Eating disorders can affect anyone. I know this because a close male friend of mine from high school struggles with bulimia. I recently asked him if he felt comfortable speaking to me about his eating disorder, and he opened up about his story, under the condition that he remain anonymous throughout this piece.
The first question I asked him was about how it all started. He told me that he was a sophomore in high school when he developed bulimia nervosa, because he was trying to get fit for the high school wrestling team. At that age, he was fully aware that it was not healthy and could potentially kill him. But with the anxieties of school and pressure from his family, he couldn’t stop, because bulimia would make him feel “neutral, rather than hopeless.”
“I’ve never been a fan of my body so it was easy to fall into these shortcuts to lose a lot of weight really quickly,” he said. As an interviewer, I have only known these insecurities about my own body and the struggle through the eyes of a female, but I could not understand the insecurities of a teenage boy. But what I did understand was the necessity to be in shape for sports. I did soccer, track, tennis, and taekwondo in high school and I felt like I was never thin enough despite being so active.
What I also connected with when interviewing my friend was the pressure he felt from his family to be more attractive. Being a male with bulimia was incredibly difficult because he said that it felt like it couldn’t be an issue he was allowed to have. The fact that he was a male made him feel like no one cared that he was struggling. These negative thoughts led to his mental health deteriorating. At times, he would feel hopeless just because he felt like he couldn’t express his pain. Since no one cared, why should he care about himself? The fact that no one took his mental disorder seriously because he is male really surprised me. While bulimia is more prevalent amongst females, males also are affected, so someone not taking a man seriously over a mental disorder is very detrimental to their own personal recovery.
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