Are you looking for online therapy? While I currently do not offer online therapy, this week’s video sponsor BetterHelp, can connect you with a licensed, online therapist, please visit: https://betterhelp.com/kati
Binge eating disorder, what is it, why does it happen and some common misconceptions about it. Binge Eating Disorder is frequently consuming unusually large amounts of food in one sitting and feeling that eating behavior is out of control. Please seek out professional help if your binge eating is regular and excessive, and, your physical and mental health are affected. Related health conditions can include bulimia, anxiety, stress and trauma.
TIMESTAMPS00:00:00 Introduction to Binge Eating Disorder video 00:00:20 Episode sponsor - BetterHelp https://betterhelp.com/kati00:01:04 DIAGNOSIS: What Is Binge Eating Disorder 00:04:21 Why do we struggle with Binge Eating Disorder 00:07:04 5 Myths about Binge Eating Disorder ——-
The only sin or guilt i should have in my food is the amount of undistracted time it gives me to ruminate on my moral or social failings. I want my coffee to advertise that it WILL remind me of all the people I failed to save, not some bull about excess calories.
Tumblr isn’t letting me share this YouTube video as anything other than a link, but watch this short video in horror with me at how normalized diet culture/fatphobia is that Tom Holland was forced onto a FIVE HUNDRED CALORIE DIET that caused him to starve so much that he felt the need to steal food and somehow the big takeaway here is not how horrifying diet culture is. The takeaway is apparently that he’s a meme. This is something you would hear in a fucking dystopian society, but it’s real.
“Well I perceive myself as fat so I can say it if I want to” no.
There are millionaires who perceive themselves as poor, they aren’t poor and saying “I’m so poor” does not actual put them into the category of “poor.”
You’re not an honorary fat person because you perceive yourself as being fat. You don’t get to invade fat spaces (think — “the body positivity movement is toxic because they don’t allow me, a skinny able bodied person, to invade a space made for disabled and fat bodies” — sorta thing) because you perceive yourself as fat.
You’re not fat, your unhappy. And there is nothing wrong with wanting be a size 4 when you’re a size 8. The problem is you invading fat spaces, invalidating actual fat people’s experiences and, pushing yourself into a community that you’re not apart of while also moving the goal post for others who are actually fat and actively wanting to lose weight.
You’re, whether knowingly or unknowingly, contributing to the unhealthy and unrealistic ideals of diet culture.
Other words you can use to describe feeling like your body isn’t the way you want to it be:
Bloated
Uncomfortable
Stuffy
Disagreeable
Unhappy
Confined
Awkward
Uneasy
Tense
Self-conscious
There are so many ways to decided being displeased with our body whether it’s how we feel about it or how we feel about how it looks. There’s no reason to use “fat” as a feeling.
Okay someone asked me earlier “Hey CT, you study the occult for a living, off the top of your head, what’s the most popular form of the occult in today’s world?”
Pseudo-nutrition. Bar none. A massive amount of the fad dieting world goes beyond simple misinformation and ignorance and full on into a systemized non-scientific theory of anatomy and nutrition that 100% qualifies as magic. If you replace the term “toxins” with “evil ghosts” half of these blogs would sound like sumerian curse tablets.
Also this whole ordeal has really opened my eyes to how deeply messed up people’s relationship to food is in our society, even people who seem relatively reasonable about it. I’m not talking about impossible standards of thinness or fad diets or weight loss pills, I knew about all that stuff. I’m talking about how even people who would NEVER endorse that stuff still have so damn many harmful ideas about food and weight and exercise and health.
Such as my parents. Sure, they would never encourage me to become underweight or cut entire food groups from my diet or try ~intermittent fasting~, in fact they would be rightly concerned if I did any of those things. They’re Reasonable People™️. They know you can’t fix all your health problems by not eating these 3 foods like the click bait article said.
But. They still believe things like:
There are such things as bad foods and good foods.
The body’s internal cues cannot be fully trusted. Without external control over our impulses we would overindulge in “unhealthy” foods and overeat in general.
There are right and wrong times to eat, particularly for sugary foods.
Body weight changes are determined based on the simple model of “calories in, calories out” ie. intake vs exercise.
Based on the above, fatness both CAN and SHOULD be “fixed” thru diet (restriction) and exercise (purging, but they are not ready to hear that).
Based on the above, that if someone is not at a “healthy” weight, it is because they are lazy and/or lack self control around food (not them, of course, they have REASONS why they gained weight. Sure, it required their due effort and willpower to “fix” but it wasn’t their fault in the first place. Unlike other people. Gotta love that cognitive dissonance.)
When I was sick and having trouble eating, they were worried about me, and they wanted me to regain the weight I lost. But the ideas they instilled in me about what it means to eat healthily have been a barrier in my recovery, which they seem to see as complete just bc my weight is back into its previous range. And once my weight was back to normal, they felt perfectly okay expressing concerns about me gaining “too much” weight. Typing this I realize, if I had been about 20 pounds heavier before getting sick, they would probably have seen the weight loss as a silver lining.
For fuck’s sake, they started dieting while that was happing to me. I was struggling to force down any amount of food and watching them weigh and measure all their sad little portions, counting up the calories. I don’t think it ever occurred to them that might be upsetting for me. My mom keeps gleefully updating me on her weight loss as if I’m not the last person in the house who wants to talk about that.
All this from people who seem relatively reasonable around food. I’m vibrating with rage now.
I take no credit for the image, it’s not mine, but I totally agree with the sentiment
Ew.
Sentiments like this are rooted in misogyny, classism, and a deep misunderstanding of diet culture that borders on orthorexia.
Let’s call out the obvious slut shaming first: What is so bad about people being “fast”? We know that you’re not actually referring to a person’s diet here - No one ever said “That girl is so fast” while referring to her penchant for chicken nuggets. This phrasing is misogyny with a wink at the end, so that it can be passed off as health advice. You’re condemning people for having sex and then are claiming that it taints them forever afterward. This isn’t acceptable. It’s gross and wholly unnecessary.
And calling someone “greasy” and “fake”? Aside from being cruel and gratuitous judgements about another person’s body, they are implications that strangers are required to follow your own personal standards of appearance and appearance. Are folks really going to condemn “greasy” while glass skin and dewy makeup looks are still dominating the cosmetic world? Or is this only bad and “fake” when an Instagram filter isn’t involved? Either way, shame on you for mocking another person’s body.
“But this isn’t actually about people!” the claim often goes, “It’s about unhealthy food!” So…what’s wrong with eating a meal that was prepared quickly? Or one that is indulgent? Or one made with added nutritional content? Fortified cereal is both fast and fake, but is a great part of a balanced diet, while the occasional side of greased up bacon can be fantastic for both the body and soul. These are not foods or descriptors that are inherently bad for you.
By using these highly charged negative terms to describe food, you are contributing to a culture where people feel guilty for eating. Food is not instrinsically unhealthy, nor should it be avoided in all circumstances. And above all else, food is not an indicator of your moral value. Let’s not fall into that pattern of thinking, because it only leads to an unhealthy relationship with dietary restriction.
There comes a point where we need to acknowledge that there is a limit to the actual “choices” we can make regarding our health.
Yes, that guy may choose to smoke every day. But we need to consider that he grew up in a home with active smokers, was exposed to second hand smoke at a young age, had older family who was willing to buy him cigarettes as a teen, works a labor intensive job where the only available times to sit are smoking breaks, has limited resources for stress or mental health relief, is supported by a social structure that normalizes smoking, does not have insurance that will cover the resources he needs to safely quit the addiction, etc etc.
And yes, that woman over there chose to start a new diet and workout routine that led to her losing significant weight. But she has access to medical care with multiple professionals who can monitor her health, can afford the expense and transportation necessary to buy fresh food regularly as well as store it appropriately in her kitchen, is educated on the nutrients her body needs and how to prepare a balanced diet, can afford to exercise safely within a controlled environment, has the extra time and energy to dedicate to exercise and meal planning every day, etc etc.
Our “choices” are supported by 1. the environment we live in, 2. the community we engage in, and 3. the resources available to us. Each of us are limited to some extent, and are already pushed towards certain daily “choices.”
That doesn’t discount the effort you’re putting in or the personal responsibility that you share, but it does inform us on the wider constraints and advantages that exist in the world of health. Don’t just ignore that because you want to compare your actions to those of strangers - You are neither better nor worse than them.
it’s weird when i step outside of my firmly anti-diet social circle and hear a person talking about doing some pretty severe calorie restriction as if that’s totally normal. like how the fuck do i even begin explaining to someone i barely know that eating only 1300 calories a day is extremely bad for you and that basically everything they think they know about nutrition is false.
the average thin person is so afraid of becoming fat that they’ll do things which are extremely bad for them on every level with zero upsides (calorie restriction is even likely to cause future weight gain!) and this is completely normalized in mainstream culture. anti-fat discrimination is so deeply ingrained in the systems of our society and it’s so fucked.
Fucking kills me how diet culture has ruined bread. Bread! One of the oldest and most universal foods on earth! The thing that connects us to each other and to our ancestors whose names and faces are lost to history! And some dipshits decided that it’s “so bad for you” because they’re scared of carbs and love shaming fat people.
it’s weird when i step outside of my firmly anti-diet social circle and hear a person talking about doing some pretty severe calorie restriction as if that’s totally normal. like how the fuck do i even begin explaining to someone i barely know that eating only 1300 calories a day is extremely bad for you and that basically everything they think they know about nutrition is false.
the average thin person is so afraid of becoming fat that they’ll do things which are extremely bad for them on every level with zero upsides (calorie restriction is even likely to cause future weight gain!) and this is completely normalized in mainstream culture. anti-fat discrimination is so deeply ingrained in the systems of our society and it’s so fucked.
Diet people never even seem to remember that a calorie is only a measurement of energy, specifically the energy it takes to raise the temperature of water by one degree. Theres no single solid definition of what a “calorie” is in your food and most labelling of such is just spitballing but people talk about it like it’s a literal 1 to 1 measure of how fat a food will make you.
As someone with maladaptive eating habits that does not eat enough or well enough when i do eat i hate this. “dont eat mcdonalds look at all those calories” like yeah ikr? Fuckton of calories and I only have to eat like 3 things. Now I won’t have to suffer food withdrawal symptoms. I had an awful migraine yesterday and I know it’s because I didn’t eat anything or drink enough water.
Not eating enough does not make you look good or feel good. It does not make you healthy and it’s not going to make you happy. Your body needs that shit to make the chemicals to keep you from going insane. Eat food.
it’s weird when i step outside of my firmly anti-diet social circle and hear a person talking about doing some pretty severe calorie restriction as if that’s totally normal. like how the fuck do i even begin explaining to someone i barely know that eating only 1300 calories a day is extremely bad for you and that basically everything they think they know about nutrition is false.
the average thin person is so afraid of becoming fat that they’ll do things which are extremely bad for them on every level with zero upsides (calorie restriction is even likely to cause future weight gain!) and this is completely normalized in mainstream culture. anti-fat discrimination is so deeply ingrained in the systems of our society and it’s so fucked.
*screencap of a tiktok by @sarahinyellow featuring a lightskinned person sitting at their laptop with a bag of potato chips and a bottle of diet coke*
“diet culture will demonize any food that isn’t “clean” but EVERY food can have a benefit for you
Diet Coke is somehow the only thing that stops my migraines, and it reminds me of my best friend. Cape Cod potato chips are my go to salty snack and I live 10 minutes from the factory, so they make me feel cool.
Food is more than fuel. It’s memories and satisfaction and tradition and home and culture.
the thing abt diet culture is that there’s no way any junk food could possibly be more self destructive than viewing your own body as not only a separate entity from yourself but as an enemy to be conquered
it’s weird when i step outside of my firmly anti-diet social circle and hear a person talking about doing some pretty severe calorie restriction as if that’s totally normal. like how the fuck do i even begin explaining to someone i barely know that eating only 1300 calories a day is extremely bad for you and that basically everything they think they know about nutrition is false.
the average thin person is so afraid of becoming fat that they’ll do things which are extremely bad for them on every level with zero upsides (calorie restriction is even likely to cause future weight gain!) and this is completely normalized in mainstream culture. anti-fat discrimination is so deeply ingrained in the systems of our society and it’s so fucked.
Diet people never even seem to remember that a calorie is only a measurement of energy, specifically the energy it takes to raise the temperature of water by one degree. Theres no single solid definition of what a “calorie” is in your food and most labelling of such is just spitballing but people talk about it like it’s a literal 1 to 1 measure of how fat a food will make you.
As someone with maladaptive eating habits that does not eat enough or well enough when i do eat i hate this. “dont eat mcdonalds look at all those calories” like yeah ikr? Fuckton of calories and I only have to eat like 3 things. Now I won’t have to suffer food withdrawal symptoms. I had an awful migraine yesterday and I know it’s because I didn’t eat anything or drink enough water.
Not eating enough does not make you look good or feel good. It does not make you healthy and it’s not going to make you happy. Your body needs that shit to make the chemicals to keep you from going insane. Eat food.
it’s weird when i step outside of my firmly anti-diet social circle and hear a person talking about doing some pretty severe calorie restriction as if that’s totally normal. like how the fuck do i even begin explaining to someone i barely know that eating only 1300 calories a day is extremely bad for you and that basically everything they think they know about nutrition is false.
the average thin person is so afraid of becoming fat that they’ll do things which are extremely bad for them on every level with zero upsides (calorie restriction is even likely to cause future weight gain!) and this is completely normalized in mainstream culture. anti-fat discrimination is so deeply ingrained in the systems of our society and it’s so fucked.
“Please don’t talk to me about your diet, diet culture is not good for me.”
“If you continue to make comments about my body, I’m going to walk away.”
“I know you’re trying to be helpful, but hearing about your diet tips is not good for me. I am stating a boundary.”
“I know you meant it as a compliment, but please don’t focus on my body so much. It makes me feel self-conscious.”
“Please don’t make comments about what I eat. It makes me feel extremely self-conscious. If you continue to do this, I will not have meals with you in the future.”
“You’re not my therapist/doctor/nutritionist, so your advice is not relevant or helpful to me.”
I might post more as they come to me. Feel free to use these freely and don’t worry about offending others. Your health is your priority!
So a couple weeks ago I heard about Weight Watchers new app designed to help children aged 8-17 to lose weight. I was absolutely infuriated. Children should be living their lives and having fun, definitely not basing their happiness and confidence around their body size.
Diet culture normalises a LOT of disordered relationships with food. So I’ve written a blog post about my relationship with food and body image ❤️ it’s quite personal so if you get bored feel free to abandon it… but if any of it resonates with you remember how frickin beautiful you are, inside and out! And if you need someone to talk to, I’m here. You are not alone!
And, most importantly - this is why I discovered my love for chicken burgers!!!
