Black coffee and lettuce was the diet suggested for Laurel Jeffrey 24 years ago as a dance student at a theater school.
The University senior and psychology major, now 46 years old, took her dance teacher’s advice and under the guise of becoming a vegetarian, ate only vegetables, shedding pounds and progressing toward a life-threatening bout with anorexia that started during her first year in college at age 22.
The Center for the Study of Collegiate Mental Health at Pennsylvania State University released a national survey of campus health centers late last month, which shows that body image concerns weigh heavily on college students and are often linked to depression, anxiety, hostility, social anxiety and family issues.
Cara Bohon, a University doctoral student in clinical psychology, researches eating disorders and obesity prevention at the Oregon Research Institute. Jeffrey’s fixation on the ideal dancer’s body is one that Bohon often sees in patients.
“The idea that the body image media portrays will bring you happiness – if you’ve internalized that ideal, you’re more likely to develop an eating disorder,” Bohon said. Away from their families for the first time, she believes that the isolation college students often feel may prompt the dangerous dieting that many times leads to an eating disorder.
For Jeffrey, it was family that first brought her disorder to light and eventually forced her into treatment.
“My mother had made me dinner for my birthday,” Jeffrey said. “I ate a couple of bites, but my stomach had shrunk so much I couldn’t eat any more.”
After years battling anorexia, bulimia and later some combination of the disorders, Jeffrey found her way out through an Overeaters Anonymous group. Although the treatment wasn’t tailor-made for people with anorexia, Jeffrey met others battling eating disorders and the 12-step program and sponsorship model led her to recovery.
Nationally renowned treatment center, Walden Behavioral Care in Northampton, Mass., estimates that 40 percent of college women experience problems with eating disorders and 91 percent have dieted to control their weight. According to the Penn State study, 44 percent of college women and 37 percent of all students endorse the statement, “the less I eat, the better I feel about myself.”
Bohon said the line between dieting and a disorder can be hard to distinguish, but having “fat days” and being concerned about one’s diet are not necessarily red flags.
“There was a strong belief that (disorders) started with dieting, but what we found is if you put women on a healthy diet, they’re not any more susceptible to developing an eating disorder,” Bohon said.
Dieting might not spur a disorder, but rapid weight loss was a dieting result Jeffrey enjoyed and obsessively pursued.
“It was about my desire to fit some mold I had made for myself, but you also get an enormous amount of attention,” she said. “Even negative attention feels good.”
While public health information on eating disorders often focuses on women, Jeffrey and Bohon agreed that men also suffer from poor body image and develop eating disorders.
“Men and women are equally dissatisfied with their bodies,” Bohon said.
While women across the board want to lose weight, Bohon said, men are split 50-50 between wanting to lose and wanting to gain. Bohon attributes this fact to the ideal body image for men being a muscular, bulkier build that many thin men can’t always achieve.
Jeffrey hopes to one day use her own experience as a physician’s assistant helping people with eating disorders find their way to recovery. For students who may be experimenting with unhealthy eating habits as she once did, Jeffrey said students should take it seriously when friends and family show concern.
“If the people around you start to say things, I’d say pay attention,” she said.
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