Student battles eating disorder with support of friends, family

Sitting at a table with her friends, then 10-year-old Erika Lozada

Div. 665, was discussing weight.

“What is your weight, Erika?”

“101 pounds.”

“Wow. You’re kind of big.”

That is when Lozada’s battle with anorexia started. She would stop eating, telling herself she was not hungry, and maybe she would eat later. But later never came. From 4th to 8th grade she would stop eating for brief periods of time, losing very little weight when she did.

In 8th grade, her condition worsened.

“I was going into high school, so I had to look good,” Lozada said. “When that happens you start thinking to yourself ‘what is the fastest way to lose weight’ and my fastest way was to not eat.”

Lozada said that as a Puerto Rican family, they eat a lot of food. When her family was concerned about having a big plate with a lot of food, Erika would fill her plate halfway, and only eat half of that.

“In the 8th grade I lost the most weight,” Lozada said. “I went from 140 to 125 pounds within maybe two or three weeks.”

Entering Lane as a freshman, Lozada’s quest for a thinner body intensified even more. 

“You know how every girl is. You have to look good going into school, especially in a school like Lane Tech,” Lozada said. “I would see all these skinny girls on sports teams, and in bathing suits when we had to do swimming for P.E., and I was like, ‘I need to lose weight’. So, I would go without eating for days. I remember I went to the doctor once and he told me that my weight [was too low]. I didn’t eat for 12 straight hours until my mom said I had to eat something.”

These pressures continued to be an influence over the summer of her freshman year. She had another dramatic weight loss, this time dropping

from 132 to 115 pounds.

“I will get thin, and then I will start eating again,” Lozada said. “And then I will get thin and then I will start eating again. Your stomach

shrinks when you don’t eat. My stomach would get so small that anything I ate would hurt.” 

During this school year, she noticed herself starting to relapse when her friends noticed a change in eating habits.

“I sometimes can’t tell [when I relapse] sometimes I do tell,” Lozada said. “This time I could not tell, and so [when my friend noticed,] I

went and bought something to eat. I went to the elote man and bought myself a tamale and an elote. Those two things filled me up to the point where I almost threw up. It was so painful. Then I knew that I had to start eating again before this gets too much.”

According to Mr. Cox, the school social worker, Lane has around 10 recorded cases of eating disorders a year compared to hundreds of mood disorders, such as anxiety or depression, a year.

“The number of students that come forward comes in waves, but in recent years, I would say the number has plateaued,” Cox said.

The two main eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa is the extreme pursuit of thinness because a person has a fear of gaining weight. 

There are two types of anorexia nervosa: restricting types and binge-eating/purging types.

Bulimia nervosa is the repeated episodes of binge eating, feeling a lack of control while eating, and then engaging in a purging of the food through intentional vomiting.

“Some people believe that if you are not skinny you are not sick,” Ms. Laroche, an English teacher, said. “People can be sick, deathly sick and needing help, at any weight. Bulimics in particular [have] a normal weight and are potentially at risk to have a heart attack or have their esophageal rupture at any moment and that is scary.”

After years of battling her eating disorder, Lozada was not formally diagnosed with anorexia until March of last year.

“I was going to the therapist for two or three months, and I asked her what are my disorders, and she told me I have anorexia,” Lozada said.

 Since the diagnosis, she has been trying to make herself healthier by eating better.

“Being Hispanic, everything is grease, so it can be hard,” Lozada said. “But, my family itself is trying to lose weight because my dad has gout and my mom wants to lose weight because we are going on vacation.”

Lozada has been making sure to eat smaller portions and eating when she is supposed to eat. She has come to lose a lot of weight in a more healthy manner by eating more vegetables and less greasy foods, not drinking soda, and exercising more.

After a diagnosis of an eating disorder, comes the treatment.

“Anxiety and eating disorders are both marked by distortions in thinking,” said Ms.Gilson, the school psychologist. “When I work with students

struggling with anxiety I challenge those thoughts that are not accurate, and make students more aware of them, and look at those thoughts more objectively. When I work with a student with an eating disorder, we use

some of those same strategies.”

But, compared to an anxiety disorder, eating disorders are much

more specialized. There is a multidisciplinary approach. A nutritionists

as well as a psychologist, and possibly a psychiatrist, are involved in treating the condition.

It is something beyond the scope of what the school can do by itself.

“Treatment revolves around facilitating conversation in the family, and find appropriate resources in the community,” Gilson said. “Once

a student is diagnosed, we can support the students’ functioning at school.”

Once the problem is realized, it is important that there is supportive relationships in order to fight the disorder.

“You need someone because you can’t fight yourself,” Lozada said. “This is between you and your brain and your body, and you cannot deal with all of that on your own.”

In each stage of her day, Lozada has friends and family who makes sure she eats. 

“My mom sits me down and makes me [eat],” Lozada said. “She tells me that I am going to sit down and eat with the family, so we eat. And she is constantly asking ‘did you eat?’, “did you eat?’, and if I say yes then its good. And she knows if I am lying, so she will be like ‘you need to eat’ [if I didn’t].”

During the school day, her friends make sure she has had food. “My friend, she had anorexia, and what she would do is go home make herself a lunch, and make me lunch and bring it to me, and we would both eat our lunches,” Lozada

said.

She relies on the support of other eating disorder survivors.

“I have a lot of friends that have had a lot of eating disorders and they help me because they are like, ‘you know we can do this together, lets be healthy like this’,” Lozada said. “There are these beautiful girls that have had this, and you would never guess they have this. It is sad. You look at them and they are doing better so it motivates you, and you can do better too.”

If a person thinks they are struggling with eating disorders the first thing to do is seek out an adult in the school be it a teacher, counselor, Ms. Gilson, or Mr. Cox, and begin to have the conversation with them.

“Even if a student is too scared to come forward, it is important to come to grips with what is going on,” Cox said. “You have to tap into the desire to find more adaptive ways of dealing with the stressors or emotional turmoil.”

What a friend can do if they suspect someone they love is going

through this is show concern, not judge, and be objective.

“Do not minimize the situation. Encourage your friend to get professional help,” Cox said.

A friend is not an adult in this situation, but they can encourage their loved one to seek professional help.

“If I were a friend I would not take it on as a secret. I would talk to adults and start a conversation about it to help that student talk about

it,” Cox said. “I understand trust is an important issue for young people, and I understand that is hard to betray a friend’s trust with something

like this if they are trying to keep it secret. But if you are a real friend you will betray that trust even if it is hard to do.”

Another way of changing eating disorders is by changing the way we look at body image.

“By personally changing what we say and how we say it one person at a time, we can change the image,” Laroche said.

Laroche supports the idea that in order to get rid of eating disorders, people have to go the root of the problem and change the way media looks

at bodies. It will not be until healthier body images become the norm in the media that women and men will have a better body image.

“People are pressured to be thin and feel pressured to look a certain way,” Laroche said. “I know there are plenty of people who embrace who they are, and appreciate who they are, and I love that. I want to promote that more. I don’t want people to question themselves or doubt what they look like because others don’t think that is what you are supposed to look like. It is not just outside pressures, but inside ones. Feeling comfortable and sharing to someone who is a reliable adult [is important]. Stuffing your feelings down and keeping it in will only make you feel worse.”