MinnieMaud Skeptic @minniemaud-skeptic - Tumblr Blog

Important info re: Gwyneth Olwyn’s membership to the Association of Patient Health Advocates:

Several complaints have been filed against Olwyn to the APHA. As a result, Olwyn has been denied membership of this organization and is no longer endorsed or recommended by APHA, and APHA has ordered that Olwyn remove the APHA from her website.

The APHA recommends that anyone who has experienced negative effects as a direct result of Olwyn’s “professional” advice should contact the Better Business Bureau or, if appropriate and reasonable, file a lawsuit.

debunking-minniemaud

New support group on Facebook for life after MinnieMaud

Long time, no see! I do not plan on updating this website — I stand behind what I’ve already said and intend to say little more. However, I have been contacted by many people over the years who have had negative experiences with MinnieMaud and almost everyone asks, “Am I the only one who hasn’t had this wonderful, life-saving experience with MinnieMaud? It seems to work for everyone else.”

So I am starting a support group for anyone who has had a negative experience with MinnieMaud — you see so many success stories for MinnieMaud but very rarely do you come across a story of someone whose life has been severely and negatively impacted by MinnieMaud and Gwyneth Olwyn’s “medical” advice.

If you have had such an experience and are looking for other people who have moved into recovery after MinnieMaud, and perhaps even fromMinnieMaud, I encourage you to join Life After MinnieMaud. The group will be closed so that no one outside the group will be able to see what you post. I don’t know how active I will be within this group or how much moderating I will be doing, but I will do my best to keep the group a safe place with no triggering numbers, images, etc.

Please spread the word!

Thank you,

-E

P. S. If you need to contact me, please do so through my website, MinnieMaud Skeptic. I will not be checking messages and comments on this account.

What are your thoughts on the Whole Foods Plant Based approach? Basically to eat only whole foods i.e. whole wheat, brown rice, fruits, vegetables, etc.

I think a whole foods, plant-based diet has a great number of health benefits. :)

#Anonymous

The post below is written in regard to my secondary blog, Debunking MinnieMaud:

This blog is no longer active but remains as a source of information.

While I’ve attempted to always back up my statements with scientific evidence, I want to acknowledge that a fair degree of emotion was involved in some of my earlier posts, and I may have been unnecessarily harsh. I did compare a certain MinnieMaud blogger to Hitler, after all. I can now readily assert that doing so was not appropriate and did nothing to ascertain my credibility and reason.

I also openly admit that when I started this blog, I was strongly fatphobic and had distorted views on obesity; however, with the research involved in the posts I’ve written on @minniemaud-skeptic, I learned that obesity is much more nuanced and that the contributing factors are very complex. This change in perspective does not change any of my opinions, published or otherwise, past or present, regarding MinnieMaud.

I wanted to write this post as a notice to anyone who comes across this blog after the fact; I can’t change the words I’ve already written in the past on this blog, but I can acknowledge that some of those words were not appropriate, specifically the fatphobia I expressed in the earlier days of this blog.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, you can leave a message in my inbox. I sincerely hope that this blog has helped prevent many vulnerable sufferers of eating disorders from partaking in a recovery method that is very likely to result in damaged health, both physical and emotional -- those individuals have suffered enough, and recovery should not be a time of suffering but of healing.

As always, I wish you all the best, in your personal life and in your recovery. The effort may be difficult, but the result is immensely worthwhile.

Be well,

Elizabeth

Hiiii, I have been watching Supersize x Superskinny and on second season they show the diet of a really overweight woman. It was not that unhealthy, but it was about 3700 worth of food. People who do the mm method usually eat this amount (or more, during "extreme hunger"). How can anyone believes they will not become overweight? Sorry for my bad english 😁 (feel free to correct my ask to change the mistakes, heheh).

Often, people believe what they want to believe. You can’t very well tell someone recovering from a restrictive eating disorder that obesity may be in the future without that person’s recovery being affected. I don’t think that most individuals in early recovery should focus more on regulating and normalizing eating patterns; weight should be very much secondary in concern.

#Anonymous

MM has helped me so much with recovery. I had eh and it just disappeared after a few months. I still get it maybe once a month but I eat very "normally" like I would eat a couscous salad and on eh maybe an extra serving... I feel like you don't need to be so hateful against this approach. Everyone needs to find their own way and that's ok. For some MM is the right way. For some maybe not.

Thank you for sharing your feelings; however, I don’t consider refuting Gwyneth’s claims with further scientific evidence to be “hateful.”

#Anonymous

This isn’t a question, but I wanted to say kudos to this whole blog. As someone who is highly interested in actual biology & anatomy, I found the whole ‘minniemaud’ thing to be absurd even when I first found out about it and was encouraged to do it. As far as I know, the metabolism works like a fire. You add fuel to the fire, it’s going to burn more. Too much fuel, it’ll increase too much. No fuel, and it’s going to get weaker. Oh and the ‘scientifical’ question made me chuckle.

You are very welcome! I appreciate your support!

#Anonymous

How many calories should a recovering anorexic eat in your opinion?

Consult a registered dietitian who specializes in eating disorders.

real-talk-recovery

A popular recovery blogger who shall not be named just told an anon that if her self-harm is superficial and does not require stitches, then the issue isn’t serious or worth concern.

LISTEN THE FUCK UP, dearest friends:

I don’t care how you self-harm – the issue is SERIOUS. Whether your wounds are serious or superficial, you are still engaging in a damaging behavior that affects you negatively. You are hurting yourself, body and soul, and that issue is really fucking serious because you don’t deserve to live with so much pain or anxiety or self-hatred that you have a compulsion to hurt yourself in any way possible.

Self-harm is serious, regardless of how you hurt yourself. Please tell anyone who tells you any differently to kindly fuck off. You are worth the concern. You have value. You matter.

- Mod E

The blog "everythingeatingdisordered" has now opened a "feedback" page.

Sarah claims to be open to "constructive criticism," so if you feel you have such criticism to voice -- as many of you have done so to me -- please navigate to that page and let your voice be heard. Some of Sarah's followers have expressed a desire to hear of negative experiences with MinnieMaud, so please share your story, as well. Be warned -- Sarah has written off every post I've written in critique of the information / misinformation she provides on her blog as "bullshit" because I did not recovery through MinnieMaud, so she may not be as open to criticism as she would like her followers to think. Regardless, she has provided an opportunity for you guys to share what you have shared with me, and I really hope that you will do so! I apologize for the inactivity, but I find being repeatedly dismissed by "MinnieMaud Warriors," despite having sound, logical, and educated arguments to be frustrating and demoralizing, and I am honestly much less interested in discussing and researching eating disorders as I am pretty absorbed in just living my own normal, boring life. :) Please take care and remember that your voice and experiments are important and valid. - Elizabeth

So, here's my plan for this blog:

I am going to delete most of the content and leave the debunking / citation analyses, patient experiences, answered questions, and some original posts. Then I will leave the blog. I have been sitting on this idea for a few weeks, as I have felt more and more frustrated and discouraged by running this blog. I know I leave and come back to this blog every six months or so, but I really hope to step away from this blog long-term at this time. I want to encourage you guys to continue to be skeptical. Gwyneth provides citations at the bottom of each article and in her references page or is in the process of doing so. Don't take her interpretation or my interpretation as fact -- paste the author's name and year of publication into Google Scholar. Read the abstracts; read the results. Ask questions. If any article or claim has no citation, contact Gwyneth through YourEatopia which is the best way to reach her. Ask questions. Best of all, ask those questions of the members of your treatment team - a medical doctor and a registered dietitian would be the best place to start. Even Gwyneth states that following MinnieMaud without medical supervision is not truly following MinnieMaud. Most importantly, share your thoughts and your experiences. YOU ARE NOT ALONE. In literally every email I receive, the person writes, "I know other people who have suffered. Can they contact you?" Contact each other. Speak out on your personal blogs - if MinnieMaud did not work for you, you do not need to be ashamed or embarrassed or like you have failed. Delete negative messages and don't respond. I have tried to be the voice of an entire group of people who are sad and angry and discouraged, and I have felt sad and angry and discouraged with those people, but the most powerful voice is that of someone who has a first-hand experience and who speaks openly and truthfully about that experience. So, please do so! And lastly - trust no bitch. Remember that most MinnieMaud advice blogs, especially Sarah at "everythingED" and the members of "letsrecover," are run by young people with no formal education who are advising outside the realm of what is appropriate or safe. The only person who can give you answers regarding your health, your diagnosis, your caloric intake, your risks, etc. is a certified medical doctor with access to your complete medical history. No blog can replace a medical professional, no matter how much you want that blogger to do so. At the end of the day, you have to do what is best for your own recovery, and I hope you guys are able to find real, true freedom from disordered thoughts and behaviors, because recovery really is possible, and an unrestricted life is.. well, I think I'll let you guys find out! Take care and be well, Elizabeth

I came to check out your blog today: I heard you had been posting screenshots from YE that were, obviously, private, so I came to see what that was about. FYI - you can't have my IP address. I don't have a fixed IP address, like many people. If it is an IP address that's looking at your blog once a week, it's certainly not mine. Funnily enough, however much I don't respect the shit you write about me and some others, my top priority is not to read hate about myself. It's just not my idea of fun.

So, why are you here?

My Objections to MinnieMaud:

My most vehement objection to MinnieMaud is the overt promotion of binge eating, which is referred to as “extreme hunger” by Gwyneth Olwyn and within the MinnieMaud community, ostensibly to differentiate healthy and necessary extreme hunger from pathological binge eating. Gwyneth herself admits that her concept of extreme hunger is not consistently supported by any study other than the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which was a groundbreaking study in terms of understanding the effects of starvation on the human body but whose subjects did not include eating disorder patients who are at an increased risk for binge eating. Even in underweight patients, binge eating is not a healthy behavior. Resolving malnutrition and a clinically low body weight takes consistent and adequate nutrition, not binge eating that may overwhelm a weakened cardiovascular system and result in cardiac failure. A significant part of recovery is learning to nourish the body appropriately, and encouraging an individual with inconsistent hunger cues to eat in response to preoccupation with food and past the point of physical fullness does not teach that person to re-connect with his or her physical sensations of hunger and fullness.

My second most vehement objection to MinnieMaud is the promotion of obesity as being protective to good health. I have seen firsthand through direct screenshots of the YourEatopia forums of self-proclaimed “warriors” who cite the obesity paradox as evidence to gain weight into an obese BMI range or to maintain a BMI within that range. I have also seen popular MinnieMaud bloggers assert that an individual can be at his or her set point while being obese and suffer no health consequences for being obese. Gwyneth herself writes authoritatively, “Obesity is not a health risk.” Ignoring the multitude of studies that have correlated obesity with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and other serious health conditions, as well as an increased mortality rate, is not a sound decision. Citing singular studies that show a decreased risk in the obese for post-surgical complications or dementia as evidence that actively becoming obese is healthier than remaining at a normal weight is also not a sound decision. Posting pictures of obese women who look “vibrant and powerful” as evidence of the benefits of obesity is not a sound decision.

My third most vehement objection to MinnieMaud is the normalization of severe physical symptoms during recovery, most significantly, the occurrence of edema, which can be a symptom of congestive heat failure, even in the absence of cardiac symptoms. Other concerning symptoms are frequently brushed off as “totally normal” during recovery. While some MinnieMaud bloggers have been more careful to advise followers to see a physicians, many more bloggers continue to offer medical advice to patients who are at an increased risk for fatal complications during refeeding. No matter how “well-researched” these bloggers claim to be, no one should be offering medical advice to anyone else outside a physician-patient relationship. Many MinnieMaud advice blogs are run by young men and women with no formal education who are not science literate and who do not have the knowledge to even begin to formulate hypotheses about someone else’s health. MinnieMaud bloggers are not doctors, but followers continue to seek and receive medical advice from these blogs.

I am not sure why I listed these objections in “levels of vehemence,” but I guess I should continue: My fourth most vehement objection to MinnieMaud is the extrapolation that is required to claim the support of the studies cited within YourEatopia articles. Gwyneth often extrapolates results of studies that focus solely on patients with anorexia nervosa to patients suffering from any restrictive eating disorder. She also frequently extrapolates the behavioral aspects of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment onto eating disorder patients. Besides extrapolating onto differing populations, Gwyneth also extrapolates in order to “fill in the gaps” of studies regarding caloric needs when the fact remains that caloric needs of the general population remain uncertain, and calculating caloric needs is complicated, especially in context with the obesity epidemic. Naturally, individuals with a higher body mass as seen in overweight and obese individuals require a higher energy intake, and the majority of the population within North America and the United Kingdom have weights within the overweight and obese range. These individuals also tend to under-report daily caloric intakes by up to one-third when self-reporting in response to societal expectations. Gwyneth extrapolates the “true” intake of these individuals using their reported intake increased by one-third and cites these occurrences as being evidence for her “minimum” caloric guidelines, disregarding the fact that many of the subjects who were surveyed are overweight or obese. As she also claims that being overweight or obese is not a health risk, then this extrapolation is not unexpected.

I have many more objections to MinnieMaud, but this list illustrates the main reasons that I do not believe that MinnieMaud is a sound recovery method.

#objection #minniemaud #minnie maud #opinion

Gwyneth’s Sources on Refeeding Edema:

I asked Gwyneth to shoot me some references for her article on edema, which did not have many citations, if I remember correctly. The following are the studies she sent to me:

Pencharz P. B. and Azcue M. 1996. Use of bioelectrical impedance analysis measurements in the clinical management of malnutrition. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 64 (3): 485S-488S [Full Text] - This study does not give much information about the patients studied, but the study size was indicated as thirteen subjects.

In a study of patients with anorexia nervosa we found that during the initial phases of refeeding the bromide space increases significantly, even in patients with marasmus, but subsequently declines to normal. Concomitantly, there was a steady increase in intracellular mass and body fat (Table 1 and Table 2). Within the intracellular mass there appears to be a prompt increase in potassium with a slower increase in protein as measured by total body nitrogen.

Moreno M. V., Djeddi D. D., andJaffrin M. Y. 2008. Assessment of body composition in adolescent subjects with anorexia nervosa by bioimpedance. Medical Engineering and Physics 30(6): 783-791 [Full Text] - A small study involving thirteen adolescents with restrictive type anorexia that were hospitalized; the methods described within this study indicated that the patients with anorexia had an increased amount of extracellular fluid than the control group.

For instance, a loss of body cell mass which includes proteins and intracellular water (ICW) may be compensated by an increase in extracellular fluid, and could not be detected from the weight. [...] The body cell mass to (height)2 ratio was found to be significantly different between AN subjects and controls.

H. L. Tey, S. C. Lim, and A. M. Snodgrass. 2005. Refeeding oedema in anorexia nervosa. Singapore Medical Journal 46(6): 308. [Full Text] - A case study of a young adult woman with anorexia nervosa who experienced edema in both legs after beginning nutritional therapy; despite treatment, her edema persisted for approximately one month before resolving spontaneously.

An important differential diagnosis to rule out in refeeding oedema is cardiac failure. Patients with anorexia nervosa lose a significant amount of body mass during starvation and coupled with the reduced demand, this can lead to reduced ventricular mass and myofibrillar atrophy. During refeeding, the sudden ingestion of relatively large amounts of nutrients can overwhelm the diminished capacity of the cardiovascular system and result in heart failure.

Ehrlich S., Querfeld U., and Pfeiffer, E. 2006. Refeeding oedema. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 15(4): 241-243 [Abstract] - Case study of a teenage girl with anorexia nervosa who experienced drastic weight gain due to the effects of refeeding; the refeeding subsided spontaneously after seven days. The authors speculate on the mechanism of refeeding edema.

Overall, refeeding oedema is a transient physical complication during treatment of malnourished AN patients, which needs close medical monitoring [...] However, to ensure patient safety, daily physical examination, vital signs, and weight should be obtained. Additionally, monitoring of fluid balance and electrolytes including phosphate are strongly recommended.

Please note that without exception, these studies focus solely on either a small group of patients with anorexia nervosa or a single case study of a young woman with anorexia nervosa, and all patients were significantly and clinically underweight. Gwyneth extrapolates the results of these studies to include anyone who is undergoing “refeeding” or increasing his or her intake after restricting.

#minniemaud #minnie maud #refeeding #gwyneth olwyn #science #debunked

Debunking EverythingEatingDisordered “Scientific Research”:

Why You Need More Calories than the Government Approved Recommended Daily Allowance (self explanatory)

Not science, just an article written by Sarah that included citations to scientific studies that did not support her claims and was debunked completely here.

Basic Weight and Obesity Facts (explaining weight set point theory and answering the common question “If weight set point theory is factual, then why are there so many obese people?”)

An article by Gwyneth Olwyn on YourEatopia in which she asserts that “obesity is not a health risk" and links to her Fat Series, which was debunked here and here. She also links several studies that are almost twenties year old, which is an issue to me personally but may be acceptable to other people. Regardless, I can find many more studies that have linked obesity to a higher mortality rate and would be glad to provide those studies to anyone interested. I have linked a few here and here.

I Need How Many Calories?!! (an explanation for why you need far more than societies RDA of calories)

Another article of Gwyneth’s that I debunked here and here. Also, LOL at Sarah’s “societies RDA of calories.”

MinnieMaud Method and Temperament-Based Treatment (another post about 2500-3500 calories and why we need them)

An article of Gwyneth’s that I have not seen, but I have the same issues as I presented in my debunking of her caloric guidelines: she extrapolates. A lot.

How We’ve Come to Believe that Overeating Causes Obesity (article supporting and showing evidence of set point theory and explaining why the diet industry and what we have been told about food and weight is wrong, referencing the Minnesota Starvation Experiment)

The author of this article provides “evidence” of a conspiracy by the weight loss drug companies yet only references the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which is not relevant to obesity. At all. Regardless, I do believe that the weight set / settling point theory is scientifically sound and that the belief that every obese person must be vastly overeating is incorrect. I have linked to a few studies that discuss the multi-faceted causes of obesity, which are not always simply overeating but are instead a combination of hormonal, environmental, and lifestyle contributors. Links to these studies can be found here.

Genes Take Charge, and Diet Falls by the Wayside (another article supporting and showing evidence of weight set point theory)

The subjects in this study were given less than 1,000 calories per day, and the researchers were shocked to see that the patients were metabolically starving? Okay. Regardless, this article is very informative in explaining how weight loss in the obese affects metabolism, as well as how obesity can be inherited. However, I would argue that just because the body has a set point within the obese range, either through genetics, environment, lifestyle, or any combination of the three, does not mean that those individuals are immune to health effects of being obese.

The Minnesota Starvation Experiment (I would highly advise that everyone read this, and all of this, since the conclusion at the end is especially important. It references extreme hunger, tapering, overshooting, and the effects of starvation, and the research supports weight set point theory. It is a famous study so many of you may already have heard of it) Here is a summary of it relating everything to recovery.

Pass.

Why Are Thin People Not Fat? (BBC documentary showing how set point theory works)

Yes, set point is a thing. Next.

The Lies We Buy: Defining Health at Women’s Expense (article talking about how unreliable BMI is at defining health, and how being overweight/obese by BMI standards does not mean poor health)

In summary, this article is writing about how BMI is inaccurate and may cause women to engage in unhealthy behaviors and develop eating disorders in an effort to lose weight. I wrote about a similar issue with BMI here - BMI should merely be used as a statistic.

Healthy Redefined Part 2: Forget About Fat and Get Fit! (an article talking about how health and fitness often has very little correlation to body weight or BMI)

The author of this article writes about how weight loss does not immediately make someone healthy, which is fairly obvious, I think. The author continues by writing, “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that poor nutrition and physical inactivity are the second leading causes of preventable morbidity and mortality, and are among the top priorities of Healthy People 2010 and beyond,” which means an overweight or obese individual who has a healthy balanced diet and engages in moderate exercise has less health risk than a normal weight person with an unhealthy or unbalanced diet who is sedentary, which is explicitly stated in the next paragraph of this article.

Wait, how does this information support MinnieMaud again?

Good Science: Dr. Leibel Explains Metabolic Slowdown with Weight Loss(science behind weight set point)

Yes, if you lose body mass and / or restrict your calories, your metabolism will be affected. Again, weight set point is a thing. Next.

Obesity and Metabolism: Why Weight Loss Is Difficult to Sustain (science behind weight set point)

Yep. Next.

Exactly Whose Weight Are You Over? (article on health at every size)

Ahh, Carrie Arnold! I love her. :) My post on BMI is similar to what she has written in this article, but what she has written is not really about the “health at every size” movement:

Certainly, if you’re completely sedentary, have velcroed your sweatpants-covered ass to the couch and do nothing all day but stuff Twinkies in your gob, then you might have some changes you wish to make for your overall well-being. But if you eat a varied diet, if you move your body, if all measures of health are good, and your weight is stable, then let me ask again: exactly whose weight are you over? You might be overweight relative to population norms but at a perfectly healthy weight FOR YOU.

Conclusion: Yes, weight set point is a thing with evidence, and yes, some people may have set points in the obese range as a result of hormonal changes, environment, lifestyle, or a combination of all three factors. The body does not like to lose weight and gets pissed when you try. The articles cited to support the MinnieMaud caloric guidelines are weak. Very weak.

A good effort on Sarah’s part though! Some of these articles are good reads, whereas others are highly questionable.

#minniemaud #minnie maud #problematic #debunked

Experience with MinnieMaud: taxed-tarkatan

I’d been diagnosed with AN; restrictive subtype for quite a while- having never experienced any binge/purge behavior or impulse. My health was becoming increasingly grave, mentally and physically, and I really “just wasn’t all there cognitively”. I felt absolutely hopeless- cue YourEatopia being my first introduction to anything related to eating disorder recovery. My parents loved it, also inexperienced, and

I cannot even articulate how *relieved* I was by the idea that all I had to do to fix the hell I was in was eat eat eat. My brain was “misinterpreting food as a threat, that’s all. If I stop restricting, everything will balance again.”

In short, I binged myself to weight restoration. I went from extremely underweight to a normal weight in a month- giving me no time to learn to cope with weight gain or accept my body as it grew. The image was so different that I couldn’t bare to look at myself in the mirror for a long time. However, the hunger and food preoccupation ended, and was replaced with a disinterest in food almost entirely and I believed so much that I was fixed completely. I tried forcing myself to continue 3000+ but couldn’t stomach it. My weight never shot up high (I’ve naturally always been on the lower side as is) and I took all of this as evidence that YE was the be all end all. I was convinced that really was it, I’d beaten my eating disorder.

7 months later, relapse hit me hard; a month in I panicked, thinking that I must have just messed up by restricting again- so what to do? Eat eat eat. This sparked my first binge/purge cycle, something I had no knowledge of or any clue how to deal with. I thought that I must be screwing up, again, by simply purging in response to ‘reactive eating’. I kept trying, but would become anxious to the point that I felt I couldn’t function if I didn’t purge after uncontrollably gorging myself. The advice I was given by my parents was, “stop purging and it’ll go away. It’s extreme hunger. Eat and then go to sleep, so you won’t purge.” because they’d put so much stock in what we’d read on YE.

By that point, I’d become addicted to it. I started planning b/ps every other 2-4 weeks. I thought I’d never recover because I couldn’t stop purging in response to “reactive eating”, and my physical health was increasingly worse as a result of dropping weight so quickly and restricting as was, but the b/ping, although spaced apart by weeks, greatly accelerated the decline. I began learning the falsehoods in MM as a whole, but, the behavior was already added to my ED’s arsenal. Believing I was recovering, my parents would unknowingly fund these b/ps and prompt me to eat more and more and took the fact that I was still losing weight rapidly as me needing to eat *even more* and at some point (I barely remember a lot of what was going on near the end of it because a lot of the time I was in a 'brain fog’ type of thing) encouraged me to binge one night, laying out 1300 cal worth of food and BEGGING me to eat it, thinking I would become okay again.

Not knowing what to do, my mother FINALLY called one of my old therapists and he urged her to get professional help and explained that this was much, much deeper than just needing to get proper nutrition. The misinformation we got from MM took a while to unlearn, and I still am very… Bereaved? Over the time when I believed I could reach remission without the difficulty of balancing things. My doctor was fucking SHOCKED by a lot of the concepts when I told him about it.

#minniemaud #minnie maud #experiences #submission

My testimony serves the purpose to inform people of what might go wrong when following internet advice.

#minniemaud #minnie maud #experiences

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