I’ll admit, I spent about a year working off some weight I gained because of a medication that disagreed with my body. I’ve kept most of it off for about 2 years now, but at 24 I’m not the size I was at 18 and I’m okay with that.

I’d like to get back into better shape – get my flexibility, strength, endurance, and joint health back where I’d like it to be. In the process, I usually end up losing a size or so, which is nice…but it’s not why I do it. I do it because I feel good when I’m weight lifting 3 days a week, a quick spin on a bike 6 days a week, and yoga a couple times in there too. I like the way my body feels powerful, I like seeing the muscle definition in my legs, arms, and shoulders.

I love my curves. I vary between a size 8 and a size 12. I’m not the size of a model and I wouldn’t want to be. They look like concentration camp survivors. On the other hand, my sister is naturally very slender – I just wish she wouldn’t let that convince her she doesn’t need to eat well and exercise! Yup, my size 2 sister exercises a lot less than size 12 me.

And anyone who wants to give me hell about the fact that I need an XL if I want to wear a buttondown shirt can go to hell! Being a woman is about being comfortable in your body and choosing to wear clothes that fit the size you ARE, not the size you think you should be.

It’s not a bad thing if you start making healthier choices and it causes weight loss. Weight loss needs to stop being the reason for things. As a society, we’re just getting more and more disfunctional about it instead of listening to our bodies.

I’m closing comments now, because I think this is a good point to quit while we’re ahead.

Eating disorders are so complicated and it’s hard to know to what extent, if any, societal factors can exacerbate or affect them.

Speaking only for myself, yes, I do feel that is part of the issue.

I used to say things like, “well, supermodels are skinnier than me, so why can’t I keep losing weight?”. I had all kinds of external pressures encouraging me to stick to my starvation, and when I looked around, I saw a lot of support for what I was doing. I mean, everyone wants to be thin, right? That’s what I seemed to be told constantly ad nauseum and all I was doing was ‘dieting’ and everyone agrees that dieting is a Good Thing, right? So how could I possibly be doing something wrong?

“So many of us (without a true understanding of the horror experienced by sufferers, of course) have secretly wished at one time or another that we had the “self-control” (ha) required to be anorexic.”

Exactly, because aren’t we forever being preached to that we could be the size we desire if only we had more self control? If only we could just stop stuffing ourselves and instead forced our Rubenesque butts into the gym for 3 hours a day, well, by golly we could be beautiful!

What you mention about the “normal weight” anorexics is so true and so horrible. I looked pretty bad at my worst point but I went to a dance/drama school where most of the students were tiny little ballerinas, so no one was at all concerned by my shrinking body. I was still ‘above average’ in size in such an environment so, surely, nothing could possibly be wrong with me, even if I was down to eating half a breakfast bar and a little clear soup a day, and was constantly dizzy, not to mention manic.

“By contrast everybody hates a glutton so it may be easier for a BED sufferer to recognize that what she is doing is “wrong,” especially if she is fat, because she is constantly hearing out in society how wrong it is to overeat and be fat. And there may be more impetus there to get help.”

I really think you might be on to something here because this makes a lot of sense to me.

Even if anorexics feel and see themselves as hugely obese, they’re not usually treated that way, so I could feasibly see a BED sufferer being more acutely aware of their disease because of societal pressure, whereas an anorexia sufferer might be picking up encouragement from such.

And, on a personal level, recently when I looked at my diet and noticed what seemed to be the beginning of an overeating/compulsive eating disorder, it was much easier for me to recognise this was ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ because I felt such huge guilt over the fact that I’d gone over my calorie allowance for the day, or had no will power.

Of course, I managed to turn that into something positive but ONLY because I have an excellent support system.

Now that I really think about it, that is such a huge contrast to how I felt when I was anorexic.

(I was watching an episode of How Do I Look recently featuring a “normal-weight” anorexic. By the end of the episode nobody was recommending residential or intensive treatment and nobody was suggesting that she consider removing herself from her line of work–she did administrative work for a beauty pageant and was hoping to become a successful pop musician, both of which I would think would be very harmful to an anorexic with these fields’ hyperfocus on appearance and thinness–and far worse, they were reassuring her that she could lose weight, she just had to do it “the healthy way.” It was awful.)

By contrast everybody hates a glutton so it may be easier for a BED sufferer to recognize that what she is doing is “wrong,” especially if she is fat, because she is constantly hearing out in society how wrong it is to overeat and be fat. And there may be more impetus there to get help. I know anorexics fully believe that they are fat and disgusting, so the idea doesn’t completely hold up, but I wonder if societal beliefs and pressures are a factor.

My guess would also be that the death rate from BED and even bulimia is probably lower than that from anorexia, which makes it even trickier to decide when someone’s life and health are at risk and when treatment intervention is needed. I have also heard that BED and bulimia are not as pernicious and resistant to treatment as anorexia, but I don’t know if that is true.

I am not knowledgeable on these issues but these were some impressions and questions that I had.

If you want me to e-mail you that last comment so you can post it on your own blog, let me know.