If you have an eating disorder, please make sure to spend New Year’s Eve with the people who love you. And if you love someone with an eating disorder, get in touch. Don’t let them spend this special evening alone.

Resolutions

1. I resolve to work on my self-esteem. This is a great website http://www.goodcharacter.com/BCBC/SelfEsteem.html
2. I resolve to join a yoga class. It’s not just exercise, it’s a way to balance my body, mind and spirit.
3. I resolve to pursue a passion: art, pottery, and music classes all have the power to engage and heal.
4. I resolve to turn inward and meditate. It will help me calm and re-focus my mind.
5. I resolve to help someone else: literacy programs, tutoring programs - so many people are in need in this economy. I won’t have to look far.
6. I resolve to cultivate an attitude of gratefulness for the littlest things in life: getting up in the morning, taking a deep breath or a walk, feeling the sun, snow, even rain.
7. I resolve to appreciate the ones closest to me who I know worry about me every day. I will think about how, if something happens to me, my father, mother, and siblings lives will be changed forever.
8. I resolve to work at loving myself just the way I am.
9. I will renew my spirituality for the great comfort and strength it can give me.
10. I resolve if I am depressed to see a professional, because women with eating disorders and a history of depression are at high risk for suicide, according to suicide.org.

If you need help, please call one of these numbers:
911
1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433)
TTY: 1-800-799-4TTY (4889)
National Suicide Hotline in English and Spanish
1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255)

http://www.empowher.com/news/herarticle/2009/12/22/anorexia-bulimia-and-binge-eating-sufferers-top-ten-resolutions-new-year

VERONA -- The scratchy carpet burned her back as tears streaked down her gaunt cheeks. She planted her feet on the floor, clasped her hands behind her neck and curled her body into a sit-up position over and over again, trying to destroy every calorie she had consumed.

Christine Maccia had eaten a piece of chocolate chip cookie cake. The 13-year-old girl couldn’t forgive herself.

I’ll never get my times down.

Maccia was a swimmer — an even better one than she expected. During her first season competing with the Caldwell Cyclones, when she was in seventh grade, her times qualified her for the Junior Olympics.

But Maccia’s competitiveness, paired with a history of anxiety and her concern for the future, led to the development of an eating disorder, she says.

In her home in Verona, she would do crunches after every meal, before bed, and in the middle of the night. She would lie down on the bathroom floor — flushing the toilet first, so no one could hear her exercising. She consumed increasingly smaller meals and eliminated snacks from her diet.

"Being a swimmer didn’t cause it, but swimming became an outlet," Maccia, 17, recalls. "At Junior Olympics I didn’t do as well as I wanted to, so I started practicing more. Every single morning, I was up at 5:30 in the pool, swimming. I had to go. I had to be better than everyone else. I had to be faster than them."

"Obviously you have difficulties when you don’t achieve what you set out to achieve," Maccia’s mom, Susan, says. "We didn’t see that as anything abnormal at the time."

Teenage girls have long been the highest risk group for developing eating disorders, but more and more research shows teenage female athletes are even more predisposed to making unhealthy decisions. Forty percent of newly identified cases of anorexia are in girls 15 to 19 years old, according to the National Eating Disorder Association — and girls in that age range who participate in sports face even greater risk.

It’s not a new trend.

According to a 2002 study, at least one-third of female collegiate athletes have some form of disordered eating. Of the 425 athletes studied by Katherine Beals, nutrition clinic director and associate professor at the University of Utah, 43 percent said they were terrified of being or becoming too heavy, and 55 percent reported feeling pressure to achieve or maintain a certain weight.

Eight years before that study, Sports Illustrated was writing about eating disorders among world-class athletes, including gymnasts like Christy Henrich, who died of multiple organ failure just days after her 22nd birthday.

"The people who are athletes have all the same risk factors that non-athletes have, but there are risk factors within the sport environment," said Ron Thompson, a doctor who co-wrote the book "Eating Disorders in Sport," which is scheduled for release next month. "If you add in more risk factors, then you would expect greater numbers."

Susan Maccia said she discovered Christine on the floor in 2005 and feared for her daughter’s health. A cycle of treatment followed, culminating in a 13-month stay at the Avalon Hills treatment center in Utah. It cost the family $300,000 beyond insurance, Susan Maccia said; most group plans cover 30 days of inpatient stay and 26 outpatient sessions.

Doctors have discovered three common traits between high-risk individuals and athletes: a willingness to work hard (or overwork), perfectionism, and the ability to withstand pain.

A sports environment often allows individuals to cover up their eating disorders, making diagnosis more difficult, according to Melissa Smith, a doctor at the Center for Change, a rehabilitation center in Utah for eating disorders.

"One of the common components of an eating disorder is using exercise as a form of purging or weight loss," Smith said. "Maybe they’re going to spend 30 extra minutes on the elliptical trainer. You see the exercise as compensatory behavior for the eating. You put that in a sports environment and it can, in ways, legitimize that behavior.

"We need people to think about: What is the difference between healthy exercise and extreme, compensatory exercise?" Smith said.

"We have a sport body stereotype," Thompson said. "We expect people in certain sports to look a particular way. The appearance factor is not if you look good, but: Does she look like she’s supposed to for the sport she competes in?"

Thompson pinpointed cross-country runners as an example: Few would suspect a tall, lean runner of having an eating disorder, because she embodies the "correct look."

DANGEROUS TRIAD

Danielle Alonzi of Millburn, a freshman at Fairfield University, said her image as a soccer player had a role in the development of her eating disorder.

"I was the shortest one on the team, and everyone commented how small I was," Alonzi said. "I was like, ‘I have to maintain that image.’ I exercised for three to four hours away in my room. I would wake up in the middle of the night and try to get an hour of exercise in, or when no one was home. ...

"I was one of the fastest ones on the team. I was like: ‘If I lose more weight then, I’ll be even faster. I won’t have this weight to hold me down.’"

The issue of young female athletes developing eating disorders has been named the "female athlete triad," a phenomenon discovered in the mid-’90s. Alongside unhealthy weight loss, these individuals suffer from amenorrhea (loss of monthly menstrual cycle) and the loss of bone mineral density, which can lead to osteoporosis.

Smith said the National Collegiate Athletic Association tests suspect female athletes in these areas because all three increase the risk of injury — and may indicate an individual needs clinical treatment.

Christine Maccia says she always hated wearing her bathing suits, especially during the time between exiting the locker room and entering the pool.

"Whenever I would sit down, I would suck in my stomach and sit very straight," she said.

Thompson said Maccia’s behavior is not that abnormal, but that coaches should be on a constant lookout for signs that an athlete is having a body-image issue. Indicators can include unexplained weight loss, a performance drop-off (due to malnutrition), depression, consistent "overuse injuries," numerous stress fractures, or discussions among athletes comparing their bodies.

"I would find any excuse to bring up how uncomfortable I was with my body," Maccia said. "I needed that reassurance, that ‘Oh, you look great. Your body’s perfect.’"

Thompson what initially appears to be an admirable trait in an athlete may be the strongest signal of a problem.

"If you have an athlete training significantly harder than everyone else," Thompson said, "you have to ask: Is it for the sport or is it something else?"

Thompson said parents of girls — and doctors performing preseason physicals — should become concerned if the girls lose their menstrual cycles, one arm of the triad.

"That’s the body’s way of communicating that something is wrong," Thompson said. "People say this happens all the time to female athletes. It may be the norm, but it’s not normal and it’s certainly not healthy."

Experts on eating disorders say aesthetic sports in which individuals are judged on the appearance of their performance — such as gymnastics and diving — offer the greatest risk. But, they add, coaches in other sports also should be monitoring behavior.

Dan Romano, the athletic director at Bloomfield Tech, said that because his school doesn’t offer either of those sports or wrestling (the greatest risk sport for boys), he originally didn’t see reason to be concerned or to educate coaches.

"But if they (doctors) find that this is something that’s prevalent among athletes, there’s definitely the need for education," Romano said. "And coaches should be at the forefront of that."

LACKING THE RIGHT TOOLS

Beth Wagner, the gymnastics coach at Hunterdon Central, said her 16 years of competition and eight years of coaching have brought her into contact with individuals with eating disorders.

"Gymnasts are perfectionists. They tend to like to control everything," Wagner said. "I think we walk a fine line of body image and eating disorder."

While Wagner, also an anatomy teacher, said she knows to look for warning signs — a noticeable drop in weight, a change in strength, irritability or mood swings — discussing one’s suspicions with the athlete is a sensitive matter. Wagner said the education should start with the athletes themselves.

"They don’t have the tools or they’re afraid to ask," Wagner said. "They think, ‘I’m not cutting it, I need to be better.’ I see that a lot with wrestlers. There’s much better ways than dressing in heavy clothes or not eating for that day to lose that weight and maintain it. They don’t have the right tools to know how to diet at that age."

Joe Piro, Nutley’s athletic director, questions how widespread the problem is in sports.

"I don’t believe it’s more prevalent in athletes," Piro said. "Eating disorders are a part of the adolescent culture. In order to be a good athlete, you need to eat; you need to fuel your body."

Piro said that while his coaches aren’t formally trained to seek out an eating disorder, they emphasize nutrition alongside weight training and fitness.

Thompson says the biggest contributing factors to athletic performance are genetics, good health and good nutrition. Athletes are predisposed to believe that thinner athletes perform better, he said, and further encouragement from coaches can be dangerous.

"When you put them under pressure and tell them they’ve got to lose weight, you may be starting a process they can’t let go of," Thompson said, "especially if you have an athlete who is motivated to do whatever she can to perform better."

Performing better isn’t Christine Maccia’s sole plan these days. She’s looking to study marine biology next year after graduating from Verona; University of North Carolina-Wilmington is her top choice.

Her treatment in Utah helped her to overcome some of her anxiety, she says, and she is better able to keep things in perspective.

"I still kind of get upset when I don’t get the time I want," Maccia said. "But it’s not like it has this huge impact on my life anymore."

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/12/nj_swimmer_dives_back_in_after.html