diets suck.

To the world,

I don’t care about your diet.

I don’t care that today is low-carb and tomorrow is a cheat day.

I don’t care that sugar is your food version of the devil.

I don’t care that you eat every three hours, six hours, or twenty-four hours.

I don’t care that fruit is suddenly off-limits.

I don’t care that you are eating X amount of calories.

I don’t care that chicken and quinoa are now miracle foods.

I don’t care about your diet pills, supplements, or new vitamins.

Oh, and I also don’t care about your weight.

I am finally at a point WHERE I DON’T CARE. If you are happy with what you eat and what you look like, GREAT. We need more people like you. Diets used to be contagious for me. Just like the common cold, if someone was trying some new food plan, I had to jump on board, too. The difference is I jumped on board with an eating disordered mentality, whereas they jumped on because they decided to lose five pounds.

My boyfriend expresses concern when he hears “diet talk” around me, because he knows that it can be triggering. He always asks if I’m okay and listens to me talk if I need to vent. Last night, for instance, we were out, and “diet talk” became a main topic of conversation at the dinner table. At one point, while waiting for our dinner, I mentioned that I was incredibly hungry, as I hadn’t eaten in about six or seven hours, and one of his family members said, Honey, you can’t starve yourself! It slows down your metabolism. It took me everything I had to NOT laugh uncontrollably. Me? Starve myself? As if I didn’t know. I know more about nutrition that I will EVER NEED TO KNOW.

His family doesn’t know about my eating disorder yet, but we will likely tell them soon. I am not hiding it, but the topic just hasn’t come up. Besides, neither of us see his family very often. However, they are currently all on some new diet craze. While it’s great to see them pay attention to their health and incorporate nutritious foods, the obsession reminded me just how neurotic I used to get over an unplanned piece of bread or a meal out with friends. I remember when I used to live day-by-day, weight-by-weight, praying the scale would show AT LEAST a 0.2 lb decrease. I remember when every calorie used to count, and I used an app on my phone to track every bite that passed through my lips. I remember being “good” or being “bad.” It was brutal.

I no longer subscribe to the dieting mentality. I had to surrender that rigidity when I chose to surrender my sickness. As far as I am concerned, dieting with an eating disorder is like counting on the “family planning” method for birth control. Typically ineffective, dangerous, and often just leads you in a worse place than you anticipated. Diet-related thoughts take me right back to the preoccupation and obsession, and diet-related actions take me right back to maladaptive behaviors.

I do my best to eat when hungry, even if I think I’ve eaten “enough” for the day. I do my best to honor my body and give it either movement or rest, depending what it needs. I do my best to listen to my satiety cues and check in with my emotions.

Notice I did not use the word try. In recovery, there is no try. I am DOING. Doing my best most days I can. Some days, it’s easy, and other days, not so much.

Diets? They are just the word DIE with an extra letter.

Diet pills, flat stomachs, and body bashing

Dear Bee,

It’s almost summer. I am surrounded by diet talk. This becomes an inevitable trend around this time of year. I firmly believe there is a direct correlation between increased temperature and increased body insecurity. Diet talk embodies a social facilitation effect. It is rampant and contagious, starting on the elementary school playgrounds and muttered in the circles of elderly ladies. Girls complain about their bellies, their breasts or lack of breasts, their thunder thighs and flabby arms, their cankles and back fat and rolls.

Does it ever end? I don’t know. I consider diet talk a cultural phenomenon. In a sick way, it unites women. Body bashing give us common ground, something to talk about, something to obsess over. Unlike men, women do not like to brag about themselves; we are not inherently taught to be arrogant. Rather, we remain modest at our best and critical at our worst.

Despite having an eating disorder, I never really engaged in much of this body bashing. Maybe, I opted from publicly drawing attention to my appearance, out of fear that someone else would notice, and God forbid, agree with my statements. I’ve listened to friends do it my entire life. They complain and vent only to receive the standardized chorus of responses, you’re beautiful or no, you have a great body or you don’t need to even worry. 

As if any of that ever resonated with them!

Today, one of my close friends started a diet pill regime. Seriously. I recognize I am in absolutely NO place to judge or be self-righteous, as I have CLEARLY done enough turmoil to my body to last a lifetime…but still, my immediate reaction was, she is so stupid. Would I have felt this triggered if I wasn’t dealing with my own eating disorder? I’d like to think not, but I’d also like to think this shows that I am still PROFOUNDLY influenced by people talking about weight loss or taking extreme dieting measures.

Another friend is on a mission to get in shape. This girl has a natural thin build with a body most people would consider flawless. She calls it skinny fat. She eats, in her own words, whatever the fuck I want. That same kind of mantra represents the essence of her life. I’ve never seen a woman so intuitive, and I must admit I try to emulate some of her free-spirited approach to balance. And yet, her quest to “get in shape” because she just wants a “flat stomach” (even though it is) for summer bothered me. Probably because it threatened me. Being aware of these feelings (jealousy, anxiety, resentment) is wonderful. Changing the thoughts (realizing that she is allowed to have her own needs and desires and whatever she does with her life does not need to influence the way I live mine) is even better. Constructively coping with these feelings and thoughts is golden. 

I also ran into an old friend from college at the gym today. I approached him, and he said he had seen me from a distance, but wasn’t sure if it was me. After I hugged him, he said, you look like you’ve lost a lot of weight! You look good! 

This statement, which was naturally meant to be a sincere and harmless compliment, triggered in so many ways. The initial feelings were anxiety, resentment, happiness, humiliation, and shame. Quite a cocktail.

Then came the thoughts. Was he hitting on me? Did I really look that different from when he saw me last? (keep in mind, I spent years offsetting my bingeing and compulsive overeating with a very “clean” and somewhat restrictive diet and compulsive overexercising regime. My weight has not dramatically fluctuated since he last saw me, although it is possible that the shape of my body has. I have always remained in the normal range.

And, finally, my last thought was hey, who cares what he thinks of your weight. Why don’t you just ignore that and listen to the “you look good part?” 

 Because I can and will believe that! 

Eating disorders are mental illnesses. Yes, they distort the way we perceive our bodies and weights, but I don’t look at myself and see an obese person. I may not always be 100% comfortable in my own skin, and there are definitely situations where I feel “fat” (which is not a feeling, by the way), but for the most part, I appreciate my body. My eating disorder started with the dieting mentality. As it progressed, it simply became a coping mechanism: it became a way for me to obtain perceived control and suppress uncomfortable feelings. 

I have a distorted reality of food. I understand and accept that.

But, I think as a society, we need to really focus on this whole body-bashing epidemic. I have so many friends with no history of eating disorders who hate their bodies. And this just devastates me. Today, my friend (the one taking diet pills) told me she just wants to feel confident in a bikini for once. She said she’s never liked her body. This girl knows about my recovery process. She believes thinness will make her happy, and I can’t blame her for that! We are practically engrained with the message that the perfect body will provide us with the perfect relationship, job, life, etc. It is insane. If you don’t have an eating disorder, chances are, you are on some kind of diet. It is practically a developmental requirement. People are either on a diet or planning on starting a diet…tomorrow. 

Thinking about it, I have never met a female who has never been on a diet. I would love to know how and why they were able to avoid that societal message. 

 

Just say no to drugs and alcohol…but what about eating disorders?

Dear Bee,

Nobody warned me about you. Growing up in middle-class cookie-cutter suburbia, you were not the potent addiction people feared. You were not campaigned or fought against. Nobody ever told me to just say no to you.

I feared drugs and alcohol. I was told to stay far away, run from them at parties, and drop friends who engaged in their illicitness. Just say no. Don’t even try it once. This was the message I heard loud-and-clear, and it was absolutely effective. I never picked up cigarettes, and despite living in California, the beach-bum, hippie capitol of the stoner world, never once touched weed. I never pill-popped or experienced psychedelics. Never sniffed or snorted or inhaled anything. Even my introduction into alcohol was reserved and cautious; by all means, I was a late-bloomer into rebellion, and my first experience of actual intoxication probably happened just after graduating high school. 

My peers were busy experimenting with the virtues of oxytocin and ecstasy. I abstained and instead began to experiment with YOU.  While I mercilessly judged drug and alcohol users with my shaming, holier-than-thou sense of pride, my eating disorder slowly emerged, wrapping itself tightly around my invisible vulnerabilities, like a blanket protecting me from all those scary, out-of-control emotions i felt. And yet, they were the ones with the problems. They were the weak ones who foolishly succumbed to childish peer pressure. They were the stupid ones willing to jeopardize their academics, friendships, and parents’ trust for the temporary sensations of getting drunk or high. 

I epitomized the goody-goody, high-achieving model student; the well-mannered, disciplined girl who never caused trouble or chaos. I followed orders and lived in an organized, linear, and predictable fashion. I was safe and diligent. Nobody has ever called me stupid or foolish. 

We spend so much time and energy focusing on the perils of drugs and alcohol. Good. I would argue we probably do not spend enough efforts in effectively teaching our youth the dangers of these substances. Abuse on dependence on either of these can wreck absolute havoc on an individual’s life. Research shows addiction strongly correlates with young age of onset and experimentation. 

But what about eating disorders? What about the millions of invisible adolescents privately suffering with their own onset and experimentation of maladaptive food-related or body image issues? Clinical diagnoses are on the rise; recovery rates are low, treatment is sparse, and fatality numbers keep rising

Who is educating them? Who is telling them to just say no? Who is fostering the positive role models and prevention strategies to avoid the slippery slope that is disordered eating? While the media glamorizes an unattainable standard of beauty, the diet and fitness industries capitalize on low self-esteem to promote unhealthy nutrition plans and exercise regimens. Who is protecting these individuals? 

Good parenting often recommends that adults avoid drinking or using drugs in front of their children to avoid them modeling such behaviors. What about adults who diet excessively? Or lament over the size of their jeans, butts, or the number on the scale? What about the parents who call their children fat? Who tell them they need to go on a diet? We laugh at the parents who tell their kids to stay away from smoking with a cigarette wedged between their parents.

But do we laugh at the parents who tell their kids to stay away from anorexia while they embark on yet another liquid fast? Or the parents who tell their kids to stay away from compulsive overeating while they enjoy a buffet dinner? 

We do not laugh at these situations, because they do not happen. Parents do not tell their kids to stay away from anorexia or bulimia. They do not necessarily notice the early signs, such as skipping meals or engaging in exercise, the way the may notice other red flags, such as smoking or going to parties. Eating disorders have not been culturally engrained as compulsory addictions. Although they typically develop during the adolescent and teenage years, we often spend so much time focusing on other vices, such as drugs, alcohol, and sex. 

Treatment is good, but prevention is better.