#cw eating disorders
to-dance-beneath-the-diamond-sky:
Friendly reminder that 1200 calories is the recommended amount for a 5 year old
this hit me.
another fact is that 500 calories isn’t even enough for a new born.
why did I go so long convinced that going over 500 in a day was the end of the world?
Another friendly reminder that the United States used 1,000 calorie diets as torture for political prisoners and justified it using the diet industry.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/17/bush-torture-memos-commer_n_188190.html
In a footnote to a May 10, 2005, memorandum from the Office of Legal Council, the Bush attorney general’s office argued that restricting the caloric intake of terrorist suspects to 1000 calories a day was medically safe because people in the United States were dieting along those lines voluntarily.
“While detainees subject to dietary manipulation are obviously situated differently from individuals who voluntarily engage in commercial weight-loss programs, we note that widely available commercial weight-loss programs in the United States employ diets of 1000 kcal/day for sustain periods of weeks or longer without requiring medical supervision,” read the footnote. “While we do not equate commercial weight loss programs and this interrogation technique, the fact that these calorie levels are used in the weight-loss programs, in our view, is instructive in evaluating the medical safety of the interrogation technique.”
Anotheranother friendly reminder that the Minnesota Starvation Experiment subjected adult men who were VOLUNTEERS to 1,560 calorie diets and the psychological effects were so profound that one volunteer cut three of his own fingers off and could not remember why.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment
These men were volunteers who knew exactlywhat they would be going through and when it would end, and who believed they were doing it for a good and moral reason (the research was used to help rehabilitate victims of starvation and famine at the end of WWII).
And these are the things we are expected to engage in FOREVER to stay at a “healthy” weight.
Reading about the Minnesota Starvation experiment was my wake-up call. It was what kicked me out of my eating disorder. The guy missing three fingers, whatever his name was, he was the last straw for me.
Scared me so fucking bad I stopped restricting my food that day, and never went back to it.
Just bringin’ this back around like I sometimes do.
Wow. This really hit me hard.
EAT
Fun fact– calorie restriction exacerbates symptoms of pretty much *every* mental illness.
Anorexia has ~16% mortality rate, slightly higher than acted upon suicidal ideation. It’s more lethal than actively trying to kill oneself and this is why.
Calorie restriction exacerbates symptoms of pretty much every physical condition as well.
“Spencer” is a meditation on practical, private horrors.
Review includes discussions of disordered eating, anorexia, bulimia, and mentions of self-harm.
***Spoilers***
Spencer is directed by Pablo Larraín who also helmed “Jackie.” He takes a story we’re familiar with, JFK’s assassination, and presents it as a murder. In “Jackie” a woman witnesses her husband get murdered right in front of her. She has to deal with the practical fallout e.g. where will we live, where will the kids go to school, how will I get a job. She has obvious advantages but in the face of personal trauma she is bound to struggle.
“Spencer” is a similar meditation on practical, private horrors. Diana is a woman who would really benefit from divorcing a checked-out, loser husband and ditching in-laws that are at best indifferent and at worst saboteurs. She is coping by controlling what she can resulting in self-harm, impulsivity, and an eating disorder. Like “Jackie” we’re presented with a captivating performance of an historical figure and attention to the details of the period, but it’s really about a woman realizing she has to get divorced in order to have some hope of future happiness.
Except, uh oh, she’s a princess. Diana ruminates on the fact that she’s married into a family descended from a man who murdered his wives. The monarchy is a multigenerational shit-show and deciding how to get out is agonizing. Despite being young, white, attractive, intelligent, and wealthy, she’s overwhelmed.
“Spencer” is a devastating depiction of anorexia and bulimia, succeeding in showing why someone would engage in disordered eating and how the behavior manifests. There’s a moment where Diana raids the fridge late at night. She’s dressed in jeans and a sweater, an outfit that for most of the world would be fine to wear to a family dinner, but here she’s out of place. She finds it impossible to eat in front of others, so here’s a moment at the end of the day where she can be in and out of control in the same moment. The horror of her being interrupted in this intimate act is hard to overstate.
There’s another moment when Charles says that the bees made the honey and the cooks worked on this and you could, you know, not vomit as a thank you. It’s a horrible thing to say. It stands in contrast with the head chef who tells Diana about the waste from the food prep, specifically from the pheasant hunt. He doesn’t belabor the point but in mentioning there is food waste, we touch on something related to disordered eating. Once you eat food it’s garbage. Someone trying to stop purging should be absolved from feeling like they’re wasting food. It’s garbage at that point. Really dealing with food waste and food insecurity is important, but torturing yourself with guilt in addition to being bulimic doesn’t help.
All around incredible cast. Kristen Stewart deserves every good thing said about her. Timothy Spall is a monster. Sean Harris shows his range by playing nice. And Sally Hawkins is great. This movie made me think that if Sally Hawkins hugged you, your problems would go away for a half hour.
