“To the Bone” and life with an eating disorder

It may be only a week old, but the controversy surrounding Netflix’s new “To the Bone” has been swirling for quite some time. The drama movie highlighting a young adult’s struggles with Anorexia Nervosa is being viewed in the eating disorder community as one that glorifies the disease. For some, the material is triggering, bringing back painful memories of their personal struggles.
The controversy began in March 2016 when it was announced that Lily Collins had been cast to play the leading role of Ellen. Collins has struggled with both anorexia and bulimia in her past. Furthermore, she opted to lose the weight with the help of a nutritionist — which is controversial in itself because nutritionists don’t aide in a person’s desires to reach an unhealthy weight — to better portray an eating disorder victim. To her credit, she gained the weight back, but it still left people wondering if the risk of a relapse was worth taking on the role.
From a strictly film perspective, “To the Bone” reviewed favorably. It currently holds a 75 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with the average score coming in at a 6.6/10. Among audience members, 71 percent viewed the film favorably with an average score of 3.7/5. Metacritic scores the film at a 64.
If there is a positive to be gained from the 107-minute film, it’s that it appears to have led to an open dialogue about eating disorders, something that is gravely lacking in the United States and most of the world. A simple Google search of the movie title returns articles from CBS News, The New York Times, USA Today and The Washington Post among others shining a spotlight on eating disorders.
I’m not someone who is going to tell someone not to watch something. There is never going to be a movie or documentary made about eating disorders that isn’t going to be triggering in nature. You can’t tell a compelling and real eating disorder narrative without disturbing imagery and dialogue. As long as it’s not “pro-anorexia,” it has the opportunity to be educational for someone who wants to learn more about the disease in hopes of establishing a dialogue with a loved one who does. I like when my parents will tell me that they watched a documentary or read an article on eating disorders because it shows me they are willing to learn more and it sparks a conversation we wouldn’t otherwise have. It would be counterproductive for me to want to advance the eating disorder conversation forward while telling everyone I know to never watch any programming about the disease.
“To the Bone” is far from a perfect movie. Honestly, it’s not very good at all, but there were moments where I could relate to the struggles of the characters. There’s definitely some Hollywoodification which detracts from the overall message of the film, but I still feel like it’s worth your time to watch it. Obviously, like anything, if the subject matter makes you uncomfortable, then don’t watch. There’s nothing pretty about eating disorders.
***Below contains spoilers for “To the Bone***
What I liked
Ellen as a main character: Ellen is far from perfect, which makes her a perfect character, if that makes sense. I didn’t want the main character to be this happy-go-lucky person who’s fully committed to recovery and is always seeing the positives in everything. That’s not how people with eating disorders operate. For most of us, we’re riddled with anxiety and we question everything we do. We beat ourselves up over the tiniest of things and we tend to seclude ourselves from the rest of the world. We have our mood swings where we’re happy and talkative one day and the next we want nothing to do with anyone or anything. Sometimes we retreat so far into our own head that we don’t come out for days.
Right away we learn that Ellen can be combative. In the opening scene she is kicked out of treatment for being defiant and a bad influence on the other patients. She keeps her family at arm’s length, never telling them what’s going on in her head. You can see the internal struggle Ellen has between herself and the eating disorder. Anytime she steps on the scale to discover she’s lost more weight, a feeling of dread washes over her, but she continues to repeat the habits that led to her diminishing figure. Her spine is covered in bruises from the excessive number of sit ups she does on the hardwood floor next to her bed.
Her behaviors will seem familiar to those of us who have struggled with eating disorders. One such behavior was her way of measuring herself without the use of a scale in the form of wrapping her hand around the opposite-side arm to see how close she could get her thumb to touch either her index or middle finger. I do that behavior quite often. I tried to find a term for the behavior, but the first search result was from a pro-anorexia forum asking people what body parts they can successful wrap their hands around, as if it was some prideful accomplishment. Don’t ever visit pro-anorexia sites. Nothing good is lurking there.
Another behavior was the obsession over calories. An early scene shows Ellen staring at her step-sister’s plate and accurately guessing the caloric value of each piece of food. Numbers are a source for major anxiety for people with eating disorders., whether it’s the number on the scale or the number of calories in a serving of potato chips. I obsessed over calories for years and it was exhausting. I remember doing a presentation for my 11th grade health class and I made a tri-fold poster with restaurant items and their bloated calorie counts. I’d spend hours scouring the Internet, combing through restaurant nutritional menus to see the calorie and fat contents of every item so I’d be prepared if my family went there for dinner. I’d always keep a mental note of the items that had the fewest calories. There was a time where I wouldn’t purchase any food item without first looking at the side of the box where the nutritional information was located.
Ellen was someone who you wanted to see succeed, but you’d find yourself getting frustrated with her behavior, which is exactly how most loved ones view their relationship with someone with an eating disorder.
Dysfunctional family: When Ellen isn’t in treatment, she lives with her father and step-mother. Her parents divorced when Ellen’s mother came to the realization that she was a lesbian and left to go live with her partner, who provides therapy for horses. When Ellen’s father and step-mother call her mother following Ellen’s expulsion from treatment, her mother says “it’s not a good time to take this on,” but sends hugs. The father is only mentioned in conversation, but is never shown. The step-mother — Susan — is a bit of a diva, who accuses Ellen’s mother’s sexual orientation as the cause of Ellen’s eating disorder, as her mother admits to abandoning her daughter 18 months ago to live with her partner. Susan shows concern at times, seemingly mortified by Ellen’s appearance when she comes home from treatment, but at other times tries to make light of everything. When Ellen is accepted into a sought-after treatment center, Susan celebrates by giving her a cake in the shape of a cheeseburger and French fries, laughing the whole time to the displeasure of her step-daughter.
The half-sister — Kelly — is the most put together of them all, not afraid to speak her mind when it comes to Ellen’s eating disorder. She’s blunt, not afraid to tell Ellen that she’s worried she’s going to die soon if she doesn’t get help. It’s Kelly’s words that eventually pushes Ellen to give treatment another try.
I’m thankful my family was not as dysfunctional as the one depicted in the movie because it makes recovery that much harder. I imagine it was intentional and not just a coincidence that Ellen’s father is never shown on screen, seeing that most father figures don’t know the right approach on how to talk to a child struggling with an eating disorder. Dads want to be able to fix everything, but “fixing” an eating disorder isn’t something that can be done with a little elbow grease. It takes an incredible amount of time and effort, and a lot of treatment and therapy. My dad and I butted heads for a few years. He’d get mad when I wouldn’t eat, and at the time I’d get mad at him for being mad at me for something I didn’t seem to have any control over. It wasn’t until years later that I realized his frustrations were more about him wanting to help me but not being able to. My dad has always loved to cook. When my older brother and I were younger, my dad would make us ice cream waffles with chocolate syrup, sprinkles and whipped cream for breakfast on the weekends. We’d get excited when we would come downstairs and see all the ingredients sprawled on the kitchen counter. In the later years he’d make chicken and cheese Scoops on Sundays to eat while we watched football. We’d bond over those moments. And then those moments went away when I became hyper aware of what I was eating. I didn’t want to be around the kitchen when he was cooking because I didn’t want to eat. At the time, I didn’t realize the damage I was doing to our relationship. I still feel guilty. Even though we’ve repaired our relationship and are closer than we’ve been in 10–12 years, I still feel guilty. It does make me happy knowing that he still has a love for cooking.
My mom did everything in her power to get me healthy. She drove me to doctor’s appointments, found me specialists, drove me to those appointments, paid for said appointments, found me therapists, paid for those appointments. She was willing to go to the ends of the Earth to make sure I got better. And, for some reason, I fought her every step of the way. I didn’t apply myself fully during early meetings with therapists. I didn’t do anything my specialist told me to do. When my mom wanted to talk to me about my eating disorder, I wasn’t willing to talk and I’d get defensive. I never saw it for myself, but I know my mom cried over what I had turned myself into. Several times. She was witnessing her baby boy erode away and there was nothing she could do.
No family is ever prepared to tackle an eating disorder living in their household when it first rears its ugly head. It puts an incredible strain on everyone. I find myself wondering just how close I came to breaking apart my family. Every relationship seemed to fizzle. I’d spend most of my time away from everyone because I felt like every conversation I was having with my parents was about food. My parents struggled to agree on the proper approach on how to handle the situation. My mom tried a more gentle approach, while my dad was more direct. I demanded so much of my parents’ attention that my brother seemed to only get noticed when he did something wrong. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he resented me for that. We all got through it and we’re stronger for it, but it was a long few years.
Chocolate scene: This was one of my favorite scenes of the movie because it shows that even though people with eating disorders struggle to eat, there is a desire deep down to want to be able to eat the foods enjoyed by those around them. While at Threshold — a Los Angeles-based group home — Ellen reveals to the treatment center’s lone male patient, Luke, that before her eating disorder, she loved to eat Goo Goo Clusters, a chocolate bar containing marshmallow nougat, caramel and roasted peanuts. The next day, when the rest of the group is in the living room watching television, Luke enters the room and presents Ellen with a Goo Goo Cluster. During the scene, Ellen touches the candy bar and then smells the candy bar, but can’t bring herself to take a bite. After repeated pleas from Luke to take a bite, Ellen gets defensive and tells him to leave her alone. Unsuccessful in his attempt, Luke leaves with the candy bar, but leaves the wrapper on the floor. One of the other patients picks up the wrapper, puts it to her nose and takes a giant inhale to breath in the intoxicating smell on chocolate.
The brain works in mysterious ways sometimes. You’d think that people with eating disorders don’t want anything to do with food, that they don’t spend anytime thinking about it. But that’s simply not true. In fact, they spend more time thinking about food than someone without an eating disorder. When I was in high school and my eating disorder had reached its height, I would always find myself watching “Food Paradise” on Travel Channel. I couldn’t get enough of it. And there would always be marathons of it, so I’d sit in front of the television for hours at a time watching a show about the best eating places in the country. Each hour-long episode would focus on as many as 10 restaurants that were known for a certain food specialty. Among the many episodes were: Hamburger Paradise, Pizza Paradise, Ice Cream Paradise, Donut Paradise, Deep Fried Paradise, Bacon Paradise and Breakfast Paradise.
I’d watch this show all the time knowing full well that I’d never eat any of it. From a distance, “The Vermonster” from Ben & Jerry’s — 20 scoops of ice cream, four bananas, hot fudge, three chocolate chip cookies, a chocolate fudge brownie, walnuts, whipped cream and a choice of four toppings — looked delicious, but I’d never partake in eating it. From a distance, the “Butterfingering” and “Memphis Mafia” donuts from Voodoo Doughnut are mouthwatering, but I could never eat one if you put one on my plate.
It was my brain’s way of telling me that it needed food. The one part of my brain that wanted me to get healthy was trying its best to fight against the other part of my brain infected by my eating disorder. It thought that the more it could show me images of food that maybe I’d come to my senses and see that food was necessary. It didn’t work at the time, but it’s funny how I haven’t had the inkling to watch Food Paradise since going to treatment for the first time.
For others, grocery stores are a regular pilgrimage, going up and down the aisles looking at all the food they’d love to eat but their eating disorder doesn’t allow them to, breathing in the aromas from the bakery and the pizza shop. Candles with the scent of food, like pumpkin pie and Christmas cookies, are popular as well.
Luke’s final scene: From the moment he’s first introduced, Luke is upbeat and always seeing the positives in everything. He eats everything on his plate and never complains. He’s been in treatment for six months and is at the tail end of his stay. Why is he so full of positive energy? Because he’s motivated by a goal. Luke was an aspiring ballet dancer before blowing out his knee and being unable to do the activity that gave him joy and purpose. It’s unclear whether Luke was battling his eating disorder while dancing or if he developed it after getting hurt, but the movie suggests it was the result of being unable to dance. With the goal of getting back on stage, Luke seems destined to beat the disease.
Luke’s story unfortunately ends on a down note. Returning from a doctor’s visit on crutches, Luke informs Ellen that his knee requires yet another surgery and that is career as a ballet dancer is over. Without a goal to look forward to, the once upbeat Luke is now downtrodden and it seems inevitable that he may be heading for a relapse.
The only reason I liked this scene was because of how real it felt. Anybody that goes to treatment on their own free will is doing it with a goal in mind other than to be comfortable around food. Some do it so they can be healthy enough to have children one day or be able to see their children grow up. Others do it so they can hold down a job. Treatment always tries to sell the message that life will get better when you address and manage your eating disorder.
Unfortunately, life is a little more complicated than that. Life isn’t waiting for you outside treatment to congratulate you. It’s not waiting at the exit with a bag of money, new friends, your dream job and the ability not to be socially awkward in groups. Your weight may be restored to a healthy zone and your heart rate and blood pressure are normalized, but your body takes a beating from years of malnutrition and some of it can’t be undone. I get stressed out anytime I get hurt because I wonder if that’s just what my life is going to be like from now on. Am I going to have to take Aleve every day to be able to function? Will I need knee and hip replacements? Am I going to be able to walk when I’m 40?
It’s important to have a goal in mind in recovery, but it’s also important to be prepared when life throws you a curveball. Because it’s going to. I had a goal of returning to the sports writing field a few months after leaving treatment and I ended up spending 18 months working retail at Best Buy instead.
What I didn’t like
Almost everything about Threshold: I have so many questions for Marti Noxon, the film’s writer and director. The movie is loosely based on Noxon’s past struggles with anorexia. I’m hoping that a place like Threshold doesn’t exist in any capacity, because it paints a bad picture of treatment facilities. I’d be curious to hear of Noxon’s stories about treatment because there seems to be some anti-treatment facility sentiment. It also could be the result of budget restraints or studio input.
But Threshold is far from what actual treatment looks like. The treatment facility is a group home owned by Dr. William Beckham (played by Keanu Reeves), housing seven patients — six girls and Luke. There is one nurse with them at all times and a therapist that conducts group sessions during the day. Beckham conducts the individual and family sessions. The treatment facility operates on a points system, the more points the more privileges. Points are accumulated by completing meals, gaining weight and doing chores around the house. Rewards include having access to phones and other technology and being allowed to leave the house unsupervised. Patients are weighed in the morning and have the option to look or not look at the scale (never a good idea to let patients see their weight). Patients are allowed to eat whatever they want for meals and even have the option not to eat at all. The only rule is that they sit at the table with the rest of the group. Bathrooms are locked for 30 minutes following meals.
That’s Threshold in a nutshell and it isn’t anything close to what treatment is like. Now, I never did a residential treatment program, but I did do inpatient at a local hospital and a partial-hospitalization program that was five days a week, 7.5 hours a day, so I have a solid understanding of the basics of what a typical treatment regimen is like. And it isn’t Threshold.
Where to even start with this. First off, let’s start with meals. No treatment facility in the world gives their patients the option not to eat during meal times. Patients can choose not to eat their provided meals, but it comes with consequences. Some treatment centers determine how many calories a patient didn’t eat and converts that amount into liquid form, usually with an Ensure. The patient is then given the choice of drinking it themselves or having it fed to them through a tube. In partial, if a patient didn’t eat or didn’t complete everything that was on their plate, it was documented, but the calories wouldn’t be replaced. If the behavior continued, the patient would more than likely be moved to a higher level of care before returning a couple months later.
Some places allow you to pick your food from a list of options and others predetermine everything, but it’s heavily regimented. Everything is assigned a point value or exchange rate and each meal has to be an exact number of points or exchanges, but it also has to be balanced. You can’t just eat spoonfuls of peanut butter out of the jar (which is actually what one of the patients did in every scene at the kitchen table) because it doesn’t help rebuild a healthy relationship with food. Instead, all of the food groups have to be represented. For me, I had lunch, snack and dinner at partial. For lunch, I chose between two entrees and had to pick at least one serving of fruit, vegetables, starches (if the entree wasn’t a sandwich) and dairy, and satisfy the rest of my point allotment from a list of 10 or so snack items that included graham crackers, peanuts, ice cream, sorbet, pop tarts and peanut butter. Dinner was between three entrees (soup, salad and sandwich), and you had to chose two. The more calories an item has, the more points its worth. So if you opt for a salad option, it’s only going to be worth a point or two, making you have to load up on other items to hit the point target. Snacks were chosen by the nutritionist. I’d fill out the following week’s menu on a Wednesday and it would be checked by the nutritionist to make sure the point totals added up. Again, regimented.
A cook would prepare all the meals and serve it to us. We would be watched by two staff members at all times to make sure we weren’t trying to drop food on the floor or put it in our pockets.
The lack of supervision at Threshold was alarming. I understand you can’t be watching everyone at all hours of the night, but they got away with some pretty major things. The one patient earns a night out and opts to go to the movies. She doesn’t have to be accompanied by a staff member, so when she leaves the movie theater, she opts to run back. Treatment facilities ban any form of exercise. Ellen later discovers the same patient is purging and keeping the vomit in a bag under her bed. When Ellen confronts her, she tells Ellen that she can get her laxative pills in exchange for her silence. Ellen agrees. Ellen does sit ups in her bed and there’s even a scene where she’s running up and down the staircase. To no surprise, her weight is down each time she steps on the scale.
None of the patients outside of Luke seem to be getting any better, which makes it odd that Threshold has such a reputation to its name. Typically, when patients don’t show progress, insurance steps in. Insurance companies are quick to pull the plug. My insurance required bi-weekly reports from the treatment staff to make sure I was improving. They were also waiting for me to be deemed healthy enough so they could argue I didn’t need to spend anymore time there and so they could drop coverage.
I get that the film has a plot and it can’t stray too far away from it, but for a treatment facility, there is very little therapy portrayed. We get the tumultuous family session with Ellen in which Beckham tells her they’re never having another family session again, which sends a terrible message in itself. Family sessions are important because it provides an opportunity to discuss pressing topics in a controlled environment. Part of a successful recovery is being surrounded by people who understand what you’re going through and can talk to you when you’re having trouble. For a doctor to say it’s not worth it is alarming.
Besides that, there is only two quick scenes where the therapist is present. It just didn’t seem like there was any structure at Threshold. If there is one knock I have on the treatment process it’s that it’s too structured and doesn’t provide for any flexibility, but there has to be at least some structure. I say treatment is too structured because I don’t feel like it fully prepares you for life outside of treatment. Meals occur at the same time every day, which isn’t realistic to expect outside of treatment. Things happen and you have to be flexible and adapt to the situation. Treatment doesn’t really prepare you for that. But there has to be some structure and there has to be some therapy, because battling an eating disorder requires hundreds of hours of individual and group therapy.
If Threshold existed, I would not recommend it.
Ellen and Luke’s “relationship”: When we are first introduced to Luke, I was happy that the film included a male eating disorder victim. I was just hoping they weren’t going to try and shove in a needless romantic subplot between Ellen and Luke. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened, and it happened unnaturally fast and it seems out of character for Ellen. Probably safe to say this is the influence of Hollywood. There has to be some type of romantic element to give the audience something to keep watching.
At the beginning, Ellen finds Luke weird, but it only takes a week or two before she becomes his go-to person to talk with. They barely know each other, but Luke uses one of his rewards to go to a restaurant and elects to bring Ellen with him. He sells her on the date by telling her she doesn’t have to eat anything and that they can walk to and from the restaurant. Luke essentially is enabling her eating disorder behavior just to spend time with her. That’s always the potential danger patients are warned about when it comes to dating someone else with an eating disorder. They can be a good fit, as no one knows eating disorders more than someone with the disease and therefore they understand one another, but there is the potential that they can be bad influences on each other. Seeing a significant other struggling to overcome the disease could trigger them to relapse as well.
Ellen’s demeanor up to that point doesn’t suggest she’s interested or even able to focus on jumping into a relationship. She keeps everyone at arm’s length and doesn’t care much for being social. Yet, not two weeks into treatment (it’s hard to get a gauge on how quickly time passes in the film) her and Luke share a passionate kiss before Luke attempts to take it too far and is immediately rejected and the relationship seemingly ends there.
It’s not the case for everyone, but when someone is so deep into their eating disorder, relationships take a back seat. Maybe it’s more prevalent for men, but hormone production almost stops when you’re dealing with an eating disorder. There were years where every girl in the world may as well have been gray blobs because I was so preoccupied with my eating disorder that I didn’t notice the people around me.
Lack of character development/narrow focus: “To the Bone” would have been better served as a mini-series rather than a feature film. There are seven patients at Threshold, all with their own stories to tell. But by the time the film rolls end credits, you probably won’t be able to remember more than three of their names. Within that lies another issue with the movie: it only focuses on anorexia.
There’s a belief that having an eating disorder means that you’re stick thin and don’t eat anything, when that’s not always the case. Not everyone with an eating disorder is underweight and not everyone with an eating disorder is classified as anorexic. According to the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) Anorexia Nervosa affects between 0.9–2.0 percent of women and 0.1–0.3 percent of men. Bulimia Nervosa affects between 1.1–4.6 percent of women and 0.1–0.5 percent of males. Bulimics tend to have healthy body weights, which is why you can’t always look at weight when determining whether someone has an eating disorder. Bulimia is considered the most dangerous of the eating disorders (they’re all incredibly dangerous) due to the electrolyte imbalance caused by the frequent vomiting or use of laxatives and diuretics. Electrolyte imbalance can trigger heart attacks.
And then there is Binge Eating Disorder (BED), which affects between 0.2–3.5 percent of females and 0.9–2.0 percent of males. BED sufferers have it the toughest when it comes to public opinion because saying arguing their weight is due to an eating disorder sounds like excuse making, especially when they are living in a country where two-thirds of the population is considered overweight or obese. But it very much is an eating disorder. BED sufferers have periods of uncontrollable eating in which they eat at an unusually fast pace and well past the point of satiation. It is no where near the same as someone who’s simply hungry and eats more than they should. BED sufferers don’t need to be hungry to have episodes of binge eating.
“To the Bone” had the opportunity to showcase to the audience what life was like living with the different types of eating disorders, but missed out by just focusing on anorexia. We end up learning nothing about Kendra, the African-American girl with BED outside of the fact that she seems to like peanut butter because that’s the only thing we ever see her eat, and we learn nothing about Tracy, who’s limited dialogue suggests she suffers from bulimia. We know very little about Anna outside of her puke bag, and the same can be said about Megan and Pearl. Megan is pregnant and worried about miscarrying and Pearl’s condition is critical to the point where she has a feeding tube through her nose. But besides that we know next to nothing about these characters. We don’t know how long they’ve been at Threshold or any background information that would give them depth.
The ending: When I say end, I mean the very end. Like the final minute of the movie. I’m not talking about the awkward scene in the tent where Ellen’s mom cradles her daughter on her lap while feeding her milk formula from a bottle and sings her a lullaby. Yeah, that’s an actual scene. And I’m not talking about the near-death moment that happens soon after where she collapses from exhaustion after walking throughout the night. I’m talking about when she opts to return to Threshold with a fresh perspective and ready to get better.
Now, I like that, but I don’t like it as the final scene of the movie. It really should have been the half way mark because as anyone that’s ever gone to treatment, having a positive attitude only gets you so far. It doesn’t make treatment any less challenging. It does increase the odds of staying on the right track after treatment, but it doesn’t make treatment any easier. The truth of the matter is if you don’t want to get better, you won’t get better. For those that are forced to be in treatment and don’t really want to be there, they may improve while there, but they are really just counting down the days until they can leave so that they can go back to their old habits and drop all the weight they’ve gained. Relapse rates are at its highest in the first 6–12 months following treatment.
The reason I didn’t like the way the movie ended was because it seemed to tell the audience that all you need is the motivation and the will to be able to beat an eating disorder and with those two things, treatment will be a breeze. But that’s not true. Treatment is brutal. It is physically and mentally exhausting and full of pain. And motivation and will isn’t always going to be there when you wake up in the morning. The times I was most motivated to get better was when I was really hungry and the scale showed a dangerously low number for my height. But all it usually took was a somewhat full stomach the next time I ate to poke holes in that motivation. A smoker is more motivated to quit after catching themselves smoking an entire pack at once than they are when withdrawal symptoms begin kicking in. Same is true for eating disorders. It’s easier to want to get help when you just about faint from hunger than it is when you were just forced to eat a meal with 1,800 calories and you feel sick to your stomach.
I wanted to see Ellen’s progression through treatment. Treatment is ugly. It’s a spiral staircase in which you’re constantly taking two steps forward and one step back. Treatment isn’t linear. There are going to be good days and there are going to be terrible days. And it only gets tougher when you start to see the physical changes. When your shirts get a little snug and you have to loosen your belt is when the challenge ramps up. I wanted to see those moments. I wanted to see the triumphant moments where progress was being made and I wanted to see the breakdowns to show the audience just how difficult treatment is.
Overall, the movie hits and misses on trying to capture what life is like with an eating disorder. But if leads to an open discussion about the disease in which people are combing the Internet in an attempt to educate themselves on the matter, than the movie is all right by me. We need more people talking about eating disorders.