I’ve been witnessing a very good friend practically withering away from starving herself, and I don’t know how to deal with this. It’s rare enough for people to develop body dysmorphia in middle age, although I am certain it’s related to a fear of aging.
I am inclined to MMOB. She has a partner who is clearly aware, and I don’t want to overstep any boundaries.
Having said that, it is increasingly difficult for me to watch her push lovingly prepared food around on her plate forever, then claiming she’s full & passing her leftovers (basically the OG plate content) to her partner to finish.
First, are you sure there isn’t some physical cause, like an illness that’s affecting her appetite? If it’s emotional, though, I empathize. I have a friend who has bouts of disordered eating. She had a gastric bypass many years ago and still has a very complicated relationship with food. We just went out to dinner the other night, and she spent the whole time stirring her bibimbap without eating a bite of it. She had it wrapped to go, and I suspect she ate it once she was alone. She seems to be at a healthy weight, though, so I don’t say anything.
If you are close to your friend’s partner, maybe you could ask them what’s going on. If not, I’d probably go with your first instinct to just keep your worries to yourself, at least until someone reaches out to you.
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
3
If possible, speak privately to the partner to see if you can learn more about what may be troubling her. Take it from there - at least you should be on the right side of the boundary.
Thank you! She’s pretty tall and has never been overweight (we’ve known each other for almost 20 years now), but a couple of years ago she got absolutely obsessed with working out - it’s damn near all she ever talks about . She was obsessed about her “wings” and doing all kinds of exercises to get rid of them. I told her at some point that you don’t lose weight working out, but that most weight loss is all about eating or, rather, NOT eating.
So, on top of all this I almost feel like I am partly responsible for her hunger artist regimen
She’ll be out of town for a while, so I’ll see if we can approach her partner, and whether he has any input. It’s obvious he noticed - and how could he not? her legs are like matchsticks at this point. He recently even made a comment about how he’s expected to finish her plate these days. Maybe with a concerted effort / some sort of intervention we can help her get back to normal.
@small_h when we first noticed her “loss of appetite” and weight loss, we approached a mutual friend, worried that she was dealing with a serious illness. She is not.
Oh, that does sound an eating disorder. Maybe her partner could try to get her into therapy. Hopefully next time she goes for a physical, her doctor will say something.
If you want to suggest an intervention to her husband, I would suggest you go armed with some locally recommended professionals and some information about programs, preferably residential. If things are as severe as they sound, this seems to have become an addiction rather than a disorder, and as difficult to treat as an addiction to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, etc.
(I’d also like to suggest that you try to really limit your social interactions with her to ones that don’t involve food, since if this is an addiction those situations are likely to be very stressful to her.)
Definitely sounds like an eating disorder. We went through this with my dad although we didn’t recognize it as an eating disorder until he was well into it. He claimed he was pre-diabetic (despite normal A1Cs) and obsessively restricted his diet. In hindsight, it was likely the beginnings of his dementia and manifested at about 70 years of age. I’m sorry.
Agree with the suggestion to talk to the partner if you have a good relationship. As you likely know already, eating disorders not the result of healthy decision-making and can’t be remedied by a conversation. Ideally the partner can get medical professionals involved.
This is serious - I have two acquaintances who died of heart failure secondary to extreme anorexia.
Update on my friend, who is still anorexic. When we were at their house for xmas day, and she once again started talking about her favorite workouts, another friend (who clearly, um, packed on a few pounds lately) asked how she lost all that weight.
My friend said she lost a total of THIRTY pounds, and that she “tries to work out at least 20 min a day using resistance bands.”
The other friend was rather nonplussed about such massive success doing so little, and I could no longer help myself and said “I’m sorry, but you did NOT lose 30lbs doing 20 min of exercise a day. You lost that weight bc you eat like a bird,” then made a more general statement about how it seems damn near impossible to lose any weight as a peri- or postmenopausal woman without practically starving ourselves.
She seemed flustered.
Well, last night I’m almost 100% sure that she threw up the one square of pizza and one wing she ate, bc she immediately went to the bathroom & came out chewing gum. It’s almost textbook.
A year later and nothing has changed. I know enough about eating disorders to recognize that it is very, very hard to recover from them, and I still don’t know what — if anything — I can do to support her.
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
9
Assuming you have an appropriate relationship, my suggestions remains talking to the partner. He must be as worried as you.
He is very private about personal things, and highly protective of her. I may have a chance when she is away at the end of next month
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
11
I can understand how he is. He may not welcome the “interference” and may feel that, with a friend intervening, he has somehow let her down by not looking after her sufficiently on his own. But, on the other hand, he may welcome your involvement. And, hey, what else can you do but offer the support.
So sad. I roomed with 4 other women in a 5BR house back in the early 1980s. One woman ONLY ate plain frozen fried chicken patties, and a half hour later, she would be in the single bathroom on the 2nd floor throwing up. And yes, thin as a rail.
It is. Several of us tried to gently talk with her about it, but she either claimed she wasn’t throwing up, or would shut down and leave the room. Her BR was right off the bathroom, so we’d be down in the kitchen and would hear her open the door and go in to the bathroom and turn on the shower. Moments later, the toilet would flush and the shower would turn off.
I happen to care greatly about my closest friends, but I am certainly under no delusion to single-handedly be able to cure her. Thus the existence of professionals, interventions, etc.
This is a very challenging situation and it is important to recognize that there is little you can “do” to suddenly have someone change. Your friend will have to get to a point where they want to do something.
My non-professional opinion is to take care of yourself. It sounds like you became frustrated with your friend and tried to call her out. Those situations rarely help the person and only suggest that those situations are challenging for you (understandably).
There are resources online to help provide some perspective on how to handle this.
Having dealt with other situations - just remember you are not responsible for their actions and unfortunately you can’t be responsible for their recovery. I know that often sounds harsh and obvious, but it is worth repeating to yourself when you are “in” one of these situations.
Well, I’ve been concerned about her for well over a year now. My calling her out was in reaction to her ludicrous statement re: working out / weight loss, when my other friend was genuinely looking for advice, and rather incredulous that “20 min / day with resistance bands” was all it took. It was a preposterous thing to say, even if my sick friend is deluding herself.
But you are right, of course, that I am not responsible for her actions, nor her (hopefully, eventual) recovery.
Being an empath is difficult, indeed. Thank you for your kind words.
