This First Person column is written by Gregory Walters who was diagnosed with an eating disorder in his 50s. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
It started with a pair of pants. I've been obsessing over my weight since I was 11 when I got a pair of Lee's "husky" jeans for the new school year. I had some belly flab and I was told, "You'll grow out of it." I suppose I did, but the fat-shaming label stuck.
Much of my life has been governed by labels — some good, some bad. Husky. Sugar-free. Fat-free. Bipolar. Gay. Then finally, anorexic. I grew up in what seemed to be the diet-crazed '70s and '80s. While it seemed men didn't talk about dieting, many women obsessed over it. Every time I stepped on the bathroom scale, I fretted. Was my weight gain from growing taller or growing wider?
I spent my adolescence eating way too many frozen pizzas, downing them with Tab, Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Faygo. At the time "sugar-free" and "zero calories" were the buzz words for pursuing slimness and I guzzled these soft drinks without any concern about news reports from the time that said saccharin gave rats cancer. I feared present-day fat far more than future chemotherapy.
In university, I established a meal regimen that sated my appetite while shedding weight. My six feet one-inch frame whittled down to 120 pounds. My friends held an intervention and I spent the next decade ping-ponging between too much Häagen-Dazs and grocery bags stuffed with all things "fat-free" — the newest label to attract desperate dieters.
Sometimes I thought I had a problem, but I dismissed it: My ribs didn't protrude; I was being overly dramatic; I'd never heard of a guy with an eating disorder. Still, at 30, my friends implored me to see a doctor.
I went. Head down, I whispered, "I think I have an eating disorder." My doctor asked no questions. Instead, he told me I was fit for my age, and there was nothing to worry about. The visit affirmed what I'd suspected: men don't have eating disorders.
I continued cycles of relatively normal eating and then long bouts of intense food restriction and excessive exercise. I never shook the shame of how I perceived my body. A regular swimmer, I drove to a pool at the far end of the city so no one I knew would see me with my shirt off. I adopted more strategies to fight the fat.
I turned 53 in a psych ward after a severe mental breakdown. Faced with zero control over my existence in lock-up, I exercised what limited control I had over my body by resisting food and confounding the nurses and a dietitian who tried to increase my food intake. More than two decades after first raising the issue, I finally got a referral to an eating disorder program.
First came the assessment. I figured I wouldn't meet the criteria for an eating disorder. I was an impostor: wrong age, wrong body size, wrong gender. I was the only man in a waiting room filled with young women and their mothers. During an orientation by my local health authority about eating disorders, a female's anatomy appeared on one slide but there was nothing for men.
I broke down in tears when I was told I was anorexic. It felt like my problem was finally acknowledged, and my struggles were validated.
That was four years ago. I've since learned that up to 25 per cent of eating disorder cases involve men who might be at higher risk of dying because they are less inclined to seek help. In group sessions, it's hard to connect with others. I rarely see anyone like me. Occasionally, there will be another man, but I'm the outlier.
I desperately needed to feel like there were other men with eating disorders and to connect regarding shame and stigma that was somewhat different from women's experiences. That's why we tried to start a men's group, but after a handful of sessions, it dwindled from four to just me.
Despite a range of treatments, my resistance to a healthy diet is entrenched. My days remain structured around food restriction and exercise. I haven't made progress.
I wonder if I would have had a better chance if more doctors, the general public and I had known more about men having eating disorders when I was 30. I want people to know eating disorders can happen to guys as well. As I continue to hope that one day I'll be ready to change, I want other men to seek help.
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If you think men don't have eating disorders, read my story - CBC.ca
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