Aubie-EDA, a student group focusing on body image education and eating disorder awareness on campus, will be sponsoring "Love your Body Week" the last week of February.
Group members will give out healthy recipes, stickers and calendars on the Haley Center concourse every weekday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., except Wednesday, when there will be a women's leadership conference in the student center from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The kickoff for the women's leadership conference will be at 5 p.m. Feb. 22.
There will also be an interactive art display all week, group fitness classes, and a cooking class Feb. 24 at 5 p.m.
Campus dietician Jessica-Lauren Roberts reveals the five most common misconceptions about eating disorders and then the truth:
1. Myth: Eating disorders only occur in women.
Fact: Women aren't the only ones who deal with these; men encounter them as well. Roberts said she has seen them in mostly 15- to 20-year-old male clients.
2. Myth: Having an eating disorder means you're skinny.
Fact: Eating disorders don't necessarily make you skinny. Aside from anorexia and bulimia, there are what Roberts refers to as "eating disorders not otherwise specified." She said this is probably the biggest category.
"Sometimes these are the most dangerous because they fall off the radar," Roberts said. "Those are the people that don't necessarily look really skinny, and so we think, 'Oh they're fine; they don't have an eating disorder,' when actually they very well may, and theirs might be far worse than the really skinny girl who's actually eating what she should."
3. Myth: A healthy appearance equals good health inside.
Fact: Looking healthy on the outside does not mean one is healthy on the inside.
"Added to that," Roberts said, "thin is not necessarily healthy. Appearance is not necessarily the marker for our health."
4. Myth: Eating disorders can be attributed to one cause, such as one's upbringing.
Fact: Eating disorders are multifaceted.
"The myth here could be that it's all about the media, all about the parents or all about bullying in school. But it's not. It could be a combination of any of those things," Roberts said. "Added to that, peer pressure, the kind of friends that we choose, you know, the people we're in school with can definitely be an influence, but we also have a choice in that."
5. Myth: Only people with certain personalities are vulnerable to obtaining eating disorders.
Fact: Anyone is susceptible.
"Anyone can (develop an eating disorder) from any feeling of insecurity or a desire to control something when there's no other sense of control in life," Roberts said. "And it doesn't have to be a full-blown eating disorder; it can be a disorder of eating. Any kind of preoccupation with food, anxiety and obsessing over it--you don't have to have anorexia nervosa to have a problem."
Roberts identified many different types: nocturnal eaters, binge eaters, over-exercisers, bingers or purgers through laxatives, diuretics and anorexia-restrictive, which limits calories to the point of starvation and includes over-exercise.
For more information and a complete list of events, visit Aubie-EDA on the Haley Center Concourse Feb. 21.
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