Survivor helps those battling eating disorders
By ANDREA SUTTON Overcoming an eating disorder is a tough battle. Dietician Caryn Honig of Bellaire knows this firsthand. She is a survivor of anorexia, bulimia and over-exercising. She said the hardest part of the illness is the recovery. “It’s a lot easier and safer and more comfortable to stay in the illness,” she said. “It’s a very powerful illness.” Today, she is the owner of The Healthy Weigh, a nutritional counseling center that specializes in eating disorders and is hosting the fourth annual Beautiful Me! eating disorders conference from 7:50 a.m.-4:15 p.m. Feb. 17 at Hotel Derek, 2525 West Loop South. Meant for the general public and professionals, the conference will include several speakers who will address such topics as family, treatment, prevention and obesity. The keynote speaker, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, will present “Fasting Girls: Then and Now” about the history of anorexia and its current status in American society. Honig continues the conference each year to promote awareness and education, which she said is one step towards preventing eating disorders. Other factors in prevention include reducing the pressures put on children and oneself and refusing to buy into a culture that promotes unhealthy body images. An eating disorder is a mental disorder and an addictive coping mechanism like alcoholism, she said. As a teenager, Honig was coping with the instability caused by moving a lot with her family. Since she couldn’t control where her father’s job in the oil business would land her next, she focused on controlling food and her body. She also struggled with her body image. Chubby, red-headed and freckled as a young girl, society sent her the message was that she wasn’t pretty enough. She began purging at age 14 and became anorexic the summer before her first semester of college. A tennis player, people always commented on her small size and ability to exercise for hours each day, but no one knew of her inner struggles and battle, she said. “When you have an eating disorder, each day is living hell,” Honig said about being hungry, irritable and weak from the disorder. “Your whole life revolves around food and losing weight. It’s a miserable existence.” Characteristics of someone who is suffering from the illness are an obsession with exercise, their body and food; excuses for why they can’t eat; isolation; and frequent visits to the restroom after eating. Thirty years ago, eating disorders weren’t widely known. But the truth of the illness broke into the public realm when Karen Carpenter died on Feb. 4, 1983 from cardiac arrest caused by the strain anorexia put on her heart. At that point, not only did America realize that such disorders existed, so did Honig’s parents. She was diagnosed with anorexia, bulimia and over-exercising that year and began receiving treatment. She said she lost a lot in recovery. She lost the control of the illness. But in return she gained a life. “When you have an eating disorder you have no life,” she said. With her recovery, she also gained a new career. After visiting a dietician she decided she wanted to be one herself. She went to the University of Texas in Houston to become a licensed dietician. At first, she refused to work with anorexic and bulimic patients, saying that it was too close to home. Instead she worked with obese children at Texas Children’s Hospital. She helped her first eating disorder patient recover eight years ago. She strives to teach her patients a normal, healthy relationship with food and that a person is not good or bad based on the food they eat.
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