Jo’s Quiet Battle: A Lifetime of Bulimic Thinking
If you met Jo today — lively, articulate, and still turning heads at 70 — you’d never guess that at 17 she was downing Ford pills by the handful to look like Twiggy.
Everyone wanted to be Twiggy then — all coltish limbs and hollow cheeks. Jo, a sensitive, clever girl from an unhappy home, thought she might find calm and acceptance if she could just make herself smaller
The Early Years
Bulimia nervosa is defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as “recurrent episodes of binge eating followed by inappropriate compensatory behaviours such as vomiting, fasting, or misuse of laxatives.”
Behind those clinical words are thousands of young women like Jo — bright, capable, and quietly hurting.
In her family, mealtimes were minefields. Alcohol-fuelled arguments erupted over lamb chops and mashed potatoes. When a hungry Jo was denied afternoon snacks because she was a “girl with a figure to keep” while her brothers munched their way to dinner, she learned early that food could mean conflict — and that control could feel like safety.
She began using laxatives. Ford pills were cheap, easy to buy, and left no evidence.
“It felt tidy,” she says. “Vomiting was messy. Pills were efficient.”
After a time she mixed laxatives with fasting. She’d boast about how many days she could go without eating — while wondering why she was having trouble thinking clearly at work.
Jo was never overweight; the goal wasn’t to be thin — it was to be good enough, not juat in her own eyes but those of others.
Letting Go, Mostly
At 32, Jo stopped. No dramatic collapse or intervention — just the weary realisation that she couldn’t keep living life on an empty stomach and a full and guilty conscience
“I wanted peace more than I wanted thinness,” she says.
She left the Ford pills behind, built a successful career, and raised a family. From the outside, it looked like a complete recovery.
The Mirror That Lies
But bulimic thinking is stubborn. It doesn’t always leave when the body heals.
Even now, at 70, Jo can look in the mirror one morning and see a woman who’s slim and healthy — and the very next day, swear she looks heavier, sometimes too heavy.
“It’s absurd,” she laughs. “I’ve never been overweight in my life, but my brain doesn’t always get the memo.”
Her friends know the routine. Out shopping, Jo will try on a frock and ask, “Does this make me look fat?” They roll their eyes affectionately. “We’ve had the same conversation for fifty years,” one friend says.
The Lingering Mindset
Experts say the thinking patterns behind bulimia — self-surveillance, perfectionism, and fear of losing control — can last long after the behaviours stop. Laxative misuse, in particular, creates deep associationsthat link lightness to safety, and fullness to failure.
For Jo, the ghost of that erroneous logic still hovers. “Some days I catch myself thinking, maybe just skip dinner tonight, and then I laugh — that old reflex again. It’s like having a pop-up ad in your brain that you can’t quite delete.”
Learning to Live With It
Jo has learned that recovery doesn’t mean silence — it means conversation.
“I talk back to the voice now,” she says. “I tell it, you’ve had your say, now I’m going to eat my toast.” (
Her self-acceptance is hard-won and laced with humour. “I’m not chasing Twiggy anymore,” she says. “These days I just want clothes that fit, friends who are kind, and a gut that behaves itself.”
A Kinder Way Forward
Eating-disorder specialists agree that lasting recovery is less about perfect body confidence and more about developing neutrality — a quiet peace with what you see In the mirror.
For anyone who still lives with old patterns or distorted thinking, help is available. The Butterfly Foundation and Eating Disorders Victoria offer confidential support for all ages, including older adults.
Because even if the ghost of bulimic thinking never disappears completely, you can still learn to live gently with it — with humour, perspective, and a body that, as Jo says, “has been loyal enough to deserve some kindness.”
Footnote: Emerging research suggests that eating disorders — including bulimia — may increasingly affect women during perimenopause and later life. Clinicians report a rise in midlife presentations, and recent studies confirm that eating disorders can occur at any age.
See:
1. “Eating disorders are quietly but steadily increasing among women in midlife and beyond,” National Geographic (2025) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/health/article/eating-disorders-women-menopause;
a 2023 review showing a 2.1–7.7% prevalence of eating disorders among older women https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37471308/;
3. Research on body dissatisfaction and disordered-eating symptoms in midlife women published by the Australasian Menopause Society https://menopause.org.au/hp/studies-published/body-dissatisfaction-can-lead-to-eating-disorders-at-any-age.
4. Additional Australian reporting highlights growing numbers of perimenopausal women seeking help for eating-disorder symptoms: ABC News (2025) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-03/perimenopause-eating-disorders-women-midlife-symptoms/105281010.*