when the past slaps you in face.....

...you remember the exactly 1 week that you wrote for the BYU-Idaho news paper. Just for the heck of it I googled my madien name and came up with this! Don't remember why I didn't continue writing after only one week but this one ended up on the front page that week. I'm actually a little embaressed!



trivia fact! This was printed exactly 2 years to the day before Ty and I got married:)



June 25th, 2002
Starving for imageAnorexia is an illness, not a sin


by Audrey Dorff

Scroll Staff


BYU-Idaho isn’t immune to eating disorders. Many students struggle daily. The good news is that it is a battle that can be won.


Often times, people assume that because they are at a church school, they aren’t affected with problemssuch as eating disorders. Some people would even go as far as to say that people are affected with eating disorders because of sin, Wendy Williams of the BYU-Idaho Counseling Office said.


Those who work in the BYU-Idaho counseling office have worked with students who deal with the struggle of having an eating disorder. Williams is one of those counselors.


Williams states that the rate of eating disorders on campus is not much different than that of the rest of the world. Anorexia occurs in about 0.4 to 0.7 percent of the population. Although she did not have exact percentages, she said that the numbers were probably about the same at BYU-Idaho.


Bulimia is a much more common problem. It occurs in about 2 to 4 percent of the population.



The counseling office sees many more cases of bulimia than they do anorexia, although anorexia is not non-existent.


“The big stumbling block of these disorders is they deny there is a problem or the seriousness of

the problem,” Williams said.


In fact, the reason that most people who suffer from eating disorders won’t admit that there is a problem is part of the disorder. They are too ashamed of their bodies. The only justification that they give is just saying, “I’m fat.”


One student who has suffered from anorexia in the past agrees with this concept.


“I never did this to be vain. I never did it to get other people’s attention. I hated the way I looked and I didn’t want anyone to look at me. I was just fat,” she said.


Williams said that a major problem with the disease of anorexia is the fact that the person has an extremely distorted view of himself or herself.


“They always see something that could be better, ‘if I could just fix this little part around my jaw, then I would be skinny.’ The problem is they always find something else,” she said.


“I’d look in the mirror and hate what I saw. I was 98 pounds, but there was more that I could do. My arms were too fat, if my skin folded over itself at all on my stomach I knew I could trim down even more,” one student said.


She would go through rituals to make herself feel good. She would even go as far as to count the number of times she chewed her food before swallowing.


“That way I could control the amount of time I ate and how long it was staying my body,” she said.


“It was about control. I was so proud of myself every time I could deny myself something to eat. When other people ate, I felt better because I have more control then they did,” she said.


She would begin her day with no breakfast or lunch then two gym classes, walk the three miles home from school and then work out for an hour and a half after getting there. Losing the fat was the only thing she cared about.


“Nothing mattered to me but the food and not eating it,” she said.
At her most desperate time, she had hallucinations and couldn’t tell the difference of what was real and what wasn’t. She had lost so much weight that her body began to physically hurt.


“I would lie in bed as long as I could so I wouldn’t have to get up and face the fridge. When I would lie on my side my thighs wouldn’t touch and when I would lie on my back my hips would hurt,” she said.


Finally she began to fix the problem.


“I started to realize that eating food wouldn’t make me blow up and be fat. It wasn’t evil to me anymore.”


The thing that made her come out of it was support. Her family just loved her and was there if she wanted help.


“I felt like a sinner. It’s not a sin though — it’s an illness.”
All material posted on Scroll eNews is property of BYU-Idaho Scroll.Contact mailto:scrollinternet@byui.eduwith comments or problems.