You’re an adult with multiple decades to your credit, and you’ve got it all together — or look as if you do. The fact that you never have a kind word for yourself when you look in the mirror? Well, who does? Your eating and exercise obsessions, secret binges and occasional purges can’t possibly be signs of an eating disorder. After all, your friends, family and even your doctor praise you when you lose a few more pounds. Besides, you’re too “old” for an eating disorder — right?
The truth is that eating disorders in midlife and beyond are all too common among women. “The belief that we all have is that eating disorders are a white girl’s disease, in high school and college, when really it is across all ages,” said Margo Maine, a Connecticut-based clinical psychologist and co-author of “Pursuing Perfection.” “We have every color, every class, every ethnicity, and eating disorders are now in every country around the globe.”
A 2012 study estimated that 13 percent of American women ages 50 and older have eating disorder symptoms. A 2017 study found that about 3.5 percent of women older than 40 have a diagnosable eating disorder, yet most are not receiving treatment. Another study found that though rates of anorexia plateau around age 26, rates of bulimia don’t plateau until around 47, and rates of binge-eating disorder don’t plateau until the 70s.
Awareness of eating disorders in midlife has been increasing slowly. Maine’s 2005 book “The Body Myth” has helped spotlight the issue. At the time of publication, many of her adult eating disorder patients were mothers of former patients who finally realized that they had problems, too. “One of them had bulimia for 30 years and had had two marriages,” she said. “Neither of her husbands knew, her children didn’t know, her doctors didn’t have a clue.”