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Posted March 9, 2004

Back from the brink
By Noell Barnidge
Abilene (Texas) Reporter-News Staff Writer
Reprinted with permission

Anorexia nervosa almost killed Hannah Jones.

Photo by Thomas Metthe, Reporter-News Jones

A 5-foot-11, 140-pound sophomore basketball player at Hardin-Simmons, Jones weighed 130 pounds when she was a 16-year-old sophomore at Wylie High School.

Her goal was to lose five pounds. She would be more attractive, she believed, at 125 pounds.

Once Jones achieved her goal, however, losing weight became a game. She constantly asked herself, "How can I get lower?" and she resorted to not eating or eating sparingly, then exercising obsessively to shed weight.

For two years, Jones secretly tortured her body, running seven miles each day and limiting her caloric intake to 500 calories per day. During that time, she was unaware that what started as a game had spiraled into anorexia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa is defined as the loss of at least 15% of body weight through starvation, accompanied by amenorrhea (the loss of a woman's period) for at least three consecutive months.

The eating disorder can be triggered by stress, coupled with a societal emphasis on being thin. Anorexia is not about dieting. It is about control and self-esteem.

By 18, Jones' weight had plunged to 98 pounds. A doctor diagnosed her condition, and her parents, Brand and Jennifer Jones, sent her to an eating disorder treatment center in Arizona for several months.

After getting back up to 130 pounds, Jones suffered a relapse. Within months, her weight plummeted to 95 pounds and she was admitted to a hospital.

Jones believes her faith in God saved her life. This weekend, at 140 pounds — the most she has ever weighed and the happiest she has ever been — Jones and her HSU Cowgirls teammates return to the Sweet 16. Jones wants to share her story with the hope her testimony will encourage others to seek help.

Quest for perfection
After leading the Lady Bulldogs to the basketball regional finals as a senior, Jones was selected to the Abilene Reporter-News All-Big Country Super Team. She was named to the all-district team and was the Fellowship of Christian Athletes' Athlete of the Year. Jones also served as president of Wylie's FCA chapter her junior and senior years.

Despite all of her accomplishments, Jones compared her then-5-foot-11, 130-pound body to those of models in fashion magazines and concluded she was fat. She saw how teenage boys reacted to super-thin women in movies and on television, and she thought losing five pounds would bring her happiness.

"Outwardly, everything was perfect. I was getting award after award," Jones said. "But inwardly, I was wasting away. I was unhappy. I don't know why, but I thought if I could be a lower weight then I could win this person's approval or that person's approval, and make everyone happy."

Within weeks, Jones stepped on a scale. She had lost her desired five pounds.

"I hit that and then I thought, 'Well, how can I get down to 120?' " she said. "You want to compete and get better, and be the best, whether it's sports or just how your body looks, so you think, 'How can I get lower? How can I get lower? How can I get lower?' Anorexia is a total game of manipulation and what you can get by with.

"My parents would ask me if I had eaten and I would lie. I would tell them that I had already eaten or that I would grab a bite on the way to wherever I was going. I was a master manipulator. I told them what they wanted to hear."

At night, as her family slept, Jones would set her alarm clock. When it sounded at 3 a.m. each day, she would get dressed, sneak out of the house and run through the neighborhood for hours on end, trying to lose more pounds.

"I was never overweight," Jones said. "But no matter how much weight I lost, nothing was good enough to me. I wanted everything to be perfect."

Hitting rock-bottom
After graduating from Wylie in 2000, Jones moved to Waco and attended Baylor University. She stayed two weeks before returning to Abilene at a weight of 98 pounds.

Startled by the sight of their emaciated child, Brand and Jennifer Jones sought professional help. They sent their daughter to Remuda Ranch, a Christ-centered treatment center in Wickenburg, Ariz., designed exclusively for women and adolescent girls struggling with anorexia, bulimia and related issues.

Jones spent a few months there. When she went from 98 pounds back to 130 pounds, she returned to Abilene.

"They taught me how to eat right," she said. "They taught me what anorexia was and that it is something I will have to deal with the rest of my life. It gave me the tools to get better ... but I didn't have the desire to get better."

Back in Abilene, Jones found it difficult to adjust because "I no longer was surrounded by that support group where we were all trying to gain weight. It was so hard coming back to Abilene because it (her anorexia nervosa) had been a secret for so long and now I felt like everybody knew. I felt like everybody knew where I had been. I felt like a failure."

Within weeks, Jones moved to Lubbock, where she took a job as a licensed massage therapist. She also found work in the office of a plastic surgeon.

A few months later, the end of a relationship triggered a relapse, only this time it was worse. Jones' weight plummeted from 130 pounds to 95 pounds. She was frequently sick and experienced dizzy spells, but forced herself to run seven miles a day despite limiting her caloric intake to 500 calories per day.

Jones eventually visited a doctor and was told she was near death. She checked herself into a Lubbock hospital and called her parents, who rushed to her bedside.

"I didn't know if she was going to live," her father said. "It was a living hell for about two years."

Finding salvation
Inside that Lubbock hospital, a nurse said the words that changed Jones' life.

"I was laying on the gurney and she was wheeling me through the hospital," Jones said. "She put me in the oncology (cancer) unit and she didn't mean anything bad by it — she just said it matter-of-fact, but she said, 'Yeah, we put you up here with all of the other skinny, dying people.' That's when I looked around and saw all of these people sick with cancer.

"These people did not choose this and I chose this. That was so humbling to me. I was numb. I didn't even cry. I just sat there and looked around the room at all of these people who were fighting for their lives. I decided right then that I wanted to change my life. I begged God to please heal me, to please set me free. I said, 'God, take it (anorexia nervosa) away from me. Take it away.'"

Jones said she then had a vision.

"I saw myself in a jail cell and there were all these bars around me," she said. "I prayed to God to set me free and the door opened. I wanted to walk out but I was afraid. It was more comfortable inside the jail cell because I knew the jail cell.

"I asked God to please let me walk out of that jail cell, and when I finally got up the courage to walk out, I tried to take a step but I couldn't. I looked down and there were shackles chained to my feet. It was then that I realized I could not do it alone. I said, 'God, I realize it's not all about me,' because it had been about me for so long. I said, 'I need you God,' and God began to restore things in me. I began to get healthy and eating was fun again."

In addition to God, Jones credits her family, her church family at River of Life Church in Abilene, and local counselor Collette White with helping her triumph over anorexia nervosa.

"My parents and I have an incredible relationship now," Jones said. "I put them through so much hell. But God had his hand on me, protecting me. Honestly, I look back on some of the things I did to my body ... and my heart is still OK, and my reproductive system is OK. I am truly blessed."

Two of her friends, patients at the treatment center in Arizona, were not as fortunate. After having appeared to have recovered from anorexia nervosa, they were released.

A few months later, one died of a heart attack. She was 22. The other, who was 25, committed suicide.

"That's the reality of anorexia," Jones said. "It's slow suicide. You're slowly killing yourself. The best anorexic is a dead one."

Having made a full recovery, Jones decided to return to basketball after a two-year absence. She enrolled at HSU in 2002 and made the team. She played in 25 of HSU's 28 games and helped the Cowgirls to a record of 27-1 overall and 12-0 in the ASC, a fifth consecutive ASC Tournament championship and a fifth consecutive trip to the NCAA Division III Tournament.

Jones also met her future husband through HSU basketball. In October, after eight months of dating, she accepted the marriage proposal of then-HSU strength and conditioning coach Clay Jowers, a 1999 graduate of Cooper High School.

The couple plans to marry May 22. Jones celebrates her 22nd birthday May 28. This is Jones' second and final season of HSU basketball because she is moving to Hawaii, where Jowers is a graduate assistant strength and conditioning coach at the University of Hawaii.

Helping others
Jones and her parents often receive phone calls from girls' parents, asking Jones to please talk with their daughters about the dangers of eating disorders. She eagerly obliges.

"If I can help anyone, then it's worth it, all that I've been through," Jones said. "You wouldn't believe how many girls and women suffer from this. I think it's mostly because of how the media portrays being thin and being attractive.

"A whole lot of girls, at some point, play with anorexia or deal with it as an issue. But happiness is so much more beautiful than thinness. I think even guys would agree with that. It's so much better to be with someone who is satisfied, content and happy with who they are and what they look like than to be with a toothpick.

"The reason I keep on weight now is because I'm happy. I can't even explain to you how fun it is to go to a fast-food restaurant and order something and not have this incredible fear come over you."

HSU second-year head coach Shanna Briggs, a Wylie High School graduate, said Jones embodies the essence of the Cowgirl basketball program.

"Hannah has truly flourished after dealing with something and overcoming something that most don't," Briggs said. "She's been through a lot and she's a good sounding board for a lot of the girls."

Contact sports writer Noell Barnidge at barnidgen@reporternews.com or 325-676-6773

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