97. The Hidden Eating Disorder Crisis in the Military: What Service Members, Families, and Clinicians Need to Know with Leah Stiles

Well, I would say, you know, the military culture is built around strength and, you know, really has a fitness culture and as it should, right? It's necessary for us to have strong warfighters.

And there's a lot that has just kind of been compounded over the years of things that have been normalized that are not healthy.

And so I think that it has become really difficult to know where to draw the line between behaviors that... you know, have been normalized or, you know, that we do in order to meet the body standards, you know, for those that are listening that maybe aren't familiar, you know, the military has to meet height, weight standards and, you know, it's different through different branches and it changes over time.

But, you know, I can speak to the Navy is twice a year.

You have to step on a scale in front of your peers, in front of your bosses or your seniors.

And that number matters.

And over the years, you know, I have seen advice given often, most of the time with the best of intentions.

We don't want anybody to fail that way in because there's so many consequences to it, career consequences.

evaluations, you could lose your orders.

There's so many consequences to it.

And so I've seen things become normalized advice given to make sure that you can pass the standards, but that has really blurred the line between, you know, disordered behaviors, eating disorders, you know, normalized behaviors.

And I think that is also a part that makes it really difficult for us to assess when something has become maybe just a bit out of control.

That's actually really interesting though.

So, and if I'm understanding this, that even if there is some awareness these days, there's genuinely a lot of concern because this can actually impact your orders, right? And your job security, right? If you're not meeting some of these standards, is that accurate? Absolutely.

Oh, interesting.

So then we have that added layer of, I have to do these things to maintain my job security on some level.

Well, I have to shrink my body to meet the

standards.

And so, you know, some of the advice around how to shrink your body to meet those standards to avoid career complications are, you know, the disordered behaviors that get... you know, really blurry around.

They're definitely not healthy.

We know that for sure, right? And then the opposite is also true, Laura, is that, you know, if you do recognize an eating disorder in yourself or, you know, do find a provider that recognizes it or knows how to screen or what screening to do, and you receive a diagnosis of an eating disorder, right now, there's an executive order that says that eating disorders are non-compatible with military service.

And so then you could

lose your career for that too.

So we

need to do more on the prevention side so that things don't even escalate this far.