Comments on: 1,000 calories a day: Officially not torture

By: Cassandra

Cassandra — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:17:25 +0000

What the hell, are they serious? I’m 22, female, 5’0″, 110 lbs and I maintain my weight on 2500 – 3000 calories a day and I live a pretty sedentary lifestyle.

1000 calories is torture. Not just physically, but mentally as well. I’d venture a guess that all recovered anorexics would agree with that.

By: Azalais

Azalais — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 01:18:24 +0000

Nancy Lebovitz, gotta disagree. I know you have me friended on LJ–you must have missed my posts about how as a 135 pound size 12 teenager I had no idea that I was generally considered “hot” and went into eating disordered behaviour while dancing many hours a week, lost enough weight that I look like an alien (big head, wispy body) in pics from that era and my father STILL asks me if I don’t want to look like that again. I would probably do terrible things if I could get the body I had when I was first convinced I resembled a sea slug.

By: Adam G.

Adam G. — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:06:00 +0000

O.C. said: “People do all sorts of self harm: Cutting, pulling out hair, scarification, Munchausen’s, suicide… Nobody in psychology is claiming that these behaviors aren’t harmful just because someone is doing it to him/herself.”

Spot on. Absolutely. I’m so tired of doctors claiming that voluntary self-harm isn’t harmful if the results fit their prejudices about health and wellness…

By: Superla

Superla — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:23:10 +0000

Oh. my. double. goodness. I had never heard of the Minnesota Starvation Study until now.

My mind is blown. How much of my mental health problems have been due to poverty-related calorie restriction as a child and disordered eating/dieting as a teen/adult? My mind is blown!

Thank you for linking to that.

By: liz

liz — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:28:38 +0000

But…but..but O.C., they gain weight because they stop dieting! They fall off the wagon! You see! It does work as long as you’re strong enough to stick it out for the rest. of. your. life!!!

By: O.C.

O.C. — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:24:35 +0000

Another thought on the government’s opinion that dieting is TOTALLY not torture:

Putting prisoners on a calorie restricted diet is tacit admission that weight loss dieting doesn’t cause permanent weight loss. Because if it did, and if you then put prisoners on a regime that would cause permanent changes to their bodies, then wouldn’t that be equivalent to subjecting them to the removal of a body part without their consent? The only way this treatment isn’t torture is if it does NOT have a permanent effect.

Oh, but all you fatties should totally diet anyway.

By: steff

steff — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:06:36 +0000

it seems i can’t make it through a sentence without a typo – *yellow

By: steff

steff — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:05:56 +0000

ostara – i love the yello wallpaper reference – that story still huants me…

By: Ostara

Ostara — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:36:29 +0000

Auds and Kristin, YES to that too. It was something else I wanted to note when I brought up the whole masculine eating thing but obviously didn’t have the brainpower to remember to address. It was something I always felt was so hypocritical but never knew really how to explain because all my girlfriends who’d had more experience with men than me (which was pretty much all my girlfriends in college) swore up and down that men loved women who could EAT like me but then I’d say “but they don’t like when girls who look like I do eat like I do” and they’d say that was bogus. For some men, like my guy, sure it is bogus. For others though, it’s bogus to point out this sort of thing. And of course, to some of the most doucherific, it’s just your imagination. No one’s telling you this. Yes, exactly. Because as a woman, not only do I require less food than a man, but clearly I’m also just overly emotional and am making all this shit up. Yellow wallpaper, anybody?

By: CassandraSays

CassandraSays — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:13:31 +0000

Libby? Just for reference, since your doctor’s recommendation sounded batshit to me, I ran those numbers through a BMI calculator. At 120 pounds you would have a BMI of 18.2, which is officially underweight. No matter how nice she might be, that’s not a very good doctor if she’s instructing her patients to aim for being underweight.

This stuff pisses me off so much. If doctors are going to place so much importance on the damn chart you’d think they could at least learn to read it properly,