by Collin Reed

Created on: October 26, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

I have had an eating disorder since I was a teenager. Growing up, I was naturally thin and wasn't really so much obsessed with losing weight as I was with wanting to have control over my need to eat. It started out kind of like a game and I would win the game if I got through a day without eating. If I did eat, I would throw it back up before it had a chance to digest. Every single night, I would lie awake all night long and obsess over what I'd put in my mouth that day. The next morning, I would wake up exhausted, drained and starving.

After 26 years of living with some variation of this particular eating disorder I know, like every other woman with a similar problem, that I will likely have issues with food for the rest of my life. I'm aware of it, I accept it, and I deal with it the best way I can - every single day.

If this sounds sad or makes you go, "Oh, I had no idea...that's too bad" - don't. I don't share this story because I want sympathy or because I'm a masochist who enjoys exposing my 'secrets' with strangers. I share a very brief piece of my personal story because I would be surprised if you didn't have your own story - your own issues with food - your own struggles with body image. I'm sick and tired of the shame attached to this disease.

The reality is that eating disorders are the norm - not the anomaly - in our North American culture. While the eating disorders I'm talking about primarily involve women sacrificing their health and well-being to be thin, we can look at the entire country - men and women - and clearly see how few people are able to manage their weight healthily.

In fact, I'm anxious for a study to be done which analyzes how American consumers can spend billions of dollars on diet and exercise every year yet still manage to be more obese and unhealthy than ever. We've clearly succumbed to one of the most powerful and far-reaching forms of brain-washing ever employed (cigarette campaigns and the war in Iraq also come to mind).

My self-disclosure (and subsequent diatribe) are really irrelevant in the overall grand scheme of things in life. But if one woman reads this and recognizes that she has a problem with food and can begin working toward healing her relationship with both her self, her body and the fuel she needs to keep it functioning properly, then it will have been totally worth the discomfort I felt while writing this piece.

I don't have the answers. I don't know how to fix this problem; if I did, I would surely be more wealthy than Oprah (who, with all her power, is absolutely powerless against her own eating disorder). But I do think that this has to stop being a disease that women feel compelled to hide or be ashamed of; we are, after all, only human.

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