Posts Tagged “Bulimia”

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Alleigh Colleran is a Seattle-based writer and mother of one, currently pregnant with her second. This essay draws from her lived experience with eating disorder recovery, pregnancy, postpartum, and motherhood.

For most of my life, food has felt loaded. It has never been just food. Even when I tried to convince myself otherwise, there was always something more attached to it: control, shame, discipline, temptation, comfort, punishment. I spent nearly two decades moving in and out of the grips of bulimia and anorexia. Some years, the eating disorder whispered. Other years, it took over completely. But whether it was loud or quiet, it was always there, shaping the way I moved through the world.

When I was deeply consumed by it, my inner life narrowed into negotiation. What had I eaten? What had I earned? What would I allow myself next? What did I need to undo? Hunger felt suspicious. Fullness felt dangerous. And pleasure, simple, unguarded enjoyment, felt perhaps most scary of all.

For years, I thought that when I was ready to let it go, I simply would. I thought I was choosing it. I thought the control still belonged to me.

**Content warning: This is one person’s story; everyone will have unique experiences in recovery and beyond. Some stories may mention eating disorder thoughts, behaviors, and symptoms. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

Amanda Marie (she/her) is a PhD in Psychology and a passionate advocate for eating disorder recovery. In 2021, she began her healing journey after a 10-year battle with bulimia, and now uses her story to empower others. She’s seen the beauty and wholesomeness that exist on the other side of recovery.

There were many times I believed I’d never recover. Living with an eating disorder felt like being trapped in a never-ending storm. I feared bulimia was forever, but it wasn’t. I realized that the same intense drive that had kept me stuck was also the drive that pulled me out. Healing has been beautiful as I have learned to choose peace over punishment, and self-respect over perfection.

Academic excellence can vanish almost overnight when eating disorders take hold. High-achieving students find themselves unable to concentrate, missing classes, and watching their GPAs plummet. The academic consequences extend far beyond temporary setbacks—they can derail entire educational trajectories.

Learn more about eating disorder treatment and school support for teens and families

When a straight-A student suddenly struggles with basic math problems, or a creative writer can’t finish a simple paragraph, the culprit might not be lack of effort. For students with eating disorders, the brain-school connection becomes disrupted in ways that many families don’t expect.

The impact goes far beyond missed meals affecting energy levels. Eating disorders fundamentally alter how the brain processes, stores, and retrieves information—the very functions students need to succeed academically.

Remember: A semester of modified academics is far better than years of struggling through school with an untreated eating disorder.

Learn more about eating disorder treatment and school support for teens and families

What Does Purging Mean?

Purging is a compensatory behavior experienced by many people with eating disorders. It refers to the act of compensating for or expelling food intake to influence body weight or “make up for” consuming calories. Purging is most commonly associated with self-induced vomiting but also includes the misuse of laxatives, diet pills, and diuretics, as well as excessive exercise. This is seen across eating disorder diagnoses, including bulimia, anorexia, and OSFED (Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder).

There are many side effects purging can have on the human body. In this blog, we will break down a handful of different physical consequences of purging to explore what eating disorder behavior can do to the body in the long term. We discuss the effects of bulimia purging across your entire body, in addition to the effects that purging disorders can have on your mental and emotional state. We’ll examine how eating disorder purging can exacerbate pre-existing mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, and how they can trigger new psychological challenges, including severe mood swings and stress-related disorders. Whether you’re struggling with this yourself or know someone who is, understanding the full scope of the impact of purging disorder is the first step toward recovery.

Our society continues to perpetuate the myth that eating disorders are an issue primarily affecting young, thin white women. While research on eating disorders in marginalized groups has improved, our society has a long way to go to truly understand the scope of eating disorders within underserved populations.  For example, though rates of binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa in the Hispanic community are often the same or greater than in non-Hispanic white communities, they often go undetected due to stereotypes about eating disorders (Alegria et al., 2007).

Racism is embedded in the world at large and trickles down to national and state levels, institutions, policies, procedures, and systems of care. Its presence also heavily predicts both mental and physical health outcomes. By educating ourselves on the lived experiences of Hispanic and Latinx Americans and learning how racism operates within the systems that provide services, we can build our collective cultural humility and ultimately improve access to care and health outcomes for this community.

Read on to learn the prevalence of eating disorders in the Hispanic and Latinx population, the factors that influence the development of these illnesses, and the barriers to treatment for this community. 

Eating disorders have stereotypically been associated with slim, white, young, heterosexual, cisgender women. In reality, eating disorders can affect anyone, regardless of how they look or identify. Eating disorders are brain-based biological illnesses that have complex causes and require specialized care. However, the stereotypical idea of someone with an eating disorder has serious ramifications on who is diagnosed and who then receives proper treatment.

Consequences of the Thin, White Woman Stereotype

Historically, there has been a misconception that eating disorders affect only thin, young, white females. Early research was conducted on only white women, which led people to believe eating disorders were only a white woman’s disease. Despite most providers now knowing that this is false, the initial belief had serious implications for eating disorder treatment today.

This initial stereotype became ingrained in the larger society, with both patients and healthcare providers working under the assumption that eating disorders only happened in certain individuals. Not only did this lead to providers missing eating disorder diagnoses in people of color, but it also caused people of color to question if they really had disordered eating that was worthy of treatment.

**Content warning: This post includes discussion of purging behaviors. Please use your discretion when reading and speak with your support system as needed.

A characteristic of certain kinds of eating disorders is a behavior called purging. The act of purging is often used as a way of compensating for food intake in order to influence body weight or shape. Purging is not specific to one kind of eating disorder and can occur in those experiencing bulimia, anorexia, and OSFED (Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder). This behavior is very serious and requires professional help.

In this blog, we will discuss different types of purging, warning signs, physical effects, and treatment options.