Julia Branton wrote the word “balance” on a paper lantern on the Plaza of the Americas on Thursday night to symbolize her recovery from an eating disorder.
Branton, a 20-year-old UF applied physiology and kinesiology junior, helped organize the Student Government Health Affairs Cabinet’s Light the Night event, a ceremony that educated students about eating disorders. About 40 students drank coffee as they visited on-campus organizations’ booths and listened to mental health care professionals.
Kelly Ulmer, a registered mental health counseling intern with the UF Health Eating Disorder Clinic, told students eating disorders affect people of different gender expressions, sexual orientations, races and ethnicities.
“Tonight I want to highlight the fact that eating disorders are neither clean nor clear cut,” she said.
Ulmer said 20 million women and 10 million men in the U.S. suffer from eating disorders. Rates have increased since the 1950s.
“Recovery is possible, though,” she said. “It’s hard, it’s long and it’s daunting. But it’s possible. I’m among the living proof.”
Branton told the audience about how a bad break-up drove her into an obsession with healthy eating during her senior year of high school, which worsened when she came to UF.
When she began canceling plans with friends to work out and stopped eating her favorite foods, she convinced herself she was fine. She lost 20 pounds in two months.
When she returned home to Pennsylvania on break, she didn’t believe her friends and family when they said she had an eating disorder. Branton thought because she wasn’t throwing up or binge eating, she couldn’t be suffering from an eating disorder, she said
“I thought I looked great because I had this very skewed image of what I looked like,” Branton said. “I would see the number on the scale drop, and I would be like, ‘Awesome Julia, this is great, let’s keep going.’”
For Branton, the word “balance” represents how she now lives her life.
“Everyone knows part of college is figuring out a balance,” she said, “but a lot of an eating disorder is finding the balance between eating healthy and eating a cookie or allowing yourself to eat what you actually like.”
About 20 people attend the beginning of the candle lighting held by the Student Government Health Affairs Cabinet to raise awareness for eating disorders on Thursday evening on the Plaza of the Americas.
