welcome to this month’s carnival of eating disorders, a monthly collection of interesting posts on eating disorders and related issues such as anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia, cumpulsive exercising and overeating.
it’s interesting that this carnival is right after the progressive dinner carnival, isn’t it? lots of stuff about food …
because we were so inclusive with yesterday’s carnival, for this edition of the carnival of eating disorders i’ve been quite strict with the selection of contributions. if a post wasn’t directly related to eating disorders, if it was something that we’ve all read about many times already, or if it simply didn’t strike my fancy, i didn’t include it.
the good thing is that with that approach, we have a real nice distillation of articles. here we go:
anorexia
in eating disorders and the net, the writer muses about what it was like when she was anorexic pre-internet:
my experience often leads me to wonder if i would have hung onto my relationship with anorexia (or “ana” as “she” is often referred to on message boards and blogs) if i had been exposed to other anorexics via the world wide web.
today, there are plenty of sites out there espousing the “positives” of being “pro-ana and mia”. (for the uninitiated, “mia” is an abbreviation for bulimia.) and given my personality, i know without a doubt i would have eagerly traded secrets and ideals and warped body image views with disordered eaters across the globe.
that would have been very, very destructive. in fact, i might still be too thin(or dead) today.
now, don’t get me wrong ” the internet isn’t all bad or all good. and i’m not demonizing it; i’m simply offering my opinion.
like any tool, the web is what you make of it.
another article on anorexia: laura collins talks about a 20/20 piece about an older anorexic woman that laura feels did not take into account more recent findings about anorexia.
body image
elastic waist points to a questionable quizno’s commercial:
once again, you have two possibilities in this world–you get to eat, or you can be hot. there is no in between! also, sandwiches are messy and therefore somehow defeminizing. and if you’re in one camp, you must hate/envy/not relate to the other side.
taking a more compassionate and realistic perspective on dress sizes, beauty is a commodity talks about tv actress rebecca field:
in an industry ruled by an obsession with the coveted size zero, the full-figured rebecca field is a welcome addition as a regular on october road. the actress plays plump barmaid janet “the planet” meadows in the abc series now on its second season.in real life, field has had her own experience tending bar at the olde heritage tavern in lenox, massachusetts. more importantly however, she recently took on the responsibility of spokesperson for a timely health cause that is also made evident by her role in october road.
in the fall of 2007, field signed on as spokeswoman for the non-profit group, multi-service eating disorders association or meda. the outfit endeavors to educate, prevent and help treat eating disorders, something the actress considers especially relevant.
bulimia
seventh hippo offers a little bit of information about diabulimia saying “it’s a little known eating disorder that has a mortality rate of 34.8% per year. this needs to be talked about!”
diabulimia is a new phrase for a phenomenon that is not very well-known. it is another form of bulimia, an eating disorder that typically strikes teens and young adults who are type 1 diabetics.1
it seems as though there are diabetic teens who would much rather go blind and be skinny than be healthy and potentially overweight. what they do to achieve this goal is to wilfully ignore their bodies’ need for insulin. this sends the body into a state of starvation, resulting in unhealthy weight loss.
and here is a song by a man (“we want to be pretty, too”) who is dealing with bulimia.
miscellaneous
steve oliphant gives an interesting anecdote about parenting his little son who has an aversion to swallowing. of course one might wonder whether there are people whose aversion to swallowing is less developed and who then develop anorexia later in life but according to at least one report, this is not the case.
overeating
samuel bryson muses about why diets don’t work
diets themselves go against human nature, they are in themselves rather counter intuitive. yet the fact remains that even if someone really knows what their doing nutritionally and on a physical level and constructs a very healthy and reasonable diet to yield slow consistent fat loss (not just weight loss) with the inclusion of exercise and so forth that they can still fail. why is this? it’s largely got to do with the approach to the diet. here again psychology is the key word. dieting is a flawed concept.
other posts on overeating included
four reasons to eat your food slower
project weight loss
handling cravings
wish exercise wasn’t so hard?
what did you think of this carnival? did you learn something new? did it help you to think differently about eating disorders? let me know!
if you have or know of an interesting article on eating disorders, please submit it here. the next edition will be out on february 28, 2008.