I read many news stories about eating disorders every week--most of them are okay.  I don't feel that they've turned the world upside down with great knowledge, but they also aren't heinous.

Then there are the heinous stories, about which I need to splutter in verbose dismay because I can't think of anything else to do.

Let's start with the title, shall we?

Addictions & Answers: Behind the insideous 'art' of anorexia

Okay, just to clear up any misconceptions here: ANOREXIA ISN'T ART.  It's not pretty.  It's not insightful.  It doesn't bring value to the world.  Watching your hair fall out in chunks, watching your skin turn yellow and gray, watching your kidneys stop working--this has nothing to do with art.

Being so afraid of eating, or the consequences of eating, isn't art.  It's an illness.  We don't call cancer or diabetes or mesothelioma an "art."  We seem to reserve that concept for eating disorders.  Stop making eating disorders into something they're not.  This so-called "art" kills thousands of people, and precious few people take it seriously.  We need a lot less art concepts and a lot more illness concepts.

I love metaphors, and I have used metaphors a lot to try and explain my own experience of having anorexia.  But there's a difference between using a metaphor to describe something ("It was like being trapped in a burning building") and actually using that something as a metaphor ("The burning building is like our society").  Frankly, I find it insulting and demeaning.  Anorexia-as-art smacks of vanity, of something less than serious, that maybe I huffed a few too many turpentine fumes on my way out the door.  Nuh-uh.

Onto the actual article...An excerpt is below:

BILL: Can't these people just look in the mirror and see something is radically wrong?


DR. DAVE: That's like saying to a meth addict, 'Can't you see you're killing yourself, why don't just stop?'


BILL: Dave, not the same. The meth addict is out-of-his-mind high. The alcoholic who dies in a one car crash or even the gambler who suicides in a deep depression rather than face his creditors—these are things our readers can understand. The closest I can come to understanding anorexia was when someone called it "the art of starvation."


DR. DAVE: Exactly: People like Isabelle Caro and Jeremy Gillitzer are addicted to view starvation as a kind of body image art.


BILL: An art they can totally control.


DR. DAVE: When the 87-pound anorexic loved one is genuinely horrified about how a stick-thin arm is "too fat," and pushes away the plate, barely touched, their families are baffled.


BILL: I can see how easy it is for parents to miss anorexic behavior. Aren't they in the midst of their own post-Christmas diet rituals --Jenny Craig "personal counselors," the new Weight Watchers "Points Plus" programs, and the rest? OK, Doc -- how does a parent or lover intervene to end this addiction?

"Body image art?"  So having anorexia is like getting a tattoo?  My only response to that is WTF, buddy?

The drunk, the meth addict, the gambler are all out of their minds, but someone with anorexia--a diagnosable mental illness--is somehow perfectly sane?  It's not just a bad choice.  The chaotic eating patterns in any eating disorder mean that the brain is painfully, thoroughly affected.  Someone with an eating disorder is exactly like a meth addict or someone as drunk as a skunk.  Their brain isn't working properly.  They need to detox before they can start behaving rationally.  Most starving people aren't completely rational--the men in Keys' Minnesota Starvation Study showed that rather well.

The last thing that really irked me is the comparison of anorexia and dieting.  An eating disorder is not an "extreme" diet or a diet gone overboard.  It's not uncommon for an eating disorder to start as a diet, but that doesn't mean that an eating disorder is a diet.  A suicidal person is often depressed and in a bad mood (trust me on this one).  Suicide isn't just a really rotten mood.  It isn't something you deal with by watching a funny movie and hoping it will go away.

One of the best things about the Internet is that everyone has a voice.  One of the most frustrating things about the Internet is that everyone has a voice.  Some people--especially these two--shouldn't have microphones.  It's one thing to peddle your whackjob theories on your own personal blog, but to have an official "stamp of approval" from a news organization is ridiculous.

I'm spluttering not so much at this article about insurance refusing to cover bulimia treatment (though the situation is very much splutter-worthy), but at the comments.

Generally, I don't read the comments on news articles mostly because they're either from extremist wingnuts, they're irrelevant, or people use the anonymity of the web to act like immature jackasses.  But I started reading the comments on this article, and my eyes just saw red.  I've gotten used to a lot of the misconceptions about eating disorders ("Just eat a sandwich!"  As if that hadn't occurred to me...) and although they're annoying, I understand that much of them stem from a lack of knowledge rather than sheer idiocy.  That is, I have hope that this person will one day understand EDs a little better once they have more knowledge.

These comments, however, are the epitome of sheer idiocy.  Some examples:

Blue Cross/Blue Shield is my insurance carrier as well. I will call and support them in this decision and I hope many more call and support this decision. I don't want to pay for her care. She is an adult, she needs to take care of herself. I'm glad this has been on the news. It brings awareness to many of us, of the crazy things people try to get insurance companies to pay for. No wonder this country is in a health care crisis. If we all get a disease then we can all be on easy street. WHATEVER

They don't help many child genetic issues either. The disabled children in this country and the Veterans in this country can't even get the medical help they need. So, why does this family feel that their daughter's condition is worthy of help? As far as I am concerned they can pay for it out of there pocket. I have to pay for "most" of my disabled child's medical bills, because insurance won't pay them. Do you see me ranting on tv and picketing the insurance company? No!!!

Or

Let her parents support her! Why should the insurance company pay. In the end all of us that have insurance with BCBS will be contributing to paying for her care. I too am going to call them tomorrow and agree with their decision to not pay for her care. My grandparents need medical help,they have cancer, the insurance company don't pay all of their bills. They act responsible and pay their bills, they don't go picket the BCBS office. They pay for their own home care.

The logic is so bad it's astounding.  Yes, getting sick drives up health care costs.  We will all get sick and it will cost money to get it treated.  Unless you have a way to prevent all illness (and something tells me if you're this blatantly stupid, you don't have the extra neocortex to come up with something so groundbreaking), then we're going to get sick and need insurance.  Any questions?

Also, I think some of these people have picket envy.  If you're pissed off, go picket.  It's your right.  You're allowed.  But don't get pissed because you can't/don't/won't take such a stand.

I just end up incensed when people (some of whom are in my family) see an eating disorder as the self-indulgence of a pampered kid.  I was exercising for hours a day on a broken foot--that's not being pampered.  Something primal in my brain was driving that, something that can't be explained by wanting to stay on my parent's health insurance policy (which wouldn't have happened because I was 28).  If that was the case, the curing an eating disorder would be as easy as refusing people with EDs health insurance.  It has happened to me (I am, literally, uninsurable), and I didn't spontaneously recover once that occurred to me.

I know I shouldn't let the little bastards get to me.  There were supportive comments on there, too.  I know most people try to understand.  But every now and again, the ignorance just astounds me.  I don't wish an eating disorder on anyone, but sometimes, I do wish these people would be able to experience an eating disorder from the inside before they open their gaping, ignorant maws and spew forth utter crap.

Most of you know by now that a few weeks ago, Kate Moss said that "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." Moss got spanked by many in the press--and rightly so--for this comment. I didn't blog about it initially, because a statement of a person in the fashion industry that advocates weight loss isn't especially newsworthy to me. There's the occasional zinger, but mostly I ignore it.

The fallout over the Kate Moss comment has been considerable, and it was annoying me a little bit. Kind of like the itch directly in the center of your back that you can't reach very well. And all you want to do is scratch. Well, I figured out what was bothering me, and this post is the equivalent of scratching an itch.

That the media reported on a famous person saying something that made them look like a goon really didn't bother me. It was a really stupid statement, she said it in an interview (which Moss would have well known is "on the record"), and she doesn't have the best reputation for promoting healthy body image anyway. I rolled my eyes and sighed when I read the quote (remember, I worked in an office where a similar phrase was posted all over), but I was neither surprised nor particularly outraged. Annoyed and irritated, yes, but I have grown almost to expect it in some arenas.

What irritated me was the coverage that had headlines like "British model Kate Moss accused of encouraging anorexia and bulimia with 'skinny' comment" and "Kate Moss accused of encouraging anorexia among teens." Certainly her comments were vexing and troubling, and do NOT make recovery from an eating disorder any easier. When so many other people have a disordered eating mindset, you have to ask: whose disorder is it anyway? And these comments do nothing to dispel the serious nature of eating disorders. But these comments, while stupid and idiotic and just flat-out WRONG, don't really encourage anorexia.

People have been saying "cleanliness is next to godliness" for centuries. There are celebrities who market their own line of non-toxic cleaners so you don't poison your family by using the "regular" stuff. Um, hello OCD. I have struggled with both compulsive hand-washing and compulsive cleaning, but I was never encouraged to boycott Purell or a line of cleaning products because they promoted unhealthy images of cleanliness. Did navigating our germ-phobic society make challenging my OCD thoughts any easier? Nope. Did it have anything to do with my OCD? Not at all.

Yet we also know that no matter how much a celebrity says that several showers a day makes them feel "good," it's not going to lead to a spike in OCD cases. Or that uncovering the illegal wiretapping from the Bush administration is going to cause a spike in schizophrenia cases because the people paranoid about others' listening in on their thoughts could actually be right. We get that distinction between our messed-up environment and a biologically-based mental illness for many other things, but we don't get it for eating disorders. Instead, we have quotes from Kate Moss' publicist saying "For the record, Kate does not support this as a lifestyle choice."

Lifestyle choice?!? That's almost more harmful than the initial comment.

Part of the problem stems from how our society admires the symptoms of anorexia, namely the weight loss. Considering that anorexia is egosyntonic, many sufferers don't initially recognize that they are suffering from an actual disorder instead of being really good at losing weight. Since sufferers don't usually recognize the ED thoughts as being unwelcome or intrusive (at least at first), it's easy to see how sufferers can use statements like Moss' to justify their actions. It is incredibly sad that it is so easy to justify the behaviors of a mental illness because our culture is just that screwed up.

Because the "nothing tastes as good as thin feels" line is commonly used in the pro-anorexia world, I can see how Moss' comment might be taken to be an endorsement of this. However, most of the "pro-ana" slogans have actually been adopted from generalized dieting mottoes. Our culture gave it to them, not the other way around. If this comment is used to justify ED behaviors, it's not really any different than people hiding behind the latest diet or food trend that's been hyped. Of course we would be better off if we didn't fetishize the anorexic body, and if we were able to get rid of the inaccurate equation that thin = happy. Her comment was neither accurate nor helpful.

And, for the record, I've tasted "skinny" when I was anorexic. It's called ketosis, and if you can imagine the constant taste of rotting and fermenting apples in your mouth, then you'll know what I mean. Skinny feels uncomfortable. You're always cold, you can't sit down because your ass is too bony, and your fingernails are blue. There's plenty of food that tastes better than this.

Via the Academy for Eating Disorders' email listserv, I found out about an upcoming game for PlayStation 3 called "Fat Princess."

From the text of the email:

The purpose of this game is to prevent the princess from being kidnapped by making her too fat to carry. To do so, the characters must navigate through a castle avoiding enemies and obstacles to find cake. They then must bring the cake back to the princess and feed her. When the characters feed her a piece of cake she significantly gains weight (as the announcer in the game preview states, she is no longer her light airy self).

As I am sure is obvious to each of you, the premise of this game sends a myriad of dangerous message to the general public as well as those at risk and suffering from eating disorders and/or body image concerns. It clearly does not promote the notion of size acceptance. Furthermore, advertising for the game has welcomed all sorts of puns such as "Fat Princess Worth the Weight" and "Fat Princess Let Them Eat Cake."

You can watch a brief 30 second trailer of the game below:



It is the longer preview of the game with its accompanying commentary that is the most inappropriate (with the highlights coming at 1:50 or so):



I will be contacting PlayStation directly, and am encouraging you to do so as well.

Sony Computer Entertainment America
Human Resources
919 East Hillsdale Boulevard, 2nd Floor
Foster City, CA 94404

The content of this game is inappropriate, discriminatory, and frankly inaccurate. It sends the wrong message to anyone that a single piece of cake will make you noticeably fatter, and that skipping the cake will turn you back into your "airy self."

Eating can be a pain- I know this very well. There's the I'm-writing-and-in-the-groove-and-don't-want-to-stop part that I think most writers know well. Then there's the I-have-an-ED-and-eating-SUCKS part that I think most people with eating disorders know well.

Thankfully, Tylenol has a cure for this.


That's right- who needs food when there's Tylenol? Because eating regular meals is, I dunno, so last year. If white is the new black, then is Tylenol the new food? I just need to ask my dietitian whether Tylenol is a grain or a vegetable...

Thanks (I think) to AS for posting this on Facebook.

I didn't think MeMe Roth could get any worse. I really truly didn't. This is, after all, a woman who threw away children's ice cream toppings. But besides the alarming visual similarities to conservative shrill Ann Coulter, MeMe Roth now has a bunch more verbal ammunition to make the similarities known.

This little piece in Jezebel (h/t Libby) absolutely blew me over: Anti-Obesity Activist MeMe Roth Compares Eating to Rape

Roth says:

The defense has been made in the case of sex criminals that there is pleasure on the part of the victim. The same is true with what we're doing with food. We may abuse our bodies with food, but it's incredibly pleasurable. From a food marketer's point of view, when your quote unquote victim is so willing and enjoying of the process, who's fighting back?

Yes, you read it right. When a fat person eats, Roth thinks they are effectively raping themselves. So if I tell her go to f*ck herself, is that like asking her to lick her elbow?

The Jezebel piece is actually an excerpt from an article in the British newspaper The Guardian titled "The Woman Who Hates Food," which I think is an interesting choice of headlines. I don't know if Roth hates food, but she does hate people who eat food. Which is basically everyone, including (considering she's still alive) herself.

Though Roth protests she's never been anorexic, she has some decidedly unhealthy attitudes toward food. She insisted on meeting interviewer Gabby Wood "after lunch," whereupon the following dialogue ensued after Wood asked Roth what she actually ate:

She squirms visibly. "You're taking me where I don't want to go ... What works for me doesn't work for a lot of people."

Well, you've said that, I insist, so taking that into account: lunch? Roth hesitates. "I discovered when I was in college that I work best when I get a workout in and eat after that. Sometimes I'll delay when I eat until I get a workout in. But I don't let a whole day go by without running four miles."

OK, I go on, but supposing you couldn't work out until four o'clock in the afternoon - would you not eat until after that?

"I might."

I look at my watch. It's 3.30pm. Alarm bells start to ring in my head. How about today, I ask. Have you eaten at all today?

Roth is a little quiet.

"No," she says.

There is a pause.

"But I feel great!"

In the end, Anna N* at Jezebel says it best in her article:

Roth may not be anorexic, and she may not think of what she does as dieting, but if "what works for her" is not eating anything until after 3:30, she's right that it's not going to work for most people. Nor should it. To liken the pleasure one gets from food to something as toxic as sexual assault isn't just illogical and insensitive — it also demonizes something that nourishes, brings people together, and produces some of the greatest and most uncomplicated joy in life. Rather than accept food for what it is — something that, like many good things, is wonderful in moderation and problematic in excess — Roth wants people to think of it as some kind of evil rapist who will make us fat and therefore shameful. It's a judgmental, unhealthy, and ultimately unsustainable way to live.

*Who linked to my piece on Daphne Merkin's story on depression last week and sent about a bazillion people my way- thanks!

Here is the single, most potent lies of the Thindustry: that you can choose your weight.

Guess what? You can't!

You can't change your shoe size- unless you lop off a toe. You can't change your height- unless you lop off your legs. They're all inscribed in the itty bitty molecules of adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine that make up your DNA. Does your environment have an influence? You betcha. But only upon the height and shoe size predetermined by your DNA.

So when did we get the idea that weight was any different?

A healthy weight for you (and me!) is a range, usually about 10-15 pounds. Sometimes more, sometimes less. And this range can change a bit over time. For example, it's common to gain a little weight as you age- something the BMI charts don't take into account.

When Tiptoe alerted me to the existence of The Pen and Paper Diet, I had to laugh. People, this is Calorie Counting 101. No big deal. You count all of the calories that you eat (and by this, I mean Every. Single. One.) on a meal plan that is designed for people of all ages and activity levels. It's the same old schtick you hear time and again: the equation of calories in - calories out=your weight. Which isn't exactly true. You start dieting, your metabolism slows. Sometimes, exercise can either speed up or slow down your metabolism.

The kicker, however, was in the press release, titled "A Simple Diet to Help People Struggling with Anorexia and Bulimia."

In it, the founders of the Pen and Paper Diet (a husband and wife team with NO MEDICAL BACKGROUND AT ALL, I might add) say this:

The Pen and Paper Diet, a new book by Michael Dow, provides a simple way for any adult of any age and activity level to control their weight to a specific pound indefinitely. This can be done as long as individuals track calorie consumption.

"If a person consumes the appropriate amount of calories for one's height, age, sex, activity level and weight, then one can maintain their ideal weight," says Dow. "This diet will be ideal for those that struggle with anorexia and bulimia because it can enable these individuals to maintain their weight at the low end of BMI like they would prefer while digesting their food," Dow says.

Can somebody please remove my jaw from the ground?

Listen to me, buddy, anorexia and bulimia are not ABOUT controlling your weight. They are ABOUT a neuropsychiatric illness over which the sufferer has basically no control. Low weights only make things worse- they continue the cycle. Furthermore, you can't recover by staying at a "low but safe weight". You will be tormented by eating disordered thoughts and always verging on relapse. You need to be at a healthy weight for you, the one determined by your genes and not your whims. Women cannot expect their weights to stay within a pound due to water fluctuations around menstruation. And Maude forbid you ever eat salt or are constipated.

This doesn't free you from the tyranny of the scale, the calorie, or the eating disorder.

You don't have a freaking clue what you're talking about. So until you have talked to people with eating disorders, have earned a medical degree and have acquired at least a margin of common sense, keep your damn mouth shut.

(And yes, I emailed him this blog post).

I'm a fan of The Onion. It's a satirical newspaper that pokes fun of damn near everything. Part of the humor is exactly what point their making, and how they use humor to make it.

There are spin offs, of course. Some give me the occasional chuckle, but most of them are piss poor attempts at humor, current events, and the combination of the two.

There was a recent article at The Spoof.com, an online magazine/newspaper/piece of utter crap, that was titled "CDC Issues List of Phony American Diseases." I found the article listed in the Google news at the side of the blog here.

At the top of the list of phony diseases?

Anorexia and bulimia.

I can't repeat my first response here, largely because my parents know of this blog and would probably wash my mouth out with soap. My second response was, "This guy must be a f*cking idiot!" My third response was, "I'd love to take him to an IP Eating Disorders Unit."

His reason why these were "fake" American diseases?

You won't find these pseudo-diseases where people lack food. Not one case of these two diseases can be found in Africa, India, Pakistan, Cuba, and in the Chinese countryside. These diseases come about as a result of worshiping at the altar of cultural expectations, ie; you do not see fat people in glamor commercials nor in soap boxes or shows like Desperate Housewives. Bulimia and anorexia are merely a return to the decadence of the Roman empire where purging was common place. Furthermore these two diseases are a badge of honor and status symbols and their rapid spread among the working classes can be directly attributed to nothing more than mass hysteria and the desire among dullard women folk to emulate their skanky Hollywood role models.

That this guy has definitely NOT checked his facts is clearly evident.

1. Eating Disorders have been shown to exist in every country, everywhere. Yes, they are more common in Western countries because that's where they've been studied, and that's where the triggers promoting healthy eating and weight loss abound.
2. These diseases occur in very young children. I don't know many 6-year-old boys who honestly give a shit about Nicole Ritchie. And yes, there are children that young with anorexia.
3. Eating disorders aren't "about" anything. They're an illness. They're no more "about" anything than cancer is.
4. Bulimia is NOT hedonistic. It's a biochemical imbalance. It's an attempt to self-medicate. It's an addictive process. See also #3.

That one random jackass says stuff like this in a desperate attempt to seem funny is annoying. I think what really gets to me is that he's echoing a lot of the beliefs that many people hold about eating disorders. That they're choices, that you have to choose to eat. That it's about celebrity worship and wanting to be thin. No one with anorexia starves themselves for a particular look. They starve themselves because not eating, losing weight, bingeing and purging, and even attempts to have the "perfect" body alleviate anxiety. These behaviors are about fear. Raw fear.

I want people to know that. I want people to see the suffering, not just of the horrifically emaciated cases that are broadcast on TV, but of every last person with an eating disorder. I'm tired of people being jealous of the fact that I have anorexia, that I have "willpower." That's crap. Like people with cancer have this amazing willpower to force their cells to keep dividing.

The author also talked about the waste of money on phony diet pills (which was the sole redeeming phrase in the article) for people who are "too lazy to eat less and move more."

Obviously, he has no more clue about the natural range of body weights in the human population, as well as the way in which diets fail people.*

Maybe this guy will pull his head out of his ass. Maybe he won't. I can't change that. But I can share MY truth, MY experiences. It's not about the weight. Seven years of starving IS a real disease. It causes real damage to your body. It causes a gap of seven years in your life. It causes bone loss, seizures, depression, anxiety, and a whole mess of things that I can hardly stand to explain. It can break families apart. It can kill you. A condition with a 10-20% mortality rate sounds like a real disease to me.

I'm not going to waste my time trying to explain this to the author. I've learned with family members that you can't reason someone out of an illogical position. And maybe he was just trying to be funny. I doubt, however, he would have said this about cancer.

Get a grip. Get a life. And do your research.

*People don't fail at diets. Diets fail them. Big difference.