But there’s noting how many calories are in a sugary can of soda, and then deciding that you can do without drinking the soda because it’s really not the healthiest thing in the world and then there’s counting every calorie that goes into your body, which is rather obsessive. The list goes on and on.
Oh agreed, and while I have no idea why my triggers DON’T include counting calories but DO include knowing what I weigh, I’m glad. Because the older I get, the more interested I am in eating a healthy balanced amount of food and knowing the nutrition includes the calorie count.
But that’s just me and my triggers–I acknowledge that others DO trigger from calories.
Other than anorexia and bulimia, how are any of these disorders? Exercising and losing weight for the sake of athletic competition is healthy, so long as it doesn’t lapse into not eating/purging. Diet pills? Probably not terribly wise, but not a sign that something is wrong. If it gets in the way of your life and damages your health, then it may be a disorder. Otherwise, it’s probably a sign of a well-adjusted person.
In my opinion, one of the problems is that girls today are stuck between three unpleasant things. There’s the media showing skinny (though not necessarily anorexic) women as normal. There’s the unpleasant reality that a lot of people are severely overweight. And then there’s the media publishing books like that one about how sixteen year old girls who are trying to lose weight all have eating disorders and what are we going to do about it? There are all sorts of contradictory and entirely idiotic messages coming from all over.
As mentioned before, these all apply to girls or women of a healthy weight, if not already underweight mid-puberty (and I’d consider crash diets, bingeing and purging, etc. disordered for anyone, regardless of their weight). Driving cross country to get diet pills made illegal because they damage your heart is disordered. Exercizing eight hours a day for no purpose but weight loss is disordered. Even the girls who had no ongoing ‘problems’ truly thought they needed to lose weight and that it would make their lives better. That’s not normal.
(And preferring to lose a limb or year of life rather than be fat is just disturbing.)
When you consider how society treats fat people, the humiliation they have to go through in some instances (having to buy two airline seats for themselves, for example) are you really surprised some people are freaked out by being fat?
Speaking of fat, what about women who ate too much in their youth- isn’t that an eating disorder too? Women who claim to have been ‘large all their life’ but some of them spending their youth overating/excersizing too little. In my opinion, that qualifies as an eating disorder just as much as anorexia does.
I almost see this as a bigger (no pun intended) problem, because since there are more people overweight in the US than at a healthy weight, over time we gradually become more accepting of it. People say things like, “Oh I just have a slow metabolism/my family is all like this/etc” rather than really hold themselves accountable. All the people I knew personally that were overweight had less healthy diets, ate more, and were less active than their slimmer counterparts. Some of them knew exactly what was making them fat, and were trying to break out of that cycle. But some were in a cycle of denial.
You make a really good point. My absolute favorite yoga instructor has lost over 100 pounds and has (by any standard) more to go. We were talking about food or diets or something one time, and I made an off hand comment about having an eating disorder and she said she did as well.
I looked puzzled. She pointed out that getting to the point of obesity she had reached was as much the result of an eating disorder as my own anorexia. I had never looked at it that way but had to agree with her.
Huh, that’s an excellent point. I have an aunt who is morbidly obese but refuses to alter her diet in any way - I guess that’s sort of the inverse of someone who’s skeleton-thin but refuses to eat more. Interesting points.
I’ve never had an eating disorder, or disordered eating.
Which is why, though I said none of the above, I did mention my overeating.
I still have a tendency to do that, to nosh when depressed and eat a fair bit of junk… but when you compare how I eat now to when I was a teen… well, I eat a helluva lot healthier and a heck of a lot less. Now I just need to get exercise in there (and since I have exercise induced asthma and recently got an inhaler… well, I think I can start breaking my bike out more, maybe I’ll start my gym membership again).
I won’t ever be skinny (good sturdy peasant genes combined with a tall frame takes care of that), but maybe I can lose some of what didn’t come off when I changed my eating habits.
That depends on your definition of an eating disorder. I know some normal weight, healthy people who follow rigid diets and will not bend for anything. If you ask them to join you in a restaurant, they have to make sure the restaurant has “something I can eat.” Some people have to eat at set times, and cannot stop to pick up a couple of things before eating at 12:30 instead of 12:00. Some people are convinced that anyone who eats anything that is not on their diet is morally inferior to them, and are going to die and go straight to hell for dietary sinning.
I think that anytime food is running your entire life, you have a problem.
I agree with this. Counting calories and using a food record was how I lost 20 pounds slowly and kept it off. Once I got to a desired, healthy weight, I didn’t have to count calories as much, but that was because I already knew what a normal day looked like and what a portion was and all that, not because calories didn’t matter anymore.
I think that most people have the opposite problem, that they don’t know how many calories are really in a portion size, or what the real nutritional value of a food is (or lack thereof.) Reading labels and keeping track for a few weeks is something that I think would actually benefit the majority of people. In fact, I remember taking a health and wellness class in school that had us journaling our food intake. It’s a good way to take a step back and see overall patterns and bad habits. It’s also a way to see how you can make better choices. You can eat a lot of healthy foods for the same calories as one fast food burger and probably even be more full from it, and get other added health benefits too.
I don’t think most people need to do it for years on end, and of course it can get obsessive, but I think for most people it can be beneficial and I would in general consider calorie counting and food journaling to be a positive thing, not negative. Even for those who aren’t overweight, just to see where you get most of your calories from and how much junk you really are eating. Just because you aren’t fat doesn’t mean you are eating well.
I’ve never had an eating disorder. I am now, for the first time in my life, trying to lose a few pounds, but I’m just eating normal sized portions instead of huge ones and playing Dance Dance Revolution, not radically changing my life.
I think I am lucky, because I tend to gravitate toward the “normal” weight for my height, if I eat regular portions. I gained some weight due to eating out too much, and finishing all my food regardless of how large the portion was, since I tend to eat what is put in front of me. I am now slightly overweight. When I eat out, I am trying to order smaller meals, or healthier foods, or take the rest home if I don’t want it anymore, instead of eating it all. Doing this, I’ve lost 10 pounds already, within the past couple of months or so.
I like food more than I care about what other people think of my looks.
Also, I’ve never been really overweight.
I never knew anyone that had an ED in highschool other then maybe typical teenage overeating of poor food.
I went from one extreme to the other. I was chubby/fat in HS, probably 30 - 50 lbs. (depending on the year) overweight and that transferred into adulthood. Then, at about 23, even though I’d already started going to the gym and being active, and had lost about 20 lbs., I decided to diet. I lost weight. Oh look, if I eat even less, I’ll lose more. Then I started obsessing about how many calories I ate. Then the total I could eat became less and less. Then I decided that if I ate 800 calories, I had to burn AT LEAST that amount at the gym on the machine. Any extra stuff I did didn’t count.
After a year and a bit (and losing a grand total of 80 lbs. from my heaviest to my lightest) I couldn’t do it anymore and decided I still liked food. So started the binge and purge cycle, which mostly kept the weight off. The I got drunk one night and told my BF. And THAT is when recovery started. He made me get help. I still struggle, but I’m a LOT healthier now.
I haven’t always have the healthiest relationship with food, though I’m not sure I’d consider it a disorder. A lot of women I know eat when they’re depressed, but I eat when I’m bored. I spent a large portion of my life from elementary school through part of high school in a deep depression. I just didn’t care much and spent a lot of time inside after 6th grade bored, snacking, not caring enough to exercise.
It’s funny, but looking back I actually had a better body image than I thought. There were times that I didn’t like my looks (usually after some jerk kid or my brother insulted me), but usually I was more self-conscious about my clothes; I hated those clothes so much… bleh.
I’m much the same now, though I recognize my boredom-eating for what it is and try not to do that so much. I’m still overweight, but I carry it pretty well and just dislike my belly. All in all I’d say I’m pretty normal.