Hey YouTube, This is my “Eating Disorder”
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — Mike Sanchez, a senior football player at Marist College started a YouTube video named “My Eating Disorder.” Sanchez’s family and friends would get to know the dark side about his “amazing 80-pounds-lost accomplishment” in 2012.
“One day I weighed myself and looked in the mirror. I didn’t recognize the person I saw,” said Sanchez. A 15-year-old Sanchez lived a rough year after his mother was involved in a car accident and his grandmother passed away. Sanchez started a depressed vicious cycle of sleep and eating, until he stumbled upon an Eric Thomas motivational video. He knew he needed a physical change, so he set his mind to lose weight. Sanchez would take extreme measures to the including jeopardizing his health.
“I went from eating everything to eating nothing. Everybody complemented how good I looked, so in a way that kind of motivated me more because people were noticing it. I kept doing it for nine months,” Sanchez said. He ate 600 calories to 1200 calories a day during the weekdays, workout an intense hour workout before school, baseball practice in the afternoon and finish the day running in a trash bag and sweatpants around his town public pool for 45 minutes at night. On the weekends he would unleash the suppressing appetite. “Weekends were a 10 thousand calorie challenge pretty much,” said Sanchez on the video. According to the American Addiction Center Binge sessions may occur after a period of stringent caloric restriction or dieting, and they are often characterized by feelings of a loss of control while eating large quantities of food in one sitting.
Sanchez binge periods remain a secret until a summer afternoon conversation started it all. “He was looking through old pictures and repeatedly mention how thin he was. I told him ‘You look so much better now.’ That make him realize healthy is better than skinny,” said Sabrina Amicucci, Sanchez’s girlfriend, said. Mike started YouTube as a recreational outlet for his workout session. So he took this platform to make his announcement public. “I said ‘screwed it,’ at least someone will notice and I could help them,” said Sanchez. His passion for exercise, perseverance and willing to help others help him realize he wanted to become a personal trainer. He started helping classmates at Marist, then progressed in helping in his father’s friend’s boot camp on the weekends to upload YouTube videos. Coming out and putting himself vulnerable helped Sanchez to become closer to his closest and a relatable person to those who experience the same journey. “ A person in my High School contacted me. He was motivated to do a change in his life by my post. If I could make somebody feel like that, is all I want,” Sanchez said.
According to the eating disorder association, binge eating disorder (BED) is the most common eating disorder in America. It was officially recognize as formal diagnosis in 2013. Today, 2.8 million are people affected. Sanchez is one stories among millions. Only one in ten suffers will seek and receive treatment.
