Forty-five years ago, on a Wednesday after school, I walked into my parents’ farmhouse and discovered a doctor was admitting me to a hospital that night for tests. I had lost some weight, and he suspected I may have diabetes.
I was seventeen; in the midst of the final semester of my senior year of high school—admitted to a geriatric unit on the seventh floor of the old Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne. It has since been torn down and the memories have faded with it.
I wrote about that awful, humiliating experience in my book, and then never revisited it again.
However, recently on Facebook, I saw the 45th birthday celebration of a baby born to family friends a few floors beneath my hospital room.
It’s been forty-five years.
I entered that hospital at 118 pounds. . . and exited at 104 pounds. (5’8”)
At discharge, my parents were instructed to make me eat more food.
That was the medical profession’s solution.
Telling a patient they need to gain or lose weight is not the solution.
It all backfired.
Eating more or less food is always the “standard of care” solution for anyone who is significantly overweight or underweight.
Today, all of these years later, many doctors are still in the dark ages.
They still hand out/prescribe diets and tell patients they need to gain or lose weight.
Diets and meal plans are not the solution.
If they were, anorexia, bulimia, chronic binge eating would be eradicated by now.
Instead, eating disorders are now an epidemic. They are the deadliest mental illness, second only to opioid overdoses.
They take a life every 52 minutes in the United States. (And that number is grossly underreported, because most physicians and coroners aren’t trained in recognizing them.)
Thankfully, there are now certified eating disorder specialists who treat patients with individual care plans. . .but mainstream physicians are still in the dark when it comes to treating patients with eating disorders.
If you suspect you or a loved one many have an eating disorder, I highly recommend reading The Eating Disorder Trap by Robyn L. Goldberg, registered dietitian and certified eating disorder specialist and expert. She also hosts the Eating Disorder Trap Podcast and interviews eating disorder experts from all throughout the world.
Other helpful resources:
1) Emilee: The Story of a Girl and Her Family Hijacked by Anorexia by John and Linda Mazur
2) Once Shattered: Picking up the Pieces Podcast hosted by John and Linda Mazur and Ellen Bennett
3) Andrea’s Voice: Silenced by Bulimia by Doris Smeltzer
May the peace of Christ be with you.
Emily Boller, wife, mother, artist, and author is on a mission to create expressive works of art in her lifetime; and to bring awareness to the potentially harmful traps of diet-wellness culture.
In her free time, she loves to chase sunrises, grow flowers and vegetables, and can homemade soups.