...Until Eating Disorders Are No More
Feel free to use the Ask box or to email me at EDsNoMore@gmail.com.
An eating disorder is nothing to be ashamed of!
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Be careful what you wish for… because you might get treated like a woman.
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How to handle a drunk girl passed out on your couch.
wow perfect
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“Understanding what intersex means also helps with understanding what it doesn’t mean. Our bodies are natural and normal and healthy; while some...”
Two years ago I was invited by the Eating Disorders Coalition to participate in the Spring 2011 Congressional Briefing. I put on a fancy suit and gave a speech on Capitol Hill about my experiences with anorexia and how drastic action is needed to save lives from eating disorders.
“When I should have been making friends, focusing on school work, and growing into the person I was going to become, I instead lost two years of my life to anorexia, two years of my life that I can’t ever get back. My senior year in high school, I had a falling out with some close friends, and fell into a deep depression. I lost my appetite, and couldn’t sleep. I didn’t know what was happening – everything occurred so quickly. Though I had visibly lost weight, it was a few months after my problems began that I ever bothered weighing myself. Co-workers who didn’t know me well would compliment me on the weight I’d lost. My friends could tell something was wrong, they just didn’t know how to approach it. Not knowing what was wrong myself, when they’d ask if I was OK I would insist that I was fine (a word that a good friend of mine refers to as ‘the real F-word’). Eventually, someone at work asked me how much weight I had lost. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind, and out of sheer curiosity I went home and weighed myself, and my bitter relationship with numbers began.”
You can access the full speech transcript here.
Striving for Perfection: Body Image in Males
Got to participate in a panel discussion on body image in males for The Stream, a program which airs on Al Jazeera English. Really stoked to have been a part of it, especially because of the other panelists. Alan Aragon, a nutrition and body building expert, had a lot of unique things to talk about that were new to me.
Here’s a clip from my interview last month with Huffington Post Live about eating disorders in men. You can watch the full segment here.
Click the title for my full write-up from Lobby Day last week!
“We hold a Congressional Briefing every time there’s a Lobby Day to offer in-depth testimonies from a variety of people who have been effected by eating disorders. This Spring, the spotlight was on diversity, because eating disorders don’t discriminate by race, gender, orientation, cultural background, or socioeconomic status.
Among the speakers was Sarah Yeung, an immigrant from Hong Kong, shared a moving testimony about developing an eating disorder after relocating to the U.S. and the challenges she faced getting treatment. Another woman named Tracy Smith spoke on behalf of her daughter, Reanna, who died while waiting for treatment to be approved. Tracy had been told by her insurance company that her daughter’s eating disorder was not “life threatening” and denied treatment. Desperate, Tracy took a new job with a better insurance plan, but Reanna died just two weeks before the plan would have come into effect.
I wish these were uncommon stories. But I hear them all the time. In a country like the United States where eating disorders have been observed, treated, and diagnosed for over half a century, it is shameful and tragic and wrong that people are dying from a treatable and preventable problem in record numbers.”
The sign I’m holding reads: ‘ I support FREED because some people still don’t believe men can get eating disorders. I was anorexic for two years.’
Finally had a chance to see Miss Representation last night at a VCU screening, and got my review right here!
“Other films, such as America the Beautiful, go a little bit more in depth in their dissection of the current culture surrounding body image and how we regard women. But, if America the Beautiful is a meticulous analysis of that culture, Miss Representation is a call to arms against it and the patriarchy which created and reinforces all the problems brought up, both for those of us living it now but especially for the rising generation.”
It’s impossible to know what kind of perception someone has of their own body image. My co-workers who complimented my extreme weight loss back when I was anorexic were really just reinforcing the disease and giving me excuses to not worry about what was happening. I think if we are to break out of our weight-obsessed culture and move towards something where people are valued for who they are and not what they weigh, one of the 1st places to start is with our own perceptions and ideas with how we perceive our fellow humans.
Is it really appropriate or even friendly to make random comments on someone’s body, regardless of how short, tall, fat, or thin they are? Without context, like my estranged ex-girlfriend excitedly telling me how healthy I now look, the only conclusion I have is No, it’s neither appropriate nor friendly, because despite how frequently and casually body image and weight get discussed, it remains a deeply personal subject for many people.
Excerpt from ‘Hey, Skinny!’, one of my favorite posts from last year. You can read the full post here.
I’ll put up a few more to keep the positivity flowing for ED Awareness Week!
The last week in February is Eating Disorder Awareness Week! In honor of it, myself and some other writers are doing a blog series on Reasons for Recovery.
All the posts so far are available here, with more to come before the end of the month!
