“Thank God Ed doesn’t talk to me anymore,” says Kamakshi Malhotra, 29, who once lived in food denial and took comfort from her eating disorder, for which she mentioned an acronym called Ed. an imaginary voice in her head that governed her choices and convinced her that food was her enemy. Obsessed with extreme body awareness and a deathly fear of looking ‘fat’, she starved herself despite being hungry and developed anorexia, an eating disorder that made her even spit out her morning cookie , gradually emaciated her and consumed her spirit. She lost 25 kg, clumps of hair and looked sick. But it was when she was on the verge of heart disease that she retired to get her life back together. Today, she runs a non-profit organization to counsel people and pull them out of a mental hollow they themselves created.
Kamakshi grew up in a close-knit, middle-class Punjabi family in Delhi, where she learned that the food on the plate should be respected and not wasted. An active, energetic and confident 17-year-old girl in 2011, trouble started when she went to the United States to study chemical engineering. “There was a performance pressure that I had never felt before. With 24/7 access to fast food on campus, who would think of cooking a healthy meal? Then one day my roommate posted a picture of me eating pizza on social media with the caption “Eat Fat”. Within hours I had 50 notifications on my phone, with friends and peers laughing at me, shaming me in a mean way. That’s when I retreated into my shell and vowed not to emerge until I looked perfect. I let my self-esteem be guided by validation from others,” recalls Kamakshi, who now lives and works between Delhi and San Francisco.
Then begins a long battle with food, body image, emotional and mental stress. Kamakshi joined a gym, trained more and more, ate less and less every day. “If I wanted to eat a little more than what I had on my plate, I told myself that I would lose all the progress I had made. Feeling guilty, I trained even more furiously the next day. This obsession with losing weight got to a point where I couldn’t relate to my friends anymore. Normal life has taken a back seat,” she explains. The worst mistake she made was deciding what not to eat based on social media posts instead of asking a nutritionist for advice on how to lose weight on a plan. “I started to lose my hair, my skin lost its shine, it became flaky and dry. I lost about 25 kg in three months and when my body started to break down, I started to taking vitamins to replenish nutrients. I started getting sick often,” Kamakshi recounts. It was during a flu medicine consultation at the campus health center that the doctor realized how bad Kamakshi had significantly lost weight since enrolling. System data flagged her sudden change in health parameters. The doctor referred her to the psychiatrist, who asked Kamakshi to discuss her insecurities. “I remember having burst into tears when she said the real problem was my mental breakdown caused by the way others saw my body, not the way I should have enjoyed it. She asked me to talk about it with someone I trusted. I was afraid to tell my parents about it and shared my plight with my younger brother. It was as if a great burden had been lifted from my soul,” she said.
She returned to the health center, where a general practitioner (GP) established a recovery protocol that included interventions by a psychologist, psychiatrist and nutritionist, participation in a support group and examinations. weekly by a physician. Although talking helped, Kamakshi still wasn’t convinced to eat what was recommended. Instead, she lied to them, drinking water and wearing extra clothes before her weight was checked on the scale. “Once the doctor checked my weight with only my underwear on. I was so thin that she told me my heart was at risk and, by law, reported my anorexia to the dean. I had to drop out of college,” says Kamakshi.
Dr Shalini Naik, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, PGI, Chandigarh, says that of all eating disorders, anorexia, characterized by self-induced malnutrition, poses a high suicidal risk. “Patients are concerned with their bodies rather than their emotional stability. Likes social media, desirability quotient, non-acceptance as a child, lack of human engagement, the reasons are many. Therefore, the relationship to food becomes an issue. A normal BMI for an adult is 18.5 to 24.9 kg/m2. Anorexic adults have a BMI of less than 17.5 kg/m2 and yet they perceive themselves to be overweight,” she explains. “Patients typically exercise too much, don’t eat, take laxatives or vomit while scratching the back of their throat, and take appetite suppressants,” she adds.
A visit home for a wedding in 2012 forced Kamakshi to face his parents. Her mother decided to put her back on track and moved to the United States. The recovery was worse than Kamakshi had expected. As soon as her weight increased as part of her rehabilitation, she cheated on her nutritionists and relapsed. “The silver lining to it all was that I realized what it was like to feel healthy. So after many back and forths it became easier to get back to my recovery plan. lasted two years,” she says.
The psychiatrist played a crucial role, working on his bodily insecurities and teaching him mind control. However, Kamakshi had become so dependent on her guide that she had a major relapse when she returned to Delhi after graduating in 2015. Given the trust factor, she opted for remote guidance and achievable goals are set. “I remember the day I went to a restaurant without guilt or the day I stopped counting calories. My recovery took eight years, three years to be medically fit and five years to get my mind back and be positive. for my body. I’m more intuitive about my body and understand it better than ever. I remember what it was like not responding to those cues and therefore not going down that path again,” says Kamakshi .
Now the head of a support group, she says the challenge for patients with eating disorders is diagnosis. “Few doctors understand anorexia, but eating disorders that don’t land you in the emergency room are overlooked,” says Kamakshi, who moved to France in 2020 for his MBA and has analyzed various types of eating disorders. feed. His group, Freed, provides a support ecosystem, accessible resources and a helpline where young people aged 9-13 seek help. “They shouldn’t let another voice into their head,” she said.
© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
First published on: 2023-04-23 at 06:30 IST