Singer/songwriter Juliana Hatfield is currently in an in-house hospital treatment program for Anorexia at age 41. She’s been blogging about her experience and recently posted ‘a day in the life’ rant on her blog.  Although Juliana was moderately successful in the 90′s, I really can’t remember a single song of hers. But I found the story interesting because of her age. Eating disorders are not just for your kids anymore.

They make us eat six times a day. Three meals and three snacks. We all sit in the kitchen together and there is a monitor at the head of the table making sure we eat everything on our plates and drink everything in our cups. This is called the refeeding process. It must be done slowly and steadily, with more food added on as time progresses so we don’t shock our systems. So we are not in danger of ending up like Karen Carpenter — she gained too much weight too fast after starving for a long time, and her heart couldn’t take it.

The bathroom doors are locked so the bulimics can’t go in and puke. (I myself have never been a purger.) When you need to go, you must ask a monitor to unlock the door for you and after she lets you in she stands just outside the door and then you must either count while you are on the toilet, loud enough so that she can hear you, right up until the moment you exit, or you must let her flush for you after you are done — so that there is proof that you didn’t vomit your food into the toilet.

She goes on about the embarrassing clinic part of treatment as well as talking about the hard emotional/mental stuff. Read further into her story at her blog…or insert your own ‘eat a sandwhich’ joke here.