Universidad Santo Toms Departamento de Lenguas

Yesica Camacho Salazar 2180392

Teacher. Diana Marcela Bernal English V
FIGHTING WITH MY BODY
Nowadays, being a teenager is a kind of difficult thing, we have to go through many
different situations that can be good or bad depending on the point of view. But,
one of these situations is fighting with stereotypes. Its in this phase of our lives that
our body changes so much, we start to have pimples, and we gain weight or lose it,
our type of hair changes, and more. The principal problem of this society is that we
criticize people for their weight so this brings a big problem to discus, anorexia and
bulimia. Anorexia and Bulimia are not just eating disorders, for some people are
their lifestyles and learn about it will save someones life even yours.
Anorexia is an eating disorder that consists on eating not so much, people with this
disease become dangerously underweight, they can weight even less than 30
kilos. Teens avoid food intake by dieting, fasting, or excessive exercise, they dont
really eat at all and are always caring about how much calories they can eat, and
its a very little quantity.
Bulimia its a little bit the same as Anorexia, but in this case, teens eat a lot of food
especially junk food and usually in secret, even sometimes they eat food that is not
cooked or might be still frozen, or retrieve food from the trash so after eating that
much they feel bad about it and vomit or throw up food in the toilet or take laxatives
and purge themselves, they usually do this once a week.
Katie Melcafes experience is one of the most known cases of Anorexia in the
world. Her battle with anorexia started when she was 14. She studied with boys
and she had no self-confidence, so her body became a focus of paranoia. Also
their parents told her their marriage was having troubles so at that time stress
arrived to her life. "Nothing in my life seemed to be right. I started to think that
perhaps if I lost some weight and improved my fitness, things would change for the
better. I assumed that thin people had fantastic lives and I could too. She said
She made a New Years resolution where she wanted through the year lose weight
by doing exercise. And she made it, she took time to make her daily exercise, but
as soon as she started to lose weight, she wanted more, the voice in her head
wanted more. Her weight dropped from 8.5st to under 5st. Her hair started to drop
and her bones ached. But she still didn't believe she was thin enough. When she
looked in the mirror she saw her like a normal girl, like she was in her old days.
Eventually this brought serious problems to her, her heart started to fail, when she
was riding her bicycle she had a heart attack, she stayed in hospital, where doctors
decided she had to eat more but they had to give her food little by little and she
had to go to the psychologist. "I was put on bed rest for five months. My treatment

involved cognitive therapy sessions once a week, and I gradually started to eat
small amounts of food again. My recovery was slow. What really helped to pull me
through was writing and the consistent support from my family. She started to
write about her experiences through her recuperation in her blog, her eating
disorder was disappearing with time, almost 5 years for it to be finally gone and
she is happy with her life now, she helps girls to try to defeat anorexia before it
defeats them.
But the saddest thing of all of this is that almost 100 people dies in the year,
because of this eating disorders and everyday appears 10 or 15 new cases with
Anorexia or Bulimia in the world, and these new cases bring more than eating
disorders, people are starting to self-harm and taking drinks to intoxicate their
bodies.
Demi Lovatos story about bulimia is one of the most known cases around the
world, she also self-harmed and started into alcohol and drugs world. Having
battled with eating disorders since she was a child, Demi explained that she first
remembers suffering with low body confidence when she was only 3 years old.
She had been so badly bullied in school that she ended up being home schooled,
Demi thinks it's often psychological abuse that can have the greatest impact in
damaging self-confidence.
"People don't realize how badly verbal harassment and that cyber bullying affects
you. It played more of a toll on me than if I was physically abused at school. I kind
of always said, 'I wish they had hit me in the face and gotten it over with,' because
what they said to me sticks to me to this day
She went to rehabilitation, and stayed in a rest center for a year, out of the
spotlight, because of being the Disney girl of the moment, it was hard, all of the
magazines and paparazzis eyes were on her, but after that year she realized that
LOVE IS LOUDER THAN THE PRESSURE TO BE PERFECT.
In short, people have to realize that being fat or thin or tall or short is not one thing
you have to be worried for, its your body, God made you like that for one reason, to
be you, to be unique. Anorexia and bulimia are not the best ways to lose weight,
you could do exercise, drink water and eat healthy but the most important thing is
to learn to respect your body the way it is and to turn a deaf ear to all those people
who are always criticizing because they are just afraid of not being the center of
the world.