Why can anorexic individuals not see the difference?!
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I am recovered from Anorexia, you can read these two posts on why it was such a huge part of my life (you don't have to be a friend to view my blog) I go into detail as to how I got there, and WHY I stayed there. My story is a lot like other women/men that experience it, it's a mental thing.So I in no way am judging anorexics, but I am simply asking this as I am trying to find more information/maybe some personal experiences who could explain this to me.
Why is it that anorexic males/females can not see the difference between a healthy body weight (whether is be strong, ripped, toned - whatever) and the unhealthy body weight (bones, rib cage, lack of muscle). Like...I guess do anorexics find the unhealthy look "sexy" or "in" or "desirable"?
I don't know, I just think that if a picture of a body that is toned/muscular/thin were shown (Lets just use jillian Michaels, because i love her) VS. a body image of lets say an anorexic body...would an anorexic prefer to look like the healthy-thin person or the unhealthy-thin person...any thoughts?
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/SerenaFisher/view/past-struggles-at-war-with-the-mirror-533814
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/SerenaFisher/view/past-struggle-eating-disorder-533813
Thank you for sharing.0 -
My experience:
I have BPD (recently diagnosed after 20+ years) - it all links in now that I've thought about it properly.
I was 14 - 1999, Spice Girls were famous and Victoria Beckham was getting crazy skinny. For some reason, I saw how applauded she was, her beautiful husband and life and I thought "I'll get me some of that" - I was at school still, only slightly overweight and tall for my age which made me stand out like a sore thumb.
My family life was a melting sh*tpot of my Dad being apathetic and neglectful and my Mother being amazing but not being able to properly coach us (me and my brother) in self praise. My Dad never said "You are crap, you need to get this grade" but rather said absolutely NOTHING at all. He was invisible and I was invisible to him - he worked away all week and came home on a Friday night in a foul mood and barked at us until Monday where he would go again.
I was bullied at school (mildly really) for being tall and broad. So I stopped eating as much rubbish. Then I stopped eating as much normal stuff, to the point where I was going days without food and surviving on diet coke and chewing gum. My hair fell out from my head, my periods stopped, I was constantly tired and cold and I couldn't concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes.
From my perspective, it was a control thing. I had absolutely NO control in my life at that period of time and the only thing I could control was what went into my mouth and the art of dodging questions, skipping meals and exercising in the night became like an escape for me from the hell I felt. I also wanted to fit in desperately. Although I was taller than everyone and I couldn't change that, I hated that I couldn't fit into their clothes and share them about. I wanted to blend in and be like the popular girls - and I thought being thin would achieve that.
Initially I was slim, not thin. Then Christmas/Millennium came and went and I was so sick I had to take time off school - a long time. I hated my "disordered" eating at this point - it was never classified as an ED because I didn't fit the BMI criteria of being underweight enough despite every mental and physical action was identical. My lowest weight was 8st 7lbs and my bones jutted out and I looked an absolute mess.
What did I see? Fat. Pure fat. I asked my Mum and friends constantly if so and so was thinner or fatter than me, how much, what size - my entire life was dominated by food (I genuinely poured over cooking books wishing to eat the food and driving myself bonkers) and how to avoid it without questions. School teachers asked anyway and I lied. My Mum knew what was going on, so did the doctor, but because I wasn't in that BMI category there was nothing they could do. I hated myself so much I started self harming at this point because I was so angry that I was fat and ill and unable to do everything my friends were doing because I was too tired.
If I'd looked at someone like Jillian Michael's when I was 14 I would have hated the concept of her body shape because it looked healthy. I didn't want to look healthy - I wanted to look thin and ill because I felt like it inside, but I only realise that now. It was a cry for help probably (personally, not for everyone) and an attempt to fit in.
In the end, I started eating again because I was sick of questions and being ill - except I didn't stop and piled a crap load of weight on until I nearly tipped the scales at 300lbs due to my distorted view of my body. How can an anorexic allow themselves to get so fat? You just don't look. You avoid mirrors. You avoid buying clothes. You avoid everything.
It has taken me over 10 years to leave those demons behind. I am still prone to being restrictive over food intake, but generally speaking, I just do whatever feels right. It's worth mentioning I'm finally getting some progression for my BPD, so hopefully that will help.0 -
A lot of people with AN know they are too thin. It is a fallacy that body dysmorphia goes hand-in-hand with AN. They are two different mental disorders.
There are hundreds of different reasons why a person with AN restricts their calorie intake and only a handful of those reasons relate to weight or body image.
Some people with AN are motivated by a need to control something when other elements of their life feel out of control, for example. Other people with AN are self-punishing (a type of self harm) because they do not feel worthy of reward. Food might represent 'mother' to some people and rejecting food is a way to reject 'mother'. I could give 100s of other reasons.
It is really simplistic to generalise and assume that EDs are related to a desire to be thin. They are a mental illness and not a diet plan or a lifestyle.
PS: True sufferers of AN do not need 'tips' and do not recite pro-ana babble quotes and do not have pictures of superskinny celebs as their thinspiration. Those people are the 'wannabes' and the 'wannabes' generally have absolutely no idea what it is like to genuinely suffer from an ED. I still find it incredible that people would ever aspire to develop a mental illness - it is like aspiring to be schizophrenic or hoping to become bi-polar.
As someone who has dealt with binging problems, depression, and anxiety for years, yes. These statements are very true and answer your thread title question as simply as one can without getting too in depth psychologically.So I in no way am judging anorexics, but I am simply asking this as I am trying to find more information/maybe some personal experiences who could explain this to me.
Why is it that anorexic males/females can not see the difference between a healthy body weight (whether is be strong, ripped, toned - whatever) and the unhealthy body weight (bones, rib cage, lack of muscle). Like...I guess do anorexics find the unhealthy look "sexy" or "in" or "desirable"?
I don't know, I just think that if a picture of a body that is toned/muscular/thin were shown (Lets just use jillian Michaels, because i love her) VS. a body image of lets say an anorexic body...would an anorexic prefer to look like the healthy-thin person or the unhealthy-thin person...any thoughts?
I was in a treatment facility for Anorexia when I was 16, I have recovered very well...just one relapse at 18.
You have to remember that Anorexia is a mental illness, and that all of us have various degrees of Body Dysmorphia. We don't see ourselves as we are. We would find Jillian Michaels' body and the unhealthy skinny body equally desirable...because it's thin. Thin is thin. Toned is toned. Bones are bones. I do not have the body to weigh less than like 135. I have child-bearing hips and hold all weight/fat I have in my hips, butt, thighs. When I was 114lbs with protruding hips bones, sunken cheeks, an overly-defined clavicle, and a huge gap between my thighs when standing up, I didn't see that.
Looking back at pictures now that I'm in recovery I can see who scary thin I was at the time. But at the time, when I looked in the mirror, I saw Rosie O'Donnell. I still struggle a bit and receive therapy for the Body Dysmorphia (BD) aspect of things. It's difficult to get treatment for BD.
It's also a lot about control. Most ED sufferers have been victimized in some way, and one's body and eating habits is the ultimate thing you have control over. I was raped when I was 15 and diagnosed Anorexic at 16. Coincidence? No. The majority of sufferers have a story similar to mine. My body was violated and during the attack, and loooong after, I felt disgusting and that my body was taken from me (I was a virgin when this happened). My eating habits and how I looked were 2 things that could not be effected by him or anyone else. Sometimes I believe my illness started as some sort of f****d up self-punishment or discipline that grew into this'd unyielding need and obsession to be thin. My psychiatrist believes that after my attack I began starving myself as a way to make myself unattractive and undesirable to men, but you can theorize all day about one's subconscious actions.
Just remember that Anorexia, Bulimia, and EDNOS are no less mental illnesses than Schizophrenia or Depression, and that unless you've endured it and are a survivor it's something that you will never truly be able to understand.
You are awesome for recovering so well, it seems like you've got a good grasp on things now. I don't know a *whole* lot about eating disorders, but my husband is in grad school for mental health counseling, and he talks to me about what he's learning, so I know that it is in fact a mental illness. It's not just someone who doesn't like the way they look. There has got to be a psychologist or counselor in the forums somewhere who can explain it, I'm surprised no one has popped up. But it really annoys me when people think an ED is something you can just get over, like it's a choice you make. Same goes with depression or any other mental illness. It's not a choice, it's a disorder, and most people can't just choose to not be that way. It takes years of therapy and treatment sometimes. I hate how our society has such impatience and ignorance about mental illness. But anyway, good on you for recovering so well and making healthy changes! You are inspirational!0 -
I think that we live in a society which idolizes being very thin.
Do we ever read about a actress who says that she is a size 10? Do we ever see a celeb 6 months after giving birth who is still carrying baby weight and okay with it?
In our country, at least, being young and thin is equated with being valued. If you have difficulty valuing yourself...getting thin is a surefire way to have other people value you.0 -
My experience:
I have BPD (recently diagnosed after 20+ years) - it all links in now that I've thought about it properly.
I was 14 - 1999, Spice Girls were famous and Victoria Beckham was getting crazy skinny. For some reason, I saw how applauded she was, her beautiful husband and life and I thought "I'll get me some of that" - I was at school still, only slightly overweight and tall for my age which made me stand out like a sore thumb.
My family life was a melting sh*tpot of my Dad being apathetic and neglectful and my Mother being amazing but not being able to properly coach us (me and my brother) in self praise. My Dad never said "You are crap, you need to get this grade" but rather said absolutely NOTHING at all. He was invisible and I was invisible to him - he worked away all week and came home on a Friday night in a foul mood and barked at us until Monday where he would go again.
I was bullied at school (mildly really) for being tall and broad. So I stopped eating as much rubbish. Then I stopped eating as much normal stuff, to the point where I was going days without food and surviving on diet coke and chewing gum. My hair fell out from my head, my periods stopped, I was constantly tired and cold and I couldn't concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes.
From my perspective, it was a control thing. I had absolutely NO control in my life at that period of time and the only thing I could control was what went into my mouth and the art of dodging questions, skipping meals and exercising in the night became like an escape for me from the hell I felt. I also wanted to fit in desperately. Although I was taller than everyone and I couldn't change that, I hated that I couldn't fit into their clothes and share them about. I wanted to blend in and be like the popular girls - and I thought being thin would achieve that.
Initially I was slim, not thin. Then Christmas/Millennium came and went and I was so sick I had to take time off school - a long time. I hated my "disordered" eating at this point - it was never classified as an ED because I didn't fit the BMI criteria of being underweight enough despite every mental and physical action was identical. My lowest weight was 8st 7lbs and my bones jutted out and I looked an absolute mess.
What did I see? Fat. Pure fat. I asked my Mum and friends constantly if so and so was thinner or fatter than me, how much, what size - my entire life was dominated by food (I genuinely poured over cooking books wishing to eat the food and driving myself bonkers) and how to avoid it without questions. School teachers asked anyway and I lied. My Mum knew what was going on, so did the doctor, but because I wasn't in that BMI category there was nothing they could do. I hated myself so much I started self harming at this point because I was so angry that I was fat and ill and unable to do everything my friends were doing because I was too tired.
If I'd looked at someone like Jillian Michael's when I was 14 I would have hated the concept of her body shape because it looked healthy. I didn't want to look healthy - I wanted to look thin and ill because I felt like it inside, but I only realise that now. It was a cry for help probably (personally, not for everyone) and an attempt to fit in.
In the end, I started eating again because I was sick of questions and being ill - except I didn't stop and piled a crap load of weight on until I nearly tipped the scales at 300lbs due to my distorted view of my body. How can an anorexic allow themselves to get so fat? You just don't look. You avoid mirrors. You avoid buying clothes. You avoid everything.
It has taken me over 10 years to leave those demons behind. I am still prone to being restrictive over food intake, but generally speaking, I just do whatever feels right. It's worth mentioning I'm finally getting some progression for my BPD, so hopefully that will help.
Thank you very much for your response. It was very inspiring to read how you found strength.0 -
When I struggled with an eating disorder, it was more of an obsession with the numbers on the scale and controlling what I ate than about how I actually looked. After a while, your brain gets warped, and what you see in the mirror doesn't look dangerously thin. You get so used to seeing yourself and a regular basis that you aren't aware of how skeletal you've become0
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I've never had an ED, but in addition to the distorted self-image discussed by some people, I think that also important is a feeling of control. Females from an early age are exposed to countless images of supposedly ideal bodies and they are judged. Anorexia is a misguided way of responding to that.
I also think that we live in a culture in which nuance is not valued. Bigger (or in this case, smaller) is better. I see that attitude on this forum in the posts of people who boast about how heavy they're lifting and who disdain others who don't have the same goals. Some people want to get as big as possible and not all of them look good. Anorexics demonstrate some of that lack of proportion, too, although in a more unhealthy way.0 -
It is a mind thing. I am not anorexic, but still have a distorted image of the way I look. What I see in the mirror is not what everyone else sees, or at least that's what they tell me lol. Many people with self image problems pick apart everything about themselves.
I think many women have some form of body dysmorphia: It's hard not to when you're confronted with so many "ideal" images of what a woman is supposed to look like and when so much emphasis is placed on women's looks and when so few women push back. In addition, some people can't accept that their genes control what they look like and no matter what they do they're not going to look like a model; they think if they keep losing weight they'll somehow look better. Anorexics literally believe that.
Americans are raised to believe that they can change anything if only they work hard enough. It's not always true. It's very difficult for some people to live with the idea of permanent imperfection.0 -
It is a mental thing, one will look in a mirror and see a fat person staring back ; they do not think they are "skinny" as you put it.
this. it also happens to "regular people" and particularly people who have recently lost a lot of weight - they often still feel fat even though they aren't. To illustrate, I went to this scince center/amusement place which is mainly aimed at kids and teenagers (they had a get-in-for-free-day. so sue me) and they had this whole section about various body images, including scarification, piercings, tattoos... and weight. There was a mirror that would move your image from super-skinny to super fat, and the idea was to hit "stop" when you thought it reached the point wher you actually were. I invariably hit stop at a heavier point than I actually was. Even though at that point in my journey I was already at goal weight and I was very happy with the way I looked, I still didn't see it properly.
Personally, that was when I realized how important it is to lose weight slowly: not only is it better for the body, it also gives the mind some time to catch up!
I can completely understand this. I'm not done losing weight but so far I've lost 34lbs, with 24 - 29lbs to go, but I still have the hardest time seeing my weight loss in the mirror. I can clearly see many of my clothes are huge on me now, I need a whole new wardrobe really. I know everyone around me can see the difference, but I look in the mirror and still see my 38 1/2" gut on my tiny frame (I measure bi-weekly), I know I've lost a few inches on it but having this large stomach makes it so hard for me to see much difference.0 -
A lot of people with AN know they are too thin. It is a fallacy that body dysmorphia goes hand-in-hand with AN. They are two different mental disorders.
There are hundreds of different reasons why a person with AN restricts their calorie intake and only a handful of those reasons relate to weight or body image.
Some people with AN are motivated by a need to control something when other elements of their life feel out of control, for example. Other people with AN are self-punishing (a type of self harm) because they do not feel worthy of reward. Food might represent 'mother' to some people and rejecting food is a way to reject 'mother'. I could give 100s of other reasons.
It is really simplistic to generalise and assume that EDs are related to a desire to be thin. They are a mental illness and not a diet plan or a lifestyle.
PS: True sufferers of AN do not need 'tips' and do not recite pro-ana babble quotes and do not have pictures of superskinny celebs as their thinspiration. Those people are the 'wannabes' and the 'wannabes' generally have absolutely no idea what it is like to genuinely suffer from an ED. I still find it incredible that people would ever aspire to develop a mental illness - it is like aspiring to be schizophrenic or hoping to become bi-polar.
I was going to break out the intellect and actually post a real response here, but you beat me too it. Nice post.
WWW.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PMC/articles/PMC1622894/
Great article questioning if Anorexia is a subtype of Body Dysmorphic Disorder, OCD, or it's own separate illness altogether.
It explains that some sufferers of Anorexia are in a grey area between it and BDD. The only thing is AN is, by definition, an intense fear of gaining weight whereas BDD is thinking you look like a freak when you look perfectly normal. It can be overall or one, specific body part.
It's a controversial thought in the mental health world that eating disorders are a form of BDD- very intriguing points for both sides of the argument. Many professionals consider the two as being one in the same.0 -
In my experience with dealing an eating disorder, no matter how thin you are..you don't feel thin. You don't understand the meaning behind food..it leaves an empty feeling. And when you do eat, you feel so horrible that there is only one way to get rid of it.
Its not a fun thing to talk about and there are so many people out there with eating disorders. I am so thankful I was able to over come mine and I have my dear sweet 20 month old to thank for that. She saved my life.0 -
When I was in middle school and high school, I had a really bad eating habit. I didn't starve myself every day for a long time, but I would go a few days here and there. Counting calories became an OBSESSION! And you know, math is my favorite subject so not only was I losing weight but I was also doing something I knew I was good at (math!). And I weighed myself maybe 10 or more times a day. I'd get on the scale. Get off the scale. Run a little. Get back on the scale. Stare at that cookie. Get back on the scale. You know what I mean...
And I think someone else already said it... But it really had a lot to do with me being able to control something in my chaotic life at the time. I wasn't necessarily fat (and I knew that), but I was one of the bigger girls at my school. And you know, I never felt skinny during this entire time. I felt good for what I was doing to myself, but I didn't feel thin and pretty. Does that make sense? I don't know how to explain it... I was bullied in middle school too, and I think that really made me feel worthless...and why feed something that doesn't deserve a place on earth?
It took me four years to stop this obsession. And then another two years to fight off those thoughts that wanted me to go back into this dark place.
So I know that I have to be really careful with dieting. I inform everyone I know that I'm cutting calories and how I plan to lose the weight (in a healthy way
and I have a good support system. I'll admit, when I step on that scale and see that I've lost weight, I feel REALLY good that I'm closer to reaching my goal. But I also get a little bit of those old feelings of wanting to deprive myself of food. And I think that's a battle I'll be fighting for who knows how long...
My story is different from many others though. But I think the one thing we might all have in common is wanting to have some control over our lives. Don't we all? If there's anything I've learned, it's that once I accept I can't control everything and to just accept it, I find some inner peace.
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^^ you are absolutely right..it really is all about control.
I actually come from a family of addictive personalities... not something I am proud of but they are my family.
I have OCD when it comes to food. I measure out everything. I pretty much eat the same stuff day in and day out except on the weekends...
I am a clean freak as well. Everything in my house has to be a certain way. I even have adjustment disorder =( it blows. But like I said.. you can overcome an Eating Disorder, you just have to do it on your own way.0 -
Very few anorexics actually see someone that is fatter than they are in the mirror. A 102 pound girl still sees 102 pounds in the mirror. Anorexics just have a disorted image of perfection.0
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This is a wonderful answer. You just earned loads of my respect.isnt that like asking why cant a depressed person just cheer up?1 -
its very complicated.
the easiest answer is body dysmorphia.
most women seem to suffer from this to some extent, men too.
dove addressed this in a clever ad (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk )
but there are a lot of reasons why people have varied degrees of varied difficulties with eating, diet and body size.
there's everything from ocd to trauma, food intolerance, issues with taste, texture, allergies, autism, abuse, neglect, bullying, malnutrition, etc.
so a girl (or boy) you see as super unhealthily gaunt might be suffering for any number of reasons. but for whatever reason they need help, support and understanding.0
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