Katrina Walker Chancellor | Student Development Beat
Foster Hunt | The Appalachian
Students and staff met Monday
in the student union to discuss how to help friends and family
members who may have an eating disorder.
Binging,
eating uncontrollably, counting calories, following restrictive
diets or exercising excessively to reach a certain weight could
signal a brush with an eating disorder.
“One fourth of all college women have some
type of an eating disorder. It’s really become an epidemic,”
Denise Lovins, a psychologist at the Counseling and Wellness Center,
said Friday. “All women at one point and time feel the pressure
to be thin and accepted.”
Eating
Disorders Awareness Week began yesterday and will continue through
Friday. The week is designed to educate students about body and
eating issues.
Lovins is heading up this week’s events. Lovins said her goal
for the week is to increase awareness and help students develop
a higher self-esteem and a positive image of their bodies through
the events.
This week’s activities are varied and include many different
programs to raise awareness about eating disorders.
Today from 12:30 p.m. until 1:30 p.m. in the Price Lake Room of
W. H. Plemmons Student Union there will be a showing of “Killing
Me Softly 2,” the latest video by Jean Kilbourne critiquing
advertisers’ images of women.
“Eating Healthy with the Pampered Chef,” an event showing
how to cook and eat food that is satisfying and healthy, will be
held Wednesday from 12 p.m. until 1 p.m. in the Calloway Peak Room
of the student union.
Also on Wednesday from 6 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. the video “Dying
to be Thin,” describing the truths behind anorexia and bulimia,
will be screened in the McRae Peak Room of Plemmons Student Union.
Sophomore elementary education major Crystal L. Tucker has had her
own struggle with bulimia. She said it all started because she got
picked on for being a “little chubby.” She said she felt
the pressure to be thin, pretty and popular in high school.
“I spent three years in therapy and seeing doctors and taking
medication. It still came back again in my 12th grade of high school,”
Tucker said. “It’s not something you get completely over.
I’ve done permanent damage to my body, and still some days
I feel the urge to throw up; you just have to fight it.”
Sophomore graphic design major Kaitlyn L. Allen witnessed the effects
of an eating disorder with a friend she had in high school. Allen
said she kept quiet while she thought her friend might have a problem
but was not sure. Allen lost her friend to this.
“My friend died even though she had all the help she could
get. It was too late because nobody said anything,” Allen said.
“It was the worst experience of my life to lose a best friend
to something like an eating disorder.”
Lovins, Tucker and Allen all agreed voicing the problem may save
the life of someone who has an eating disorder.
Body and eating issues affect us all at some point in time, female
and males, Lovins said. This week’s events are available to
help inform students on the dangers as well as the preventions of
an eating disorder and help students accept their body image and
build confidence.
