**Note: A Tech student volunteered to write an anonymous personal account of their battle with eating disorders for The Tech Talk.

People with eating disorders have an altered image of their body and are constantly striving to be thinner. (Note: the person pictured is in no way related to the story.)

I live every day of my life battling a silent disease that few talk about, but many have.

Anorexia.

That one word altered my mind and body, and changed my life forever.

In high school, image is everything; everyone wants to be accepted.

I took the idea of the perfect image and turned it into an obsession, which not only cost me my health but my appetite for life as well.

Everything revolved around my size.

I barely weighed 100 pounds when I began my freshman year of high school. So it's not that I was unhappy with my size; I just wanted to have the model look. I went from a size zero to a size five in a matter of just six months, so naturally that was a major change for me.

These sizes are not big by any means. They are relatively small.

However, the size five just sounded big to me because I was use to wearing a size zero. I was a varsity cheerleader, and like I said earlier, image is everything.

I carried a little red tape measure with me in my duffle bag when I went to games and events, so keeping up with my size would be easier.

As girls and women we are given this image that every guy supposedly wants us to look like.

I felt that I didn't fit that image. I was barely five feet tall. I did not have blonde hair, nor have blue eyes. My obsession with my size and looks began slowly.

Checking calories and fat grams on boxes of food and drinks before eating or drinking them eventually became a habit. Drinking water became a necessity.

Eventually, I decided what I was doing was not enough to lose the amount of weight I wanted to.

So I started trying to lose weight by doing things a little less obvious, such as substituting gum and a Coke for breakfast. I never really ate a big breakfast anyway, so no one noticed.

When I saw this was not working, I started doing the same thing for lunch, except I had a Snickers candy bar and a can of Coca-Cola.

I used the excuse that the food in the cafeteria was bad, and everyone agreed with me, so nothing was said about my ritual of a Snickers and a Coke.

I became good at making people think I was eating. Anytime I ate anything, I made a point of eating it in front of someone.

Even my parents had no idea what was going on, but that does not make them bad parents; it just makes me very good at what I was doing.

I was able to hide it for about five or six months.

Then everyone started questioning me about my weight.

I started to get really bad headaches, become stressed out very easily and snap at everyone who tried to talk to me about it.

It really didn't matter to me what everyone was telling me.

My eating habits were fine, and that was all there was to it. I was stubborn, and listening to people about what they thought was just completely out of the question.

I became lazy and sluggish from not receiving the right amount of vitamins to keep me from becoming tired.

My cheerleading abilities suffered from this.

When I became sick with the flu, my mom brought me to the doctor to get some antibiotics and the doctor explained that some of the reasons I was getting sick was because I was not eating right and not eating enough.

I listened to him gripe about me being underweight and about anorexia, but paying attention to what he was saying was not really a priority to me at the time.

He told me he was not going to officially diagnose me with anorexia because in his belief that discouraged women.

He did say he would give me some antibiotics for the flu and a few months to put some weight on and then he wanted a follow-up appointment scheduled.

If he did not believe I was at least trying to gain weight, then he would officially diagnose me and ask me to tell my parents.

My goal weight was 113 pounds, and I am very happy to say that I did reach that goal by the time I returned to his office for my follow-up.

Every day is still a struggle, but at least I am waking up.

If I had continued on the path I was on, I honestly believe I would not be here right now.

I would have eventually cut my eating to the point where I was eating nothing at all.

The rest of my life has been affected by the irrational decision I made as a freshman in high school.

Eating sometimes still seems like a chore because I get nauseous.

On days I am too nauseous to eat, which I am glad to say are now few and far between, I always try to supplement something healthy for my meals.

One of the things I deal with when I talk to people about anorexia is constant criticism because some people are ignorant and do not understand the disease.

They think it is ridiculous that a person cannot just sit down and eat a meal. I am here to tell you it is a little more difficult than that.

The last thing someone experiencing this disease needs is more criticism. Instead, give encouragement and listen.

I did not speak to anyone about being anorexic until I came to college and waiting was probably one of the worst mistakes I could have made.

It would have been a lot easier for me to go through the weight gain and nausea if I would have had a shoulder to lean on sooner.

But I was embarrassed.