The National Eating Disorders Association reported a 41 percent increase in messages to its telephone and online help lines in January 2021 compared with January 2020. And in a study of about 1,000 American and Dutch people with eating disorders published last July, more than one-third of subjects reported that they were restricting their diet and increasing “compensatory behaviors,” like purging and exercise. Among the Americans, 23 percent also said they would regularly binge-eat stockpiled food.
“I’m seeing more clients, and I’m getting clients who are sicker when they come to me, because we cannot get them access to a higher level of treatment,” said Whitney Trotter, a registered dietitian and nurse in Memphis who provides one-on-one nutritional counseling for adolescents and adults of color with eating disorders. She noted that many in-patient treatment centers are fully booked due to the heightened demand.
The uptick in her practice stems from a mix of relapse cases, like Ms. Hill’s, and disorders that have newly taken hold in the past year. “I’m treating more teenagers, and also more teachers, doctors, nurses and other first responders and essential personnel,” Ms. Trotter said. “An eating disorder can manifest as a trauma response. Our nervous systems were not meant to deal with a long-term pandemic.”
How food scarcity can stoke eating disorders
Early on in the pandemic, fears around grocery store shortages and food access re-triggered some people’s disordered eating. “I found myself lying awake at 3 a.m., thinking, ‘What if there is no more baby food at the store?’” said Aneidys Reyes, 33, a stay-at-home father in Madison, Wis., who had been in eating disorder recovery for more than six years before the pandemic.
Mx. Reyes, who was raised as a girl, said that their eating disorder originally began as a coping strategy for the gender dysphoria they experienced as a teenager. Now that they identify as transgender, the urge to restrict food is less connected to body image anxieties. “It’s weird for me, because it’s not the same old eating disorder,” they said. “But once I’m at a certain level of anxiety, then my brain is like, ‘Do you remember these neuropathways? What if it’s what you’re eating? What if your clothes don’t fit tomorrow?’ All these old, familiar thoughts come back.”
