For years, Leslie Goldman kept her eating disorder a secret.
As a medical student in college, Goldman was very involved.
She had plenty of friends, learned leadership skills through her sorority and even worked at her campus' health center.
But behind closed doors, Goldman took on a very different set of tasks; severely limiting her calorie intake, working out religiously and purging.
Even as her weight dwindled, her hair started to fall out, her pulse reached a dangerous 36 beats-per-minute and her family intervened for fear of her life, Goldman denied her problem and went out of her way to hide it.
Twelve years later, Goldman is telling her story, hoping to prevent other women from going down the same path she did.
Best-selling health and medical writer Leslie Goldman spoke to more than 500 ASU students Thursday night about body image and the dangers of eating disorders.
ASU was Goldman's second stop in a two-week, five-school tour to educate students and promote her book, "Locker Room Diaries."
Goldman's presentation, "Body Image: The Naked Truth", was part of National Body Pride Week, and was sponsored locally by ASU's Wellness and Health Promotion program.
"Anorexia and bulimia are psychiatric disease," Goldman said, adding that the two diseases kill more people than any other such psychiatric disease. "This is happening all over."
Goldman recounted her own personal battle with an eating disorder.
"I was basically the perfect example of when a student wants to make everybody happy," Goldman said, "And things go very, very wrong."
The transition from high school to college was a difficult one, she said, and she felt intimidated by the other girls on campus.
"I remember thinking, 'How am I going to measure up to these girls?'" Goldman said.
She almost immediately turned to drastic dieting and strenuous exercise.
"It happened very quickly," Goldman said. "It got to the point where I would go study at the campus library, come back around midnight, and change into my workout clothes."
Goldman set a personal weight goal of 120 pounds, the supposed weight of supermodel Cindy Crawford, a goal she now recognizes as unhealthy and unreasonable.
"There are dogs that weigh 150 pounds," Goldman said.
Even after her family confronted her about her problem, she continued the same unhealthy habits, even drinking water to temporarily gain weight before her mandatory weekly weigh-ins, she said.
It wasn't until her senior year of college when two of her sorority sisters intervened after discovering that she had been purging, that she finally faced her problem head-on, Goldman said.
She took her doctor's advice and started taking medicine to increase her serotonin levels, which helped her to start a healthier lifestyle and improve her perception of her own body level.
"I had been resistant to trying medicine," Goldman said. "Three weeks later, I looked in the mirror, and it was like that mirror went from one of those fun house mirrors—wavy, distorting your image— to a regular mirror."
Goldman was able to seek treatment for her eating disorder, recovering to become a successful health writer and contributor to the Chicago Tribune, the American Medical Association, Women's Health, People and other magazines, but her experience will always be a part of her, she said.
"I kind of see having anorexia sort of like being an alcoholic," Goldman said. "You can conquer it, but it's always there."
Stories such as Goldman's are common at ASU, senior Liz Froebel said after the presentation, pointing to the campus' environment as one major problem.
"It's a lot warmer here [than other places]," Froebel said. "Everyone wears clothes that make it harder to hide."
Such sentiment is very common at ASU, but not always completely founded, said Lynda Seefeldt, health educator for ASU's Wellness and Health Promotion.
"Students do feel a pressure to look good," Seefeldt said. "People have told me, '[Campus] looks like an MTV set', and 'you have to dress up to go to class.'"
But after observing students on campus, Seefeldt said that most students dress casually and comfortably.
"What's fascinating about our human perception is we pick up on the extreme," she said.
According to an ASU Wellness and Health Promotion survey, 42 percent of ASU female students and 16 percent of male students reported feeling disappointed or disgusted when looking in the mirror.
Additionally, the American College Health Association National College Health Assessment indicates that 2.1 percent of ASU students admit to having been diagnosed with anorexia and 1.5 percent with bulimia, almost identical to the national average, Seefeldt said.
The Campus Health Center has many resources to handle eating disorder cases, including on-site specialists, but ASU's share of eating disorder victims aren't disproportionately large, Seefeldt said.
"Clinical eating disorders are not worse here than other campuses," Seefeldt said.
Reach the reporter at: nathaniel.lipka@asu.edu.
