Cassie

There is plenty of information out there already telling us what we should and shouldn’t eat, how much to exercise etc. What we need are resources put into helping us understand the underlying causes of why we overeat. Telling a person with BED to ‘just eat less’ is like telling an alcoholic to ‘just stop drinking’. Of course, like you said, food isn’t necessarily an addiction the way alcohol is, but it is a very powerful coping mechanism. Without understanding why we overeat we will never stop overeating.

The Australian government has done one good thing in this area, by now subsidising 12 psychology sessions per year. This is a great first step for those of us with eating disorders, but there is still a long way to go.

Also, I noticed your new site redesign. It’s lovely. And best of luck in your post-grad studies! I’m excited to read what you have to say.

THANKYOU!!!!

PS I adore that photo of yourself you have up – gorgeous!

Exactly. And that is part of the reason I’ve always been a little wary of “stereotype-busting” efforts. Because, in all the effort to prove that certain stereotypes are not true, we end up throwing some of our own under the bus, by disowning them and denying their existence just because they happen to share some of the characteristics of the stereotype.

The truth is, stereotypes can never apply accurately to *an entire group of people* because a stereotype consists of *individual characteristics.* Some individuals in the group are going to have those characteristics, and others will not. That does not prove or disprove the stereotype one way or another. Because the stereotype is inherently inapplicable to the group.

I am far more interested in helping fat people, whatever their eating issues may or may not be, than I am in busting stereotypes. Because I don’t even want to dignify stereotypes with an attempt to bust them — they are inherently worthless as descriptors of groups of people, and they engender dehumanization and hatred.

Anyway, of *course* there are fat people who overeat. Just as there are thin people who overeat. There are also fat people who undereat, and who have all the diagnostic signs of anorexia nervosa, except for the weight criteria. It’s counterproductive, and deeply discompassionate, to deny that.

And you are right, BED is a difficult topic even in FA circles, or at least I have the impression that it is. I think talking openly that there are fat people who do binge/ overeat is not easy because it can be misunderstood by outsiders as admitting that the stereotype of fattie bingeing on fast food is correct. (Then this stereotype is not even true for binge eaters – for example, I am a binge eating vegetarian who loves fruits and veggies, which is something that usually blows people’s minds.)

I totally, totally agree with you about eating disorders, BED in particular. I’m glad you’re willing to talk openly about it, because it can be such a contentious issue, both from a fat-hating perspective and even from a fat-acceptance perspective. But I have friends with BED, and it’s important to hear people’s experiences with it.

Please, please stay around and give us more of your brilliant comments.

I am so fed up with people thinking I am addicted to food because I have BED and that restricting certain foods could somehow “cure” me. Wake up, people, I have restricted food, this is what got me into this in the first place. How could I have become addicted to food while restricting it? In addition I have been on many diets (and actually was quite “successful” in the short term). If I am addicted to food shouldn’t I experience some kind of withdrawal when I am dieting and shouldn’t the withdrawal symptoms get better after a while? Well, I never experienced physical withdrawal, only hunger, and the urge to binge was still there even after months of dieting, in fact it got worse. How is this similar to an addiction? Or how do people with an addiction get just as compulsive about withdrawal as about consuming the substance they are addicted to? (You bet that I am compulsive about dieting – when ever I did diet I ended up restricting a little more all the time. I also had night mares about breaking my diet and a week in which I lost less than a kilogram was a bad week.)

Plus, while I disagree that eating disorders of any kind are not about food at all, they are not only about food. Right now I do not even binge that often, and when I binge my binges are relatively small compared to the binges I used to have. I do, however, have an extremely bad body image – basically I cannot stand seeing myself in the mirror and any negative comment about my physical appearance can throw me into a really dark place for a while. Is this normal? No. But hardly typical of how a “food addiction” would look like.

What makes me angry about this is that people who insist that food is an addiction stand in the way of my recovery. Yes, in the end, I am the one that has to take responsibility for recovering (and I do). And yet, it would be nice if there would be more people around who understand this disorder and could support me.