#tw orthorexia

[anabeladaily]

I bought a child size shirt!

My plan is for it to fit perfectly on me, even a bit loose would be great! It's made to fit a 7/8 year old boy.

Today I ate about 600/700 calories today, I still feel hungry but that's okay because nothing taste as good as skinny feels.

I also got a 91% on a test so I'm happy about that, and strangely that made me more excited to eat less!

[hussyknee]

Tfw you colonize half the world for spices and three hundred years later this is where your civilization's ended up.

[ellaangelxx]

found on 📌trest and thought i’d share bc this was so motivating to read. (all credits to original owner 💞)

[jellyfish-soda]

Say it with me!

Ana ➡️ Ortho ➡️ BED ➡️ Repeat!

[t4tozier]

projecting on that elf,,(tw for porter ED mentality)

jace with GI issues that make it very difficult for him to digest food vs porter who eats exactly what he needs each day and no more, who doesn’t gain any pleasure from food and views it only as fuel. jace having this built up resentment about it because porter chooses to restrict himself when jace doesn’t have that option. both of them taking supplements but jace has to because it’s the only way he’ll get any nutrients and porter decides to to reduce the amount of food he has to consume. maybe porter sees how upset it makes jace and tries to stop obsessing over macros and calories when jace is just trying to get through each day without passing out from lack of nutrients. it’s not easy, but it’s also not like his partner is cruising through life, either, so he gives it a shot.

[thehappyvet]

Me: I binge eat when I'm stressed or emotional

Therapist: what was your go to meal

Me: a large double quarter pounder meal from Maccas

Therapist: oh so an average meal?

Me: ...

But no, my mum and dads obsession with diet, weight and appearance and only commenting on my weight when I'm skinny and "look healthy" hasn't messed with my brain at all 🙃

[skelespidey]

HOW DO U FEEL ABOUT ORTHOREXICS

i mean i don't know if i can have any opinion on any sort of ed or anything cuz like well. i have one. and thing is that it's unhealthy but it's more than the disorder and more about the person behind it

so honestly unless youre an asshole who happens 2 b orthorexic and is an asshole due 2 your orthorexia somehow then frankly all orthorexicsare welcome :333 every1 is welcome till they aint, i dont judge people :p unless theyre bad 2 begin with thennn....

[dorianbrightmusic]

Somewhat Quick Guidelines for How Not to be Triggering to ED-Havers

i'll do a more elaborate version of this some other time, but i have just consumed way too much youtube and i need to get some very mixed feelings out of my system

(tw for some discussion of EDs and the areas these render most sensitive)

Don't equate 'eating disorder' with 'anorexia nervosa'

The most common eating disorders are Binge-Eating Disorder and OSFED – according to Santomauro et al. (2021) and Yasmina and Keski-Rahkonen (2022), OSFED is more common than BED, so yeah. OSFED includes many, many categories in and of itself, including: subthreshold bulimia, subthreshold BED, atypical anorexia, purging disorder, and night eating syndrome. Orthorexia isn't recognised in the DSM-5-TR, but should be. I could not tell you what the most common form of OSFED is – I'd always thought it was atypical anorexia, but some studies I can find on a general population point more to purging disorder, subthreshold BN, subthreshold BED, (see Stice, Marti, & Rohde (2013), while this more recent study in a less reputable journal by Hay et al. (2023) places atypical AN as the most common OSFED. Either way, full-threshold AN is comparatively very, very rare.

Most eating disorders are not becoming emaciated + growing lanugo. If you did become emaciated and grow lanugo, then I'm proud of you for surviving your ED every day, because they are the absolute worst illnesses. However, you are also in a substantial minority. That doesn't make you any less valid—all it means is that EDs aren't necessarily traditional anorexia.

I'll get onto the main difference between atypical and non-atypical AN in a minute, but for now, let's say that even if atypical AN is horrifyingly common, most EDs aren't anorexia of any kind. Most EDs are one of the other kinds. And while good AN rep is great and rare, using 'eating disorder' to mean 'anorexia' is incredibly dismissive of the immense and debilitating of eating disordered behaviour out there. It's limited in the same way as using 'neurodivergent' to just mean 'autism + ADHD' – just as neurodivergence is much, much broader than Au/DHD (and this isn't to detract from the validity of Au/DHD folks), EDs are much, much broader than anorexia, and using 'eating disorder' as a synonym for 'thin and restrictive' is an extremely limited definition.

Moreover, many ED-havers go to immense, immense efforts to downplay their symptoms. The common refrain you'll hear in ED recovery is 'but I'm not sick enough to need help' – and the more narrow the operational definition of ED, the more people are made to feel they aren't sufficiently ill to have a real problem. EDs thrive in secrecy. They are often silent, and they are lethal. By using 'eating disorder' as a euphemism for 'anorexia', we give power to each of these illnesses by letting them remain silent, too macabre and mysterious to acknowledge.

Be specific. Do not talk about someone having 'an eating disorder'. Do not use it as a smokescreen behind which to hide nervousness. Say the exact disorder, or, if unsure, use an adjective: a restrictive eating disorder, an ED with purging, an ED with bingeing, etc.

2. 'Eating disordered' does not mean thin

This goes for all EDs, and especially for anorexia. Argh.

Bulimia is often overweight, and can be any weight. BED can be any weight. ARFID can be any weight. Pica, rumination disorder, night-eating syndrome, and orthorexia can be any weight. Moreover, a thin person with an ED may not have AN—they might have ARFID, BED, BN, or so many more.

And most importantly, most anorexics are not underweight. There exists a diagnostic distinction between AN and so-called atypical AN, wherein the sole difference is that atypical anorexics are not underweight. That's it. That's the one difference.

It's also a completely BS distinction, since ED psychopathology is as bad/worse in atypical AN, and atypical AN recovery rates are marginally worse. The two are the same illness. How thin you are does not necessarily correlate with how restrictive you are, and every use of 'anorexic' as a synonym for 'thin' is indicative of a total misunderstanding of the complexity of this disorder.

Have courage. Give me obese characters with BN and AN, normal-weight characters with BED, characters of all weights with ARFID. Please: I'm outright begging at this point.

3. Sensationalising weight makes us feel, unsurprisingly, fairly awful

Writing eating-disordered characters by focussing on their weight is an excellent way to sensationalise the illness and implant a horrible feeling in audience mouths. If I google search images for anorexia, I will see ribs and spines everywhere. If I google search images for bulimia, I will see extremely thin young women eating pizza or crouched beside toilets. If I google search images for binge-eating disorder, there's no end to the pizza.

There is no definitive size eating-disordered folks are. But the more we see EDs represented in extremes of thinness and fatness—think To the Bone or The Whale—the more we, as a society, convey the message that by not fitting a size mould, people aren't sick enough to have a problem. And that perpetuates the cycle of hiding disordered behaviours and getting thinner.

Making a show of how thin or fat certain characters are is a great way to make people with EDs feel embarrassed either by their similarity to the thin/fat people depicted ('wow, I am disgusting') or by their lack of similarity ('I was never anywhere near that thin. God, I couldn't even succeed at being a failure'). So, please don't emphasise specific emaciated or larger body parts as explicitly indicative of an eating disorder.

4. Please keep the numbers out of this

I don't have the perspective to speak from the POV of those with other disorders, but I can say this much: Anorexia is a very analytical illness—will I be small enough to fit in this space, hold this, do this? —and seeing someone else's minimum weight is an excellent way to make someone feel as if they are a failure for being less thin. This is especially problematic given that 'xxkg lady' is a headline that sells like wildfire in a world where most anorexics aren't thin. I love Hank Green and his work, but the CrashCourse video on eating disorders is an excellent example of how not to handle talking about weight: explicit height/weight numbers are mentioned for the hypothetical sick woman, emphasising the role of emaciation in the illness. It's a bit sensationalist and very triggering.

This is also one of the things Heartstopper (the comic – I haven't watched the show) does right. Though it's not perfect, Charlie's weight is never given a number, and while he's shown to be unhealthily thin, we never get an explicit close-up of any bones or the like. It's other physical symptoms, like fainting and constant coldness, that make it clear that he's seriously, seriously ill. And that took immense, immense tact. Also the fact that later on, after diagnosis, he's explicitly said to have anorexia, rather than the smokescreen of 'an ED', and that he still struggles after he starts recovery... those are all very respectful ways of writing ED-having characters. Alice Oseman, I tip my hat to you.

I'd recommend against mentioning numbers of calories in anything (guess who once scrolled through an ED blog, found out the number of calories in a normal breakfast food, and then was promptly very scared of eating such), or about mentioning explicit amounts of food. Moreover, if you're going to depict a character eating, please do it carefully.

If you want to mention any numbers when writing eating-disordered characters: mention blood pressure, temperature or rate of weight loss/gain (I don't think it's awful to say 'lost/gained this much in this much time), but keep the discourse around rate of any weight change as neutral as possible. If I say I weighed xyz kilograms at my sickest, that doesn't do justice to the illness. If I say my temperature was about 35 degrees and my blood pressure was 59/40, it does, but it's not exactly something that can be made competitive as easily.

5. Don't sensationalise amounts

See above. We don't need to know the explicit number of slices of pizza/bags of xyz/bars of abc that a character consumed during a binge, nor how little a character with a restrictive ED had for breakfast. There is an immense amount of horror that can be engendered through implication. One exception—showing that a character can remember the exact number of whatever food they consumed (so long as this isn't being done in kcal/kj) is an excellent way to show disordered eating behaviour! e.g. I generally count how many water crackers I eat in a snack and have strict (low) limits on how many I'm allowed per day. This is proof AN doesn't go away too quickly.

6. Don't sensationalise weight, generally

This goes out to every time i've seen neuroleptics bashed for having the side-effect of weight gain, but without it being then explained that there are a host of many, many other side effects, most of which are much worse than weight gain.

This goes out to every time I walked out of the ED clinic and saw the Jenny Craig ads across the road.

This goes out to every time I see losing weight promoted as a panacea for every single health condition, including those that cause weight gain.

Showing weight gain in an overly negative light or isolating it when it's one of many, many other things in a category is just tasteless. Please, don't do this.

7. Don't sensationalise kinds of food

Some binge-eaters will never touch pizza or chocolate in a binge. Some anorexics friggin' love chocolate. Don't assume a diagnosis necessarily means one will have or lack a sweet tooth.

8. Setting up ground for comparisons is... worrisome

We probably don't want to know the specifics of someone's diet, clothing size, or any of the like. When handling EDs, please don't focus on the specifics of what someone consumes or how large/small they are.

9. Don't assume EDs are character traits

BN and AN are correlated with perfectionism and harm avoidance, amongst other things, but EDs aren't personality traits. Bingeing is not sloppiness. Restriction is not vanity. Please don't assume these behaviours are indicative of what's in the soul.

10. Please don't focus on white, young, otherwise-neurotypical women

People of all ethnicities, ages, genders, and neurotypes can have eating disorders, natch. There is no single way to look or be eating-disordered.

11. Please don't assume we get better immediately

When you live with an ED, you live with a voice in the back of your head that is constantly vying to hit the self-destruct button. And it isolates you and mimics your own voice, and after a time, it becomes extremely difficult to tell it from your own thoughts. It's being taken over and possessed, semi-conscious, from the inside. It's living in a trance and being made a puppet. It is learned helplessness. It is sewn into the fabric of your thought, your speech, your values. Even before you are acutely sick, you live with it inside you. Learning to survive an ED is learning to live with it beside you—becoming less helpless to the behaviour, but no less aware of the thought for a very long time. Recovery is possible, but it's most certainly not linear, and most certainly a long, long process.

Recovery is not merely the cessation of the behaviour, or weight restoration. It's a disservice to ED-havers to say you can easily get to a point of never having ED thoughts ever again. So know that we are living with our illnesses every day, but that even so, we can move on. Grant us the grace to let us admit we won't always be well, and guide us nevertheless to believing in our own ability to recover.

[galaxyslime]

I finally visited my mom for dinner this weekend (after she stood me up twice for lunch lol) and she asked me what I eat for breakfast and I said "oh I have quick oats most mornings". She proceeded to ask me which brand I ate and she literally started tearing up when I told her I usually eat Great Value or Quaker oats. She is so orthorexia brained that she cried bc I don't buy the organic Bob's Red Mill kind. She told me the Quaker kind is a "guaranteed death sentence" bc of the glyphosate lmfaoooo I cannot take it.

[bipolarmango]

It upsets me when doctors don't understand the anxiety and mental distress that comes with orthorexia.

There's a HUGE difference between people who have a "healthy lifestyle" but can drop it and go out, eat whatever they want when they feel like it, skip an exercise when needed/when there's a special occasion and so forth, AND people who cannot because the mental illness won't let them do it.

It's absurd that I have to justify and explain to doctors why I don't want to go back to my orthorexia years when I spent hours planning my meals and could never eat anything I had not cooked myself because I had cut out literally everything; how I cried before going for my second exercise of the day because it was raining cats and dogs and I was hurting but I had to go or the anxiety would have killed me; when I had to say 'no' when friends invited me to concerts or parties because I had to workout and going would have ruined my schedule; when I was just drinking water in bars those few times when I went because I couldn't drink alcohol and light soda and mocktails had ingredients I couldn't consume; when my whole life was circling around exercise and food and what is being put inside the food and when it is time to eat again and exercise again and how clean the food is and if I'm going to get sick from it.

But all the doctors see is how I didn't eat any processed foods and how I had nothing but homecooked meals with a ton of vegetables and drank nothing but water and had so much exercise. For them, I was living such a healthy life, and because I wasn't starving (like I have been with anorexia) or vomiting, I wasn't sick.

[anabeladaily]

Losing weight is all I can think about

I'm currently in my university class but all i can think about is getting skinnier. I haven't eaten anything all day and I feel great, it makes me feel so much better.

Unfortunately I can't ⭐ve myself for long because I need the brain power to study hard.

UPDATE-

I ended up eating about 500 calories today, maybe a bit less bc i wasn't able to finish my plate (YEY!!)

I felt so guilty for even eating at all, so it wasn't very enjoyable.

Does anyone have any tips for stopping thinking about food and my body the whole day? I can't focus on anything else!!

[lrg-iced-cbrew]

Omg this dude is working on our house and like hes so nice but I look like a freak pacing around on the trampoline to get my steps in.

[ellaangelxx]

😩 having a cold, crispy diet coke as “dessert” >>>>>

[laiilo]

I want to be a doll. I want to look pretty and pure. I want to look angelic. I want to be a literal angel on earth. But i can't because of the stupid fat coating my disgusting body. I need rid of it so i can become divine.

[yourheartinyourmouth]

i am so fucking glad i escaped the cult of Weight Loss.

i walked into the changing room at the gym and a group of women were there with a scale and a measuring tape. jesus christ. that’s straight up eating disorder/orthorexia territory.

[canyouhearthelight]

This is literally what my eating disorder, orthorexia, is like.

Thank you, @drbibliophile ❤️. I fimd it so hard to put into words sometimes.

(please note, readers, I am being serious. I adore drbib, and this really is what orthorexia is like.)

It’s so incredible how there is simultaneously diet culture that says only eating the way of our ancestors is healthy while there are also areas of diet culture that says you can’t eat an apple because an apple = sugar and sugar bad. Meanwhile the people who think it’s only healthy to eat the food of cavemen are drinking their protein shakes they found in the wild.

One week there will be a news headline about a study showing that eating chicken eggs is bad for cholesterol. The next week there’s a news headline about a study that shows eating chicken eggs helps you fight cancer. Both of these news articles made for clicks conveniently don’t mention that the collective sample size of these two studies was fifteen people over a course of five months.

This yoga instructor says you can’t eat between noon and 3 pm. This doctor who had less than ten hours of training on nutrition says you shouldn’t eat after 6 pm. This Instagram dietician says intermittent starving fasting is good for you. This celebrity fake doctor with a TV show says you should only eat on Wednesdays and if the weather is overcast. 

Your mom who grew up hating her body because people would judge her for her appearance is on her 20th juice cleanse, but it’s for health, not because a lifetime of discrimination made her feel worthless. And hey, you should do this juice cleanse with her! And then the included three hour workout videos! And this new keto diet meant to help children with epilepsy looks good, let’s try that together! Oh, you don’t want to eat at all anymore? Well, at least not eating is good for you!

You should only eat meat. No, you should only eat vegetables and fruits. Scratch that, fruits have carbs. You should only eat cold-blooded mammals and seaweed. Wait, it’s actually okay to eat fruit again! Does this protein bar have omega-3 fatty acids? Wow, you don’t eat fat-free, dairy-free, carb-free, sugar-free milk? Do you even care about your health? Things without gluten taste worse, so that must mean they’re healthy! I can’t believe you actually ate a whole bag of chips. Yes, it was a single-serving bag meant for one person, but you still ate a whole bag of chips. I could never. Oh, my weekly supply of diet food arrived, and only double the cost of regular food from the grocery store! What a steal!! You actually feel pangs of hunger when you don’t eat and then listen to those hunger cues? What a fat ass. You know if you eat a single piece of cake you’ll get diabetes, an illness that is very complex and is actually extremely based on genetics, right?

You can never win with diet culture.