Before the death of singer Karen Carpenter in 1983, anorexia nervosa was an unknown eating disorder mentioned mostly in medical journals. In June of 1975, I was a 23-year-old male who developed this debilitating disorder.

For me it all began inside of a Sears store located in Boise, Idaho, about 15 months earlier. "Those large farmer overalls hanging on the clothing rack could fit you," my sister-n-law Cory jokingly said to me. I laughed and then focused on the amount of weight I had gained. I had always been thin and athletic so what she said did cause me to take notice and I decided to start a diet and exercise program.

In the next couple of weeks I started running, starting dieting and started losing weight...slowly. Within months I was no longer eating bad foods, I baked my own bread, fasted regularly and the weight of my 5'10" frame dropped from 180 pounds to 155 pounds..

The cafeteria at Boise St. University was where I worked and the university track was where I ran. I trained myself to become a fast long distance runner and those who saw me run knew I was talented. I would sprint 10 miles on the university track, while the football team was practicing, and before I was finished many of the players were watching me. A student there indicated to me the track team coach was interested in my running until it was discovered I wasn't a student.

I felt so positive about myself, I decided to cut my hair and look for a better paying job. I applied with Albertson's Food Stores, interviewed by the store manager and was hired as an apprentice grocery clerk. I was so excited with my new job and made friends working inside the store. Unfortunately though, an event took place involving dishonesty that made my employment stressful and soon found myself isolated while at work.

To combat the stress, I ran but mostly focused on my weight. Weighing myself after I ate became a standard practice and my scale became my only trusted friend. Every other week I would measure the size of my waist to see if it had gotten any smaller. I slowly started cutting food out of my diet and counting calories became a preoccupation. I would even walk extra miles to get from my house to where I was employed to burn off extra calories.

Doing daily rituals became my life. Everyday, everything I did was exactly the same way I did it the day before. I would get up in the morning and run five miles after my breakfast. My meal would consist of a few peanuts, a slice of bread with peanut butter and a low calorie fruit. I would chew it r-e-a-l slowly and stretch a 5-minute-snack into a 45-minute-meal and felt like I overate.

My weight had dropped to 130 pounds. Next goal: 120 pounds. I knew I could reach that goal quickly because I was cutting back even more on my food intake. My happiness was dependent on my scale. If I dropped a pound in weight, that would make me happy. If I gained a pound, I would punish myself by running an extra two miles to lose that pound. I had become so obsessed with this behavior it was consuming my entire life. Isolated and living in a small house by myself made it easy for me to go unnoticed so I didn't have to answer to anybody about the lifestyle I became married to.

Standing in front of my mirror was all the evidence I needed to convince me I was still too fat. Weighing in at 120 pounds was enough to inspire my next goal: 110 pounds. There was nothing indicating to me that falling deeper in-love with starvation could be life-threatening while assessing the layer of fat still clinging to my abdomen needed to disappear.

 

I loved my grocery store job because of the amount of delicious food that surrounded me and I could eye it all day long while at work. Bagging up food purchases for customers, whom I knew were enjoying at their homes, was a constant reminder to me that I needed to deny myself of that same enjoyment because food represented being fat and losing control. I felt superior to others because I could control my appetite and say "no" to food.

Customers would ask me if I was OK when noticing my extreme thinness and I would tell them I couldn't be any happier.  I was in the process of starving myself to death and nobody, including myself, knew what was happening to me.  A customer dressed in a nurse's outfit was certain there was something wrong with me because my eyes were sunken in and my cheek-bones were showing.  I could tell her nothing to convince her otherwise and tried to avoid her when she came to shop.

Some days I would visit my brother Tom and sister-n-law Cory, and the same sister-n-law whom used to comment I was too fat, was now making comments to me that I looked too thin. They would offer me food and I would always respond "no thanks, I have already eaten," knowing truthfully I had eaten very little that day. I started to wear long sleeve shirts and baggier clothes to avoid getting remarks from others about my thinness. Thinness I couldn't see and no longer wanted anybody else to see.

 

There were times I was in contact with medical professionals and nobody knew what was going on with me because they weren't aware of the diet/food/exercise obsessions going on in my life. At one time I was even tested for tuberculosis.

As I said previously, my daily life had become a sequence of rituals and one of them required me to visit the Boise public library so I could read food magazines and imagine overdosing on high calorie desserts. While most guys my age fantasized about hot girls, I fantasized about hot fudge sundaes and Boston cream pies.  The Good Housekeeping magazine was normally available and I always found a secluded place in the library to settle back and enjoy myself for that one hour of the day. 

The article titled "Our daughter was dieting herself to death" in Housekeeping's June edition immediately caught my attention because it focused on dieting. My sunken eyes nearly popped out of my head and my boney legs nearly shattered below my chair when this article revealed to me the happiness I thought I discovered in dieting was actually a life-threatening disorder that was slowly consuming my entire body and known for being a deadly disease afflicting mostly females. I felt like I had been hit on the side of the head by a brick, packaged up in the form of an anonymous article and written by a mother whose daughter exhibited practically every symptom of an unbelievable eating disorder I also had.
 

Leaving the library, I decided to make an appointment with a female medical doctor I discovered through a telephone book. After the doctor examined me without my shirt on, she told me she knew what my problem was, while I sat on her table crying. From there, I was directed to the agency where Hayden was employed.

Being embarrassed about this disorder, I never told Hayden about the magazine article after coming into contact with her only days later because I didn't want to believe the truth how my obsessive dieting was leading me to an early death. I was unconsciously committing suicide through a diet and I didn't even know it.

As I recall, I believe Hayden wanted me to see her three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. She knew there was something seriously wrong with me and she needed to visually see where I was on a more frequent basis. Then as she assessed by what I was telling her and the fact I was able to hold down my job at Albertsons' full time she went to a two-times a week. Her office was located on Orchard St, right down the street from where I worked at 5180 Franklin Blvd. There were times I saw her inside the store I worked at talking to the store manager.

When I would show up for therapy I would bring a coffee and donut I had purchased for her inside of a bag. She would thank me and then she would say "nothing for you?" And I would always answer back "no, I am not hungry." This became a ritual too. Looking back at it now, I don't believe Hayden appreciated it because she knew by what I had been telling her I had developed behaviors making it difficult for me to change the areas in my life she was hoping to change for my well being.

I spent many months in therapy with Hayden until she realized I couldn't solve this problem with the treatment plan she established for me. Because I told her my next goal was to reduce my weight below 100 pounds she considered this behavior was now suicidal and she forced me into a hospital setting. How interesting the word "die" is in diet.

Looking back, that magazine article became important to my survival at the time because there was nobody around to tell me that losing more weight would have life-threatening health consequences. Which one of my co-workers at Albertsons', where I worked, were willing to pull me aside to let me know that I needed to start eating more? This is the same Albertsons' store where employees wrote the words "Fuck you Frank" in big black letters on the back-room wall.

Simply put, I would have surely died had I not read the story about the girl in the article and nobody at this time (in 1975) would have even considered my death was due to anorexia nervosa because this disorder wasn't diagnosed that often in males-especially knowing most doctors didn't have a lot of contact with people suffering from this disorder.

I was skin and bones, dealing with anemia, and not one of my co-workers said a word to me about my thinness. However, they must have been making comments about me behind my back because as I said earlier, I was receiving comments from customers subtly letting me know in carefully chosen words I was a sight for sore eyes.

Before I found out I had anemia, the new store manager at the Albertsons' #109 asked me if I could work a sixth day for him and he would pay me overtime. I said sure. On Saturday, the sixth day, I felt like I didn't have the energy to work and so I went to the store and told the manager of my dilemma.

The store manager, while in the checkstand, told me "Get the hell out of the store, I need people willing to work." I went home, decided I wasn't going to let him get away with saying that to me, put on a white dress shirt, went to the store and worked eight hours on that day. After I clocked in, the manager noticed me in the store and flashed me a smile.

A few days later, after feeling sick, I saw a doctor who ran tests on me and he told me I had anemia and he took me off of work. I wasn't getting enough nutrients and this was causing my health to deteriorate.

While there is so much additional information about me going through this ordeal that won't be shared in this article, I did survive and occasionally I will have a relapse because I never fully recovered.

Every time I place food into my mouth, I am reminded of this bizarre eating disorder that I developed back in 1975. This disease will forever live within me, hoping I will allow it to rear its ugly head once again, take control and slowly starve the remaining life out of me.
 

For those hungry for more information, here is some food for thought:

All Food For Thought Information above is from the South Carolina web site at:
www.state.sc.us/dmh/anorexia/statistics.htm

While the causes of eating disorders are complex, young people and the public in general need to understand that starting a diet, for whatever reason, can have life-long adverse effects on a person's health if it becomes uncontrollable. A person who allows an eating disorder to control them will decrease the chances of living a normal life until old age and increase the odds of dying young.

It took the life and work of a young therapist in Boise, Idaho, back in 1975, to look beyond the public spectacle I had become, provide me a theraputic friendship and lead me to a normal life.

It took the suffering and death of a young woman, back in 1983, before society would stick a dinner fork deep into the heart of an eating disorder, lift it up so high and visable for everyone to see and expose it for what it really is.

The good news today is there's so much information available about eating disorders, making it unnecessary for anybody having to stumble onto an obscure article, like the one I discovered in Good Housekeeping in June of 1975, while secluded inside the reading room of a Boise library, in order to find out they are dieting themselves to death.

Sources:

Saint Alphonsus hospital's treatment plan from December, 1975 (See Attachment A)

Sue Hayden-progress note from December, 1975 (See Attachment B)

Hospital record showing Albertsons employer/insurance carrier (See Attachment C)

June,1975 Good Housekeeping article about mother's daughter with an eating disorder (See Attachment D)

Hospital record showing my weight as being 107 pounds in December of 1975 (See Attachment E)

Food for thought information on page 4 found at the South Carolina Department of Mental Health Eating Disorder-website @

Picture featuring hills surrounding Boise, Idaho taken by Frank Nordby. Hill actually has a "B" on the side and the "cross" still stands at the top of this hill.

Picture of Albertsons store #109 located at the Franklin Shopping center retrieved from web site at 

This story was originally written for a college journalism course.  It received an "A" grade and the instructor wanted a copy.  This true story could have been much longer but there was a maximum of 1400 words...I believe.