So, I ask myself, what can I write about? After contemplating this stirring question in my mind's eye, I have determined to truly write from the heart. I want to help people out there who have issues and problems--with as much as my limited experience can offer. And with that, I will post my first essay--an essay written to students at Brigham Young University---- in an endeavor to help as many of you as possible. Please excuse any errors in the text.
A Temple of God
The doll that was given to you for your sixth birthday; the girl you see on your favorite Thursday-night television show; the celebrity that saturated the magazine that you flip through at the grocery store – fake women. As girls in the world grow older, they are constantly bombarded by the images of so-called “perfect” women, and are told that they should be exactly like them. This indoctrination begins at an early age with Barbie, and continues through the preteen and teenage years by way of magazines and T.V. Because of this, many young women feel that their own appearance is inadequate, and try to change it through drastic measures. The most commonly used: anorexia nervosa. Most unfortunately, this trend has seeped into the lifestyle at Brigham Young University, and anorexia has become the biggest problem for girls at this school; a problem that needs to be fixed. I urge those of you who are on the edge of becoming anorexic to stop and think about all of the consequences that it can have on your life, and decide to quit taking part in the present fad at BYU.
Anorexia is a disorder which is extremely hard to let go of. When I was a young girl, I was overweight. I was teased constantly about my weight and appearance; this mockery filled my middle school years, and because of the sensitivity of youth to peer approval, I quickly became obsessed with the way I looked. I was incredibly unhappy, and I thought that if I was “skinny”, like the other girls, I would be content with myself. So, I cut carbohydrates completely out of my diet. Surprisingly, this plan worked; in one week I had already lost five pounds. After a couple of weeks, I cut down my diet even more, until I was eating only a snack and one meal a day. That semester, I lost twenty pounds, and I thought that now I would finally be happy with my image. But, the ridicule from previous years still echoed in my ears and lingered in my heart, and I decided to try to lose weight again during the second semester of my freshman year of high school. Across that year and the following year, I became anorexic. I ate barely enough to survive; I exercised excessively; and I was overly preoccupied with my appearance. Eventually, I was so thin, that my bones stuck out all over my body. At the time, I saw the old me when I looked in the mirror. I saw a girl who was grossly overweight with nothing going for her. Because of my disillusionment, I could not see how sick I was becoming. Even with bones sticking out all over my body, I still thought that I was too fat. Fortunately for me, my parents, teachers and friends knew what was going on, and forced me to start eating again—after almost a year of starvation. Because of them, I started to regain physical health. But, even after a year, I still suffered from psychological problems. I still thought that I was overweight, and I exercised to an extreme. Anorexia is an overpowering disorder, which wraps its tentacles around you, choking you off from any sort of normal behavior. It takes over your mind, body, and spirit, but is so discreet that you hardly notice that you are becoming a new person. Because of this, it is a challenge to see reasons why anorexia is such a bad thing, but there are several logical reasons why anorexia is unsafe.
One reason why eating disorders should be avoided is because they are extraordinarily dangerous for you physically. Yes, anorexia will cause you to lose weight, but the loss is so severe, that it is causes several known bad effects. One effect of starving yourself is decreased blood flow to your brain, which will change the structure and function of your brain. This change, once attained, can never be completely erased. The function of your brain will return only slightly, as you regain that weight that you obviously—after months of trying to lose—do not want to carry on your body. Unfortunately, this change in brain structure can cause memory loss, which greatly decreases your ability to succeed in college level classes. Furthermore, your brain will not be able to cope with stress, leading to psychological inadequacies, and possibly social deficiencies. Another effect of anorexia is decreased white blood cell count, which in turn, lowers the sufficiency of your immune system. Decreased sufficiency leads to a greater chance of you catching, as well as keeping, a virus or a bacterial infection. Illness can have similar effects on school work as brain loss: extreme exhaustion, which leads to lack of studying; inability to concentrate on exams; and failure in class—something which you would not enjoy tackling.
While the physiological impacts of anorexia should lead us to withdraw from the desire to lose excessive weight, this unfortunately is not the case. While most of us may understand the reasons behind the need to quit, most of us still find faults within ourselves, and our feelings of doubt overpower any logic we may have developed to try to convince us to stop. Fortunately for us, we have the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. One of His teachings is the “Word of Wisdom”. Many of us think that this law is a command to refrain from smoking, drinking alcohol, and consuming coffee and tea. While this is true, it also includes another portion which is often overlooked. This segment outlines an eating guide, which includes what kinds of foods we should eat and which foods we should not eat. Clearly, the Lord wants us to eat and maintain a healthy physic.
Another doctrine of the church, which counters anorexic behavior, is the teaching that our bodies are temples. A temple is a building which is dedicated to be the House of God. When the Temple of the Lord is built, the church uses the best and most precious supplies to make sure that it is perfect. When the saints were building the Kirtland Temple in the 1800s, they had barely enough money to buy the essentials needed to survive, but they gave everything extra that they had to make the temple beautiful. Many of the women crushed their china and mixed the china powder into the plaster, so that the temple walls would shine. They put so much effort into making the temples perfect, and knew that the temple must not be defiled or taken advantage of in any way. This includes painting it in atrocious colors, pounding holes into its walls, or using it in an inappropriate way. Like the temple, our bodies as temples, were made perfect. The Lord put His best into the house of our spirits. He made it perfect, and expects it, like the temple, to not be defiled in any way. This includes being tattooed, pierced extensively, or used in erotic behavior outside the bonds of matrimony—stains to our perfect bodies. A stain which we often fail to understand is the failure to be healthy. We should never starve our temples of the food that they need to survive.
I know from firsthand experience that anorexia is a hard disorder to overcome. It has taken me years to realize this one thing: my self-confidence, as a youth, rested on peer approval. I wanted to be accepted, and because I thought that I was not included in the group, I tried my best to change the situation myself. Now, I finally realize that peer opinions do not matter. I am a daughter of God, as each of us is, and my self-confidence and self-esteem should be grounded on this principal: I have a Heavenly Father who loves me. In this life, we are constantly bombarded with pictures of the world’s view of beauty including everything from celebrities to Barbie. We must remember that Barbie could never be real. We are real women. I plead with the women on this campus, to find joy in the knowledge that we are beautiful daughters of God. He gave us bodies, and it is our duty to Him to protect them from harm.
