Even after the COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, some young people who had developed eating disorders during the pandemic due to stress are still suffering from symptoms.
One such case is an office worker in her 20s in the Tokai region who had developed anorexia, which involves severely limiting food intake for fear of gaining weight. At one point, the woman's weight fell to almost half of what it was before she became ill. With the support of her family, she has recovered to the point where she can eat healthy food, but she is still fighting with some of the symptoms.
To share her experience with high school students and other young people suffering from eating disorders, the woman has taken to social media to give them advice and words of encouragement that a person’s value is not determined by their body shape.
“I was so afraid of eating carbohydrates that I couldn’t eat even a grain of rice,” the woman said, recalling the most difficult days she went through. “I lost almost half of my body weight, down to 31 kilograms."
It was the summer of 2022, just after she was assigned an overseas position that she had hoped for, when she became unable to eat properly. Her business trips were restricted due to the pandemic, and she felt anxious about being unable to produce results. She had been on a diet since before her transfer, but she began to get deeper into it as she felt that losing weight was the only thing through which she could see results in numbers.
Every day, she would eat only chicken breast and vegetables for meals, which led to rapid weight loss. She drank coffee and ate kelp and agar to control her hunger.
A medical checkup at her company revealed that she had lost a great deal of weight, and six months after her transfer, she was forced to return to Japan due to her health deteriorating. Even then, however, she wasn't aware that she was going through an illness. “Back then, I was wondering, what was wrong with me for being thin,” the woman said.
Her physical condition worsened to the point where she couldn’t climb the stairs at a train station. Last fall, she was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa at a psychiatry clinic and was hospitalized for one month.
“I became unable to work or take trips which I liked. There was nothing good about losing weight," she said. After leaving the hospital, she improved her diet by cooking nutritious and well-balanced meals that she learned from her mother. She gradually regained her weight and began to feel more relaxed and motivated to work and travel.
She started posting her colorful meals on social media and eventually began to receive comments from high school girls suffering from the same symptoms, asking about how she overcame her anorexia.
"There are many things you can do once you regain your weight,” the woman wrote in one of her posts. “Think of rice as medicine, and let's get nutrition from it,” she said in another. Based on her own experience, she continues to send positive messages.
“I still haven't completely gotten over my desire to lose weight. There are days when I can't eat properly,” she says. But because she has faced the illness and learned how difficult it is to recover completely, she calls on others in the same situation not to keep it to themselves. “There is so much more to you than your body shape,” she tells them. “You are fine."
It is estimated that more than 200,000 people in Japan suffer from eating disorders each year. During the pandemic, the number of new, young patients increased, possibly due to stress caused by lifestyle changes. Experts urge adults to consult a medical institution as soon as possible if they notice any signs of loss of appetite or weight in their children.
Eating disorders are broadly categorized as anorexia which involves severely limiting food intake, and bulimia, which typically involves vomiting after overeating. In both types, patients are often unaware of their illness, and leaving the conditions unattended could lead to serious health consequences such as osteoporosis and death in the worst case.
According to a survey conducted by the National Center for Child Health and Development on 23 hospitals nationwide, 276 people under the age of 20 were diagnosed with anorexia in fiscal 2022, which ended in March 2023. Although the number declined from 319 in fiscal 2021 and 313 in fiscal 2020, it is still higher than the 199 reported in fiscal 2019 before the pandemic.
Tatsuya Koeda, a senior fellow at the center, analyzed that the COVID-19 measures taken at schools, such as having students eat in silence and wash their hands thoroughly, may have made them feel unable to enjoy meals casually.
Increased stress due to various other restrictions and anxiety about infection may also have triggered eating disorders, experts say.
The COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in May last year by lowering the classification of the disease to the same level as seasonal flu. However, the situation around eating disorders hasn’t improved much. Takeshi Inoue, a doctor at the Dokkyo Medical University’s Child Development and Psychosomatic Medicine Center, pointed out that the number of new patients and hospitalized patients with eating disorders remains high as of this year.
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