THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 19, 1996 TAG: 9607190706
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY WENDY GROSSMAN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 167 lines
Whitney Spannuth was an 18-year-old girl with a mighty big appetite. For lunch, she'd eat two hamburgers, a salad and dessert. During classes she'd munch on granola bars, cookies or another sandwich. At 5 feet 6 inches, she only weighed 125 pounds.
She also could run fast. Real fast.
She was the Tennessee high school state track champion in the mile and two-mile, as well as state champion in cross-country for two consecutive years, 1991 and 1992. Every night as she sat down to study for AP calculus and AP biology exams, track coaches from all of the top colleges called offering her scholarships. She accepted a full ride to Vanderbilt University in Nashville without ever filling out an application.
Her class voted her ``Best All Around'' and ``The Most Outstanding Senior.'' She was a member of the homecoming court, German Club, Model United Nations, Beta Club and Mu Alpha Theta, a math honor society. She was blond with pale blue eyes, a brand new Mazda Miata convertible and a hot prom date.
Just after graduation in 1993, a group of guys challenged her to an eating contest at a seafood buffet. She ate fried clams, fried shrimp, hushpuppies and crab. She won.
A year later, as a freshman on the Vanderbilt track team, she won another eating contest. Her teammates tried to see who could eat the least. For an average dinner they'd eat half a bagel, a salad with non-fat dressing and a plain baked potato.
``Several of us got caught up in the fact that the lighter you were, the faster you would run. Running is a very competitive sport - and you have to have that mentality. It just carried over to the dinner table,'' she says.
Whitney got faster and faster.
And lighter and lighter.
She now weighed 112 pounds.
She also missed two months of practice during her first season because she had mononucleosis. To compensate for lost training time, she ate less, exercised more.
It worked. Almost. She missed qualifying for the 1993 U.S. junior national cross-country team by half a second.
``The more weight I was losing, the more success I was having - I thought the two were tied together. I was running fast times so I started cutting my calories even more and then I cut fat out of my diet,'' she says. ``I had probably the best track season I ever had - and I qualified for the national team.''
Whitney ran with the 1994 national cross-country team in Budapest, Hungary. She finished in 92nd place out of 156 competitors.
She came home and continued training and winning, breaking her personal record in the 1,500 meter. She ran 12 miles each morning and lifted weights. She stuck to a rigid training schedule all summer.
She was sick a lot, but she was fast.
``The third meet we went to my body just gave out. I couldn't finish the race - it was awful - I didn't know what was wrong,'' she says. The next meet she ran really slow, too.
Scared that she might be anemic, Whitney went to the doctor to have blood work done. Her doctor pulled her into his office and told her that she had the blood of someone from a Third World country - someone who doesn't eat.
That was the first time she realized that her sickness had anything to do with food.
``From there it just kinda spiraled,'' she says. ``It got worse when I found out what it was. I became more anorexic and dropped to 102 pounds.''
In the fall of 1995, she had 3 percent body fat.
Her coach and doctor drew up a contract of what she could and couldn't do at different weights. At 102 pounds, no physical activity. At least 105 pounds to lift weights. Over 110 to jog, easy. And between 112 and 115 to do interval workouts and any kind of hard training.
At different times during the day her doctor and her coach weighed her and told her if she could run that day.
The numbers on the scale frightened her. Getting onto the scale and seeing her weight decrease was a good thing in her mind. It's what she wanted to happen.
She didn't want to see those numbers rise. So the night before they weighed her she ate less.
``I wanted to weigh the least amount possible, and they wanted me to weigh more,'' she says.
She won.
Her weight went down.
If the numbers rose they wouldn't stop, she thought.
So, they weighed her facing backward - so she couldn't see the numbers on the scale. She started gaining some. But anorexia still appealed to her. It was something she was good at.
``You realize that it's something you have control over and almost something you can get attention for. With running or with school or anything else you're going to have the days you do really well and the days you do really bad,'' she says. ``With an eating disorder you have complete control over it.
``The more sick I got, it seemed like the more people were willing to help me. And that's what I liked - it's an addiction,'' she says. ``But once I got the disorder, I couldn't get out by myself. I couldn't control it.''
She saw eating a bagel or less all day as ``an accomplishment.'' She was controlling her body. But when she realized that she would never be able to run again, she tried to start eating.
``That kinda backfired,'' she says.
She had messed up her metabolism by starving so much that her body's natural instinct was to binge. She no longer could control her food intake.
She ate a lot.
She was no longer anorexic.
But she wanted her power back.
Whitney sat for hours in the bathroom wanting to throw up. She couldn't make herself do it. So she took laxatives.
She became bulimic.
By February 1995, she couldn't eat, she couldn't run and she couldn't study.
She and her mother visited an eating disorders clinic in Cincinnati, Ohio, highly recommended by a psychiatrist friend of her father's. A week later, she enrolled in the monthlong, inpatient program with six other girls.
In the morning, they had ``Food Group,'' where they planned out exactly what they were going to eat that day. They had to take one risk each day, trying new foods that they were scared to eat.
Whitney had a hard time eating any desserts, butter or sour cream.
They kept a log of what they ate, and the next morning they talked about how the meals had gone. Did they feel comfortable eating?
She wanted to leave. Whitney had a private hotel room. But they told her not to call a lot of people - wanting the girls to focus on the program and support each other.
That first week was really tough. But the program helped her recognize why she was struggling with the eating disorder.
Over a year later, she still has to think about what she's going to eat and when she's going to eat it. Her battle with anorexia isn't over.
She tries not to count calories anymore. She eats three meals a day. A bagel and apple for breakfast. A sandwich, pretzels, yogurt and dessert for lunch. Right now she's at home in Johnson City, Tenn., studying for the MCAT exams to get into medical school, so dinner is whatever mom happens to be cooking. Chicken, or maybe a steak.
She's back in training, too, running 12 miles a day and working out. Her weight is almost what it was in high school - she fluctuates between 120 and 125 pounds.
When she first started winning track meets in ninth grade, the dreamed of running in the 1996 Olympics.
In two weeks when the gun fires starting the 1,500-meter Olympic finals, Whitney will be there.
Watching. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Whitney Spannuth has it all. Voted ``Best All-Around'' student in
high school, she was a state track champion, a home-coming court
member and an honor student. She went to Vanderbilt on a full
scholarship. There, her eating problems began.
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MORE INFORMATION
If you need free information about eating disorders, have
questions about where to go for help or even want a speaker to come
to your school, contact:
The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated
Disorders, Inc., Box 7, Highland Park, Ill. 60035, or call (847)
831-3438
EATING DISORDERS
The three major types of eating disorders are:
Bulimia - eating large quantities of food in a short amount of
time with subsequent purging via self-induced vomiting, starvation,
laxatives, diet pills, diuretics, appetite suppressants or excessive
exercise.
Anorexia nervosa - the pursuit of thinness characterized by
willful starvation.
Compulsive overeating - a continuing impulse to consume large
quantities of food.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY ANOREXIA
BULIMIA TRACK by CNB