Do you have an eating disorder?

• by Judi on Feb 29, 2008

My 14 year old is our only child “in” school…. I don’t much care for schools or their rules and would much prefer her to be at home. But, she’s happy there.. thriving, learning and making friends (I’ll leave my thoughts on that to myself).

For one of her classes (health I believe) she had to keep track of her food consumption for 4 days; calorie count, sodium, carbs, etc, etc…

Her teacher, whom Em describes as being a “loud talker”, asks her in front of the whole class if she has an eating disorder and to explain why her intake is so low, not enough protein, etc. She said she could feel her face getting red… as she explained she doesn’t eat a lot of meat and mostly just pasta, fruits and veggies.

I asked her if she thought to tell him it pretty much runs on her mom’s side of the family.. I mean, I just don’t eat a lot, my dad has never been a big eater, my mom either.. and then going back to my grandparents.. at least on my dad’s side.. very light eaters. And much like Em.. lots of pasta, grains, beans (oh how I miss beans!), fruits, veggies.

I was really pretty upset, honestly, not that the teacher was concerned, but that he did it in front of the class - where it’s so easy to get a rumor started.. I mean, this is high school!

Last year, when I was dealing with my first symptoms, issues, and diagnosis, of crohn’s disease, I was asked by a co-worker if I was bulimic. I was offended because I’ve never been able to make myself throw up, and here I was dealing with throwing up and losing so much weight because I could hardly eat, I was scared. But he was only concerned, I know.. it’s just hard to prove to people that you do *not* have an eating disorder when it looks like you do - regardless of why it looks that way. All I can say is I hope this teacher didn’t start something for Em… I’ll be so ticked.

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