Today, at least 30 million Americans suffer from anorexia, bulimia or other forms of eating disorders, according to the National Eating Disorders Association, compared with an estimated 11 million sufferers in 1995. Here, The Post’s Jane Ridley meets former anorexic Alexa Silvaggio, 29, a yoga and meditation instructor from the Upper West Side, who opens up about her path to recovery.
Relishing each spoonful of the oatmeal I’m having for breakfast, I make a mental note that I’m consuming exactly half of the 200 calories I’m allowing myself that day.
The remaining 100 will be derived from a variety of raw and lightly steamed vegetables — chopped cabbage being my favorite because, according to research I did on the internet, like cucumber and celery, it fills your stomach and requires more energy to digest than it provides.
Most people would assume I’d be too weak to exercise on such little food intake. But to the contrary, I have three hours of ballet and one hour of pilates ahead of me. I dance five times a week and do pilates every single day.
This was my everyday reality when I was in my sophomore year of college and in the grips of anorexia for an agonizing 18 months. At my lightest, I hit the scales at just 95 pounds — severely underweight for my 5-foot-7½-inch frame.
Now, thanks to a combination of sheer determination and the discovery of meditation and yoga, I’ve gained 50 pounds and am back to my healthier pre-diet weight of about 145 pounds.
The problem started at age 20 at Syracuse University. I desperately wanted to date another student and mistakenly hoped that he would notice me if I got thinner and, by extension, more beautiful.
It didn’t help that I was majoring in musical theater. There is definitely pressure to look petite onstage, and I told myself I’d land certain parts if I were slimmer. The pressure was mostly internal but, the previous year, one of my dance teachers had playfully tapped me on the ass and said, “We need to watch our weight here.”
I constantly compared my figure to those of other women. If I was the skinniest person in the room (and I usually was), I’d get a thrill. “Ignore the hunger pangs,” I’d tell myself. “It’s paying off.”
In the beginning, I’d typically eat about 500 calories a day, consisting of oatmeal, fruits, vegetables and a piece of grilled chicken for dinner. But at my worst, a year into the “diet” during the summer of 2007, my daily caloric intake was closer to 200.
Needless to say, the weight fell off me. My periods stopped. I became reclusive, only meeting friends for a cup of black coffee occasionally, never a meal. “Are you healthy?” they would ask, disturbed by my skeletal appearance, which I tried to disguise with baggy clothing. Even my dance teacher took me aside and suggested I should eat more.
Then, while flying to visit my family in California in January 2008, I felt delirious with hunger and asked for tomato juice. When I saw the can contained 50 calories, I asked to swap it for a Diet Coke. I remember pausing and having a moment where I thought, “Wow! That was tremendously tragic.” I realized how messed up and abnormal I was. I had just started reading the self-help book “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise L. Hay, which encourages positive thinking and made me more aware of my actions.
As I took off my coat at home that night, my sister, Rozlyn, gasped and said, “Oh my God.” Later, she saw my back covered in a soft fuzz called lanugo — when you’re so underweight, your body grows hair to keep you warm. “You have to get help,” she told me. “We don’t want to lose you.”
Her face was a mixture of horror and fright. This, the self-help book and the incident with the tomato juice were the jolt I needed. That week I saw a doctor in San Francisco. There was a chance I may have developed osteopenia — decreased bone density — but luckily, the tests came back negative. The doctor recommended a psychotherapist and I was prescribed Prozac.
With the help of therapy, I conceded I was desperately unhappy. I didn’t want to be present and exist within my own body. By starving myself, I felt the physical pain of denial, and this helped block the other negative feelings I had. Obsessing about my calorie intake left no time for me to deal with the real issues upsetting me.
If I was the skinniest person in the room, I’d get a thrill.
- Alexa Silvaggio
Meanwhile, a holistic nutritionist gradually helped me get back on track with healthy eating. To my relief, I didn’t have any long-term physical effects from anorexia, but the psychological aspect was a whole other matter. The thought of eating large amounts of food scared me s - - tless. It took me forever to enjoy breakfast, instead of just drinking black coffee. Once, when I was at a dinner party, I refused to eat the salad because the hostess made a point of adding the dressing and not placing it on the side as I’d wanted.
If someone had said, “Go eat pizza,” that wouldn’t have worked; I was terrified of the calories. Instead, I’d eat vegetables, plus whole grains, lean meat and fish. My new diet was organic and similar to the Paleo method. It took about three years to achieve a healthy weight. I continued my studies and graduated in 2010, a year earlier than my cohorts.
Still, there have been tough moments, and some days I still over- or undereat.
But the lifestyle change that made the biggest difference was yoga and meditation.
Rozlyn took me to my first proper yoga class the day after I confided in her. The calm soothed my mind, and I learned to listen to the nobility of my body. My anxiety levels — which run in the family and are a side effect of my perfectionist nature — took a dive. I began to appreciate the magnificence of my body and even went off Prozac.
In fact, I loved yoga so much, I turned my back on musical theater soon after graduating college. Today I’m a full-time yoga instructor in Los Angeles and New York and a brand ambassador for the Meditation Studio app, which offers original guided meditations to help people who, like me, need to feel in touch with their bodies and minds.
In my job, I hear that a lot of my clients have or have had eating disorders. It’s so common and such a spectrum. We put incredible pressure on ourselves to look a certain way and have a specific body type that we’re not genetically capable of.
I’m very fit but very curvy. I’m single, dating, and hope to find the right guy. Now that my health is restored, I’ve gone from a size 0 to a size 6 to 8, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Could this FDA approved weight loss pump cause more eating disorders?