All should read! EDs, calories, and the truth

juliesjuke

Really good post and definately food for thought. Thank you.

knottygrandmav

Thanks for your post- I've been beating myself up for years now about my up and down weight- and your words are so true. We all need to be reminded from time to time- thanks- and blessings to you....

Cyndi1

Thank-you for sharing.. I enjoyed it and it made sense. : ) good on you for working on you.

SomeoneSomeplace

You are wise beyond your years!

I'm 24 and I've been in and out of Anorexia since I was 13, all the points you made here are excellent and it is fantastic you have come to embrace recovery so fully as your young age!

LisaLouisiana

I commend you for caring about your fellow human being to make the effort to make a difference. I think your advice holds true for many people.

There is a wide array of people with issues that run the gamut as to why we are here working on our bodies. I also have to agree with the poster I quoted here:

This might be good advice for you.
For me and a lot of other people, it's exactly what DID make us unhealthy and overweight.

Each of us need to find what works for us and I'm sure you have helped some people today find answers for themselves.

small_ninja

Experience everything, indeed. When you are craving that ice cream, you eat an ice cream. And when you are full, stop. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. You will lose weight, but I think that is less important than being satisfied with yourself. Because you're a human person and deserve pleasure and love.

Unfortunately, that's how I ended up here... I'm quite small already (5'0" and started MFP @ 132lb) - I went from around about 120lb to 132lb gradually over 4-5 years. This is simply because it doesn't take a lot of calories to maintain that weight, particularly in comparison to "normal-sized" people. I exercised a lot and would generally eat what I wanted, but in moderation. For example, when I went out to dinner, I'd still eat salads if I wanted dessert and I'd hardly ever eat a whole chocolate bar. I hardly scoffed anything and everything in sight. I simply didn't put what I knew about calories into practice. I convinced myself that if I wanted that bikini body I'd have to live on salads for the rest of my life. MFP has opened my eyes to the fact that this is not the case, and I find that quite liberating.

I still enjoy the foods I love, in moderation, and usually after I've exercised, and then I really feel great about eating them. I think a better message would be to tell people to keep in mind the importance of still enjoying life whilst seeking their perfect body. It's way too easy to get sucked into the diet mentality and stress over going over calories or not exercising that day. Give yourself a break people, you're in it for the long haul

Jongfaith

Im proud of you for coming to these realizations! This is your truth.

Mine is slightly different. *shrug.

At my highest weight I was 295lbs and got a slew of health problems with it. High cholesterol, diabetes, polycystic ovaries, blah blah blah. MFP helps me control myself in keeping on the right track of weight loss. I do try to live and you can see Mcds frappes, ice cream, chips, pizza and everything else in moderation in my diary. Now I'm at 219lbs and have a long road yet ahead of me to get to a healthy weight and possibly reverse some negative effects on my body.

Kudos to you and your realizations of what helps vs. hurts you and I agree with almost everything you said! Congrats for being at a healthy outlook on your body and weight. Hope your journey continues to be a positive one.:flowerforyou:

ktrn0312

Thanks for the prospective.

fittiephd

Bump. I am very impressed by your recovery, you seem to have a beautiful relationship with food now! Congrats.

ivikatasha

These are some of the most important lessons I learned through my treatment. People call MFP a great tool for weight loss, but I respectfully dissent. Calorie counting is quite unhealthy. Eat until you're no longer hungry, and eat foods that make you feel GOOD. This is life. If you spend your whole live at war with your body, will that really a be a life worth living? Enjoy everything, experience everything. And above all, love yourself.

Lovely post! I just cannot agree with this last part though. Love the rest though

Me eating until I was no longer hungry made me obese in the first place, being obese is not healthy at all. MFP has been pretty much been the only weight loss tool to work for me. I also just feel better when I am more aware of what I eat. I wouldn't consider myself being at war with my body, I just want to be healthier.

zaph0d

Excellent post. Thank you for sharing.

jnn0409

I have enjoyed reading this. Your very wise for someone so young.

Thanks.

Agreed, kind of calming and soothing too.

mgobluetx12

I totally agree that sets of rules like these just don't work for everyone. I do exercise to look good and lose weight. I don't generally enjoy it, but I enjoy the results I get. I do restrict myself from having certain foods. If I eat junk, I'll want more junk and I know this about myself. I'm not setting myself up for a binge because I don't binge and I don't crave junk food anymore. Also, there totally is such a thing as unhealthy foods. Those of us who were overweight got here by eating them.

eileenchristine

Thank you for the time and effort you put into writing that so well! I do agree with it. I think will post it to my 16 year old girl, or cute and paste it in an email.

For me MFP has helped me in choosing more wisely what I eat. I am too sedentary. Having children cut into my activity level (I know excuse), then surgery and injuries. I do not have a scale. I go to TOPS (take off pounds sensibly) for my weigh in. When I get at job will reevaluate getting a scale or going to different meeting. I eat into my exercise calories frequently and am not obsessed with losing weight but I do really need and want to lose so am on a journey of one day at a time.

I do see obsessed people on here posting bout how they weigh themselves daily, sometimes more than once, agonizing over that they major screwed up on eating, etc. etc. etc. working out obsessively. More power to them, if that is what makes them happy.

I just putter on this journey, getting there slowly. Will probably take me a year to reach my goal weight and am sure many would get there much faster being more controlled in exercise and food, but this way is working for now. When I hit a plateau then will have to adjust accordingly (probably by upping exercise...sigh).

Again thank you so much on this very very healthy view! I appreciate it!

Namaste

SuperstarDJ

I don't deny I have many times 'comfort eaten' to make me feel better.
But I do this because in the first place I enjoy eating food.
If it wasn't was for the consequences I would happily eat a lot more even when I'm in a very good frame of mind. I do have plenty of 'bad history', but that's far from the complete story blaming it on that for me.

Your body's survival method is not eating everything in sight immediately; that is what it has been trained to do, perhaps.

In an evolutionary sense it certainly makes sense that those who ate plenty of high calorie foods were more likely to survive to an age where they could procreate.
Do you have any evidence to suggest this is not the case, or is it just your opinion?
Either way, what are you basing this on?

If you eat below your maintenance level of calories, all you do is train your body to be more efficient in conserving and storing calories.

Again. Eating below maintenance is the ONLY way to lose weight by definition.
So it's certainly not 'all you do'. I've lost around 60lb since May be eating between say 3000 and 1000 calories under what would be required for maintenance (starting higher and reducing as I got nearer my 10% BF goal).

Experience everything, indeed. When you are craving that ice cream, you eat an ice cream. And when you are full, stop. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. You will lose weight, but I think that is less important than being satisfied with yourself. Because you're a human person and deserve pleasure and love.

No, I absolutely will not.
Afraid you are most definitely wrong in regards to me in this case.
I certainly don't get the 'full' feeling as quickly as others do. Everyone is different and while that may well work for you, it doesn't mean it will work for me.

Wow, the OP was sharing the learnings and realisations that she gained during recovery from an eating disorder. Why would you want to go out of your way to try and disprove a set of beliefs that helped her recover from an illness that kills more people than any other psychological disorder???

This place baffles me sometimes :noway:

lilmisfit

Awesome post. Thanks for sharing.

geekyjock76

1. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. My wonderful nutritionist had been in her profession for years and understood the science between weight gain and loss, and how calories actually work. You see, you NEED carbs. You need a healthy, normal, amount of carbs.

This is pretty much a given. If a person believes he or she is at risk of developing an eating disorder, they need to consult with a healthcare provider who specializes in disordered eating to understand the relationship between self-destructive behaviors and declining mental and physical health.

2. Do not ever eat below maintenance level of calories. Trying to gain weight and trying to lose weight have the same solution. If you've been starving, slowly reintroduce amounts of food to work up to a normal level. If you're trying to lose weight, decrease your amount of food until you're at your normal level. The body wants to be healthy. It's hard on the body to be fat. If you give it what it's aways needed, it will give you the body you need to have (over time). Not everyone needs to have THE perfect body, but every single person can have his or her perfect body.

This is what I always tell clients and people in general. If your goal is to maintain body weight/composition, eat the maximum amount of calories to meet energy demands that lead to maintenance of body weight and composition. This way, your endocrine system is working at optimal conditions which help maintain activity level as well as body weight/composition.

5. There are NO healthy or unhealthy foods. This was the first thing that my nutritionist told me. I had been categorizing, like many of you, food into "healthy", "okay occasionally," and "bad for you!". She debunked this rather quickly. Huge amounts of anything can be harmful. But no one food can destroy or restore health, so no one food is healthy or unhealthy.

Context is very important in terms of classifying foods. Too often, people will label something as being "clean" and avoid all foods not in this list. Your body sees food primarily as a means to meet energy demands. If 80% of your calories come from your "clean" list, then filling the remaining 20% with ice cream, candy, cookies, or other treats is fine. If I've met that 80% quota, and my body still needs energy, I'm going to choose ice cream over celery because by body needs more energy in the form of calories. This lets me enjoy my favorite foods without guilt, daily.

6. Understand, respect, and love your body. Yoga really helped me with this. Your body has a purpose. That purpose is to survive. Help your body fulfill its purpose more efficiently and effectively. Understand why it does what it does. Your body needs to conserve fat sometimes, because fat can be healthy. Understand that, and stop fighting your body.

Arguably the most crucial point. Lots of people wish to improve body composition and image, but very few pursue the proper channels to obtain knowledge. Always check out thoroughly researched studies to educate oneself on the endocrine system (which helps maintain metabolic function), the energy balance equation (how the laws of thermodynamics affect weight gain, weight homeostasis or weight gain), as well as roles of vitamins, minerals and nutrients (how intake in each effect optimal health).

As for as the respect of love part, I unfortunately see lots of young girls on here leaving posts of self-hate on their feeds as a result of an ED, body dysmorphic disorder, or even peer pressure from others. It's really sad to see them feel that way when many actually look healthy and are at a normal body weight/composition.

Aries03

Bump..... really good read.

Thanks

onyxgirl17

As somebody who had an eating disorder as a teen, I completely adore all the points you made in this post :bow:

invisibubble

bumping for my feed: excellent, excellent post.

gekcsk

This is awesome. I am so glad that I happened upon this thread. Thank you for writing this, it all makes so much sense.

jetscreaminagain

What a wonderfully healthy, clear headed, wise post. Thank you!

This isn't just knowledgeable, it is wise. Like all wisdom, it came from deep personal experience. I am so inspired by your recovery and your thriving after that dark personal experience you had. Thank you so much for sharing this in the hopes that others can avoid your dark history. That is so generous of you.

Expect that the wisdom will be rejected by people who are currently in that dark place.

kiddoc88

wonderful, wise words!

raichhype

That was a really nice thing to read.
I was actually in a fairly crappy mood and that cheered me up
I'm so glad you could get through it!

What I can't believe is that there is negativity on this post. Shame on you negative posters, shame on YOU.

kelly_e_montana

Thanks so much for posting this. This is exactly what I am going thru on this site. I told people I want to quit counting calories because I think it's at odds with what I learned in my ED treatment for binge eating disorder. I feel like people who don't have an ED don't understand how our brains are programmed and how we need to take the emphasis OFF food and onto LIFE. I do lose weight when doing this, but my focus has to be on being healthy, not skinny. I exercise for health and strength, not weight loss, as well.

kelly_e_montana

My other point is a lot of people who disagree with your post may not have an ED. So what works for them may have absolutely no relevance to someone without one or visa versa.

nickyfm

I'm glad that works for you, and in theory these rules are true.

However, for people like myself with PCOS and other hormone disorders, often our bodies are affected by a hormone imbalance, which can sometimes mix up our hunger signals etc, so if we were to eat whenever we were hungry, chances are we may very well never stop eating.

Also, hormone imbalances can cause huge cravings for sugar, meaning that we literally 'cant get enough' of the white stuff. So it is more of an addiction, rather than our bodies being physically hungry.

Personally, calorie counting has really saved me. Sometimes this works for people, sometimes it doesn't. But it's somewhat close-minded of you to dismiss it.

Do what works for you, and we'll do what works for us

love4fitnesslove4food_wechange

I don't deny I have many times 'comfort eaten' to make me feel better.
But I do this because in the first place I enjoy eating food.
If it wasn't was for the consequences I would happily eat a lot more even when I'm in a very good frame of mind. I do have plenty of 'bad history', but that's far from the complete story blaming it on that for me.

Your body's survival method is not eating everything in sight immediately; that is what it has been trained to do, perhaps.

In an evolutionary sense it certainly makes sense that those who ate plenty of high calorie foods were more likely to survive to an age where they could procreate.
Do you have any evidence to suggest this is not the case, or is it just your opinion?
Either way, what are you basing this on?

If you eat below your maintenance level of calories, all you do is train your body to be more efficient in conserving and storing calories.

Again. Eating below maintenance is the ONLY way to lose weight by definition.
So it's certainly not 'all you do'. I've lost around 60lb since May be eating between say 3000 and 1000 calories under what would be required for maintenance (starting higher and reducing as I got nearer my 10% BF goal).

Experience everything, indeed. When you are craving that ice cream, you eat an ice cream. And when you are full, stop. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. You will lose weight, but I think that is less important than being satisfied with yourself. Because you're a human person and deserve pleasure and love.

No, I absolutely will not.
Afraid you are most definitely wrong in regards to me in this case.
I certainly don't get the 'full' feeling as quickly as others do. Everyone is different and while that may well work for you, it doesn't mean it will work for me.

I don't think this applied to you and your response was completely uncalled for . This is the type of insensitive reply that makes MFP one of the worst "support" systems (while also being completely amazing in other regards). I cannot believe you went out of your way to refute the OPs points when clearly you have no experience with an eating disorder. You should be ashamed of yourself, just saying. She's a young girl encouraging other people who might be suffering and you just want to pick a fight.

NocturnalGirl

I don't deny I have many times 'comfort eaten' to make me feel better.
But I do this because in the first place I enjoy eating food.
If it wasn't was for the consequences I would happily eat a lot more even when I'm in a very good frame of mind. I do have plenty of 'bad history', but that's far from the complete story blaming it on that for me.

Your body's survival method is not eating everything in sight immediately; that is what it has been trained to do, perhaps.

In an evolutionary sense it certainly makes sense that those who ate plenty of high calorie foods were more likely to survive to an age where they could procreate.
Do you have any evidence to suggest this is not the case, or is it just your opinion?
Either way, what are you basing this on?

If you eat below your maintenance level of calories, all you do is train your body to be more efficient in conserving and storing calories.

Again. Eating below maintenance is the ONLY way to lose weight by definition.
So it's certainly not 'all you do'. I've lost around 60lb since May be eating between say 3000 and 1000 calories under what would be required for maintenance (starting higher and reducing as I got nearer my 10% BF goal).

Experience everything, indeed. When you are craving that ice cream, you eat an ice cream. And when you are full, stop. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full. You will lose weight, but I think that is less important than being satisfied with yourself. Because you're a human person and deserve pleasure and love.

No, I absolutely will not.
Afraid you are most definitely wrong in regards to me in this case.
I certainly don't get the 'full' feeling as quickly as others do. Everyone is different and while that may well work for you, it doesn't mean it will work for me.

I don't think this applied to you and your response was completely uncalled for . This is the type of insensitive reply that makes MFP one of the worst "support" systems (while also being completely amazing in other regards). I cannot believe you went out of your way to refute the OPs points when clearly you have no experience with an eating disorder. You should be ashamed of yourself, just saying. She's a young girl encouraging other people who might be suffering and you just want to pick a fight.

What she said!!

OP: I am very proud of the progress you made, well done!! Recovery is a hard battle but it is so rewarding at the same time. Good luck with everything! xx

sc1572

Love this. SO much. Thank you!