Eating Disorder Talk

USA Today reported the story of Leslie Lipton, a college student in New York. According to the newspaper, when Lipton was younger and without other symptoms of disordered eating, she felt watched and worse, judged during occasions of public eating.

This fixation on food choices and portion sizes is apparently rampant in adolescent society,

“Lunch in the high school cafeteria felt like a competition. ‘Everyone would be looking at everyone else’s tray to see what everyone else was eating,’ says Lipton. ‘If you eat less, at least the comparisons are good.’”

This competition and it’s occasional foray into eating disorders makes sense, since untouchability is a widely-held adolescent belief. The sub-conscious thought that nothing can really harm teenagers, risky behaviour will not have long-term consequences and death is something that happens to older people - these are great ingredients for dabbling in restricting, especially when you don’t want to be the only girl at the pizza parlour actually drinking a regular coke and eating more than a slice.

What can we do to combat this non-eating competition and potentially the fall to out-of-control eating disorders? Model behaviour that we think is healthy, of course.

Do you want your kids to grow up thinking that eating a meal a day, consisting of low-fat, low-calorie energy is right for themselves? Then don’t do it.

Don’t have kids or know anyone with them that would be affected by your choices? Do it anyways - you never know who may be watching you at your local food court. Or watching, to see if you’re watching them.

There’s been quite a lot of stir over the new iMac. Yes, it’s a beautiful machine guaranteed to convert even more people to the Apple side, but the stir has really been about it’s advertising.

The Alliance for Eating Disorder Awareness wrote a letter directly to Steve Jobs after the newest iMac advertisment went global with the tagline, “You can’t be too thin. Or too powerful.” Apple pulled the ad after 13 days of world-viewing, replacing it with the tagline-less, “The new, all-in-one iMac.”

So what do you think? Was the tagline really as dangerous and potentially triggering as AEDA thinks?

Some articles to check out:

• Wired Blogs
• Macenstein - here and here
• Huffington Post
• Back in Skinny Jeans
• Yahoo News

So the British Fashion Council (BFC) was set up to orchestrate the Fall London Fashion Week. In March, the BFC set up the Model Health Inquiry (MHI) due to concerns about working and lifestyle problems within the fashion industry. More specifically, the health and working conditions of models within the London Fashion Week extravaganza. The MHI announced the scope, submission and reporting process of their study in May. Early July brought an interim report.

Early findings led to a opinionated statement by the panel’s chairhead, Baroness Kingsmill: it’s inappropriate for models under 16 to be portrayed as women and ultimately, it’s a possibility that the Council will rule against allowing models under 16 to appear in the six-day designer showcase. She even went so far as to say

“We have been given startling medical evidence about the prevalence and impact of eating disorders in certain high-risk industries.
“There was also strongly expressed concern that it is profoundly inappropriate that girls under 16 under the age of consent should be portrayed as adult women.
“The risk of sexualizing these children was high and designers could risk charges of sexual exploitation.” read the BBC article…

So basically, she’s saying that models are hired to promote a sexy, thin, womanly image (let’s not even get into what a paradox that is) and are being treated as though they are walking sexpots? So, what, sometimes drugged, drunk, undernourished girls in sometimes very little clothing are actually still children? Maybe we should stop giving them adult jobs then. Is fashion is the madame of image? Are we all helping promote pimping and starvation?

In a word, yes. Want to debate that? Leave your comment.

london fashion week, model health authority, models, modeling, teen models, sexy, pimps, british fashion council

Keira Knightly won nearly $6,000 in a lawsuit against The Daily Mail. The suit was to defend against the notion that Knightley, assumed anorexic, was the reason a 19 year old, who Knightly was not friends with, died of anorexia.

The paper ran a picture of a bikini-clad Knightley in January with an editorial statement that expressed a parent’s heartache, and blame towards the media - something that not only would have given themselves negative publicity (should there really be publishing warnings?), but ultimately cost them something like two employees’ monthly salaries.

If pictures like this one of Keira carried a health warning, my darling daughter might have lived.

She has long argued rumours of a possible eating disorder - she blames being naturally thin and states that she is aware of the seriousness of anorexia, since she had an aunt who’d suffered from the disease. This is supposed to be reasonable proof that she doesn’t have one?

Judge for yourself and let me know what you think - is Keira Knightley sick or in need of a slap?

She is rumoured to be considering donating the court’s award to the UK’s Beat - an ED charity.

BEAT, keira knightley, the daily mail

Today, CNN highlighted a supposedly new eating disorder, diabulimia. Apparently, 34 year old Lee Ann Thill was at a diabetic camp for teenage girls when she overheard counsellors reprimanding another camper for not taking her insulin so that she could lose weight. That lead to 17 years of taking “just enough insulin to function.”

The practice has seemingly been around for a long time, especially amongst young girls with uncontrolled type I (juvenile) diabetes. But it’s becoming more prevalent recently, in part due to the tips exchanged on diabetes and eating disorder internet bulletin boards. One expert suggests that 450,000 US type I girls - about one third of current diagnosed cases - have at some point practiced diabulimia. It does makes sense that juvenile diabetes would predispose people for disordered eating - to control it well, it means occupying your thoughts with carb counting and adhering to a specific diet. At most, if not all, times.

From the CNN article:

Jacq Allan, 26, of London, is a diabulimic.

“I’m constantly worried that my eyes are going to go, but they seem relatively OK for the moment,” she said. “I always wonder if this will be the day that some major organ fails. I kind of want something to happen because then maybe I’ll stop.”

The risks? Namely, early onset of diabetic complications, especially those related to eyesight and kidney function. Missing or lowering insulin doses can lead to hyperglycemia, which then leads to excessive urination and weight loss. My favourite effect of diabulimia is hypoglycemia. This leads to all kinds of horrible complications, such as shakiness and dysphoria.

As a side effect of my long-term eating disorder, I was diagnosed as hypoglycemic about eight years ago. I was also warned that if I did not get control over my disordered eating habits, I would likely become diabetic. I’m thinking, maybe that in light of diabulimia’s existence, that wasn’t such an unnerving threat.

bulimia, juvenile diabetes, diabetes type 1, diabulimia, insulin, hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, dysphoria, organ failure, pro-ana websites

A new over the counter (OTC) weight loss product has hit the shelves in the US. alli is a fat-blocker reputed to block absorption of about 25% of the fat you take in. The major drawback, besides the embarassing and uncomfortable side effects, is that alli will be most effective and least invasive when used with the low-calorie, low-fat diet plan and exercise regime marketed with the product’s starter pack.

Side effects of not following the low-fat plan include diarrhea, unplanned bowel movements and gas with an oily discharge. The product’s website actually suggests wearing dark pants and carrying an extra pair around, in case of accidents. This hasn’t stopped consumers from purchasing the product, as reported here. Sales of the moderately stocked but massively hyped product have surprised vendors, who are being questioned about whether the drug works, not how or at what physical cost.

The problem as I see it, is that while marketing of the drug states that it is most effective when used in conjuction with lifestyle changes, such as fitness and following a low-fat, low-calorie diet, perusal of the alli message board left question marks as whether this prescribed diet is realistic for a typical user. And whether the lifestyle changes will indeed be heathier. In one location of the product’s webpage, “treatment effects” can be minimized by eating meals with less than 15 grams of fat - more and you risk the leakage and painful digestion issues. But on the message board, consumers of the product are concerned as to whether they should eat less than the recommended 19 grams of fat per meal or risk the drug not working to help them lose weight…this specific number of fat grams was based on their own “alli diet plan”.

One user went so far as to explain the diet plans available in the product’s diet plan book and this is where the red flags were raised. She describes having a choice between a 1200, 1500 and 1800 calorie plan, each with specific fat intake recommendations. But let’s examine this, based on the calorie recommendations, alone…

The average Canadian woman weighs 153 pounds and is 5 feet, 3.4 inches tall; American women are 10 pounds heavier, while being 0.4 pounds taller. This means, using this caloric calculator, an average 35 year old Canadian woman needs 2,063 calories daily and her American counterpart, 2,170. Using alli’s suggested 1,200 calorie per day diet plan means a deficit of over 900 calories for some women. Add three thirty-minute sessions of jogging per week, she could burn an extra 750 calories weekly, totalling a loss of 2 pounds per week.

So, without even introducing fat-blockers - non-digestion of a quarter of the fat you eat (not to mention what else you won’t be absorbing: fat-soluble vitamins, for one) - you can expect to lose 2 pounds a week if you’re an average woman living in the US, eating 1,200 calories a day and jogging for a total of an hour and a half a week. So, what’s the point of the fat blockers, again? Why deal with anal leakage? Sounds great, right? Sounds like a plan?!

It sounds fishy to me.

In my personal experience, the very devoted anorexics I’ve known adhere to a diet of between 100 and 1,200 calories daily. So, yes, I question how many women are setting themselves up for the fall, here - in an effort to lose 10 to 20 pounds. I know that it would send me into a spiral of starvation. Would it be worth it for you - the mess, the lack of food, the lack of control?

alli, anal leakage, calories, diet pills, low-fat

Want to be shocked and shaken? Here’s the findings of a study of 2,980 adults, conducted from 2001-2003.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (yes, that’s NIMH, as in the Secret of) published findings of the study, 0.9 and 0.3 percent of women and men had suffered from anorexia during their lifetime, while 1.5 and 0.5 percent of the female and male respondents admitted to suffering from bulimia. A surprise to some is that 3.5 and 2 percent of women and men admitted to having had a binge-eating disorder at some point.

The study also confirmed the largely-held theory that people with eating disorders, regardless of classification, type or severity, often have coexisting mood, anxiety, impulse-control, or substance use disorders.

Also in the results was a suggestion that anorexia is a less chronic illness that other disorders, with an average life of 1.7 years. Tell that to the last 20 years of my life!

NIMH, Anorexia, Bulimia, Binge-eating, Mood disorders, Substance use