Eating Disorder Talk

When I came across this article, I knew I’d be sharing it with you. Seems that October 11th will see the largest eating disorder awareness event Canada’s seen, Until Your Heart’s Content at the Boulevard Casino in Coquitlam.

The event will be hosted by Shelley’s Angels Society, a non-profit committed to providing funding to those afflicted with eating disorders who cannot afford private counseling via bursaries. World-known speakers include Dr. Anita Johnston, Lori Henry, Susan Kern, Karen Cook and more. Also on the bill are musician and dancers, such as Evelyn Yngveson and Divirani Naidoo.

Two days later, Dr. Johnston will be running the Soul Hunger Workshop, a day-long event with a view of challenging and questioning the feminine ideals and habits.

Sadly, I won’t be able to attend either of the events, but I recommend it to anyone who can - the ticket prices of $50 and %150 could well be worth it, to be surrounded by those recovered and positively stationed in life. IF anyone is planning on attending and would like to share their experiences, interpretation or even just some photos, please get in touch with me via email.

soul hunger workshop, eating disorder awareness, eating disorder events, until your heart’s content, shelley’s angels society, eating disorder recovery funding

Media-wise, so much focus is given to Social Anorexia, even when talking about bulimia. Social Anorexia, for those who aren’t aware, can loosely be defined as an eating disorder, Anorexia, that was brought on by a media-instilled quest for thinness. People go on extreme diets and use bulimic tactics to lower and maintain their weights to conform to some magazine/Hollywood-idealized form.

So when I came across this post on Dumb Little Man, I couldn’t help but point you in the direction. And show you my favourites:

• drink water.
• have sex daily.
• skip seconds and eat slower.
• use nonfat milk in your latte.
• skip the muffin.

I couldn’t have said those better myself. My top three add-ons?

1. Use spices such as cayenne, basil and garlic instead of excess salt.
   Just one tablespoon of salt is nearly 300% of the recommended daily amount for a lot of people. Let’s not even talk water retention.
2. Replace soda with 100% fruit or vegetable juice.
   Eight ounces of V8 juice contains only 50 calories, yet is high in fibre and vitamins A and C (as well as sugar and salt); soda’s same serving size has nearly double the calories, no vitamins or minerals (but under 10% of the sodium of V8).
3. Watch portion sizes.
   Literally learn the recommended portion amounts for your age, sex and lifestyle and then use the size recommendations. Did you know hat a serving of meat is roughly the same size as a deck of cards? A serving of pasta or rice is equal to a light bulb. Check out the link above for more comparisons.

Personal story: my daughter and I were coming home on the bus today from the craft store - we were looking for some new yarn colours for another crocheting project for a friend’s new place. After we went past the hospital where she was born, one that offers a wonderful eating disorders program as well as the reproductive psychiatry program that I participated in, a woman and her companion got on the bus.

I’m assuming that the woman was an inpatient of the program, out on a day-trip. She was severely anorexic. So thin that her ocular cavities stood out from her face. She was a little taller than me and I’d say I outweigh her by 25 pounds. She spoke with a tiny voice to her friend, looking downward most of the time. The lanugo covered most visible surfaces. She was advanced, extreme and I’m guessing an eyesore to every other person on the bus who avoided looking at her.

I glanced her way a number of times, hoping for the chance to smile at her - to show her that I didn’t think she was worthy of dismissal or to be invisible (whether it was her intention to be, or not), but she didn’t meet my eyes until a few minutes into our bus ride. Why?

Because my wonderful daughter, nearly 13 months, who is outrageously social most of the time, leaned as far out of her stroller as she could towards the woman, hung her head backwards as if upside-down and gave her a thousand watt smile. The woman was obviously caught off guard and looked to me, as if for an explanation. Zoë tried again to engage the woman and while in the same position, did a little finger-curling wave. Then the woman gave a little half smile, barely discernible and Zoë laughed.

So did the woman. It was small, but it sounded like a form of joy to me. Toddlers are amazing individuals. They don’t judge or show hatred. Or even tension around people who may be construed as problematic by us, apparently higher, adults. They are incredibly intuitive and in those situations sometimes, they just share themselves.

I’m feeling witty, yet humbled after a visit to my doctor during which we found that I’d dropped another two pounds and my blood pressure is back in the danger zone. Last night, I was looking at my reflection before a hurried shower as my daughter was sleeping. She sees this all the time, me engaging in self-judgements, searching my profile for signs of bloat or…what, i don’t know.

She’s still young enough to think that a reflection is a friend to play with, to poke and kiss and try to caress - but honestly, I’m running out of time to prevent her from seeing me as a unhealthy person to model herself after. What I saw last night shocked me because though I knew I was getting thin, it crept up on me how thin I’m already getting.

So, on that note, tonight I write about recovery - something seeming far away and unattainable at the moment. But still, it’s good to have long term goals.

Terra’s Version of the Twelve Steps for Eating Disorders*

1. I admit that I am suffering from an eating disorder, because of which, aspects of my life seem unmanageable.
2. I believe that with discipline, self-acceptance and the pursuit of health, I could be restored to sanity.
3. I’ve decided that in the case and in all likelihood, I will require help to recover from this illness. I will actively seek it and accept it when it’s offered to me.
4. I’ve taken inventory of my thoughts and habits, with a view to find ways to encourage positivity and discourage negative self-talk.
5. I am willing to be open about my habits and feeling with others, especially those directly affected, as long as it is for the greater good of communication and support.
6. I am ready to recover, even though it is a scary thought to process - my life would be too short and unfulfilled without mental and physical health.
7. I accept that I am not ensconced with faults for which I must punish myself, engage in disordered eating or give up - this is a hard journey and I must work at all steps of it, but even if I fall from my path to health, I can rejoin it at any time and it doesn’t make me a lesser person.
8. I am willing to forgive myself, my family, my peers, the media and other important influences for their role in or enabling of my eating disorder and ask that they do the same.
9. I recognize that my past of disordered eating has affected others and so choose to apologize for my role in their unhappiness, when doing so would have a positive affect.
10. I will continue, even when recovered, to reassess my improvements and backslides in an effort to be in tune with my recovery constantly.
11. I will learn to live with the thought that perfection, thinness, measurement are not realistic and to use the Serenity Prayer, in some form, as a personal mantra.
12. I will, during appropriate times and using appropriate avenues, tact and sensitivity, share with other my struggle as a means to help those who are also struggling.

Adapted from the 12-Steps available through the Al-Anon website.

An alternate mantra, taken from the Quado & Carrie site states:

Recognize that your faults are exactly what make you the wonderful person that you are. Recognize that your perfection consists of all these faults and imperfections. You are perfect in your imperfection. You are exactly right, exactly as you should be, right now. When the criticism starts, just stop it dead in its tracks and say: “I love and approve of myself. I accept and love myself exactly as I am.”

12 steps, eating disorder recovery, perfectionism, thinness, guilt, Serenity Prayer

We’ve all spent too much time playing around with personality tests on the internet - What ice cream flavour would you be? What Disney princess are you? and How virginal are you? are some of the best (time wasters) out there.

But what if your personality type could predict or indicate why you have an eating disorder? What if you could take this diagnosis of personality and apply it to getting healthy because in black and white, a test was telling you what your weaknesses and strengths were?

I came across the Enneagram series a while back and the questions bounced around in my head. So here I go, your guinea pig. I’ve taken the 10 minute test and my results are:

Type 6: The Guardian is my strongest type, followed immediately by Types 1 and 7, the Achiever and Optimist. What does that mean? Using the descriptions from the series, you can believe I’m firstly:

• a hard-headed thinker who is focussed on securing the well-being of others.
• loyal, trustworthy, able to work without need of special recognition for long periods.
• suspicious, moody, slow to trust and forgive.
• at times paranoid due to a heightened sense of awareness, which leads to anxiety.

I’m secondly:

• a creative thinker with the ability to see the silver lining, who chooses to use this behaviour to charm and please others.
• concerned with others’ happiness, sometimes above my own, for the fact that it makes me happy, if I’ve made others happy.
• A capable and responsible problem solver, who can become addicted easily to self-gratifying experiences as a method of escapism.
• Critical and hurtful when feeling as though I’ve been taken advantage of.
• Purposeful and efficient, sacrificial to meet a goal, an idealist.
• Obsessed with the correct way that tasks can be accomplished.
• Privy to a harsh inner critic, who leads me to guilt and irritability for not meeting my own high standards.

Now, from your own thoughts, feelings, research, etc., how similar are you to my results? Do you think that your own results would differ greatly? Try the test, let me know. After you’ve done that, check out the fifth part in the Enneagram Series, Working on Yourself and the sixth and final part of the series, Working with Others.

Since you’re here for one of five reasons (according to last week’s poll), I must assume that you’ve stumbled onto or been referred to my new favourite blog, mamaVISION. You haven’t? Here’s your chance. Bookmark it and add it to your feed readers because this woman is informed, indignant, and supportive. She’s a pit bull wrapped in a cuddly infant snowsuit, licking your cheek.

Some of my favourite areas of her site include (in no specific order):

1. Her story. She was a model for six years and then quit and had to repair her disordered eating habits, self esteem and so on.
2. A recent email she received from Mike Smith. Who used stereotypical apples to oranges comparisons and was too scared to give his real name and a long-established email address!
3. A description of Social Anorexia and how it affects us.
4. Her audacity to tell parents to examine proana sites and proana videos on youtube. It’s wonderfully unabashed. Especially since it was following the outrage of…
5. Her posting on how to make your daughter anorexic - which basically lists the ways parents unknowingly instill disordered eating habits in their children, via rewarding, praise and modeling behaviours.

There’s lots more that I’d like to go into, but I won’t keep you when you could be over there!

Don’t forget to anonymously vote in this week’s poll!

Since coming to ED Talk, I’ve reviewed the top ranked websites in the areas of bulimia, binge eating disorder and anorexia. This week I’ve looked around Alexa’s subjects and listed the top five eating sites - most of them are in direct relation to eating disorders; one doesn’t focus only on them, but also on dieting, mental illness - the grandiose subject of unhealthiness.

I’ve chosen to not actually review these sites for a number of reasons, the first of which being my lack of bias, in light of my recent downturn. Other reasons? I’m aware of what a positive impact a few of these sites have had on people I’ve cared about; I don’t want to potentially have a hand turning someone else away from that positivity.

1. Something Fishy
2. Eating Disorders Resources
3. Dying to be Thin
4. Suite 101: Eating Disorders
5. After the Diet

I hope that these resources are a positive step for you, if you’re looking to plant your foot somewhere. On the opposite spectrum, my next top five list will be the most popular pro sites.

Don’t forget to vote in this week’s poll!

The typical recovery program involves food and weight monitoring; one-on-one, group and sometimes family therapy; vital tracking; and journaling, in some form, whether it’s via art, music or writing.

A newer form of treatment is getting rave recommendations, as well as the typical critics - family centred therapy, or the Maudsley Approach. In fact, it’s gaining medical support as well: at it’s 2004 launch, the Maudlsey Parents website listed four therapists, now it’s over 60 (source: Wall Street Journal).

The program involves three phases typically consuming about a year, during which the patient is normally not in private care at a facility, but rather, with their family. These phases include:

• Weight restoration
  • Harmful side effects of the disorder are explained
  • Family’s typical eating habits and interactions are assessed
  • Therapist helps the family to re-feed the patient
  • Therapist models and provides feedback on a uncritical stance towards the eating disorder
• Returning control over eating to the patient
  • Family is schooled and encouraged to help the patient take control of eating habits, themselves.
  • Issues relating to eating are discussed as the program moves further forward
  • Small steps are taken to ensure that weight correction is moving in a positive direction, however normal social habits are encouraged
• Establishing a healthy identity
  • When weight is nearly normalized, identity and the eating disorder’s effect on establishment of it, is a main focus
  • Correction of misinterpretations of identity take place
  • Family is encouraged to prepare for the days ahead when they are no longer needed as a part of treatment - or even if treatment is not longer needed at all.

This seems like a great idea, however I do question how many families would be able to be, consistently, a constant role of support and teaching. It’s exhausting being close to someone with an eating disorder. Especially in the case of parents and children, there is often the dichotomy of parental self blame versus criticism of the child’s behaviour and lack of ability to “get over it.”

I suppose the main intention though is to provide a support system for both the curative and post-treatment eras - that’s in no way negative in my books.

family therapy, eating disorders, Maudsley Approach

Continuing onwards, week three’s top five is all about bulimia; weeks one and two can be found here and here.

1. Ask the Dietitian - First off, I was distracted from reviewing the site due to the damn top-right corner link to the site’s Healthy Body Calculator. It was pretty damn informative. Once I corrected the typo in the height category, that is. Back to the site. As the name indicates, it’s more of a Q and A area where people (I’m assuming visitors to the home site) are asking how to help friends and themselves, clarifying the differences between EDs and even asking for advice regarding firing a potentially bulimic employee whose work performance was horrendous (in part due to the bulimic cycle). Not bad, but I don’t know that it’s been updated in a while. Just check out the calculator and read the rest if you’re looking for camaraderie.

2. Mental Health -Provides links on the American and European descriptions, child and adolescent EDs from the US Surgeon General, diagnosis, treatment, research and other articles. No information provided on the actual page itself. Useful if you’ve got time to kill, opening page, after page. What I find moderately disturbing is the link in the sidebar, “diagnose yourself” - that phrase is a double-edged sword. The link itself is for signup to a 6 or 12-month computerized “decisionbase,” that reportedly tracks personality and psychiatric disorders. Can you say yay, for promoting hypochondria?

3. Healthy Place - The title of this site is Beat Bulimia, giving a positive first impression. Provides links in the sidebar and header to a community forum - also good. Sidebar also contains links about intervention, the author, articles and a newsletter. The main page is a letter touching on the lack of glamour of bulimia vs anorexia - speaking my language; good. This sums it up:

On the Beat Bulimia site, we’ll be talking about the causes of bulimia, what you need to do to recover from bulimia, and how your family and friends can help. Our goal here is to bring bulimics out of hiding and form a virtual community where we can help each other.

4. Payson Road - Well, we have a fuchsia header. And a black background. That’s it. If you Google it, you come up with a link to the Homepage which has a bunch more stuff in equally annoying colours. Which I have not the patience to look at or review because they lost me at the black screen. Hello? Could you not simply put a redirect link?

5. Selfhelp Magazine - This is only linking to an article written by a counsellor. The article thinks aloud about this therapist views initial contact and treatment with a patient showing signs of bulimia. She includes some rather insulting and stereotypical presentment types and explains how she doesn’t exert control over the patient’s binge-purging, choosing to spend time expanding and deepening the patient-therapist relationship. A little too Hallmark for me, but hey, I’m one of those permanent-bubble types of people.

Next week, we’ll be delving into the top ten ranked sites of all things ED-related.

Last week, I reviewed the top five anorexia sites, as listed by Alexa.

This week, as promised, is my take on the top sites devoted to binge eating disorder (BED).

1. Teen’s Health - Well, the site is targeted towards teens, making it a very easy read. Some of the information is contradictory: people engaged in a binge often eat past feeling full vs. theories about the hypothalamus’ failure to provide a message of fullness. There is some information as to the types of help needed in the case of BED, such as nutritionists to provide a realistic eating plan. The page also has tabs to the right wherein readers can look to other related articles and resources. But overall, this is very introductory - though quite well put together, when considered for teens’ reading.

2. Weight-control Information Network - Provides answers to the questions of risk, prevalence, symptoms, complications, types of therapy relevant to BED. Vague answers about causes and weight loss attempts are also tackled. The bottom of the single page provides a general message titled “you are not alone” and contact information for National Eating Disorder Association and Academy for Eating Disorders. Very safe website: provides medically based facts and doesn’t waste very much time theorizing on anything unproven. One good thing is that there’s a chart which profiles 10 programs in the United States - including the program type, treatment used and age of patients taken. Three additional reading resources are also provided: the oldest was published in 1959; the newest, 2003.

3. athealth.com - My favourite, so far, the main page is a Q and A with the director and a psychologist of the Acoria Eating Disorders Treatment Center in Cincinnati. The interview is very candid, allowing for theorizing and bluntness. This was refreshing, considering how much BED resources are timid and people-pleasing. The sidebar provides newsletters, a lookup for practitioners and treatment centres, self-help and book store sections, a resource centre and featured articles. Very reader-friendly, while being overtly honest. Just my kind of place.

4. a weight out - Since the focus of most of the entire site is overeating, both compulsive and emotional, it’s hard to look at this page as anything directly related to an eating disorder resource. There is a short write about about “when it’s a binge eating disorder” and links on the side bar to symptoms and signs, dieting, child obesity and confessions. Also sidebarred is a link called “Beyond Fen-Phen,” which was the article published in January 1998 by a Cincinnati reporter who had struggled with emotional eating and diet pills. A little old, don’t you think? This site made BED seem as though it was a reason to diet, not a severe eating disorder.

5. Healthy Place - A community devoted to eating disorders. The link above will take you to a transcripted interview between a moderator, audience and author/recovered binge eater, Jane Latimer. I recommend it because it was inspiring and informative. There are, however, very few external links, excepting Latimer’s site and Overeaters Anonymous. All sidebarred items are the usual, but again only internal “Healthy Place” links. I find it semi-disturbing that they’ve cornered the information market, apparently.

Overall, very disappointing but predictable. Overeating and BED have long been stereotyped against. Few people seem to consider binge eating as serious as the other big two disorders. Alarming. Too many people tie it in with being overweight or obese, not as a serious mental condition. Odd, when you consider how many complications and life-long health issues that can be incurred from life with BED.

Is it just another indication of our society’s obsession with thin? To the outside world, anorexia is obviously about being as thin as possible; bulimia is about halting weigh gain due to gorging, via purging in some form. These two are specific methods of getting or staying thin, whereas BED is (again, to the uninvolved eye) about gaining weight from a lack of self-control. Approximately 1 in 142 people suffer from BED, 1 in 1000 from anorexia and 1 in 181 of bulimia (stats according to wrong diagnosis)- yet we are obsessed with the lower “ranking” diseases.

Why do you think that is?

Next week, I’ll review the top five sites related to Bulimia. That should be quite different than this week’s!

BED, overeating, compulsive eating, obesity

Thin by Lauren Greenfield was the first book about eating disorders that I picked up in a long time. Truth be told, after my last commitment to “get better,” I left thirty-odd books at my father’s house, away from my prying hands and roving eyes. I was at Chapters when I saw the cover (marked with a 30% off sticker), buying things that struck my fancy in a manic hardcover jaunt. I realized that it was majorly a photographic book and the side of me that denies sought to buy it in the hopes of having something “taboo and artistic” in my house. I suppose I might have put it next to Generation S.L.U.T.

Honestly, I flipped through it’s pages, trying to be nonchalant. My boyfriend glanced at a few pages with me and gasped at the awkwardly thin senior, he piqued my competitive side when noticing one girl who was much thinner than he’d ever known me to be, and he made me proud when he asked why one girl was even in the book - I had been much thinner than her.

My friend saw it on my coffee table and mentioned seeing the documentary on Showcase. How intense and at some points disgusting and others scintillating it was. She said that from what she had seen, the patient on the cover had been very thin and unhealthy and nowhere near my size (then 5′6″ and about 105lbs.) - she was that thin. Now, this is one of my best friends, so I know that she did not intentionally mean to send me a message like that - but our continuing debate about it, where I may have even lied about the girl’s stats in order to deflate my own, lead me to a discovery.

It was beginning again and the book was a trigger for me. I returned it within the week.

There is an intro to the documentary, that I found on YouTube. You’re not me, so if you’re interested in picking it up, it’s available on many bookseller’s sites, such as Amazon.

youtube, thin, hbo, showcase, lauren greenfield, Renfrew Center, eating disorders, trigger, Generation S.L.U.T., relapse

Each week, I’ll provide my take on the top five websites, as rated by Alexa. No, I’m not playing favourites, we’re starting with Anorexia because it’s first in the alphabet; next Tuesday, I’ll cover the top five sites relating to Binge Eating Disorder.

1. Anorexic Web: This site is owned by a wiccan who suffered from an eating disorder for seven years. Very graphically based, it’s apparently been operating since 1999. It’s simplistic, artistic and leaden with poetry. Regardless, it is full of positive messages (both wiccan and not), pictures, warnings and disclaimers. A little too blessed (be) for my taste.

2. Mental Health: Contains description links such as to facetheissue’s movie, American and European diagnostics, the US Surgeon General’s report, and eMedicine. Also includes diagnosis, treatment, research and literature. Very bare-bones and does not seem to have been updated for some time.

3. Family Doctor: Vague, stereotypical and oversimplified - this site reminds me of something I might have read at the early stages of the disease, before I realized how all-consuming and complex eating disorders really are.

4. Revolution Health: Another (at first glance) introductory lesson on what anorexia is and it’s treatment. Upon further perusal, this site is very easy to navigate, leads to a lot of clicking on individual links and contains resources for treatment and coping.

5. Ana Death: First impression: a site written for those seeking recovery, by someone recently recovered. You can read her story, which reads more like a journal entry than a timeline. But other than that, I ran out of patience when trying to navigate away from the homepage. Why? Most of the links no longer exist. Does this mean that recovery is over? I’ll never know, it seems.