Anorexia: a newly grazed tunnel

By Dr. Francesca Fanolla

Anorexia (from the Greek ανορεξία: anorexía, comp. Of an -priv. And órexis: 'appetite' ), is scientifically defined as the lack or voluntary reduction of appetite, as well as bulimia (from the Greek boulimía, comp. of bôus 'bue' and limós 'fame ': owner 'ox hunger' consists in the opposite disorder, that is a compulsive need to take disproportionate amounts of food, often eliminated through self-induced vomiting.

Scientific definitions. Technical-medical terminology. Words, often too cold, formal, simplistic to explain instead what has become, over the years, a real hardship

social, a phenomenon of vast scope and diffusion, above all in the adolescent and juvenile population. Both diseases (or eating disorders) reveal a reality that is still spoken about in a too detached way, and above all they lay bare a body, the body not accepted, battered, flogged, undernourished or excessively nourished, but still punished. Whether one reduces oneself to a walking skeleton, whether one arrives at high levels of obesity or even spoils one's teeth in continuous vomiting, the basic question, the real problem is a state of inner discomfort, a real suffering psychological. The reasons can be many, emotional stress, love disappointment, psychopathologies linked to difficulties in childhood or adolescence, both family and external ... But there is a great, unstoppable 'monster' looming, threat and phagocyte thousands of girls and, surprisingly, also many kids: the media.

TV, newspapers, magazines, even books, internet ... everywhere we see the ostentation of perfect, thin, often very thin, photomodel and photomodel models that are lost in microscopic-sized dresses, all constantly in the spotlight, on the photos, next to big stars, in vacation spots. Rich, smiling. Or at least apparently.

I do not want to dwell too much on what anorexia and bulimia are, but I would rather take advantage of this space granted to me in the great universe of the Internet to expose my personal experience, my approach, albeit fortunately short, with these two tremendous 'social wounds', as I would call them.

I was 16, I was the captain of a volleyball team, I had been competing for a few years and even though for me, then, there was only the field and the ball, at a certain point I decided to change something. I was about 1, 69 cm tall, my weight was around 56 kg. A weight-form, due to age and height. However, I don't remember why, suddenly I started to see myself too 'fat'. I want to point out that at that time I had not yet made my acquaintance with the weight room and my muscular structure was certainly not the current one. I had very thin legs, a narrow waist, not very broad shoulders; in short, I boasted a 'athletic' but thin physique. Yes, thin. And yet ... I saw myself big, fat, I wanted to lose weight, get into smaller jeans sizes like a 40. I started out by initially excluding the foods that I thought were more 'dangerous' and guilty of my alleged 'fatness' like sweets, biscuits, ice cream, etc. ... and then go on to pasta, bread, fruit, meat, even vegetables ... in short, everything much less than before. Within a few months the 'cuts' to food (which by the way was rather balanced, a lot of attention was always paid to what you eat at home) grew more and more, until I began, to my great satisfaction, to notice the results of the unconscious battle against something that absolutely did not exist on my adolescent body: the fat, 'the fat'. I was even more enthusiastic in reaching 51 kg in weight, up to almost 50 kg. I want to emphasize that those 50kg earned by depriving me of any food, without any criteria, given that I still didn't care about food and I couldn't know more than what the DIY magazines proposed were absolutely insufficient for a high school student who he worked very hard in the studio and practiced more than an hour a day between volleyball training, games, mountain biking and outdoor racing. I was and still am a very dynamic person, with a very intense life regime, both physically and mentally.

Everything proceeded as planned and the step was short from the drastic reduction of food to self-induced vomiting. When I began to suffer also from bulimic attacks, ingesting practically all the more caloric, sweet, fatty foods that I found in the larders, the guilt that immediately assailed me induced me to lock myself up in the bathroom and to provoke a sort of 'selective' vomit ( I tried to throw up only what I thought 'more', like the piece of pizza I could have avoided or dessert at the end of lunch or after dinner). Of course, after a short time, the vomiting was no longer selective, but total ... Fortunately I did not fall below 51kg, but the hair began to weaken and fall, I had the first signs of a slight anemia but above all I began to lose strength and energy . What saved me by dragging me back from that damned tunnel that I had chosen for myself, without knowing the real reason even today, was my greatest passion: volleyball, sport.

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