Expert: Jeanne Rust, PhD - 3/24/2011

Question
I'm 15, and my weight is considered "average" for my height. Despite this, I feel very overweight. I constantly compare my body to other people's and I refuse to wear body-clinging clothes because I feel and look overweight. I hate to admit that I am very self conscious of my appearance. When some people say I look skinny, I instantly get suspicious - they could just be polite.

I am conscious of the calories I consume. Again, I hate to admit this but when I exercise, I find satisfaction in watching the calories lost going up. I don't exercise that much - only about an hour a day.

I'm 5'2 and I think if I went down to 100lbs (my weight ranges from 110-115) I would feel massively better about my body image. It's close enough to healthy according to the BMI calculator - only 0.2 away from healthy.

I do fast regularly. Some days I go without food for about 8 or 9 hours whilst I am awake. But what usually happens is that I eat breakfast as normal, eat half of my sandwich for lunch (5-6 hours since breakfast), finish the other half when I get home from school (4 hours after the first half), then eat dinner as normal. I haven't really lost weight from this so I don't think it's too much of a problem. My stomach rumbles a lot though but it dies down after a  couple of hours.

A recovering bulimic person told me I have a problem, but I'm skeptical because I thought a majority of girls felt like this and did what I did. So do I have a problem or is it normal?

Many thanks in advance.

Answer
Dear Faye,

Let me put it this way -- you don't have a problem yet -- but you could certainly be on the way to having a serious problem.  Right now you're experiencing what I would call body dysmorphia.  This is where you're paying obsessive attention to your body,  what it looks like, and where you think you are on the scale of what you think socially accepted looks might be for someone your age.

Our culture among women (and teens) today is saying that only if you're skinny, can you be cute and popular.  Our culture (plus numerous other factors) takes young women such as yourself and gets you wasting time on thinking about your body all of the time rather than thinking about other things -- such as school, friends, movies, and the number of other things teens think about that are happy or are really sad.

When we're focused on our bodies and food, we don't have time to think about what we really might be feeling.  An eating disorder can serve as a coping mechanism that helps deal with painful feelings.

My hope for you would be that you could do some yoga or Tai Chi, or pilates -- some kind of exercise that will help you get into your body and learn that your body is good.  Your body can be strong and you can still be very cute without having to be "skinny."

Please keep in touch and let me know if this gets worse -- then we'll go from there.

Warmly,
Jeanne Rust, PhD
CEO/Founder
Mirasol, Inc.
888-520-1700
www.mirasol.net