Are Dieting Behaviors And Disordered Eating Behaviors Really So Different?

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

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In November of 1998, during my senior year in college, I embarked on a new diet.  I called it “low carb with fruit.”  I cut out a lot of foods, and like most diets, it started working in the beginning.  Because I was losing weight, I stuck with the diet very carefully.

In early January 1999, I went on a trip to Prague with my scholarship group from school.  It was extremely cold in Prague, and I didn’t have much money.  There was hardly any fruit or vegetables to be had anywhere, so for about a week I subsisted on about 2 sausages that you buy on the street per day, carefully throwing out the hearty roll it was wrapped in.  I was also walking for miles each day, exploring the city.

I'm bummed that I can't find my pictures from that trip. But here's Prague Castle (image courtesy of wikipedia).

As you might imagine, I was hungry for most of the day, and I ignored that hunger for both convenience sake and because I wanted to stick to this diet. Only someone on a diet (or with a severe wheat allergy would have thrown those rolls away).  And maybe there were some other foods I could have found on the cheap, but I was so single-minded about sticking to my diet that I probably didn’t consider them.

When I got back to New York, I had lost more weight, and received a lot of praise for that.  My hair was also thinner, and I’m not sure it ever really recovered.

I remember, at the time, feeling happy to have lost more weight, but sad that no one seemed to mind that I did it in a really unhealthy way.  I thought, if I had gone to Prague a size 2 and come back a size 0, they might have considered getting me some help for an eating disorder, but leaving a size 14/16 and coming back a 12/14 was considered a great accomplishment.

A lot of my clients come to me with self-diagnosed restrictive eating disorders.  And they come to me that way because when you’re fat or plus-sized or even toward the larger end of the “normal size” scale, weight loss is considered a healthy, important goal, and almost any way that you arrive at or strive for that goal is approved of.  Many of the symptoms of dieting (obsession with weight, obsession with food, body dysmorphia) are akin to eating disorder symptoms, but they’re overlooked if you’re engaging in them while existing in a fatter body.  They still have deleterious mental, emotional, and physical effects, whether you’re fat, thin, or in between.  I think it’s time that the health and wellness community and the world at large recognized this reality.

This lack of recognition for eating disorders in fatter people is something I think about quite a lot, but it was brought to the fore by the fact that the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) has decided to partner with Strategies To Overcome and Prevent (STOP) Obesity Alliance, a group who’s funded by pharmaceutical companies that produce dangerous and questionable things like diet pills and lap bands.  (To read more about it, read Ragen Chastain’s excellent open letter to NEDA and sign the petition to stop this alliance.)

Is engaging in restricting and obsessive behaviors perfectly great if you’re fatter and yet something worthy of treatment when you’re thinner?  Or are our societal norms and unfounded beliefs about health and beauty clouding the fact that it’s pretty much the same thing?  Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Join her for her upcoming FREE teleclass, HAES For The Holidays: How To Navigate Food, Family & Fatness Better This Holiday Season, by clicking here.

8 thoughts on “Are Dieting Behaviors And Disordered Eating Behaviors Really So Different?

  1. I have a long history of anorexia – hospitalisations to go with – lots of ‘treatment’ and begging me to eat and gain weight; Now, after years of dieting on and off and being completely obsessed with my weight and diet – I am once again overweight; older but not wiser – sadder but not wiser… loads of medications for all kinds of things; weight related meds, stressors, mental illness and the lot ; not one thing ‘better’ in all my years- a whole life time of weight obsession and dieting AND treatment – in fact, probably in the WORST physical and mental shape of my life – but now, with being somewhat overweight- I AM TOLD TO DIET AND EXERCISE DIET AND EXERCISE DIET AND EXERCISE…. this will ‘cure’ my ills! It is sad to be in ones mid-60s and fat and unhappy and unwell in many ways- and I am STILL being told, since 7 years old to DIET AND EXERCISE MORE! That’s the ‘treatment’ for me now! Thanks for your article!

  2. So true!

    Have you seen youreatopia.com and junkfoodscience.blogspot.com ? I have used/been using both of these sites to help myself recover from dieting. The information at youreatopia, while directed at those with eating disorders, applies to everyone in regards to the physical healing required after any amount of under eating. Her blog posts are very eye opening. I put a lot of her links on my blog if you want a quick reference.

  3. I “dieted” away 52 kg over a year 5 years ago. I was under the supervision of a Doctor for the entire time. I was eating no more than 5 gms of fat a day and tried to stick to about 700-800 calories a day. I frequently ate very little at all in a day. I had terrible mood swings, I was dizzy and weak and depressed. Once I’d lost the weight I was in the middle of the BMI for my height (I am 6ft).

    Shortly after the weight loss I lost all thyroid function, I had the lowest Vitamin D levels the clinic had ever seen, I had two ovarian cysts, chronic pain (which lead to a hysterectomy) from undiagnosed food intolerances that has now lead me to a very restricted diet just to have normal gastro functioning (I now have to eat a low FODMAP diet). My hair was falling out and I developed a permanent skin condition.

    During all this I was told how great I looked, how fantastic I looked, some people didn’t recognise me. It was endless. People begged me to tell them how I did it. The change in people’s behaviours was astounding.

    I know I had an eating disorder during that time. I have been told that by specialists since this time. However I got nothing but positive reinforcement from everyone, even my Doctor, even after I was losing 6 kg a month, on consecutive months.

    Now I have of course gained all the weight back, especially when my thyroid stopped working. This has lead to much pain and embarrassment as people had expressed their feelings towards my new thin shape and now they are just quiet about my new fat shape.

    I have spent the last 18 months trying to stop hating my body and trying to get right with food. It’s a daily struggle but if I told anyone I had once had an eating disorder (and really, do you ever get rid of it??) they would laugh!

    It’s hard. Dieting is a disordered way of dealing with food. It’s damaging to the body in ALL it’s forms. I wish the assessment of eating disorder was not related to the weight of the person. It’s two separate issues.

    Thank you for such a great post.

  4. I think anorexia/eating disorders are so strongly associated with emaciation that most people would never consider that a fat person could be anorexic. Likewise the “get thin at any cost” mentality is also so strong, no one considers where it can lead. Also, people believe that all fat people get fat by eating like pigs, so if you’re fat you can’t POSSIBLY be starving yourself. I think Paul Campos is right in asserting that American culture is fundamentally eating disordered. That’s all a diet is, an eating disorder on a small scale that can easily get out of control.

  5. Golda, I think you are totally right. Dieting is seen like a good thing if you are larger, dangerous if you are thin. Disordered eating behaviors are detrimental to your physical and emotional health no matter your size. That’s the whole point of HAES, in my opinion: learning to be healthy, no matter your pants size.

  6. “They still have deleterious mental, emotional, and physical effects, whether you’re fat, thin, or in between. I think it’s time that the health and wellness community and the world at large recognized this reality.”

    In order for that to make sense, they have to recognise that we are real. That’s the first thing that struck me about that NEDA debacle, they would never have done it to anyone else because they would have asked fat people about it first.

    I’ll bet that didn’t even occur for a second.

  7. I developed anorexia when I was 18-19, and while I was already thin it wasn’t severe enough that other people noticed. Anyways, as part of this I started frequenting pro-ana forums and websites. Back then there seemed to be a big difference between “normal dieting” and “eating disorder.” Thankfully I eventually recovered, but part of me is wondering if my mild fatness now (BMI 31) is due to the severe restriction I was on as a young adult.

    Anyways, cut to 7 years later and I start getting into fat acceptance, which was ultimately how I got over my eating disorder. I join facebook as well, find friends from high school, etc. and I am utterly shocked to see all these obscure pro-ana tips everywhere, discussed casually, and become totally mainstream. I’m talking diets of 500-800 calories, going “vegan” or “gluten free” in order to lose weight, obsessive tracking of calories, weight, exercise and posting this publicly. Thinspiration everywhere.

    Also bariatric surgery was considered extreme, as was liquid diets. Now they’re being actively promoted by both large health clinics in town.

    Anyways, as a former anorexic who adopted that “lifestyle” in the heyday of the pro-ana movement, I don’t see any difference between what we were doing then and what I see most people doing now. And I no longer believe that the weight requirements for a diagnosis of an eating disorder is even remotely reasonable; the behavior is damaging no matter the size.

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