More body positivity and general support for fat girls with eating disorders
I don’t usually add to posts like this but this is super important to me and this is why:
When I was thirteen, I told my therapist about my eating disorder. I was starving myself for days, then binging and purging, and then starving myself again, etc etc.
I told my therapist this and she said to me “That’s not going to help you lose weight.” And she told me to see my doctor about a diet plan. And she asked if I had anything else I wanted to talk about.
I told my best friend as a last ditch effort to get someone to care. I pulled her aside at a church meeting and said I had something to tell her. It was so hard for me to say.
She laughed it off and said she was expecting worse and then she told me “don’t do that anymore” with a smile. And I said okay, thanks, and we went back outside. And I got the sense that she was humoring me, like “aw, fat girl thinks she has a skinny person illness.”
Those were the only two people I told. I kept it to myself after that. I had NO support. I had to claw my way out of my ED on my own. I still get the urge to throw up sometimes if I’ve had a big meal, or skip a meal or work out until I pass out.
Please support fat girls with eating disorders. Please help them. Please don’t make them feel like they deserve what they are doing to themselves.
I have said it once and I’ll say it again: we absolutely teach young people disordered eating
I remember seeing a women’s magazine advertising the “coffee diet” where they advised drinking warm cups of coffee in place of meals
and that - that’s an ana trick, drinking hot water to convince yourself you’ve had food
The magazine acted like it was perfectly reasonable to eat one meal a day
It’s not alarming to most people to see a fat girl skipping meals. It is easy to hide the disorder in the open because no one thinks “she hasn’t eaten lunch a single time this week.” Even if someone does notice, it’s seen as an attempt to “get healthy” and not “holy fuckballs, is she starving herself? Should I be worried? Should I try to help?”
A fat girl eating is cause for ridicule. A fat girl not eating is nothing to worry about.
I’m not a small woman, and my life is spent living, working and travelling with the same group of people. Mostly, people don’t notice what other people do with their time. So no-one pays much mind if I don’t eat for days, but on the last run, a woman ten years my junior picked up on it and started cooking meals for us to share. Up to five times a week (over 10-12 weeks), she’d bring meals around to my room and we’d watch a movie and chat while eating whatever delicious, healthy creation she had bought over. She certainly knew what was going on, but we never spoke about why I wasn’t eating because I never broached the subject. She just kept doing what she was doing and accepting my most sincere gratitudes for the effort she put in, with a genuine, “I really don’t mind, I’m cooking anyway!”
This was the easily the most meaningful thing to have happened to me in the last year.
