Eating disorders don’t just affect women, a growing number of men are now starting to “come out” of the eating disorder closet. Vic Avon shares his near death experience and talks about his battle with Anorexia, more commonly known in men as Manorexia.
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Imagine eating a lollypop and feeling like you have gained over 200 pounds at the end of your last lick? That is exactly how Vic Avon felt during his deep dark years battling depression and a life threatening eating disorder, Anorexia, more commonly known, in men, as Manorexia.
Avon was on the verge of dyeing when his family forcefully admitted him into The Princeton University Medical Center for Eating Disorders. Doctors were astonished to see the six-foot tall, 23-year-old Avon so malnourished that his organs were on the verge of shutting down.
The disease Manorexia is more common in the gay community or amongst sportsmen who are encouraged to keep their weight low, such as jockeys. Avon is neither making his road to recovery so much harder. When it came time to find a sponsor, he was unsure who he could share his story with.
An overweight and depressed teenager, Avon started to starve himself when he entered college. He stopped himself from eating more than one meal a day and would work out for hours a day, to keep his weight and body mass as low as possibly. But no matter how low his body weight got, Avon only saw the chubby teen when he looked in the mirror.
Today, nearly five years since he was admitted to the hospital for Manorexia, Avon is still not fully cured. Although he is at a normal body weight, he is unable to recognize his body’s hunger signals and must adhere to a strict meal plan and follow his dietitian’s orders, in order to keep his disease in remission.
- a word for word accurate transcript of the final piece
Each of us is born with an unloaded gun, society gives you the bullets and some of us pull the trigger.
I loaded that gun and pulled the trigger
In the years when I was going through the bulling and the rejection, and all the negative things in the world, that were going on around me, my coping mechanism was to turn to the food, and it just made me feel good.
Food, biologically, just makes you feel good sometimes, cus I could turn to it, and it was there to comfort me, when I was feeling bad or when I was feeling sad, or lonely. Then I hated it at the same time, cus it changed my body, and it made me have the body that I have, so if I had an emotional time of where I would eat a lot, because I was really bummed out or really depressed, I’d actually hate myself more afterwards, cus I had eaten all that, and and I knew there probably would be a negative physical reaction to it.
That’s one thing I really disliked about those years, was the fact that I didn’t know when I was hungry and when I was not, just didn’t know when my body physically needed food at that second and when to shut it off.
And it is kind of interesting because I did the exact same thing in my disordered years, where I didn’t follow the hunger ques at all . Unfortunately, my body hasn’t really adjusted, my hunger ques are all screwed up, to the point where I still need to follow a meal plan to make sure that I am eating what I need to eat, so I don’t stop too early or go to much, cus I am not intuitive like a normal person.
- a compelling headline and subhead that are SEO optimized plus at least 5 tags
Manorexia- When eating hurts.
* Anorexia ×
* Eating Disorder ×
* Skinny ×
* Male Sickness ×
* Nationa Eating Disorder
- at least three suitable links to the subject, story or theme from other sources
nationaleatingdisorders.org/information-resources/men-and-boys.php
abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=2536602&page=1
psychologytoday.com/blog/comfort-cravings/201005/manorexia
- a short behind-the-scenes story about how you found the character, something interesting that happened that’s not in the final piece, why you created this story, etc (great for blogging)
I was doing research on eating disorders in general when I came across a page on the National Eating Disorder Association, (NEDA) that talked about men and boys who can also be afflicted with eating disorders.
I was shocked. We always hear about the girls and women who do live with Anorexia or Bulimia but how many of us think that men can possibly live with the same.
I called NEDA to learn more about how many males have they treated who are dealing with these diseases. They shared Vic’s name with me and let me know that although he is not fully recovered, he is able to manage his disease and is quite vocal about getting the message out to boys and men, that eating disorders affect everyone, be it a male or a female.