I recently posted a picture collage of me on social media and asked, “Which picture am I struggling with an eating disorder?
Here are the results:
The majority of individuals picked #4. . . followed by #2. (Some stated, “All of them.”)
The answer is #5.
In all of the other pictures, my focus was on eating foods that restored my nutritional health after a lifetime of dieting and disordered eating patterns.
In those pictures, I wasn’t suffering from obsessively weighing myself or compulsively checking mirrors.
It was the first time in my life I focused on EATING instead of NOT eating or undereating/restricting in order to lose weight.
In picture #5, I weighed myself daily; and then restricted food, skipped meals, and/or fasted in order to see the number on the scale decrease. This chronic undereating--restricting nutrients and calories—ignited rebounding binge eating.
Binge eating is discreetly consuming large quantities of food in a relatively short period of time. It’s eating to beyond full and then feeling shame afterwards. And unfortunately, dieting doesn’t cure it.
I’d lose ten pounds—and then gain back twelve.
Then, I’d panic and undereat/restrict again in order to lose those twelve pounds. . . followed by a rebounding binge again.
And then I’d gain even more weight, which fueled additional panic-driven restricting.
This cycle continually repeated itself as the anxiety and suffocating pressure to be thin accelerated.
The more I focused on losing weight—the more I gained weight.
An individual can easily gain weight by eating even high-nutrient, whole plant nutrition--if they develop binge eating--as the direct result of chronic undereating and the obsessive compulsion to be thin.
If the focus of eating is weight loss, the train to health will eventually derail.
There are derailed trains all over America right now, thanks to the nation’s diet industrial complex. (A term referring to the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry that promotes thinness as the perfect ideal.)
Weight loss sells.
Individuals who participate in extreme food restrictions in order to lose weight are 18x more likely to develop eating disorders than those who don’t. (NEDA.org)
Binge eating is the most common eating disorder in the United States: 2.8 million people struggle with it in our country (and untold numbers go unreported due to the shame associated with it). Binge eating affects three times the number of individuals than those who suffer with anorexia and bulimia combined. (BraveSpaceNutrition.com)
Someone dies as a direct result of eating disorders every fifty-two minutes in the U.S.
As diet ads, weight loss challenges, and juice cleanses abound in the New Year ahead, be aware of their dangers.
And whatever you do, don’t expose children to them.
Precious lives are at stake.
Part 2:
“Which one of these pictures am I struggling with anorexia?” (image below)
Emily Boller, wife, mother, artist, and author of Starved to Obesity, is on a mission to bring awareness to the suffocating and potentially deadly trap of diet culture and eating disorders; and to bring understanding and compassion to those suffering in silence.
In her free time, she loves to can homemade soups.