Out of Control Fatroll

I’m swapping out this week’s celebrity thoughts on weight loss for a harder look at my own struggles with weight loss (and gain). Don’t worry, I’ll be chatting about Kelly Clarkson next week if you only read the blog for my snarky thoughts on celebrities. But my guess is you don’t.

I’ll be the first to admit that back in high school, I definitely was borderline anorexic. A pint of milk, baked potato and a sugar cookie should never be considered a balanced meal – let alone that one meal accounting for three. But stupidly, I thought that having an eating disorder or being anorexic or bulimic meant that you didn’t eat at all or were a hard-core purger.

But according to a recent Self Magazine article, I didn’t have an eating disorder, I was/am a disordered eater.

Okay, so you may be thinking, WTF? It’s the same damn thing. I thought that too until I read the whole article.

According to this online survey – taken by more than 4,000 women across the U.S. – six out of 10 women are disordered eaters, meaning that you practice habits like eating little to no carbs, skipping meals (like breakfast or dinner) and are constantly dieting without the extremes that anorexia or bulimia can cause. But it still can mess up your emotional or physical well-being. And on top of that, an additional 10 percent of the women suffer from the actual disorders (anorexia, bulimia). So three out of four women are nursing a serious issue with the food they eat.

According to the Self Survey, disordered eaters are broken down into six categories:

• Calorie Prisoners: People who only eat a certain amount of calories because they are so scared to gain weight… cough, me and my LoseIt app that I’m addicted to
• Secret Eaters: Find ways to eat crap food where they won’t get caught… um, my recent sugar cookie incident
• Career Dieters: Constantly on a diet – and more than likely to be overweight or obese… drats, me too
• Purgers: Use laxatives and vomiting to get rid of calories
• Food addicts: Eat to deal with stress, celebrate events… um, every day of my life
• Extreme Exercisers: Work out to lose weight, and get upset if they miss a session… oh dear, me too

So it appears that I am easily in five of the six categories, which definitely puts me as a disordered eater. A lot of individuals (myself included) thought that this issue was mainly found in young girls (middle/high school/college), but the survey found that women in their 30s and 40s suffer from disordered eating at the same rates.

I remember a few years back, I decided to try out the South Beach diet. Two weeks without carbs caused me to go mentally crazy – seriously. I dropped serious balls at work, got into horrible fights with Justin for no reason – and was so unhappy (even though I lost 10 pounds – and quickly gained it back). They actually have a name for what I was suffering from – the Atkins Effect. A study in 2008 by Tufts University showed that:

When dieters eliminate carbohydrates from their meals, they performed more poorly on memory-based tasks than when they reduce calories, but maintain carbohydrates. When carbohydrates were reintroduced, cognition skills returned to normal.

So, um, what do you do? Well, unfortunately, the article doesn’t say. It spends freaking four pages talking about these women and all their different struggles (which I can totally relate to all of them) and then at the last paragraph at the VERY END, they briefly interview someone who weighs 210 and recently lost 15 pounds and is perfectly happy the way she is. Then the reporter has the audacity to write “That’s a happy mind-set we can all aspire to.”

I’m happy for her, really. But let’s be honest. Self – and countless other magazines, blogs, weight loss programs, etc. – make their money off of people NOT being happy with themselves. And Self tries to come in and tell me, I just need to be happy with the way I am? While on the next page they tell me to try these weight loss techniques and/or new diet?

That’s just poor journalism at the end of the day. I mean, instead of including quotes from doctors saying how you can beat this mentality, they just vaguely include quotes like, “Imagine what women could accomplish if they spent that time and energy on things other than body issues.” How about you actually tell me HOW TO STOP THINKING ABOUT IT?! Duh, I know I need to not think of my diet 24/7. BUT HOW DO I STOP?!

So thanks Self. Thanks for telling me I have a problem. I suppose that’s half the battle. But shame on you for not sharing with other women how to stop disordered eating – instead, you continue feeding the flame the second the reader turns the page.