Article - IIFYM: A New Vehicle for Eating Disorders
senecarr
Posts: 5,377 Member
content.tigerfitness.com/iifym-new-eating-disorder/
Thoughts anyone? I'm inclined to disagree with the article.
This is a danger that is inherent in the fitness community as a whole. As a demographic, our community draws in a large number of people who already have unhealthy relationships with their food, and poor body image. We as a community as pre-disposed to eating disorders and body image disorders.
Any method of eating has the potential to become a vehicle for an eating disorder, and no method comes without its risks and drawbacks. No one single dieting protocol is a cure for this. The cure lies in recognizing these patterns within yourself, and learning to step back and assess yourself objectively.
Thoughts anyone? I'm inclined to disagree with the article.
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Replies
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I agree with the article.... IIFYM and calorie counting is just another form of controlling your intake. It can become obsessive.
In my experience, it gets draining to spend weeks doing it (for comp prep plus before and after prep) and I need a mental break. That usually means no logging and just eating intuitively using my weight and the mirror as a guide ....0 -
It has some good take home messages...Each of us must find a method of eating and dieting that causes us the last amount of stress, while providing the most amount of satiety and satisfaction. If we cannot do this then recognize that we may need professional help rather than another new method we found on a forum.
At the end of the day, some people will do best with a meal plan, others with a flexible dieting approach like IIFYM, and others a list of foods they can and cannot eat. Assess if your method causes restriction, stress and unhappiness in your life.
If it does then it is time to throw it away and find something else, irrespective of how many forum heroes or Youtube celebrities experienced great success with your failed method. All that matters is what works for you, your goals and your life.
I think health and fitness forums in general need a good dose of tolerance and acceptance, just because someone chooses a method of eating different than the majority of users, doesn't mean the majority is 'right' and the minority 'wrong' and vice versa, some minorities seem to come across as smug.0 -
I see logic in the article.
The idea of balance and getting solid nutrition with some occasion favorite treats seems normal. It is something most people with a healthy relationship with food can do
The problem is often that it is an unhealthy relationship with food that got most of us fat. We struggle with that.
Lots of people at a normal weight get a slice of cheese cake with dinner when dining out. It is normal to be able to manage food. We struggle with it.
So.... That honesty with ourself is key.
But again, I know what works for me and enjoy sharing with like minded people
I have zero interest in trying to convince someone else how to live their life as if my way is superior to theirs.
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Sure. You see all kinds of obsessiveness on the forums all the time - and it's an awfully thin line between obsessive and disordered. When people go feces-flinging ape nuts because someone called a food "clean" - yeah, there's quite possibly a problem there.
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content.tigerfitness.com/iifym-new-eating-disorder/This is a danger that is inherent in the fitness community as a whole. As a demographic, our community draws in a large number of people who already have unhealthy relationships with their food, and poor body image. We as a community as pre-disposed to eating disorders and body image disorders.
Any method of eating has the potential to become a vehicle for an eating disorder, and no method comes without its risks and drawbacks. No one single dieting protocol is a cure for this. The cure lies in recognizing these patterns within yourself, and learning to step back and assess yourself objectively.
Thoughts anyone? I'm inclined to disagree with the article.
What is it you disagree with, exactly?0 -
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I agree with the basic premise of the article--macro/calorie counting can be as obsessive as "clean" eating, just in a different way. And I can see how someone could develop disordered thinking while doing it. I think it's a good blog post, and I'm sure someone out there needs to read it.
I personally have tried to talk people out of restrictive diets because those have always led to disordered thinking and eventual abandonment of the program for me. But if someone feels better within the confines of a program, well, who I am to knock it?0 -
He uses a few too many 'look at my article' tricks for my taste and falls into some of the fairly hysterical over-generalizations about what IIFYM means - including throwing the concept of 'eating disorders' into the article title itself.
Nothing he says genuinely addresses the issue of the kind of thinking patterns typically found in eating disordered individuals. He just seems to want to take a poke at IIFYM and rant about pop tarts.
I'd certainly welcome thoughtful discussion about that sometimes-murky line between being focused on your diet versus overtly disordered thinking (which I believe is not seen all that frequently on MFP), but his whole article just seems like more of a cheap shot for attention based on a currently-popular topic of debate.
I would agree with this. It does get a bit ALL YOU PEOPLE EAT ARE TWINKIES at times and that could be what turns off OP.0 -
I have at least a problem with calling IIFYM a kind of orthorexia. I feel orexic diseases should involve delusion as part of the diagnostic criteria. A person may be obsessed with IIFYM, but they aren't wrong when they believe it will work. In this sense, I'd say it is more a compulsive disorder, if anything.Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »content.tigerfitness.com/iifym-new-eating-disorder/This is a danger that is inherent in the fitness community as a whole. As a demographic, our community draws in a large number of people who already have unhealthy relationships with their food, and poor body image. We as a community as pre-disposed to eating disorders and body image disorders.
Any method of eating has the potential to become a vehicle for an eating disorder, and no method comes without its risks and drawbacks. No one single dieting protocol is a cure for this. The cure lies in recognizing these patterns within yourself, and learning to step back and assess yourself objectively.
Thoughts anyone? I'm inclined to disagree with the article.
What is it you disagree with, exactly?0 -
Sure. You see all kinds of obsessiveness on the forums all the time - and it's an awfully thin line between obsessive and disordered. When people go feces-flinging ape nuts because someone called a food "clean" - yeah, there's quite possibly a problem there.
The "hardcore" (if there can be such a thing) IIFYM people are who "drove me off" this site the first time I left (though not at all what caused me to go back to bad eating habits.) There's a funny... duality? to the beliefs of some people here where they think that humans in general have both no self control and infinite self control. For example, if someone says "I stopped buying and eating Oreo cookies because I know that I can't stop at just one or two," you get a lot of people telling them that 1. they should just eat them in moderation and not deny themselves Oreos because 2) if they deny themselves entirely, that will cause them to overeat. So, a person with a self-described control problem is told they should exercise more control, or else they won't be able to control themselves (if this is not quite coherent, sorry, it's hard to put the problem into words.)
Also, different diets/programs/lifestyles work for different people at different times, and trying to apply one system to every person is futile. When I first came here, I had some success but became pretty neurotic about weighing/logging/tracking because I'm prone to anxiety. I eventually left because I disliked large swaths of the community. For many months after that I had success losing weight just by "eating clean" (I don't use/like that terminology, but it's the easiest way to explain in a way that most people will understand) and being mindful of portions. However, I then had a series of (external and internal) crises that left me in a pretty vulnerable emotional/psychological state, and I started gaining a lot of weight because my "intuitive" self-control was shot. That's when I came back here to log food, so that the diary does the work my mind can't handle right now.0 -
I think spending a lot of time worrying about this article might itself be a sign of disordered thinking.
Bottom line - someone on the internet posted something someone else doesn't like. It's nothing I'm going to waste a lot of time thinking about.0 -
I have at least a problem with calling IIFYM a kind of orthorexia. I feel orexic diseases should involve delusion as part of the diagnostic criteria. A person may be obsessed with IIFYM, but they aren't wrong when they believe it will work. In this sense, I'd say it is more a compulsive disorder, if anything.Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »content.tigerfitness.com/iifym-new-eating-disorder/This is a danger that is inherent in the fitness community as a whole. As a demographic, our community draws in a large number of people who already have unhealthy relationships with their food, and poor body image. We as a community as pre-disposed to eating disorders and body image disorders.
Any method of eating has the potential to become a vehicle for an eating disorder, and no method comes without its risks and drawbacks. No one single dieting protocol is a cure for this. The cure lies in recognizing these patterns within yourself, and learning to step back and assess yourself objectively.
Thoughts anyone? I'm inclined to disagree with the article.
What is it you disagree with, exactly?
Ah, so you disagree with calling a compulsive approach to diet "orthorexia". ok.
I can buy that. I get annoyed when folks equate "clean eating" with orthorexia, so I can see your annoyance from the other side.
Otherwise, is he wrong that IIFYM dieters can also be compulsive?
Is he wrong that there are different "better approaches" for different people?0 -
I think the article is moronic:
"Critics of strict food intake ignored the fact that most IIFYM dieters had an issue with keeping their appetite in check. Anything more than a few hundred calories of junk per day and they failed to get in enough high satiety foods to keep their hunger in check."
Ummmmmmm...no, most IIFYM dieters don't have an issue with keeping their appetite in check. See, because we aren't morons, we figure out what we need to eat to make room for some """junk""" pretty fast.
I'm on 1200 cal a day as my recommended amount. I usually eat 1000-1400. I learned, for instance, that I really need to watch my fats or I'm going to overshoot the mark--meaning get ENOUGH fats not to be hungry.
I've also eaten at restaurants for the past 2 days. My diary is open, ladies and gentlemen. I have no shame of the pumpkin muffie.
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And, sorry, but if you can't have a social life because of your fetishistic attitude toward food--THAT is disordered eating.
People who project magical properties onto food are messed up in the head, whether they're unnecessarily avoiding gluten or have a delusion that organic food makes them feel better or obsess over absurd protein intake.0 -
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roselemonade wrote: »Sure. You see all kinds of obsessiveness on the forums all the time - and it's an awfully thin line between obsessive and disordered. When people go feces-flinging ape nuts because someone called a food "clean" - yeah, there's quite possibly a problem there.
The "hardcore" (if there can be such a thing) IIFYM people are who "drove me off" this site the first time I left (though not at all what caused me to go back to bad eating habits.) There's a funny... duality? to the beliefs of some people here where they think that humans in general have both no self control and infinite self control. For example, if someone says "I stopped buying and eating Oreo cookies because I know that I can't stop at just one or two," you get a lot of people telling them that 1. they should just eat them in moderation and not deny themselves Oreos because 2) if they deny themselves entirely, that will cause them to overeat. So, a person with a self-described control problem is told they should exercise more control, or else they won't be able to control themselves (if this is not quite coherent, sorry, it's hard to put the problem into words.)
Also, different diets/programs/lifestyles work for different people at different times, and trying to apply one system to every person is futile. When I first came here, I had some success but became pretty neurotic about weighing/logging/tracking because I'm prone to anxiety. I eventually left because I disliked large swaths of the community. For many months after that I had success losing weight just by "eating clean" (I don't use/like that terminology, but it's the easiest way to explain in a way that most people will understand) and being mindful of portions. However, I then had a series of (external and internal) crises that left me in a pretty vulnerable emotional/psychological state, and I started gaining a lot of weight because my "intuitive" self-control was shot. That's when I came back here to log food, so that the diary does the work my mind can't handle right now.
I wouldn't tell you that. I'd tell you to buy one of the 6-packs or Oreos once a week instead. 0 -
Anorexics and muscle dysmorphics will of course be attracted to fitness sites, but they need more help than just assessing themselves.
Fat is different. I have a poor body image because I actually have a poor body. It's really just not being ind denial about how I look. When it's better, I won't be starving or living in the gym.0 -
roselemonade wrote: »
<snip>
For example, if someone says "I stopped buying and eating Oreo cookies because I know that I can't stop at just one or two," you get a lot of people telling them that 1. they should just eat them in moderation and not deny themselves Oreos because 2) if they deny themselves entirely, that will cause them to overeat. So, a person with a self-described control problem is told they should exercise more control, or else they won't be able to control themselves (if this is not quite coherent, sorry, it's hard to put the problem into words.)
<snip>
Usually the point is to learn moderation and self control. Oreo's will always be around, there is no getting rid of them entirely. Teaching yourself be in control, using tools like IIFYM to help you, is a huge part of what makes a person successful at weight loss. I have Oreo's sitting in my pantry right this moment that my husband bought Friday night. A year ago they wouldn't have lasted this long. There's 3 missing from the package as I type this, and there won't be any eaten for another few days.
More on topic - I already had disordered eating in that I gave no F's about how much I ate and never considered what I was doing to myself. Having an IIFYM mindframe means I focus on eating better (hitting my macros) while still having things I enjoy (gelato and beer). I'll take the latter over the former ANY day.0 -
Honestly, anything can trigger an eating disorder. In order to manage my diabetes, I need to be very concise about what I am consuming and in what quantities -being off by as few as 24g in a meal can cause my blood sugar to go from 120 to 30 (low enough to kill me) or from 120 to 200 (high enough to cause damage to my kidneys, nerves, and heart). As a result, I have to weigh everything I consume and factor in the other macros and fiber to determine my best insulin dosage and timing for my meal. On a diabetes forum I visit, someone brought up an online eating disorder assessment. They discovered that a lot of the behaviors that we need to do to manage our condition, such as knowing exactly what we eat or avoiding foods that cause insane variance in our blood sugars, are similar to the behaviors of people with eating disorders. I feel like I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I can manage my condition in a way that I know works for me and be considered to have disordered eating, or I can "let it go" and run the risk of developing diabetes-related complications.
Interesting thing is that there is an eating disorder associated with insulin-dependent diabetes (I think it is acknowledged in the DSM-5 as diabulemia). If we don't inject enough insulin, sudden and rapid weight loss occurs because of glucose being unable to move through the cell membrane and into the cell (which therefore prevents glycolysis and subsequent ATP production from occurring). Diabetics looking for a "quick" way to lose weight can purposefully withhold proper insulin dosages and experience rapid weight loss at the expense of high blood glucose levels, potential ketoacidosis, and a heightened risk for complications.
With IIFYM, it might certainly be more sustainable for some people just like how many of us maintain our weights through calorie counting while others don't need to. A lot of times, we start off this journey with a mild degree of disordered eating (whether through issues with binging, emotional eating, etc) that caused us to become overweight. As we shift our mindset to losing weight, it's very easy to abandon one way of disordered eating for another form unless we take the time to address and resolve it.0 -
MamaBirdBoss wrote: »And, sorry, but if you can't have a social life because of your fetishistic attitude toward food--THAT is disordered eating.
We see this all the time with (a minority of) calorie counters on MFP.
You may have just made the author's point...
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MamaBirdBoss wrote: »And, sorry, but if you can't have a social life because of your fetishistic attitude toward food--THAT is disordered eating.
We see this all the time with (a minority of) calorie counters on MFP.
You may have just made the author's point...
How can you NOT do it, though? I've been to 4 restaurants in 4 weeks and ordered a full meal at all 4 and was no more than 1300 calories on any of those days.
If you're a silly person who can't figure out things or look up a chain restaurant ahead of time, this might be an issue, but if you have two brain cells to rub together to keep warm, it's not that hard.
And those who freak out get it explained to them.-1 -
You're spending an awful lot of posting energy insulting people. That might be a sign of disordered thinking...
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I think if there's a predisposition to disordered thinking about food, IIFYM could certainly trigger some unhealthy behaviors.
Just like any other "diet".
I've had to take breaks from logging (or macro counting) because I felt like it was becoming a bigger "thing" than I was comfortable with. But that sort of perfectionism/controlling behavior already existed in me and would have manifested regardless of the route I chose.0 -
TheVirgoddess wrote: »I think if there's a predisposition to disordered thinking about food, IIFYM could certainly trigger some unhealthy behaviors.
Just like any other "diet".
I've had to take breaks from logging (or macro counting) because I felt like it was becoming a bigger "thing" than I was comfortable with. But that sort of perfectionism/controlling behavior already existed in me and would have manifested regardless of the route I chose.
This is more or less why I turned away from calorie-counting for a while. There's definitely some care to be taken in balancing what is effective (and I won't say that calorie counting isn't effective) and what is sustainable and keeps you sane. Lately I've had a lot of success with taking even one day a week off from logging--it helps me keep a relaxed attitude towards food while still working steadily towards my goals.0 -
You're spending an awful lot of posting energy insulting people. That might be a sign of disordered thinking...
Wow, invested much? LOLOL.
Some people want to make things hard. Or they're scared that easy won't work.
Fact is...IFFYM is easy AND it works.
To many people, that's cause for a freak-out. Or to snobbishly reject it in favor of unhealthy behaviors. And others, once they figure out they REALLY DO NEED TO WEIGH STUFF, start thinking it has to be harder than that and try to make it hard.
Anyone doing IFFYM and eating a non-VLCD can eat out at any restaurant with few menu tweaks, if any, AND it will still work. Can't be said for most of the "let's project moral qualities onto food" crowd.
Just think for a moment what the opposite of "clean" eating would be..."dirty" eating. How is that NOT messed up?0 -
He uses a few too many 'look at my article' tricks for my taste and falls into some of the fairly hysterical over-generalizations about what IIFYM means - including throwing the concept of 'eating disorders' into the article title itself.
Nothing he says genuinely addresses the issue of the kind of thinking patterns typically found in eating disordered individuals. He just seems to want to take a poke at IIFYM and rant about pop tarts.
I'd certainly welcome thoughtful discussion about that sometimes-murky line between being focused on your diet versus overtly disordered thinking (which I believe is not seen all that frequently on MFP), but his whole article just seems like more of a cheap shot for attention based on a currently-popular topic of debate.
I agree. He went on at great length to show how the disordered thinker would practice IIFYM, didn't really get into much depth, and then wrapped things up really quickly with the relatively saneAt the end of the day, some people will do best with a meal plan, others with a flexible dieting approach like IIFYM, and others a list of foods they can and cannot eat. Assess if your method causes restriction, stress and unhappiness in your life.
If it does then it is time to throw it away and find something else, irrespective of how many forum heroes or Youtube celebrities experienced great success with your failed method. All that matters is what works for you, your goals and your life.
I agree with the part I quoted. I just think he presented his point of view poorly.
The main thrust of his argument was that people in the fitness community might disproportionately tend towards disordered behavior with food. There could have been some more helpful information in the article about that and how to spot it in yourself. Instead, it comes across as a diatribe against IIFYM, and that smells of clickbait.
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Anorexics and muscle dysmorphics will of course be attracted to fitness sites, but they need more help than just assessing themselves.
Fat is different. I have a poor body image because I actually have a poor body. It's really just not being ind denial about how I look. When it's better, I won't be starving or living in the gym.
Are you saying... you're disordered?
I don't understand your post in the context of the discussion, or following up the mention of yourself after two types of disorder unless you meant to call yourself that as well.
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Pretty sure I go to restaurants to give orders, not to receive disorders.0
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MamaBirdBoss wrote: »Just think for a moment what the opposite of "clean" eating would be..."dirty" eating. How is that NOT messed up?
What's messed up is thinking that's the opposite.
Oy vey...talk about projecting "morals" onto food...
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Tee hee @ forum heroes.0
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