anorexia

How is it that women who identify as anorexic are nearly three times as likely to have an unplanned pregnancy than other women? Simple. Just because a woman stops menstruating doesn't mean she stops ovulating.

The results shocked the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study, who conducted the study. Out of 62,060 women who participated, 62 identified as anorexic and half of them got pregnant by accident compared to only 19 percent of other women. Of course, where there are pregnancies, there are abortions, so anorexic women have more of them.

Amennhorea, period cessation, can be caused by a number of changes in the organs, glands, and hormones. Some anorexics stop ovulating, but clearly most don't. And lots of women with anorexia still have regular periods, so it's all very ambiguous.

Whatever it is, one thing is clear: women don't realize pregnancy can occur when periods cease, and that's a public health message that needs to be sent.

Since it's National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, NEDA ambassador and best-selling author Jenni Schaefer is sharing her insights with us. Yesterday Jenni told us that although she struggled with serious eating disorders for years, she thinks recovery gave her a better body image than she could have ever hoped for. She said: "I spent years talking to a therapist about the size of my thighs. Normal women out there they don't have that luxury, they don't get those tools." So I asked her to share ways we can all improve our body image.

1. Focus on what your body does, not what it looks like. Jenni says: "Rather than always concentrating on what my body looks like, I shifted my focus to what my body does. I started focusing on how lucky I am to have legs that can hike up a mountain, rather than thinking 'wow my legs are so big.' Instead, we should appreciate what our bodies do. Especially with women, our bodies are so amazing. We can bear children. If we started shifting our focus on what our body does and not what it looks like — that was big for me."
2. Replace negative body image with life experiences. Jenni explains: "Realize that your body is just a vehicle for life. I've heard people say it's like an earth suit. It's what you get to wear to walk around and experience the world. Instead of staying in my apartment and hating my body and wrapping myself up in sweats and big blankets and hiding from the world, I started taking off those things, putting on a swimsuit, and going swimming with my friends.

   "I was replacing the negative shame I had for wearing a swimsuit, with the life experience of getting a swimsuit, putting it on, and jumping in the pool. At first, women, and men, need to know, they're going to feel uncomfortable. If they hate their body and they put on a swim suit and go in the water, they'll probably still hate their body. But if you do it slowly over time that experience will become fun and joyful that you'll stop hating your body so much. Bad body image is like a prison, it keeps people trapped in their minds and in their houses, literally."

Since it's National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, NEDA ambassador and best-selling author Jenni Schaefer is sharing her insights with us. After struggling with anorexia and bulimia, Jenni finally divorced her eating disorder. Here are Jenni's thoughts on how society plays a role in eating disorders.

How much does society contribute to an eating disorder and how much is it an individual's issue? Leading researchers on eating disorders often say: genetics loads the gun, and environment pulls the trigger. Certain people are born with certain personality traits that can lead to an eating disorder. Some of those traits are compulsivity, high anxiety, perfectionism.

I was born with all of those traits. And then environment pulling the trigger, for me that was mostly being in our society with the media and with the focus on the thin ideal and the message that if you're thin you'll be happy and you'll be smart and successful. So when I applied all those traits — compulsivity, high anxiety, perfectionism — to trying to meet the thin ideal, for me it was the perfect storm for an eating disorder.

Still, Jenni says society's thinness obsession can have a negative impact on anyone: But what I see now is that regardless of whether someone has a clinical eating disorder, so many people in this world live in this disordered-eating zone. They're worried about food all the time, they still eat but it's a constant worry, a constant weight. They're a healthy weight, but they still worry. And I think it's really sad that the norm is to not like your body. I think society really has an eating disorder — I call it "societal Ed." 

How did you get past the thin ideal? The keys for me with body image was giving myself time and patience to accept and then love my body. Also it's a continuum as well — I started off hating my body, moved to not liking it, then I moved to accepting it, then I moved to liking it, then I moved to loving it. That continuum of my body image improving took years and years. What I've learned, it's really wild, people I know who have recovered from eating disorders have so many more tools to deal with "societal Ed," aka the thin ideal. I spent years talking to a therapist about the size of my thighs. Normal women out there — they don't have that luxury, they don't get those tools. I feel that my eating disorder forced me to be healthier than I ever would have been. 

Come back tomorrow to learn more about the tools anyone can use to improve body image.

At age four, author Jenni Schaefer felt fat in dance class. At the age of 22, when her life had become unmanageable thanks to anorexia and bulimia, Jenni committed to getting help and began the long path toward successfully "divorcing" her eating disorder. Jenni has written two books — Life Without Ed and Goodbye Ed, Hello Me — and now serves as an ambassador for the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). This is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, so I talked to Jenni about her journey toward life without an eating disorder and will share her insight with you this week.

How did you become a NEDA ambassador? I got help at 22. I was struggling with anorexia and bulimia and it took many years to get better, but once I finally did I wanted to help get the word out. I recovered using a unique technique — my first book is called Life Without Ed, and "Ed" is an acronym for eating disorder. I was taught to treat my eating disorder like a relationship, rather than an illness. So in therapy I actually talked to Ed, and I learned to find my own voice and eventually divorce Ed, which is a metaphor I used a lot in recovery. . . It's a little confusing now, that "ED" actually stands for something else! 

How did you know you needed help? I actually thought for so long that I was really healthy, and I think that's what most women and men that first get into eating disorders initially think — and maybe they are initially healthy, but so many times dieting can spiral fast into a clinical eating disorder. I think I finally realized I had a problem in college when my life was spinning out of control. I felt hopeless; when I graduated I couldn't even hold a job waiting tables. Here I was, I was supposed to go to medical school, I had straight As in college and I couldn't hold a job waiting tables because my eating disorder was so bad. And that's when I finally decided to get help, when I was at rock bottom. I didn't want to live another day if I had to live with my eating disorder, but I actually wanted to live.

Jenni acknowledges that the line between an eating disorder and dieting isn't always so clear: It'd be safe to say for someone struggling with an eating disorder that in the beginning, they're not going to know. They're going to think they're being healthy. They're going to be receiving compliments for their eating behaviors. A key question to ask yourself: is my life unmanageable because of food and weight? Is my life miserable because of food and weight? And if your life is unmanageable and you're unhappy because of food and weight then you need to get help regardless of what you're doing with food, regardless of what you weigh. 

Jenni, who lost a friend to anorexia last year, says that if you suspect a friend is struggling you have to do something: So many people are afraid to approach someone about a mental illness regardless of what it might be, but this is an illness that kills.

So what should an outsider do? To find out, read more

Grammy-winner Alanis Morissette has traveled a long road struggling with depression, self-image, and food. In a recent interview with Health magazine, the singer shares that as a teenager, she was both anorexic and bulimic. Although her recovery began at age 18, Alanis says, "eating issues dogged me through my 20s." During that time, she wasn't worried about her weight, but was working long hours and eating salty and processed foods. Admittedly, she wasn't taking care of herself.

Life changed completely when she discovered Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s book Eat to Live. "It’s become my bible, pushing me to completely reorient my thinking about what to put into my body," the singer says. Check out her current diet:

"Now I concentrate on eating high-nutrient foods like fruit, nuts, collards, kale, and spinach. I’m obsessed with them. I even put spinach in my smoothies! — and arugula, too. For lunch, say, I’ll put it in a whole grain wrap with cucumbers, green peppers, hummus, tomatoes, and some lemon juice, cayenne, and hot sauce. I eat a lot of flaxseed oil to keep my omega-3s up, and I put cruciferous veggies like broccoli in soups — they’re so good for you."

Learn Alanis's philosophy on alcohol when you read more

Did you "thin-herit" food issues from your mother?

According to a poll conducted by teen magazine Sugar, girls ages 12 - 18 said that their mother's eating and/or dieting habits and views on food were the biggest influence on their own relationship to food. It was found that if a mom diets, she's twice as likely to have a daughter with an eating disorder.

What was your mother's relationship to food? Do you think it has affected you positively or negatively?

When controversy erupted over an image for Ralph Lauren's Blue Label — model Filippa Hamilton's body appeared to have been digitally retouched, so that she looked bobble-headed and emaciated — I was convinced that the image wasn't the original ad. I was sure that it had been retouched by one of those "thinspirational" proanorexia blogs you hear about which feature models Photoshopped, so that they look like Holocaust victims.

Wow, was I wrong. A spokesperson for Ralph Lauren made this comment about the controversial image:

"For over 42 years, we have built a brand based on quality and integrity. After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately."

Website Boing Boing was first to criticize the image by saying, "Dude, her head's bigger than her pelvis." When Ralph Lauren asked them to take the image down, claiming copyright infringement, they refused, citing fair use laws that that allow for the reproduction of images "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting."

Maybe this will be a message to the cabal of Photoshoppers gone wild who don't seem to recognize that they're contributing to the unrealistic body images that make normal women feel inadequate. When an uberthin model isn't thin enough for the fashion industry, something is seriously wrong.

"Even though I was accomplishing my dream, I was absolutely miserable. I was torturing myself every day by going to the gym every day up to eight hours a day and starving myself."

— From anorexic to plus-size model and now author of the memoir Hungry, Crystal Renn tells Good Morning America how she suffered to get where she is now. She thought she had signed up for a dream job when a modeling scout told her she had the look. The catch? The 5'9" Renn was told she needed to shave nine inches from her hips and lose around 70 pounds — which she did, at one time weighing only 90 pounds. Older, wiser, and a lot less hungry, Renn should be a lesson to us all: don't lose yourself (figuratively or literally!) to make anyone else happy.