when ppl tell the stories of their eating disorders, they often say “it started out with me just eating a little healthier and exercising a little more…” and tho i get the spirit of that phrasing, it’s dangerously inaccurate. we didn’t start eating healthier, we started restricting our food intake. there was nothing healthy about our eating in the beginning phases of our eating disorders. restricting food intake is not healthy, and it’s extra not healthy for ppl w a genetic predisposition to an ed
as long as we frame eds as “healthy behavior gone too far” we’re gonna suck at treating them and keep pulling the environmental triggers on those genetically loaded guns (that is, causing eds, if you accept the biomedical model) in more and more pplÂ
healthy eating is not restrictive eating. healthy eating is intuitive, the way we ate as kids, long before the ed was a twinkle in our genetic predisposition’s eye. the ed started with a little restriction and became a lot of restriction. we can’t afford to get this point wrong
