The ETSU Counseling Center will be holding the first “A Day Without Dieting, A day Without Food Obsessions” on March 2 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Culp Center Atrium.
This event will give students, faculty and staff, and the public an opportunity to learn about healthy eating choices and behaviors, the dangers of dieting and the epidemic of eating disorders in our country.
There will be a free and confidential healthy eating questionnaire and counselors will be available to discuss the results. Also, local eating disorder specialists and individuals from the Center for Physical Activity and the Student Health Clinic will be there to give students information on healthy eating, exercising and body image.
“This problem is so pervasive that almost every female client has concerns about their body image,” said Kim Bushore-Maki, coordinator at the Counseling Center.
“Dieting is a huge problem,” said Laura Jones, intern for the counseling center. In America alone, 10 million women and 1 million men are affected by some sort of eating disorder and $40 billion dollars is spent each year in the diet industry. Eighty percent of women are not happy with the way their body looks.
This problem has even begun to reach young children, Forty percent of 9-year-old girls and 80 percent of 10- and 11-year-old girls have admitted to dieting for fear of becoming fat.
By the time they reach college, one in five will develop an eating disorder. “Eating disorders are not just anorexia and bulimia,” Jones said. Eating disorders include binge eating, compulsive overexercising, weighing yourself multiple times a day, counting calories and disillusionment as to how your body actually looks.
Eating disorders among men are highly unrecognized. The media image of the perfect man is changing. Even G.I. Joe has changed. “His muscle mass has increased tenfold,” Jones said. Men are feeling the pressure to bulk-up. Binge eating is the most pervasive eating disorder among men.
Eating disorders have a higher concentration among people whose jobs require them to look a certain way. Athletes, body builders, horse jockeys and models all have higher rates of disorders. However, eating disorders can strike anyone, at any size.
“It often will sneak up on someone,” Jones said. “They will start by dieting and doing this or that and the next thing they know they have an eating disorder. It’s kind of like a spiral.”
Eating disorders are not just about looking thin – they are about the relationship that people have with their food. There are many problems that come along with having these problems. Some people who are diagnosed with having an eating disorder also have depression.
The people that are affected by eating disorders may be perfectionists who find they can control their body. People who have these disorders also experience anxiety, fear, guilt and shame.
The media plays a large role in the spreading of this problem. The average teenage girl will see 60,000 advertisements a day. “The vast majority of the images in these advertisements are not real,” Jones said. “They have been airbrushed to look like what is considered the perfect ideal. This results in an impossible standard that cannot be reached.”
Jones hopes that projects like Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty will help spread the message. “I think it’s beautiful the way they’re getting it out there in the mainstream,” she said.
Advertising is just now starting to stray from the preconceived notion of beauty. Instead of having the typical tall, slender, blonde woman, they are using women of all heights and sizes and from different ethnic backgrounds.
Last year, the center had Eating Disorder Screening Day. “It was not very popular,” Jones said. “A lot of people do not self identify that they have problems. Also there is such a stigma that comes with having an eating disorder.”
“A good goal would be that anyone at any size, weight or shape could have a good body image and be happy with themselves not based on a size or a number,” Jones said.
The healthy eating screening test is available on the Internet at www.etsu.edu/students/counsel/counsel.htm.
The center is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and has walk-in hours from 10 a.m. to noon and from 2 to 4 p.m.

Author