Late-night snacking, Ben and Jerry’s by the pint and three
pizzas for $15 at Domino’s ­— all of these are contributing factors to the
infamous “freshman 15.” But a little extra weight is only one aspect of what
makes college life so hard. Challenging course loads, peer pressure and being
away from home for the first time all add to the college student’s daunting
life. With all the activities, parties and new people to meet and impress,
there’s little to wonder why a teenager might get self-conscious.

“With eating disorders, the whole problem is body image,”
said Tim Hong, a Thurgood Marshall College alumnus and political science major.
“But I think it’s more than that. I think it has to do with the control factor.
With an eating disorder, you have control over at least one aspect of your
life, even when all the other things are out of control.”

According to the National Eating Disorder Association,
eating disorders and purging behaviors occur in as many as 25 percent of
college-age women and as many as 10 percent of college-age men. Without
treatment, 20 percent of people suffering from eating disorders will die from
the effects.

“Bulimia often starts in the early 20s,” said Elise Curry,
program manager at the UCSD Eating Disorder Clinic. “Whenever you have a bunch
of 20-somethings together, that’s the population where you are going to see a
significant amount of people with bulimia. You start to see anorexia around 14,
and if that goes untreated sometimes it can lead to bulimia. Someone starts off
as an anorexic, they never get treatment, go off to college and their disorder
just gets worse. There aren’t very many obstacles for an eating disorder in
college.”

There are two main types of eating disorders: anorexia
nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Bulimia is diagnosed when person eats a
significant amount of food (binges) and then attempts to stop weight gain by
either vomiting (purging) or using a laxative. Anorexia occurs in people who
fear gaining weight so intensely that they avoid food and stop eating altogether.

Female students often find themselves surrounded by people
who are smaller and skinnier than they are. For a lot of these students,
college is the first time that they can starve themselves without anyone else
noticing.

Male students have a similar problem. They see people who
have more muscle, and work out twice a day to build the perfect body. Hong
developed bulimic tendencies while at UCSD by overexercising to the point that
his body started to give out.

“I was running 20 to 30 miles every week,” Hong said. “I got
to the point where I had to work out and then I started throwing up afterward,
which complicated things. In one summer I lost 50 pounds. I went from 200 to
150. I used to lift a lot of weights, so it was like going from one extreme to
the other.”

Hong exercised to the point that his knee cartilage wore
down heavily, and his doctors told him to stop abusing his body.

“But I couldn’t stop running,” Hong said. “And even if I did
stop, I would swim for three or four miles every day instead. When I figured
out that I needed to get help, I actually vomited blood up. It wasn’t a ton —
but it wasn’t a little either. It was right before Christmas, and my chest hurt
for about a week. Every time I breathed, every time I laughed, coughed,
anything, my chest would hurt. That’s when I realized I could be doing
permanent damage.”

Hong sought help through a friend in the psychiatry program
who knew a therapist at the UCSD Eating Disorder Clinic. With her referral,
Hong started the program to recover.

About two years ago, UCSD recruited Curry to start a new
on-campus eating disorder program. She came from a four-and-a-half-year service
at the Sharp HealthCare, one of the leading medical service providers in San
Diego County, where she also created an eating disorder program from the ground
up.

“We opened our doors here about two years ago,” she said.
“We started with two patients and we haven’t been closed since. We have a lot
of UCSD students, and people from the community. People with anorexia and
bulimia are beginning to find us, but I don’t think people on campus really
know, so I’m looking forward to having that.”

Apart from the eating disorder program, UCSD students have a
few other options. Psychological and Counseling Services provide free therapy
for students. They also have a body-image discussion group that meets weekly to
discuss problems that college students face with accepting their bodies. Both
options deal with students who have slightly less severe problems. But if a
student purges more than twice a day, psychological services will refer them to
the eating disorder program.

“We have people from across the country [at the program] who
couldn’t make it in college,” Curry said. “It completely interrupts their
college experience. But if they are UCSD students then they might be able to
come here and stay in school, and that’s what we try to do with them. Our
program meets only in the afternoon and evening hours. A lot of UCSD students
try to put their classes around this, so hopefully they can get through the
program and still go to school. Sometimes they have to take a smaller load, but
it usually works out.”

The eating disorder program has a 12-week session, and
accepts about 10 patients per session. The patients go through sequences of
group therapy, meet with a dietician and a therapist, practice meditation and
goal-setting, eat group meals and do family therapy, among other things.

Psychiatry professor and Eating Disorders Program Director
Walter Kaye has done research that indicates there may be a gene linked to
anorexia.

“We try to cut down [the behaviors] slowly,” Curry said. “It
doesn’t help with bulimia to say to quit now. They’ve been doing it for a long
time, and they aren’t just going to stop. It takes about 20 different skills to
replace one eating disorder. That’s how powerful these things are.”

After the program, patients are given a discharge plan and
are encouraged to meet with a therapist for at least a year. According to
Curry, the average recovery time for people suffering from eating disorders is
about seven years. Of the people who seek treatment, about a third completely
recover, while another third relapse and the rest don’t recover at all.

Patients in the eating disorder program at UCSD do find
comfort in one another, and keep each other accountable even after the program
is over. Hong is still involved with his aftercare group, and he has learned
from his experiences.

“Looks aren’t everything they’re cracked up to be,” Hong
said. “I’ve been in both positions. I’ve been really fat, and I’ve been really
skinny. I’ve been normal too. I think the reason that guys do it is to attract
girls, but girls really don’t care that much about it as guys think they do.
People need to learn how to become cool with themselves. Those are the people
who are happy. There are tons of people that I know that are ripped and
everything who aren’t happy people. I’ve learned that I would rather just be
happy.”