I read an article about the recent launch of a web site  offering support and advice for men and teens with eating disorders.  A 23 year old named Sam Thomas developed the site  after developing bulimia as a teenager.  He stated that he  endured years of bullying at school as a result of his disease.  He related that one doctor even told him that there was nothing wrong with him as eating disorders only affect females.  The name of the web site is “Men Get Eating Disorders Too.”

I think this is a great idea.  I am right there with Sam.  I am acutely aware  that Men Do Get Eating Disorders Too.  I know this because for several years I suffered from Bulimia. I experienced the stigma, the unwillingness to tell anyone, the isolation, and the health effects.

I empathize with any male sufferer being too ashamed and embarrassed to seek treatment.  I went through a three year brutal battle with bulimia while a student at Penn State University.   If you think that it is a disease under-reported by men in the 21st century  try being a 21 year old male bulimia sufferer on a college campus of Forty-Thousand in 1981.

Treatment for an eating disorder is for the most part not going to be anything a male 18 year old freshman college student contemplates. I was not about to ask for medical or other help.  I did not even tell my family.   I went through several emotional battles within myself.  There is the overwhelming feeling of shame.  I would have rather told my family I wanted a sex change than I was throwing up after every meal.  You have no context for understanding what you are going through.  You believe that once  you are thin enough to have reached your goal all your social problems will be solved.  Unfortunately the mirror tells you that you are never thin enough.

There is no doubt that in the hot-bod, infinite image explosion,  G-Q generation we live in, men have become more  aggressive in trying to emulate the male model types they see in various types of media.  I never saw it that way.  In the pre-MTV and Directv world of my college days, you were simply not exposed to those types of images to any significant degree.  I equated being thinner with being more accepted and popular.  I was not comparing myself to television and other media images.  I was comparing myself to the people I saw around me on a daily basis.  My perception going through high school was that there were no fat popular kids.  I  was not a model.  I was just your average fat kid trying to fit in and wanting to be popular like the thin kids seemed to be.  I wanted that life.  I wanted any life but mine.  In order to help my weight along I decided to get into long distance running.  I eventually worked my way up to running  10 -20 miles a day, 7 days a week.  I would run 10 in the morning and the same in the evening. I was always training for one marathon or another. When the day was over I scarf down a 2lb bag of peanut M&Ms.  I would then head straight to my next best friend, the toilet, to puke it all up.  This behavior was repeated with pizza, fast food etc. There were days that between not eating, puking after I ate and running long distances I was too dehydrated and weak to even get out of bed.  No matter how much weight I lost or how thin I became I always saw the same person in the mirror.  It was some beastly kid who still needed to drop a few lbs that had no friends.

In the span of one year I went from 230 lbs to 165 lbs at 6’2.  As appealing as that may seem to some, it was a brutal, almost deadly ride that I would not wish on my worst enemy. In my mind being thinner  was the only possible route to social acceptance.  I was not trying to reach some unattainable model goal, I was simply trying to fit in.  The problem is that regardless of why you think you need to either starve yourself or binge and purge the reflection in the mirror never ever changes until you are dead.  About 10 percent of those suffering from Bulimia will ultimately die from the disease.

Fast forward to present day.  Today as I sit here writing this in at 220lbs in 2010.  I still hold the battle scars from my struggles over 25 years ago.  The mirror images fueling the disease also lead to other issues such as alcohol and steroid abuse.  I was able to beat the eating and binging part by replacing it with years of self-exploration and getting comfortable me.  The mental and mirror images will stay with me for life.

Copyright 2010

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