#EDAW2017

[recoveryisbeautiful]

Eating Disorder Awareness Week

Fact: you can't tell if someone has an eating disorder just by looking at them

Fact: eating disorders are not a choice

Fact: eating disorders can affect anyone

Fact: full recovery from an eating disorder is possible

[best-dress-fearless]

So a long and somewhat awkward post but this week was Eating Disorder Awareness week and march 1st was Self Harm Awareness day. I've suffered with anorexia, depression and anxiety for the past 7 years, resulting in being admitted inpatient 5 times. I've missed out on a lot because of my eating disorder. I was supposed to see @taylorswift on Speak Now tour when I was first inpatient in 2011. I was there for 3 months and had got my mum to bring in my Taylor CDs to listen to. On a particularly bad night for me there was a nurse sat in my room, she was flicking through my CDs and started talking about how much she loved @taylorswift and how she'd just been to the Speak Now tour. I was flooded with envy and heartbreak. I was supposed to be there, I was supposed to be crying over finally seeing Taylor for the first time and dancing to my favourite songs, I could picture it all so well, but instead I was crying over meal times and being fed through a tube. This was when it truly hit me how much I'd been missing out on and how much I'd continue to miss out on. The fearless quote has always meant a lot to me. I remember the day Fearless album was released and mum had driven me to pick a copy up in store and I came home and listened to it on repeat all night, uncovering all the hidden messages and reading the fearless quote on the last page. This was pre-eating disorder me but something about the fearless quote meant so much to me, is always liked the idea of being fearless. When I was in hospital that time my cousin had made me a bracelet saying "fearless" and i wore it every day. It was a constant reminder that my life was worth living. I'd finally got to see @taylorswift live in Wembley stadium for Summertime Ball. I was able to do that. I'd camped out for 2 days in a tent outside the gate because I was able to do that, I wasn't stuck within hospital walls. I was able to cry and dance along to my favourite songs. Coming up to my Red tour date I was in a particularly bad place and was hospitalised again but i soon got out because I couldn't miss this. I'd given up on ever hearing my favourite song Fearless live. I knew I'd never hear it and I'd come to terms with that. But I was at Red tour on 1st February 2014 and it happened. She sang fearless and I was a mess. I was seated in the skies and there was thousands of people but somehow I felt like the only person in the room, I felt like it was for me. The following weekend I got the fearless quote tattooed on my arm as a constant reminder of how special that day was and as a reminder that I am the fearless girl I dreamt of being. Every time I'm in a bad place I look down at my arm and I'm reminded of how it felt to be at that concert after missing out before and for a few minutes I'm content and at peace because in my head I'm back at that concert and I'm reminded that my life is worth living, despite my doubts and fears, keep fighting. So @taylorswift thank you. Thank you for teaching me to be fearless and sticking by me all these years. LoveLoveLove x

[sunflowershealing]

it’s eating disorder awareness week! well, yesterday was the last day. close enough. 

my eating disorder has told me a lot of lies over the years. there was a point last year where I was so wrapped up in it that I completely lost sight of who I am. it took a lot of time, a lot of difficult meals, and a lot of self compassion and patience to figure out the truth. 

the truth is that I’m a really strong person who didn’t choose this. it was about my weight as much as alcoholism is about the alcohol itself. the truth is that I will never have a thigh gap or a perfectly flat stomach, and my body was never meant to. I love my body, and I’ve forgiven myself for the damage I’ve done to it that wasn’t my fault. eating disorders try and take everything you have, and for me that almost included my life. 

I deserve recovery, even when I’d rather get punched in the face than finish a meal. I deserve all the love that I would always give to everyone but myself. 

I am resilient, I am powerful, and for the first time I can say that I truly love myself. flaws and all. 

[ryansallans]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSlx3SdALgo)

Earlier this week, I visited the LGBT Community Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where I did a reading from my book Second Son and then held a discussion with attendees on various topics related to being trans. In this clip, I provide a reading from a chapter where I speak about body image and then speak to eating disorders and the transgender community. This event was sponsored by FORGE. 

[undressedconsciousness]

Chronicles of Anorexia: The Girl, the Mirror and the Fridge,

aka, why i believe in eating disorder advocacy, supporting those in recovery, etc., 365 days a year, and not just one week out of the year. There is no need to post photos utilizing stigmatizing photos, emphasizing physical irrelevant symptoms, when these disorders are deadly at any weight, and much more complex than the physical symptoms they present.

“I have been my most sick at a completely healthy weight” (7:10)

[skeletems]

Eating (EDAW 2017) || http://emilygcx.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/battles-of-all-kind-involve-mental.html in my newest blog post, i talk about my relationship with eating. whilst i never had an eating disorder, my rather toxic relationship with eating in my teenage years and how i nearly found myself in a cycle with no way out in relation to binge eating. its not the easiest read, not the easiest thing to write. something i've never spoken about is my relationship with eating, so this to me was hard to accept. i'm also not an expert in ED's and don't claim to be, but i'm happy with this

[silverthreadsandneedles]

Personal and serious post for ED awareness week .... living with an eating disorder is a lifelong struggle. Some days you don't want to eat, some days you binge, some days you vomit so much you throat bleeds. But I'm really thankful to have developed a love of exercise and a healthier attitude to food. Thinking of those who are struggling. You'll get there, please just ask for help ❤️ #edrecovery #edawarenessweek #edawareness #eatingdisorderrecovery #selflove #selfloveclub #bodypositive #bodypositivity #bodyposi #tattoo #inked #powerful #girls #love #selfhelp #eatingdisorderawarenessweek #eatingdisorderawareness #eatingdisorderrecovery #edaw2017

[polysprachig]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKxu_iOOZsA)

Happy Eating Disorders Awareness Week, Everyone! In this German video, you’ll find out the difference between the terms “anorexie” und “Anorexia nervosa”.

[dinkyfitness]

I liked this basic information. As it’s Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2017 I wanted to open my mailbox to anyone suffering or knows someone who is. When I went back to rehab the last time four years ago they told me I’d never fully recover and they were wrong. Never give up. It gets better and recovery is better than anything your illness is telling you to do x

Follow me @

dinkyfitness.tumblr.com

SC / IG @ DinkyPrincess

FB @ TheDinkyPrincess

[ieatyourhatelikelovezine-blog]

#1

It was through my eating disorder that I started to learn to cut off parts of myself, whole parts of my body and my personality. Because that’s what an eating disorder feels like, it starts to feel like your body is taking up all this room that you’re not worthy of but then you need to cut off more and more and more. It’s never enough until you’re all gone. The problem is you never feel like you’re going to need to recover and one day you might need it all back.

The absolute kicker came when I realised that I wasn’t just at the mercy of what was deemed clinical disordered eating that induced such a feeling of ridding myself of excess parts of me. But I was at the mercy of an entire structure that determined I shrink myself and mould into the shape of a perfect woman. Expected to perform womanhood in everything from how much I weighed, how I dressed, how I related to men, what I wanted from relationships, whether I wanted children. Because gender is a performance, and as I began to recognise people saw me as growing into an adult woman I also began to recognise my queerness, my need to find meaning in ways that didn’t focus around heteronormativity, the family unit, in my ‘choice’ of labour, or generally in the trajectory that my life was supposed to follow. People are expected to perform binary gender roles and perform well, and I believe that it was partly under this weight in which I collapsed.

This morning, I began to start the long process that it takes for me to get ready. I know that the psychiatrist makes notes about the way in which you dress, whether you paint your nails, whether you’ve shaved, whether you wear make-up, and that this provides information as to where you are in your recovery. When I arrive at the Eating Disorders clinic, I am greeted by several women’s magazines. I go to the mirror and check I look like the women on the cover for they provide a marker as to what is acceptable. Though should I have a similar body weight, in this setting, I will be told I am coping poorly.

I then consider what I should do in order to make sure my problems are correctly received by the psychiatrist waiting for me, I practice what to say. I think about what people with eating disorders are expected to say on autopilot and I regurgitate this because failing to meet the criteria for this might put my treatment in jeopardy. I ask about my medication and this question is directed to the gatekeeper of my wellness, my psychiatrist, the person who has the power to allow or deny me access to the treatment that I need.

I come home with a headache and I think about the irony in which I am expected to perform a personality and appearance and how failure to do so may result in different treatment and - at worst - further diagnoses. But also about how those expectations create the conditions for my mental health problems. I think about the way in which women are expected to stay quiet as we perform double, triple, quadruple labour burdens and I think about how I’m going to get the energy to simply text anyone back.

I think about how this would feel, to be forced to access treatment when not only were you asked to perform gender, but also to perform and conform to a different culture. White supremacy has enforced its brand of gender roles through colonialism. It’s now well documented that people of colour are not only suffering eating disorders at high rates, but are being failed by professionals to recognise symptoms because they may show up in different ways to white people. At the same time, people of colour are sometimes medicalised and often othered for not conforming to western culture.

I feel tired and with all my energy gone, I sit down for the day to do some work and write this post. I make sure I look okay before anyone comes home.

[donaldduck18]

Today is the start of eating disorder awareness week!!

If you are struggling with an eating disorder, you don’t have to do so alone. By visiting your GP and telling them what you are struggling with, they can advise you of where and how to get support. 

If someone you know has an eating disorder, or you suspect they do, then continue to show them love and please don’t shout at them, even though it can be very stressful. Encourage them to get help by going to their GP and show them that they are not alone, but have support.

Eating disorders are very serious and someone who is struggling with it should never be treated with disrespect or teased because of it. There is plenty of support out there and you can call the ‘beat’ helpline at any time. 

Helpline 0808 801 0677 Youthline 0808 801 0711

Beat is a charity supporting those who are affected by eating disorders. The link attached leads you to their home page. 

[hopeisstronger-blog1]

Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2017: you are not alone 

There have been times during the last year when I have felt completely and utterly alone. I have felt like a freak, a malfunction, a weirdo. I watched my friends devour cheesy pizzas and sip sugary cocktails and I marvelled at their normalcy, their ability to simply eat and drink as they pleased without the suffocating dread and anxiety that consumed me whenever a crumb passed my lips. I lived in…

[mcho31]

EDAW2017

I've setup a fundraising page in honour of Eating Disorder Awareness Week here in Canada. I'm raising money for Sheena's Place - an organization that provides supports for those touched by eating disorders at no cost to their clients, and for the Student-Athlete Mental Health Initiative which is working to change the landscape around mental health for student-athletes. I'm not looking for much, I just wanted to try and do something for two organizations that are near and dear to my heart. Any donation helps and every share helps to reach as many people as possible. https://www.generosity.com/community-fundraising/support-sheena-s-place-and-student-athletes

[changingthedefinition]

Eating disorder awareness week 2017

Due to the chaos of this past week, I'm leaving it very last minute to make my post for #edaw2017 this years theme is 'early intervention' which is something is feel very passionately in, with regards to all aspects of mental health, not only eating disorders. For many reasons early intervention is important it would improve success rates of treatment, it would allow treatment durations to be shortened, allowing more people to be treated and saving cost and mostly it would save lives! Eating disorders are MENTAL ILLNESSES, once physical signs show a person is already seriously ill (regardless of what eating disorder that may be). Eating disorders are often secretive disorders, so are often hard to notice early on. Changes in eating habits, obsession over appearance, changes in style, emotional/family/financial stressors, mood fluctuations, withdrawal, uncharacteristic comments or actions. If you have concerns about someone, don't ignore it, approach them, support them and encourage them to seek the correct support ASAP. Eating disorders don't have to be a life sentence.

[ieatyourhatelikelovezine-blog]

ED awareness isn’t good enough for marginalised people

It’s important that as a feature of these #EDAW2017 blogs I talk about inclusivity in eating disorder awareness. So far, the majority of awareness conversations, infographics and campaigns are based around Anorexia Nervosa and include images of thin, white, cisnormative bodies that meet western beauty standards. Firstly, Anorexia Nervosa diagnoses only makeup 10% of ED diagnoses. For those unaware, eating disorder diagnoses currently include Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, OSFED, Binge Eating Disorder, Pica, ARFID, UFED and Rumination Disorder as per the DSM 5. Anorexia also includes 2 types: type 1 is Restricting Type, type 2 is Binging-Purging type. Though it’s really important to say at this point that we shouldn’t be wed to the DSM too much, as I’ll remind you that at one point homosexuality was a considered a ‘mental illness’ and being trans still is. So if you don’t fit into these categories, it doesn’t mean you aren’t suffering. Secondly, regardless of the coverage of eating disorders that suggest EDs remain in the domain of the thin, white, wealthy, cishet woman, this is far from the truth. Holding on to these stereotypes isn’t just annoying or inconvenient for people who fall outside of this category; it is deadly because they don’t get the support they need when they need it.

Focusing awareness around one type of eating disorder suffered by one type of person isn’t progressive and it’s not awareness. When I was on the decline into an eating disorder, I remember feeling like a fraud for complaining or going to my doctor to tell them I was struggling because I wasn’t ‘thin enough to have an eating disorder’. I’m aware that this is a common theme amongst people with EDs and I can’t speculate about all the reasons why. It could be in part that with an ED you might feel like you can never ‘be thin enough’, but I think it’s reasonable to assume the stereotype of someone with an ED really contributes to that feeling. At least that was the case with me, desperately searching for someone I could identify with in awareness campaigns or in the stories that charities relayed, but I struggled to find myself. The thing is, I did conform to a lot of the stereotypes and I still didn’t feel that I deserved or warranted any help and I did meet doctors that felt the same based on their lack of knowledge and most likely pervasive stereotypes.

What about when someone who knows that their thoughts about eating, food and exercise are damaging their wellbeing, but they’re a person of colour? Trans? Above the “healthy” BMI range? Weight is absolutely not an indicator of how ill a person is. There is no way to look like you have an eating disorder because an ED causes issues with your thoughts surrounding food, and therefore we need to widen our discussion about what it means to have an ED.

Here’s some information regarding identities that exist outside of the stereotypes:

·         “A recent study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that transgender youth are four times more likely than their cisgender, heterosexual, female peers to report a diagnosed eating disorder and twice as likely to report abusing weight loss pills and engaging self-induced vomiting.”  (Teen vogue doing some good feminist shit there.)

·         In fact, “In a survey of college students, transgender students were significantly more likely than members of any other group  to report an eating disorder diagnosis in the past year.” 

·         In one study, gay and bisexual boys reported being significantly more likely to have fasted, vomited, or taken laxatives or diet pills to control their weight in the last 30 days. Gay males were 7 times more likely to report binging and 12 times more likely to report purging than heterosexual males. 

·         While research indicates that lesbian women experience less body dissatisfaction overall, research shows that beginning as early as 12, gay, lesbian, and bisexual teens may be at higher risk of binge-eating and purging than heterosexual peers. 

·         It appears that despite heavily entrenched stereotypes, EDs affect people from different socio-economic backgrounds. It is not limited to the middle/upper-middle classes. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/1k70k3fd

·         Teenage girls from low-income families are 153% more likely to be bulimic than girls from wealthy families. 

·         People of colour suffer from eating disorders, and here’s a fantastic blog summing up how and why they might suffer and be under-represented much better than I can This is important because “A 2006 study found that clinicians were less likely to assign an eating disorder diagnosis to a fictional character based on her case history if her race was represented as African-American rather than Caucasian or Hispanic,” (taken from this post) and you bet this translates into real life.

·         NEDA’s website shows “Black teenagers are 50% more likely than white teenagers to exhibit bulimic behavior, such as binging and purging.”

·         15% of gay and bisexual men and 4.6% of heterosexual men had a full or subthreshold eating disorder at some point in their lives

·         A study of 2,822 students on a large university campus found that 3.6% of males had positive screens for ED. The female-to-male ratio was 3-to-1 (Eisenburg, 2011).

·         Subclinical eating disordered behaviors (including binge eating, purging, laxative abuse and fasting for weight loss) are nearly as common among males as they are among females (Mond, 2014).

·         It’s not just young people who suffer – “From 1999 to 2009, hospitalizations involving eating disorders increased for all age groups, but hospitalizations for patients aged 45-65 increased the most, by 88 percent. In 2009, people over the age of 45 accounted for 25% of eating disorder-related hospitalizations.” 

Belonging to a marginalized community does a number of things: it causes the conditions for more trauma and stress and of course, these things can lead to mental health issues that clear the way for unhealthy coping mechanisms like an ED. It also, from my own and others experiences, creates a more intense feeling of wanting to try harder to fit in with societal norms. This is possibly a crude way of putting it, but for me, my thought processes went a little like: “okay, I’m bisexual and this puts me at a disadvantage, therefore as a trade-off I have to try harder to conform in another aspect”. This doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone, though I definitely experienced this myself.

Please consider the above when you’re raising awareness, because the narratives that surround EDs have a huge impact on who receives treatment. Yes, awareness campaigns aren’t the be all and end all, but it’s a start, and so our language and actions need to be inclusive and thoughtful.

[thosehummingbirds]

Help those with #eatingdisorders get treatment quickly. I support Beat's #EDAW2017 campaign #EarlyInterventionEDs http://thndr.me/qM56C1