Comments on: Guest Blogger Dani: Treehorn Syndrome

By: RP

RP — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:52:55 +0000

Totally late to this, but it hits home with me as well. I’m on the small side, but in a way that doesn’t correlate to small clothes sizes (mainly due to a high waist-to-hip ratio even without IBS bloating driving it even higher). In grad school, my IBS was completely uncontrolled and I was nauseated at least 75% of the time. Add in some dating and school stress or a stretch of hot and humid weather (or hell, a tight waistband at the wrong time), and I’d be bed and bathroom ridden for days at a time.

I was picking at my lunch and trying not to turn green in public while with another grad student during one of my bad phases, and I mentioned something about not being able to eat much all week because I felt so miserable. She immediately said that she wished she had the same thing. All my clarifications (it’s not will power, it’s feeling like you want to die or puke or both simultaneously) didn’t make a difference – miserable would be fine so long as she lost weight.

And 15 years later, I still get this. I’ve stabilized my IBS thanks to NuvaRing and soluble fiber and regular exercise and peppermint tea and giving up red meat and dairy and what seems like a bazillion other things. But I’m not in pain and I don’t spend days on the toilet and I only feel nauseated on rare occasions. Yay me, right? My doctor expressed worry that I’ve gained 3 pounds over the past couple of years. Yes. One does tend to gain weight when one can actually eat regular nutritious meals as opposed to cautiously eating a single slice of bread to see if the Stomach Gods find it acceptable. I have a low friggin’ BMI (thanks to having no hips at all, I think). And yet…I get the “we’d better watch this”.

Obviously, losing weight is Good, even if you’re sick as hell and already on the small side. And gaining weight is Bad, even if you’re still small and you’ve increased both your nutrition and built muscle. Hmm – I think I just moved from “gee, this FA stuff is interesting” to “I need FA”.

By: Dani

Dani — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:21:20 +0000

Denise – Sinequan made me crave carbs like whoa, but I’ve had to avoid them anyway because they put my hypoglycemia into overload. Despite the avoidance, I’ve put on five or six pounds since I started it.

On the bright side, it’s stopped my migraines almost entirely (down to one or two days a month from the former fifteen to twenty), and I can totally live with the trade. :D

By: Denise

Denise — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:02:09 +0000

I would love to see a post like this, Sweet Machine. I have struggled to accept my not thin yet “normal” (BMI-wise) body my entire life, and since starting Lexapro 2 years ago (which is precious to me, since it’s allowed me to live my life again) I have gained about 15 pounds – I’m now teetering on the edge of “overweight”. My doctor said it’s because anti-depressants make you crave carbs, and I’m really wondering if others out there have had this experience. Kate – do you crave carbs more now? Have you gained weight from Lexapro? I mean, taking an AD can be hard enough, what with the rest of the world telling you you don’t need it, it doesn’t really work anyway, blah blah, and then to deal with the stigma of weight gain on top of that, as if all you needed to do to avoid it was to resist those carbs you now crave…well, it’s not easy. That’s why I come here.

By: sweetmachine

sweetmachine — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:01:37 +0000

Oh Meghan, I have a lot to say about that topic and have been thinking of doing a post about it. Now that I see how many readers have been dealing with various unintentional weight changes recently, maybe I’ll actually sit down to write it. Stay tuned.

By: phledge

phledge — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 03:12:23 +0000

Meghan, if I may speak for Kate, I believe she would say that “it’s a process.” I doubt very seriously that there is anyone here who could say in all honesty that reaching that societal standard is not somewhat tempting even if it means ill health. At the same time, we come together here to remind ourselves and each other that our health, both mental and physical, comes before attaining someone else’s concept of what we should look and act like. I know for a fact that, if I were to choose HAES and I started losing weight as a result, I would be pretty fucking pleased as punch. In some ways I am embarrassed by that, but I also know that so many of us go through the same thing! Not wanting to feel ostracized, not wanting to have health care professionals harp on me, not wanting to go to different stores to buy my clothing, not wanting to have my family “worry” about me–those are all very real parts of my mental health that would presumably be eliminated by achieving a societally-sanctioned body. But if it dove into the same old obsession over food and purgative exercise with which I have flayed my body in the past, or if it was as a result–as Dani’s has been–of a serious pathology, I know that I can come here and be reminded that I am more than my dress size, more than my perceived ability to reshape my folds and bumps and curves. So please keep sharing and observing and travelling this path that is body acceptance; it’s well worth it.

By: meghan

meghan — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:24:20 +0000

“We equate weight loss so strongly with accomplishment that so many people see it as something to be proud of even if you didn’t fucking do anything to lose the weight.”

Oh man, this hits home really hard, Kate. I’m going through exactly this right now. I’ve lost about 30lbs over the last few months thanks to what I assume is a combination of a few factors: quitting the drug I’d been taking for 5 years that caused weight gain (your precious Lexapro, I’m sorry to say), starting a different drug that slightly suppresses appetite, and deciding to join the roller derby and working out all the time. I’m pretty sure I was either at the very top or above my set-point range beforehand. So I’ve lost the weight literally without trying to – and I honestly believe I’m moving into the weight range that my body SHOULD be. But I’ve had a few comments, from a coworker and a random stranger at the gym, asking if I’ve lost a lot of weight and complimenting my ‘hard work.’

I’m also fairly new to the idea of fat-acceptance, so I’m experiencing some cognitive dissonance at the same time. If I’m supposed to like myself the way I am, why am I so happy that I’m changing?

By: Isabel

Isabel — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 03:59:21 +0000

Oh man, this post resonates with me so strongly. When I lost some weight I didn’t need to lose, one (always creepy) guy who hadn’t seen me in two years told me I’d “gotten in shape.” To this day I want to punch him in his stupid face when I think of that. When I told someone “I hate losing weight” she looked completely blank and asked, “Why? Isn’t it always a good thing?” (probably not exactly verbatim but the sentiment was DEFINITELY there). I was like, “uh, I just had to buy a belt for the first time in my life. and I HATE BELTS.” (this part is still true. I just don’t like the way they feel, and most of my pants sit on my hips anyway so they just look awkward).

Mercifully I was blessed with not just one but several friends, and a mother (and two doctors) who are sane about such things, and who continued to tell me they were worried about me as I insisted I was totally fine (a lie) and my weight loss had nothing to do with eating issues, nope, I just was walking so much and so busy! I didn’t have time for lunch, that’s all (a bigger lie, one my doctor totally saw through). They also made sure to tell me how much healthier I look now.

Interestingly, I have never been “underweight” by BMI standards.

By: onejewishdyke

onejewishdyke — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:25:28 +0000

Fortunately most of the women in my office aren’t too weight-obsessed, but there is one who regularly makes the comment, “I wish I could get anorexia for a few months so I could lose the extra weight.” Not really wanting to share my stories with her, I just say, “Be careful what you wish for, the results might not be what you want,” and shut my office door when she starts talking about it. I haven’t heard that comment in several months so maybe she has gotten the idea that she shouldn’t say it around me, either on her own or because someone else has mentioned that there’s probably something wrong given the amount of weight I lost in that short period of time. I’m only open about what’s going on with certain people, and not at work. There’s too much stigma associated with mental illness, even if I have one that our culture had a large part in causing.

By: Dani

Dani — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 01:38:49 +0000

Oh look, there it is again! Imported from one of the “complaining of our various diseases” LiveJournal communities I read:

“you guys are really making me wish i could take [drug]. I would LOVE to lose weight like that.”

I gave her a link to this post and begged her to reconsider. No idea if it’ll work, but really – I can’t watch someone say they want to lose this kind of weight and not say SOMETHING. Not anymore.

By: onejewishdyke

onejewishdyke — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 00:01:10 +0000

When I was growing up, I knew that my mom weighed 106 pounds on her wedding day and wore a size 4 dress. During my first bout with anorexia as a teenager, I remember the day I hit 105 on the scale and thought that things were going to be okay now that I was under where Mom had been, because I thought that was the highest acceptable weight, and my previous high teenage weight had been all of 117. Then I set my new goal as 100, of course. Then 95.

Then I found out years later that my mom got dry socket after having her wisdom teeth out, and the infection was so bad that she couldn’t eat solid food for some long period of time before her wedding. She lost about 30 pounds in a month or two right before the wedding and that’s why she weighed 106 and the size 4 dress had to be altered at last minute.

My 14-year-old anorexic self and the 33-year-old still working on living HAES thank you for moving those goalposts for me, Mom. Because you know, thinking that I should weigh 135 as a teenager because you did, Mom (she married at 19), wouldn’t have been enough to live up to.

Ironically, that was what I weighed at 18 years old, once I’d recovered from the anorexia, about 135. The only thing I wonder is if I stunted my growth, being anorexic right as puberty hit. I’m a touch under five feet. When I was little the doc said I’d be 5’4″. But she also said my sister would be 5’2″, and I’m a touch under five feet and my sister is a touch over it, so perhaps I wasn’t getting any more height anyway. But I do wonder, if I’d been properly nourished, if I’d be a little taller. Mom was 5’2″ at her tallest though she has lost a bit in the past decade or so. My great-grandmother and grandmother were both 4’10″, but they probably weren’t getting great nutrition in the shtetl in Poland either.