So Wall constantly would hit the gym and keep a closer eye on what she ate in hopes she could improve her athletic performance and overall appearance.

“I would feel guilty if I didn’t exercise,” she said. “My mom even noticed that I was preoccupied with exercising constantly.”

Wall was one of about 20 attendees at a discussion hosted by Respecting and Understanding Body Image, Phi Beta Sigma and Lambda Theta Alpha on Monday night as a part of MSU’s Eating Disorder Awareness Week.

Eating Disorder Awareness Week at MSU, happening now through Friday, consists of a series of campuswide events that aim to promote a healthy body image and raise awareness about eating disorders.

“The whole idea is to focus on the positive,” said Ronda Bokram, a nutritionist at Olin Health Center who also helped organize the week’s activities.

“(Eating Disorder Awareness Week) raises the awareness of not only resources on campus for people who want to seek help but also … that prevention is really sort of resetting our feelings and our thoughts about what we should weigh or how much we should be eating so we can prevent eating disorders from actually happening,” Bokram said.

At MSU, Bokram said two to five percent of students suffer from some form of eating disorder, and three times that many have a distorted relationship with food.

While about 70 percent of students are at or below the recommended body mass index, about 50 percent still are trying to lose weight.

Wall said it is important to educate young people about body image problems because they often are most affected by the issues.

“It’s great to create more awareness because it’s really prevalent in younger children now with Barbies and magazines (portraying unrealistic views of beauty),” she said.

Grace Davis, a human biology sophomore who attended Monday’s event where facts about eating disorders were presented, said she was happy to be able to participate in an honest dialogue about eating disorders and the importance of having a positive perception of one’s own body.

“I just support the whole movement that everyone is beautiful — regardless of body size,” she said. “It’s interesting to hear about eating disorder statistics because people usually assume it only happens to a certain type of people.”

Davis had a close friend in high school who suffered from anorexia, and she said events such as these are important because they can help people detect when someone they care about is struggling with a disorder.

“These events benefit not necessarily people who have the eating disorders, but the people around them so that they can recognize the warning signs and be able to help their friends,” she said.