By Dr. Francesca Fanolla
Anorexia (from the Greek ανορεξία: anorexía, comp. from an- priv. And órexis: "appetite"), is scientifically defined as the lack or voluntary reduction of appetite, as well as bulimia (from the Greek boulimía, comp. from bôus "ox" And limós "hunger"; propriet." Ox hunger ") consists of the opposite disorder, ie a compulsive need to take disproportionate amounts of food, often eliminated through self-induced vomiting.
Scientific definitions. Technical-medical terminology. Words, often too cold, formal, simplistic to explain instead what has become, over the years, a real discomfort
TV, newspapers, magazines, even books, the internet ... everywhere you can see the ostentation of perfect, thin, often very skinny physicists, models who get lost in clothes of microscopic sizes, all always constantly in the spotlight , in the photos, next to great stars, in holiday resorts, rich, smiling, or at least apparently.
I do not want to dwell too much on what anorexia and bulimia are, but I would rather take advantage of this space granted to me in the great universe of the Internet to expose my personal experience, my approach, albeit fortunately brief, with these two terrible social "wounds" , as I would define them.
I was 16 years old, I was the captain of a volleyball team, I had been competing for a few years and even if for me, at that time, only the field and the ball existed, at a certain point I decided that I had to change something. I was already about 1.69cm tall, my weight fluctuated around 56 kg. A perfect weight, for my age and height. However, I don't quite remember why, suddenly I started to see myself too "fat". muscular structure was certainly not the current one. I had very thin legs, a narrow waist, shoulders not very broad; in short, I boasted an "athletic" but lean physique. Yes, thin. Yet ... I saw myself big, fat, I wanted to lose weight , get into smaller jeans sizes like a 40. So I began by initially excluding the foods that I considered most "dangerous" and guilty of my alleged "fatness" such as sweets, biscuits, ice creams, etc. ... and then moving on to pasta, bread, fruit, meat, even vegetables ... in short, much less of everything than before. In the space of a few months the "cuts" to the diet (which by the way was rather balanced, in my house a lot of attention has always been paid to what you eat) grew more and more, until I started, to my great satisfaction, to notice the results of the unconscious battle against something that absolutely did not exist on my adolescent body: fat, "flab". I was even more enthusiastic in reaching 51 kg in weight, up to almost 50 kg. I want to emphasize that those 50kg gained by depriving myself of any food, without any criteria, since I was not yet interested in nutrition and could not know more than what the "do-it-yourself" diet magazines advocate were absolutely insufficient for a high school student who was very committed to I studied and practically trained more than one "hour a day between volleyball training, matches, mountain biking and outdoor races. I was and still am a very dynamic person, with a healthy diet. a very intense, from both a physical and psychic point of view.
Everything proceeded as planned and from the drastic reduction of food to self-induced vomiting it was a short step. When I also began to suffer from bulimic attacks, ingesting practically all the most caloric, sweet, fatty foods that I found in the pantries, the sense of guilt that assailed me immediately afterwards led me to lock myself up in the bathroom and cause a kind of "selective" vomiting ( I tried to throw up only what I thought was "more", like the piece of pizza that I could have avoided or the dessert at the end of lunch or after dinner). Naturally, after a short time, the vomiting was no longer selective, but total ... Fortunately I did not drop below 51 kg, but the hair began to weaken and fall out, I had the first signs of a slight anemia but above all I began to lose strength and energy . What saved me by dragging me back from that cursed tunnel that I had taken for my choice, without knowing the real reason even today, was my greatest passion: volleyball, sport.
sport and anorexia "
