Laura’s real name is not Laura.

The young Whitehorse woman spoke to the Star this week, on the condition of anonymity, about the eating disorder she’s battled for years. National Eating Disorder Awareness Week ends today.

“I’m not ashamed of who I am, but I also don’t want other people to define me just because they know one thing about me,” Laura says of why she doesn’t want her identity revealed.

“I don’t think that what I struggle with or what I have struggled with is bad or shameful, it’s just that not everyone will see it that way.”

It was late in elementary school when Laura started to care about what she ate and how it could affect her body. She’d lost some weight by cutting out junk food and having one helping at meals instead of two.

The compliments started: how great did she look! A chubby kid growing up, she says can remember every negative comment people made about her weight.

So this positive attention she was getting for her weight loss was new. She liked it. “It just became something, when I was 13, that was really easy for me to control,” she says. “It doesn’t matter if everything else is going to s* * * in your life, it’s that one thing that you’re in control of.”

According to the National Eating Disorder Information Centre, nearly one million people are diagnosed with an eating disorder at any time. One in two people report knowing someone, including themselves, who has or had an eating disorder.

As she headed into high school, Laura started keeping a food journal, documenting what she ate and how many calories it contained. She limited herself to 1,500 calories a day.

“Very quickly, you just shave off that number.” She’d chew gum and drink diet pop, in an attempt to make herself feel full without calories.

Soon, she felt so worn out it was hard to participate in gym class. A school counsellor called her parents and told them that she and some of Laura’s teachers were concerned about her. Laura’s mom insisted she see a family doctor.

“I was like, ‘There’s nothing wrong. Why are you making me do this?’ she recalls. “You’re first being confronted with the idea that (an eating disorder) is what it is. You’re very defensive about it. I said such horrible things to my parents who were trying to help me.”

Laura wasn’t ready to address the problem – she didn’t think there was one. So she continued to restrict her food intake, but would binge from time to time and then overexercise. This is what’s called a compensatory behaviour. Others include purging or taking laxatives.

“You’ve had your binge and you have this feeling of like, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s the most stressful feeling in the world. There’s so much negative energy built up inside you and you have to do something to make yourself feel less bad about what you’ve just done,” she says. “So you either run really far to the point of hurting yourself or you throw it up.”

Once, Laura was so distraught after a binge that she went to the emergency room at Whitehorse General Hospital. She was admitted, because staff told her she’d get quicker access to mental health services if she was a patient – a few weeks rather than a few months, “which it could normally be,” she says. Laura stayed at the hospital for two nights.

This was several years ago, and she still remembers one snide comment from a nurse who brought a meal to her room: “So are you going to puke this up if I leave this here for you?” Soon after, she began meeting with a mental health clinician and nutritionist through the Department of Health and Social Services.

In the Yukon, eating disorders are addressed under the umbrella of mental health issues, in conjunction with Mental Health Services, dietitians, family physicians, private counsellors and psychiatrists.

Here, there are no in-patient treatment options for people with eating disorders. When necessary, Health and Social Services works with out-of-territory facilities that provide those services.

The clinical manager of Mental Health Services was not available this week for an interview. Angela Neufeld is a counsellor at Yukon College. She sees students dealing with a range of issues and mental health problems, including eating disorders.

Since September 2014, she said she’s seen about four students with full-on eating disorders, and five to 10 with eating-related problems, like weight gain or using food to cope with stress. These are predominantly young women.

In the past, some college students have had to go Outside for in-patient treatment. “I think that’s the challenge with eating disorders,” Neufeld says. “The numbers aren’t as high as, say, depression or anxiety, but people with eating disorders also often have anxiety or depression or other mental health-related problems.

“It can be challenging for somebody who’s having difficulty staying stable. The hospital isn’t always going to be the best place for them.” It seems some people struggling with disordered eating or eating disorders feel they have to search beyond the Yukon’s borders for help.

Dr. Janice A. Graham, a counsellor based in Victoria, says she’ll receive calls about once a month from people in the territory for eating disorder therapy. These are most often young women.

“I do gather that in a lot of the northern communities, not just the Yukon ... the communities are so vastly spread that it’s not realistic to expect there to be a good solid set of healthcare professionals accessible to everyone,” Graham says.

Today, Laura’s eating disorder is still a struggle. If other things in her life are going well, it becomes easier to manage, easier to practice good coping strategies. But if she’s dealing with stress or uncertainty, that’s when she’s more like to fall back into those old habits.

Laura says many of the health care practitioners she’s dealt with in the Yukon over the years have provided good support. She still sees the clinician she first met with in high school, and has learned strategies to improve her body image and self-esteem.

She’ll focus on what her body can do – physical feats like hiking or running– rather than how it looks. And she’ll try to talk to herself in the way she’d talk to a friend.

“Because we’re often ourselves’ worst critic,” she says. “Things that we would never say to any other human being we often say to ourselves.”

To access support for eating disorders, contact the territory’s Mental Health Services at 667-8346. If you’re a Yukon College student looking for assistance, contact Neufeld at 668-8854.