I just read another mainstream article about eating disorders, and yet again, the article does very little to distinguish between healthy ways of getting right with your BMI & calorie density, versus people who do destructive things to their body because they are coming from a dark place emotionally.
One reason I want to mention the distinction between a true eating disorder, and articles in the mainstream that call EVERYTHING an eating disorder is this:
I honestly think that many people do quite well on this way of eating, until they start to feel a sense of scrutiny (real or imagined) from their peers about what they are doing. So in an effort to prove that they are not “going too far” or “obsessed” with their weight or their food, they agree to eat sweets, or pizza, or oily restaurant food — thus re-toxifying their body with calorie-rich-and-processed food, and then sliding down the slippery slope back into their SAD eating and their SAD diseases.
So, I’m curious — how do we think clearly about this?
For starters, we ARE allowed to be passionate about our health, and we don’t have to have a heart attack in our past in order to “justify” our food choices to anybody. It’s my life, and it’s my body. And nobody else really gets a vote.
We really don’t have to agree to be “moderate” (olive oil) or “good sports” (birthday cake), just because that would make other people more comfortable. Especially if those people are adopting the language of starting to accuse of us of extreme eating (“I think you’re taking this way too far.” Or “I think you look fine. You don’t need to lose weight to like yourself.”
I’m sure that we have every right to be extremely attentive to our health — including refusing food that has oil in it (yes, even olive oil) and including declining offers of other people’s food. We are grown-ups and can eat perfectly good food that’s in line with our health goals & in line with our desired body weight.
I keep thinking — society (at least some people within it) are so deeply worried about us being anorexic, that they cannot tolerate any eating patterns that are different from theirs, without feeling that we are doing damage to ourselves emotionally by being so “strict”. To them, any devoted athlete could be accused of having an “unhealthy obsession” with their sport, and every focused innovator could be accused of having a “dangerous fixation” on success, and every passionate dancer could be accused of “being compulsive” about their life.
So, someone who is hypersensitive about eating disorders would — by the same standard — think that EVERY person focused on high levels of success (in a sport, in an artform, in a career) is “trapped” and needs to be rescued. But why in the world would this be true? Can’t people choose to pursue something with great effort, without it being pathologized by society?
In some ways, an eating disorder is an addiction to starving oneself. Just as an alcoholic may feel trapped in their addiction, and may in fact need a helping hand not to keep getting sucked into a viscious pattern that they do not wish for themselves, someone who is anorexic may feel trapped in patterns of self-starvation, and may feel that if they do not get help, they will get sucked into that vortex again and again.
So that seems to be one distinction — does a person feel trapped in behavior patterns they do not wish for themselves.
Certainly, an innovator like Steve Jobs or somebody doesn’t LONG to quell the fires of their passion, so that they can learn to be happy as a 9-to-5 proggrammer rather than actualize their fabulous goals for themselves. Society can’t just decide see any flames (of passion! of greatness!) and call the freaking fire department.
Oh well, that’s an incomplete post. But I’m seriously thinking — how do we refute accusations that what we’re doing is “too extreme” and “emotionally unhealthy”? Versus, doing something that’s importat to us, that does not end in death or destruction, as eating disorders do.
More on this later!