Because of weight loss, she had suffered from anorexia, lost the ability to eat, weighing only 29 kg at one point, her life was in danger, tormented by thoughts of suicide. After that, she quickly turned to “bulimia”, eating more than a dozen take-out, a dozen packets of potato chips, and even cat food… …After four years of being tormented by eating disorders, Qin Wen decided to tell her story, “I hope that this special group of us, can get more people’s understanding “.
Eating disorder is a collective name for a series of psychological disorders associated with abnormal eating behavior, including bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa, etc. In China, people with eating disorders are a little-known group.
Qinwen, born in 1997, is of the generation that grew up with the Internet, but she had not heard of eating disorders until she lost weight.
In her time alone, Qinwen likes to draw.
Around 2014, “weight loss”, “body management” and “body self-discipline” became hot topics of discussion among netizens. In 2014, “weight loss”, “body management” and “body discipline” became hot topics of discussion among netizens, and “over 100 weight is fat” was held as the truth by many girls. Qinwen, who is a senior in high school, has been infected by these “golden sayings” and has a strong desire to lose weight, even though her family doesn’t think she needs it.
The girls who are prone to eating disorders probably fall into two categories, one is the pursuit of perfection in everything, very demanding of themselves, and the other is not recognized by their families since childhood, hoping to change their family’s view of themselves through this matter. “Qinwen is the first kind, she hopes she can be a little thinner, more perfect.
The truth of the matter is that many young girls are fat when they weigh over 100.
Her initial diet was to skip dinner and keep up a lot of exercise, which successfully got her down to under 100 pounds. By her freshman year, her approach began to become “insider” when calorie control apps appeared on the market, allowing her to finely measure and calculate the amount of food She was able to measure and calculate the calorie content of food in order to strictly control her daily calorie intake.
A white boiled egg has 80 calories, a slice of whole wheat bread has 90 calories, and it takes an hour of walking to consume all of them, and a packet of chips equals 10 kilometers. “
Supervised by a calorie calculator, she soon topped 90 pounds downward – much encouraged, she did not realize that a nightmare was kicking off.
Gradually, all types of food slowly turned into a set of calorie numbers in Qinwen’s mind. In repeated calculations, Qinwen’s weight decreased along with the food every day. First, low-carb coarse grains disappeared from the bowl, then meat, and finally when there was only a little fruit left in the recipe, she found herself unable to face the food anymore.
“After that it got worse and worse and I started to feel intimidated by food. “In Chin-man’s memory, food was like the devil at that stage.
After all the abhorrence of food, Qinwen didn’t want to eat anything.
The anorexia was getting worse and worse, and her parents were aware of it, but nothing they could do seemed to stop their daughter from continuing to lose weight.
It’s not that you don’t want to eat even if you’re hungry, it’s that you don’t dare to eat even if you’re hungry. You want to eat it, but you may want to eat it one second, but in fact you can’t even hold the chopsticks to pick it up. “She describes what anorexia feels like – the more you fear the food, the more tension you have with it, the more tension you have, the more pressure it creates on you, and the worse the situation gets.
Weight loss began to accelerate, and signs of lesions appeared: first the cessation of physiological periods, followed by severe hair loss and molting, and finally even the surfacing of age spots.
When Qinwen’s weight dropped to 28.8 kg, she was admitted to the ICU, and her parents were given a paper notice of critical illness due to organ failure. The doctor said that if she was sent here any later, she might not be saved. During her first few days in the hospital, she even “could see the white light of death. “
After four months in the ICU, Qinwen was finally discharged. Then the anorexia relapsed, she was hospitalized, and then discharged. She thought her condition would continue to recur, but her appetite suddenly came upon her.
People with anorexia may change to bulimia when they are treated because their bodies have been deprived for a long time.
This was the case with Qinwen. Her appetite quickly went out of control, with a dozen take-out meals and a dozen packs of potato chips being swept away by her. Her body seems to be unable to stop for a moment and must keep eating, and it is all food that she would never touch when she was anorexic.
In recent years, the incidence of eating disorders has been increasing every year.
“In the most severe cases even open a packet of cat food and hate to eat all of it. “
“Will drink straight jam peanut butter, it must always eat. “
“I isolated myself from all social activities and lost many friends when overeating because I couldn’t do meals with others. I couldn’t even share meals with my parents. I was afraid to have an eating comparison, and that comparison would make me feel like I wasn’t a normal person. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and began refusing to see anyone, even thinking of lightening her life, and was forced to give up her studies.
Painting gave Qinwen a sense of peace.
“The vast majority of people who overeat eat alone, and they feel ashamed of how much they eat. The comparison of how much they eat can also bring stress, and this stress can turn into anxiety and sometimes cause a relapse of the bulimic condition. “To this day, Qinwen still fights such comparisons of food intake internally, and she must always remind herself that she is supposed to eat this much, that she is different from others.
“It’s really hard, this second and the next are in a different state. It can be that one day you figure it out and the next day it’s bad again, and it takes a long time. “
She needs to embrace this comparison of herself.
“Then I took my experience and made a microfilm and posted it online, and many people came and left messages to encourage me. Many netizens who had suffered from eating disorders told me about their experiences, and I learned that the condition that happened to me was not unique, and the fear that lingered slowly dissipated. She is determined to say goodbye to her past and wrote on her social media pages, “You are not better because of what you eat and you are not better because of what you eat less. ” to remind herself.
She calls herself a “survivor” and attributes the key to her recovery to the love of her parents and the kindness of others.
It was this experience that made Qinwen decide to become a communicator of eating disorder knowledge, and she wanted to give more people with eating disorders “peace of mind. She helped recruit volunteers for the hospital, searched for literature, filmed and edited videos, and answered questions for internet users.
After work, Qinwen shares her collection of eating disorder information with netizens via live streaming.
Qinwen has also asked passersby on the street about their impressions of eating disorders, “Many people think it’s a digestive, intestinal type of disease, but they don’t know it’s a mental illness, one of the highest mortality rates of mental illness. “
At the same time, she finds that the patients she runs into with eating disorders rarely choose to seek medical attention. On the one hand, some parents believe that the disorder is made and self-inflicted and feel that it can be resolved by keeping their children from being pretentious. On the other hand, related medical resources are scarce, with only two hospitals, the Sixth Hospital of Peking University and the Shanghai Mental health Center, having eating disorder specialties.
“Once I received a private message that there was a girl who was only 29 kg at 1 meter 68. I was terrified and immediately told her that her life was in danger and she had to be treated, but the girl said no, she had to study abroad the next day. I told her that it was impossible for her to go in this state, but she didn’t listen. I got several girls who had suffered from eating disorders to persuade her together, but still couldn’t. I was so angry all day that I was shaking. “
After coming out of the gloom, Qinwen regained the courage to start learning to dance.
The eating disorder group is generally 14 to 25 years old, and is growing at a younger age. This period is often a critical stage for them to go to school and enter society, and many people may choose to postpone treatment. Therefore, Qinwen realized the importance of strengthening the dissemination of eating disorder science.
“Eating disorders are so devastating to children at this age that dealing with them poorly can delay them for life. “
“It’s hard for people who haven’t had this disease to imagine what we’re really going through. “
Don’t let them be hurt twice by words they don’t understand; no one is intentionally trying to get sick,” Chin-man once urged in a speech. “She has formed a fan group where she hopes that many people with eating disorders will find companionship and encouragement to stop going through the loneliness she experienced and what it’s like to not be understood.
Qinwen and her partners set up a charity team, determined to “fight” eating disorders to the end.
As her fan base grew, volunteers with professional backgrounds joined her science team. Qinwen found that she was no longer working alone, but was surrounded by partners in nutrition, psychology and medicine. They set up a public service team called “ED Healer”, determined to fight eating disorders They are determined to fight eating disorders to the end.
The general environment still advocates girls to be ‘thin as beautiful’ and various The concept of ‘white young thin’, but fat and thin and aesthetics are two different things. You can think that thin is beautiful, I can also think that fat is beautiful. Beauty should be unrestricted and diverse. People should return to a diverse aesthetic and accept different types of body shapes. “
Now it is that she has gained some weight than before, but she decided to respect her body and love herself well.
Chin-man admits that she never really seemed to love herself in the past, and that she would be very mindful of her body type, her voice, her ability and even the way she walked. Now she has left all these self-criticisms behind, “You will find that if you try to accept yourself, you can take a wonderful step. “
“Now I may still want to lose a little bit of weight. But I will respect my body, and I think this is the best I can be. “It could take a lifetime,” said Chin-man, who has not fully recovered and is still struggling to fight her eating disorder. “But she’s mentally prepared for it.
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