All should read! EDs, calories, and the truth

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

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

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.

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:

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

Excellent post. Thank you for sharing.

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.

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:

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.

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

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

wonderful, wise words!

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.

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

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