The Dangerous Reality of Midlife Women and Eating Disorders
We’re 50 going on 15. Only we have more to lose. Literally.
Let me come out swinging. There is something going on with women in midlife and we need to talk about it. Why? Because currently, there are more women over 50 (13%) suffering from symptoms of eating disorders than there are suffering from breast cancer (12%).
An article came across in a Google alert about increasing reports of the likelihood of midlife women having an eating disorder. It’s shocking because, even as the article states, eating disorders are usually something that we associate with teenage girls.
We don’t think about eating disorders in terms of something that a smart, successful woman in the middle of her life could possibly endure. But here we are.
Though it may be shocking, it’s not actually that surprising if you give it 3.4 seconds of thought.
In digging a little deeper I found several different studies and articles that are reiterating the same concern about women in midlife and everything seems to make so much sense and is so obvious.
Here’s the saddening reality of some of the information that is being uncovered by the medical community.
13% of women over 50 experience symptoms of an eating disorder
3.5% of women older than 40 have a diagnosed eating disorder
Here’s why so much of this makes sense. Let’s look at all of the different things that perimenopausal and menopausal women are dealing with.
There is a dwindling perception of aging women as being desirable. Middle-aged women are continually made to feel invisible and like they have no space to take up in the realm of being physically or sexually desired by anyone. That is a massive toll on our psyches and our self-esteem.
One article specifically mentioned that the world of fashion does not consider the changing of our bodies as we age. Clothing is either designed for the very young, vital woman or swings in the completely opposite direction and we are supposed to succumb to living in burlap sacks for the rest of our lives.
I struggle all the time to try and find clothes in a style that I actually like and that fits my ever-changing midlife body. So, midlife women are faced with a choice:
Either we succumb to the land of the burlap sack or we have to go all in on the crusade to make our midlife bodies look like what they did 20 years ago to wear something that’s even remotely cute.
We are absolutely in the midst of a culture that values youth and disregards the fact that older women have something to bring to the table. Different cosmetics and beauty products are marketed to middle-aged women to help us to turn back the hands of time because, if we can’t undo the damage that has been done by us getting older, we are then, just…damaged.
Interestingly, part of the problem we’re seeing with eating disorders in midlife is that many who suffer are women who have had a history of disorders and midlife is triggering all of that again. That’s especially true if women never got treatment for the disorder when they were younger.
There is clearly a shift in thinking that needs to be made that eating disorders are something that we outgrow. Clearly, we don’t. Left untreated they may resurface at various points in our lives. and we can’t necessarily predict that or stop it.
Beyond the physical reasons why women may suffer from eating disorders much of what the research is saying is that the reasons why eating disorders are increasingly discovered in midlife women have to do with how we experience midlife itself.
These researchers are pointing to major changes in our lives as stress triggers that affect our eating. The list of stressful events includes things like getting divorced, having an empty nest, hormonal changes in and of themselves, and changes in career.
The toll that the stress of my divorce took on my body was incredible. There were days when I was too mentally and emotionally exhausted to eat food.
I must have lived on protein shakes for a couple of months because gathering up the energy to chew food let alone make it, was way too much for me. So I knew that I needed protein to keep the muscle that I had built, but the actual idea of eating food was completely lost on me.
Oftentimes, we also use food as a control mechanism. When we can’t control the environment around us we search for things that we can control and so what we eat or what we don’t eat or how much we exercise is something that we can control.
After I got through the living on protein shakes part of my divorce, I started eating real food again but I tracked every single calorie that went into my mouth because that was something that was concrete that I could wrap my arms around and control.
But the other part of the reality that midlife women face is that we aren’t 15 anymore we can’t just change our diet and lose a few pounds.
Weight loss for women in midlife is shoveling shit against a tide. Weight does not move. It’s like concrete.
I understand that these 15 to 20 pounds that I put on were super easy for me to gain over the last three years but for me to lose this weight is going to take another two years and it’s going to be an excruciating two years.
Of course, this is where I and so many other women become susceptible to disordered eating. I think about it and I am 100% ashamed to even admit that this thought has occurred to me:
There are moments when I pull on my jeans and they don’t fit, or a catch a glimpse in the mirror when I’m getting dressed and I don’t like it and you know what fucking thought creeps it. “Ya know, if I just stopped chewing food and drank two protein shakes a day again for a few months this would no longer be a problem.”
I don’t want to live like that.
There is a real danger here that we have to recognize. For women over the age of 50, eating disorders take a toll on the body and at this point in our lives, we don’t recover easily.
Women over 50 with eating disorders are going to encounter life-threatening effects including bone loss and heart disease.
To put a fine point on it, it is like taking a car that we’ve owned for decades and revving the engine into the red nonstop. Our bodies can’t withstand that kind of abuse.
The problem is that we have normalized dieting as a constant state of being for us. I asked a group of midlife women that I lead on Facebook if they have dieted in any form in the last 12 months. Early results? Every single answer to the poll is “yes.” Every. Single. One.
Dieting is a constant way of life for us. Women live in this space just as readily as men live in a space called “breathe.”
If ever there has been a more critical time in our lives to love ourselves it is now. We have to get rid of the noise and the bullshit to save ourselves and our sanity.
The good thing about much of the work that is being done in drawing attention to eating disorders in midlife is that it is actually getting the attention that it needs and that needs to continue to happen.
The more we can have discussions that are direct and informational, the better people have a chance of living a solid and fulfilled life unencumbered by horrific things that burden them.
We have to move from normalizing dieting to normalizing that our bodies are the only ones we get and we need to take better care of it. Not by dieting. Not by dropping a dress size for our kid’s wedding. Not so society still finds us “worthy.” But, rather, because we have one beautiful envelope that contains our whole soul. We have to hold that sacred to keep what’s inside, our dear and precious souls, safe.
*If you are suffering from symptoms of an eating disorder or an eating disorder, please get the help you need to heal. Resources can be found here.
Navigating midlife and trying to figure out what to do with it? Feel like something is wrong in midlife but you have no idea what it is? You just feel… meh? Take this quiz and I can tell you what’s “off?” Get on my mailing list for exciting things that make midlife not suck, especially if you want in on some radical self-care I’m leading women through in July.
Vanessa Torre is a writer and a midlife coach for women looking to make remarkable changes so they can live creative, fulfilling, and meaningful lives. Learn more at www.vanessatorre.com.
Follow Vanessa on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. Join her Facebook community for midlife women HERE.