The toll of being South Asian with an eating disorder

“My eating disorder started when I was quite young. I think it’s a result of where I grew up—I am an Indian born in India, and grew up in Korea and Hong Kong. When I hit puberty, the ideal body image in those countries was different from my body,” says Sravya Attaluri, a body positivity activist who is in the process of recovering from her eating disorder.

Attaluri believes that being South Asian had a big impact on her developing an eating disorder. “Exercise isn't really a huge part of our culture. And then on top of that, my grandma, my mom, my aunts, all the women in my family were really obsessed with diet culture, she explains. “It seemed like something you had to do to get married. I don't even think any of the women in my family realized they're a product of that culture.”

This is the time of the year when many people have a resolution to lose weight. For some, however, trying to keep that resolution can spiral into an eating disorder. In recent years, a number of studies have highlighted the specific vulnerability of diasporic South Asian women and femmes to disordered eating patterns. Researchers have found that conforming to South Asian beauty standards and adapting to the beauty standards of their adopted homeland creates an immense dual pressure. In addition, the normalization of diet culture and the stigma of mental illness in the South Asian community makes it even more difficult for people struggling with these issues to seek help.

Sravya Attaluri illustrating a graphic for a social campaign for mental health destigmatization.

Courtesy of Sravya Attaluri

Attaluri’s disorder took a turn for the worse when her grandmother died when Attaluri was 15. “The day she died, my parents took me to McDonald's because I was having a really bad day. I remember eating a large bag of fries and breaking down,” she recalls. “It made me feel better. That's when my relationship with food tied in with my depression, because every time I was feeling bad, I would binge eat to feel better.” After these episodes of binge eating, Attaluri would starve herself. This pattern of disordered eating continued until she was 19, when she found herself extremely stressed out at university and living with depression. To cope, Attaluri stopped drinking or eating regularly, which landed her in the hospital from dehydration. “A few hours before I ended up in the hospital, I was looking in the mirror, counting my ribs. It was the skinniest I've been, and I didn't even realize that it was bad,” she says. “They told me at the hospital that I was really dehydrated and needed help. That's when I realized it never even hit me that I needed help.” She believes that the normalization of dieting in South Asian culture played a huge part in her not realizing she had a problem for so long, as she has been encouraged to diet.

Given the scant discussions about eating disorders in South Asian culture, Attaluri’s family was at a loss as to where to start. They were also ashamed that she had ended up in the hospital. But after the initial shock, they did their best to educate themselves on the topic. “They came with me to therapy, they dove into readings, they joined online communities about eating disorder recovery,” she says of her family’s support. “They learned as much as they could so they could support me and then make sure no one around us goes through this again.”

She believes that the normalization of dieting in South Asian culture played a huge part in her not realizing she had a problem for so long, as she has been encouraged to diet.

Other people around her did not respond as positively. When some of her cousins supported her recovery publicly, many members of her extended family stopped reaching out to her parents because of the stigma around mental illness. “A lot of friends who had my back beforehand also stopped talking to me the second I ended up in the hospital and said I had depression,” Attaluri recalls, adding that she was hurt and disappointed by their response. Because of this experience, she doesn’t trust people as easily as she had before.

She is grateful that her immediate family rallied around her and went through the healing process with her as a team. “I have an open dialogue with my family. They check in with me and I check in with them. I do set boundaries, such as telling them to not use certain words that are triggering for me, like ‘fat’ or ‘chubby,’” she says. Attaluri’s parents are now mental health advocates and support other South Asian parents whose children have eating disorders to seek help.

At the intersection of eating disorders and gender identity 

Others aren’t so lucky in terms of family support. When Kaiden Kanagarajan presented as female, they started starving themselves at 14. As a child, their father actively encouraged them to lose weight by often refusing them dinner—punishing them if they went into the kitchen, and only allowing them to eat specific things at specific times. “I didn't have a choice when I was a kid. And then when I became a little older, my parents were still controlling me, but at that point I starved myself willingly,” they say. The Tamil Canadian would tell others they were not hungry, and binge eat at midnight when everyone else in the house was sleeping. They worked out for more than four hours a day, not eating anything except a salad—a routine they kept up for days until they got dizzy. At one point, Kanagarajan lost 30-40 pounds in two months. Medical professionals never noticed they had a problem because they were not underweight.

Kaiden Kanagarajan developed an eating disorder as a child but found healing after the pandemic.

Courtesy of Kaiden Kanagarajan

Kanagarajan identifies patriarchal norms within South Asian culture as huge contributing factors in their disordered eating. They say there is a norm of bodily control of “anyone who doesn't identify as a cis man.” Non-cis-male bodies are supposed to look a very specific way and do very specific labor. Femme-presenting people’s only value is in having their bodies look a certain way to be married off. “All of these things contribute to eating disorders, which to me, is just the final symptom. I was already experiencing all these toxic pressures, so an eating disorder was just how I responded to it,” Kanagarajan explains. “What was I supposed to do? I had no control of my body, people told me I had to look this way, and I couldn’t eat what I wanted. Of course, I would end up with an eating disorder!”

The young trans man found healing after the pandemic. They had been living independently from their family for several years, had come out as trans after learning to be more in tune with their body, and stumbled on the concept of intuitive eating. This approach to nutrition emphasizes listening to your own body for cues of hunger and fullness, eating food you want, and not assigning any moral judgement on food. “So for a few weeks I was eating takeout with a lot of high-sugar foods that were not nutritious, as I was so deprived. But after those few weeks, I found that I just didn't want these foods anymore,” Kanagarajan says of their intuitive eating process. “I just started eating what I wanted to eat. In the morning, I would have scrambled eggs. For lunch, I would eat a regular meal with a variety of fruits and vegetables, with dessert if I felt like it. I noticed that when I trusted my body, it naturally regulated into making me want a balanced diet.” They were also diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a condition that often makes people want more sugar, and sought treatment. Over time, food became “fun” and they began enjoying learning to cook different recipes.

Today, Kanagarajan has much healthier eating patterns and feels more at home in their body. “You don't owe anything to other people about how you look. You owe yourself comfort in your body but you do not owe external people or society or anyone else a certain look. Every single body is normal and different,” they say.