When Food Starts Feeling Like Another Assignment: Disordered Eating in Vet School

Vet school can turn almost anything into a performance metric. Grades, class rank, clinical skills, productivity, sleep, exercise, and sometimes even food can quietly become one more thing you feel like you should be “doing right.” Add long days, irregular schedules, stress, limited money, constant comparison, and a culture that can reward pushing through discomfort, and it is easy for a complicated relationship with food or your body to hide in plain sight.

That is why a recent Teen Vogue story about actor KJ Apa speaking candidly about his own experience with disordered eating is worth paying attention to. One of the biggest points of the article is that eating disorders do not have a particular look, gender, race, sexuality, or personality type. Men in particular have historically been underrecognized because eating disorders have so often been framed as a problem affecting young women, but people of every gender can struggle. For vet students, the message is even simpler: if food, exercise, weight, or body image is beginning to control more of your day than you want it to, you deserve to take that seriously.

It Does Not Have to “Look Like an Eating Disorder” to Matter

Disordered eating exists on a spectrum, and you do not have to fit a textbook picture of anorexia, bulimia, or binge-eating disorder before asking for help. Sometimes the first signs are much quieter. Food rules become increasingly rigid. Missing a workout creates anxiety or guilt. You routinely skip meals and tell yourself you are simply “too busy.” You start avoiding meals with friends, thinking about food or your body throughout the day, or feeling as though what you ate determines whether you had a good or bad day.

Other signs can include recurrent binge eating, purging behaviors, compulsive exercise, significant weight changes, fear surrounding certain foods, frequent body checking, or an increasing preoccupation with dieting and weight. NEDA emphasizes that warning signs vary considerably and that someone does not need to display every possible symptom for there to be a problem worth addressing.

The important question is not whether your behavior seems “bad enough” compared with somebody else's. A better question is whether food, exercise, or body image is beginning to interfere with your health, relationships, concentration, happiness, or ability to live normally.

Vet School Can Make Weird Eating Patterns Feel Completely Normal

Eating lunch at 4 p.m. because you had lab is not automatically disordered eating. Neither is surviving one chaotic day on coffee and a granola bar. Vet school schedules are genuinely difficult, and veterinary students have long reported significant academic stress and difficulty maintaining healthy routines. Research has specifically looked at the challenges veterinary students face in making healthy food choices amid the demands of training.

The problem is when temporary chaos starts becoming your normal or when restriction begins to feel like an accomplishment rather than an inconvenience. The line can also get blurry when behaviors that look “healthy” from the outside are actually being driven by fear or compulsion. Exercising every day, carefully monitoring food, or pursuing weight loss does not tell you anything by itself about someone's mental health. The motivation, rigidity, distress, and consequences matter.

There is also evidence that this issue deserves specific attention in veterinary education. In one 2023 study of Austrian veterinary medicine students, 38.6% of participants screened above the study's cutoff for symptoms of disordered eating. That was one population in one country, so it should not be treated as the prevalence for every vet school, but it is a pretty strong reminder that these struggles exist within our profession and are not rare enough to ignore.

Eating Disorders Are Not a Women's Issue

This is where the Teen Vogue story is especially important. Apa's decision to talk publicly about his experience challenges the stereotype that eating disorders belong to one gender. The article points to research suggesting that eating disorders in men have historically been underestimated and that men, particularly men of color and LGBTQ+ men, may have fewer examples that help them recognize what they are experiencing.

The stereotypes hurt everyone. A man may assume he cannot have an eating disorder because he does not resemble the person usually depicted in awareness campaigns. A woman in a larger body may be praised for weight loss while nobody asks what she is doing to achieve it. A student who appears athletic and healthy may be struggling intensely with compulsive exercise or food restriction. Someone whose weight has not changed at all may still have a serious eating disorder.

You cannot diagnose someone's relationship with food by looking at them, and you certainly cannot determine whether they deserve help by looking at a number on a scale.

The “Wellness” World Can Make This More Confusing

Vet students are surrounded by advice about optimization. Get more protein. Get your steps. Meal prep. Track your macros. Wake up earlier. Exercise for stress. Lose weight. Gain muscle. Drink more water. Fix your sleep. Somehow squeeze all of this between pathology and morning rounds.

None of those suggestions is inherently harmful. The problem starts when health advice becomes another source of fear, guilt, perfectionism, or control. There is a major difference between choosing foods because they make you feel good and believing you have failed because you ate something that was not part of your plan. There is a difference between enjoying exercise and feeling terrified or guilty when you miss a workout.

Your health does not need to become another subject you are trying to get an A in.

Your Friends May Notice Before You Do

Sometimes another person sees the change first. Maybe you stop going to dinner with your classmates. You always have a reason you already ate. You become unusually anxious about restaurants. Your conversations start revolving around calories, weight, food rules, or exercise. You seem exhausted, dizzy, cold, irritable, or unable to concentrate.

If you are worried about a friend, you do not need to diagnose them. In fact, it is better not to. Talk about what you have noticed and how they seem to be doing rather than commenting on their weight or appearance. A simple conversation about stress, eating, or how overwhelmed they have seemed can open a door without turning their body into the subject.

And avoid the temptation to reassure someone by saying, “But you look healthy.” Eating disorders are not visible in that way, and comments about appearance can unintentionally reinforce the very thing someone is struggling with.

Getting Help Does Not Require Hitting Rock Bottom

One of the most damaging ideas around eating disorders is that you have to become visibly or medically unwell before you have earned treatment. You do not. Earlier recognition and treatment are important, and NEDA encourages people who are concerned about themselves or someone they know to seek professional help rather than waiting for every possible warning sign to appear.

Your campus health center can be a good first stop. Tell them specifically that you are concerned about your eating, exercise, or body-image behaviors and would like an evaluation or referral. Your primary-care clinician can also assess your physical health and connect you with clinicians who specialize in eating disorders, which may include a therapist, physician, psychiatrist, and registered dietitian depending on your needs.

Do not be discouraged if the first person you talk to does not seem to understand the issue. Eating disorders can still be missed, particularly in people who do not fit outdated stereotypes. You are allowed to ask for an eating-disorder specialist or a second opinion.

There Is Help Outside Your School, Too

The National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, or ANAD, offers free support for people dealing with eating disorders, disordered eating, or body-image concerns. Its current services include a helpline, virtual peer-support groups, recovery mentorship, and treatment referrals. ANAD's helpline is 1-888-375-7767, Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Central Time.

ANAD also makes an important point that is especially useful for students who are unsure whether they “qualify” for support: its community is open to people struggling with food or body image whether or not they have a formal eating-disorder diagnosis.

If you are experiencing fainting, chest pain, severe weakness, trouble breathing, vomiting blood, significant dehydration, or another potentially serious medical symptom, do not wait for a counseling appointment or helpline response. Seek urgent medical care or go to an emergency department.

Your Body Is Not Another Vet School Project

Veterinary medicine attracts people who are very good at pushing themselves. That can be useful when there is a 6 a.m. treatment shift or an exam tomorrow. It becomes less useful when every signal from your own body is treated as something to override.

Food is not a reward for productivity. Rest is not something you have to earn. Missing a workout is not a character flaw, and eating more than you planned does not require compensation the next day. Your body is carrying you through one of the most demanding professional programs you could have chosen. It deserves more than being treated like another assignment to perfect.

The Bottom Line

KJ Apa's story matters because speaking openly makes it easier for somebody else to recognize themselves in the conversation. Eating disorders and disordered eating can affect women, men, nonbinary people, athletes, people in larger bodies, people in smaller bodies, and people who appear from the outside to have everything completely under control.

Vet school already asks you to become excellent at noticing subtle clinical changes before they become emergencies. Apply some of that observational skill to yourself and the people around you. If your relationship with food, exercise, weight, or your body is starting to feel smaller, stricter, scarier, or more consuming than it used to, listen to that change. You do not have to wait until it becomes a crisis to ask for help.