“If I said I felt fat, it really meant I was sad, angry, or insecure. For a long time I thought I was only depressed, but from the depression I had developed an eating disorder. Little food ensured that I could partly suppress my gloom.
As a child I experienced everything very intensely, but I never learned to express those feelings in the right way. The fact that I could endure not eating gave me a strong feeling: finally something I could do. It gave me a daze, something paralyzing. Like I was a little drunk.
I kept pushing the boundaries: how far could I go? If I ate a little more than I should have, I did abdominal exercises or went cycling or doing pushups. But because I had so little energy, at a certain point I was no longer able to stick to my self-imposed exercise rules.
I projected all my insecurities onto my body. The idea of growing up oppressed me and I preferred not to think about the future. So I wanted to keep a child’s body. I also linked my changing adolescent body to getting fatter.
It was never thin enough for me, because the thinner I was, the less I existed. I had the feeling that I was always alone, but actually that was not the case: I was not open myself. I often played with my food because I knew my father would ask me if there was anything. Yet I said nothing. My eating disorder was a sneaky world and it was all mine.”
“I used to think there were confident and insecure people. A classmate at the time who was very confident in my eyes, expressed uncertainty at one point. I don’t even remember which one exactly, but it was in a very constructive way. He came across as very confident. I found that inspiring. I thought: I can be sure too.
Coming out about my eating disorder felt like coming out of the closet: there was so much shame involved. I was in my mid-20s and I first told a close friend. As an experience professional at eating disorder treatment center Human Concern, I want to lower the threshold for other men to seek help.
I provide individual therapy and do group sessions. Eating disorders are seen as women’s diseases. There is an image that women are more concerned with their bodies than men, but that is not necessarily true. Men just deal with it in a different way and women talk about it more easily.
It’s interesting how many men are obsessed with that body at the gym. I want to help other men by sharing my life experiences. That’s what helped me the most. I am also trained as a helper. I don’t think eating disorders are less common in men than in women, but men are underdiagnosed.
Shame to talk about it is a theme I hear more often with male clients than with women. There seems to be extra shame in men. I once had a male client who described meeting a man who also had an eating disorder as a healing experience. It was a recognition for him that he was normal.”
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You can read Leroy and Nick’s other stories about their eating disorder in Flair 13-2023.
