http://www.returnofkings.com/21313/5-reasons-to-date-a-girl-with-an-eating-disorder
This is a response to the article "5 Reasons to Date A Girl With An Eating Disorder" Yes, this is a real article. As much as we'd like to believe that this is just some nobody trying to pull a fast one for publicity, the author known as "Tuthmosis Sonofra" has been more than open about this article being a genuine piece of work. His reasons he defended were "Her obsession over her body will improve her overall looks, she costs less money, she's fragile and vulnerable, she probably has money of her own, and she's better in bed". Obviously her obsession over her body will improve her overall looks, right? The perks of anorexia include weight 15% less than the recommended BMI, hair loss, cracked and dry skin, and yellowing teeth to name only a few side effects. And don't even get me started with the beauty hacks of bulimics: tooth decay, swollen salivary glands, scarred hands, and red eyes are bound to draw positive feedback! And she may even cost less! You'll never have to take her out to dinner because you'll be too embarrassed when she slices her salad leaves into fourths or asks the waiter to take her plate early. And she'll always buy her own food because she's too ashamed to make you pay $80 at the fast food drive thru for her binge meal she'll just throw up after. She definitely WILL have money of her own, because instead of going out with you for a birthday dinner or a work promotion celebration she'll just buy you extravagant gifts to make up for the calories she'll never fill up on. Her gifts may even come in the form of apologies; I'm sorry I threw up dinner last night, here's an expensive watch; I'm sorry I stayed out all day trying to burn off any extra calories I may have consumed, here's tickets to a basketball game. She'll probably be fragile and vulnerable- anorexics show evidence of osteoporosis and bone mineral defiency which will make it difficult for them to walk and lead to bone fractures. And she WILL be vulnerable, so vulnerable that if she's a bulimic there's a 40% chance she's more likely to turn to prostitution and drugs as a way out of her addiction, which can lead to exploitation. And she will be better in bed- except the only bed she'll be on if she doesn't seek help is a hospital bed or her deathbed. Don't mock the 3% of the popultion who suffer from eating disorders- and don't mock the 10% of people suffering who will die from their illness. We want to know what you think. Leave your thoughts below.
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10/5/2016 What it means for a Male, Overweight Athlete to live with an eating disorder - ARead Now“Due to my increase in not only weight but also depression and anxiety my team physicians started to notice not only a change in my overall happiness but also my performance as a normal human being.” Penn State kicker Joey Julius became a viral sensation his freshman year for his sheer size. The internet celebrates whenever one of the largest players on the field scores a touchdown or does anything other block an opponent. Julius was a star kicker, making a highlight reel-play last season with Michigan’s kick returner.
In the midst of media’s spotlight, Penn State’s 258-pound kicker Joey Julius opened up on a brave Facebook post about his struggle with an eating disorder. Just this Monday, the 21-year-old confessed that he spent the past three months in a treatment center for his anxiety and binge-eating disorder. Throughout the last 11 years of his life, Julius has not only been diagnosed for binge-eating but has also showed signs of bulimia through terms of purging from extreme anxiety placed on himself. “Due to my increase in not only weight but also depression and anxiety my team physicians started to notice not only a change in my overall happiness but also my performance as a normal human being.” The social stigmas of eating disorders are just overwhelming, and Joey’s story contradicts many of these stigmas. For one, we tend to associate eating disorders with only “skinniness,” disregarding and almost laughing in disbelief when “not skinny” people confess their mental illnesses. Let me remind you that Joey weighs in at 258 pounds, and is in a profession that emphasizes large size. And yet he has been living with anxiety, binge-eating, and bulimia. Another big misleading assumption that we attach to eating disorders is that they are a “women’s issue” when in reality, 1 in 15 men in the U.S. will deal with this at some point in their lives. This reputation has made it that much harder for men to open up about something that more of them suffer from than they think. Joey’s brave and respectable decision to share with the public his battle despite his gender, weight, and profession has sparked a huge discussion, inspiring others to share their stories as well. http://www.foxsports.com/college-football/story/penn-state-football-258-pound-kicker-joey-julius-eating-disorder-100316 Girls are putting their life and education on pause so they can pursue the modeling industry. At a young age girls are introduced to this industry. Many long to one day be walking down a runway with cameras flashing, the job is painted in a colorful and happy picture. One thing that is not spoken about is the very strict size restrictions; every inch counts. Models are pressured into going on detrimental diets to be accepted. Jenny Awford writes about this in an article published in Daily Mail.
Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3794749/London-Fashion-Week-Versace-sees-skinny-models.html For some reason many people think only women have eating disorders. The idea of a man having an eating disorder is often unheard of. However, twenty-five to forty percent of eating disorder cases are male. The stereotype of only women having these issues is just one of the many misconceptions about eating disorders.
Men are faced with many of the same pressures about body weight as women are. Starting very young, boys are told they have to be between a certain weight range to play the sport they want to play. The unrealistic rule makes the boys aware of their weight, and often times insecure about it. The misconception is detrimental to the millions men who suffer from eating disorders in their lifetime. The stereotype leads most of them to feel embarrassed. They feel as if it is not possible for them to have this happening to them because it is not known as normal. It ultimately stops them from seeking help from others. Their eating disorders continue to worsen without help from others and eventually it is too late. Educating society about eating disorders can help save and improve the lives of thousands of people. "She doesn't have an eating disorder, She looks perfectly normal and isn't super super skinny." "He can't have an eating disorder he eats all the time!" These are the things that we hear all the time about eating disorders and the people that may struggle with them. So often, those who don't struggle with an eating disorder are blind to the hidden world of eating disorders. Here is the truth and here are some examples. There are countless amounts of blogs and tumblrs that spread the idea of #Thinspiration. Thinspiration is the idea that you get "inspiration" from looking at other pictures of #bodygoals. This is what 14 year old junior high girls look up before they eat lunch or dinner in hopes of convincing themselves to maybe eat less or not eat at all. Simply put, this is fucked up and creating a more insecure younger generation. And now with instagram and twitter these hashtags and pictures more prevalent then ever. Our bodies will never be perfect and we are reminded of that everyday. This one blog takes it one step further and even gives tips on how one can start this "weight loss journey" and how one can give "excuses" as to why they might not be eating. These types of blogs are present all around us and they are all one click away. With this widespread of negative messages and "goals" it is crucial that we promote positive hashtags such as #bodyposi and #beautybeyondsize. We will always have an "ideal" body type that takes precedent over our physical and/or mental health but we all need to work towards body positivity.
Remember the thigh gap craze that pushed girls to take mirror selfies with the stick-your-butt-out-so-it-looks-like-your-thighs-don't-touch pose? Remember the hip bridge obsession that engulfed girls in a deadly trend to become diet-manias?
When we think about the root of it all, it ultimately boils down to how media presents itself; the growing intimate social networking has instilled upon us a mentality that everyone has to look one way and only one way. We have basically defined beauty in a single bracket of thinness for women and the perfect six-pack for men. We've created a perfect arena for judgment, jealousy, and insecurity to thrive in forms of eating disorders, extreme dieting, obsessive calorie counting, and so on. Not everyone suffers from eating disorders, but everyone brushes contact with the media that perpetuates negative body image. There are more people who scroll through Kendall Jenner's or Gigi Hadid's photoshopped reflections on Instagram then inflict shame on their own selves than those who don't. There are more of those who set pictures of model Scarlett Leithold and Alexis Ren as their wallpapers, idolizing them and striving to be like them. The video above of model Agnes Hedengard relays a product of some dysfunction that has engineered our minds to a set of standards that cause us to isolate those who don't fit under it. But Agnes Hedengard's choice to stand up against this discrimination is a perfect example of how small attacks can amass to a powerful battle. She didn't succumb to the voices that told her she wasn't good enough; she instead dauntlessly declares her mark of beauty, refusing to conform to the standards that we think we are forced to follow. It's the tiny pebbles that cause the ripples which accumulate to create a wave. We can no longer avoid facing the underlying false sense of insecurity that the media perpetuates on us. We don't have to be victims and succumb to this deteriorating mentality. Let's start by taking baby steps - unfollow that one model you know only damages your self-esteem; go on a hike with friends rather than skip dinner tonight - to nix the cult of conformity that confines us to self-degradation. 20% of people with eating disorders die. So why is an illness only concerning food so hard to treat?
Simple. Eating disorders have nothing to do with food. Food is the gun but a poor mental state is the hand that pulls the trigger. Eating disorders are so difficult to treat because they never occur due to a single event or even a period of time; they are a build up a life long struggle of factors concerning body image AND not concerning body image that cause the individual to finally succumb to the pressure. Eating disorders are deeply rooted in physcological factors that give a false allure of a way to control an aspect of life out of the many others an individual feels like they can't : weight. It may begin as an extreme form of dieting, but eventually the eating disorder becomes a "beacon of hope", or a "comfort" to the sufferer. Over time, the eating disorder will be a way to numb the individual to the other stresses of the world, such as the pressures of school, a dysfunctional family, or feelings of failure, while still believing that if they "lose weight", all those problems will go away. The complication is that sufferers equate their worth to how much weight they lose. They equate their beauty to how little calories they can eat in a day. They equate their control in life to how many pounds they can lose in a week. They truly believe they are in control over their eating disorder, but really they are more further from control than anyone. It's important to realize that eating disorders are never voluntary or a choice. Over time they become compulsory- something as normal as a daily routine. Treatment is hard because many don't want to "lose" their eating disorders, and some mentally just don't understand how to let go of an addiction that has desensitized them for so long. The process is draining, and many experience severe depression and hopelessness from the withdrawal. The sad fact is that eating disorders can never be completely cured. They can be healed or numbed or blocked out but never fully cured- cured as in the thought will always be there, one just must become strong enough to resist the allure. Eating disorders such as Bulimia may remerge during times of extreme stress, so therapy is often a life long commitment for some. Bulimics feel comforted by the feeling of emptiness. Anorexics feel full by the feeling of an empty stomach. Binge Eaters feel safe by the thoughts of an over stuffed stomach. Confused? Still don't understand how someone can force themselves to throw up? Or why someone would starve themselves to 60 pounds? That's understandable. It's very hard to understand the illness unless one has it themselves. When the topic of eating disorders are brought up in conversation, the words "sickly, thin, underweight, emaciated, skeleton, etc" are typically only associated with the illness. Images of starved models with piercing collar bones and jutting hip bones chiseled on a pale canvas of a skeleton-like body are the only pictures that show up when one googles "eating disorder". It rarely occurs to the vast majority of people that almost 30% of individuals suffering from life threatening forms of eating disorders are at an average weight or even overweight. Out of 5 eating disorders, Anorexia Nervosa is the ONLY one where the individual suffering drops and maintains a body mass index much lower than that of a healthy person- but in the other 4 (Bulimia Nervosa, EDNOS, Binge Eating Disorder, and Orthorexia) rapid weight loss is not a symptom. In fact, the eating disorders such as Bulimia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorder, an individual will actually gain weight. Why? Take Bulimia Nervosa for example: Bulimia is the cycle when an individual will binge on large amounts of food and then proceed to purge the food (throw up) due to an overwhelming sensation of guilt. The cycle begins by having low self esteem and a strong desire to lose weight quickly. The individual will attempt to strictly diet, have a small slip up or feel a sensation of extreme hunger, feel ashamed and turn to binge on food as a way to cope with the shame, feel even more guilty from the binge, purge the food, and go back to dieting believing that "tomorrow will be different". And this cycle repeats itself over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until one is so helplessly stuck in the deep pits of Bulimia that they ironically resort to it as a coping mechanism rather than a way to lose weight.
There are, however, signs to look for to spot a bulimic: * going to the bathroom frequently after meals * repeated flushing from the bathroom * taking long showers or running the tap for long period of time * overuse of perfume or body spray in the bathroom * a vomit like smell in a bathroom or a person * the Russell signs (calluses or indents on knuckles from scratching against the teeth when purging) * swollen face or salivary glands * puffy redness of the eyes after using the bathroom * yellowing or erosion of the teeth * frequent coughing or complaining of sore throat * consuming extremely large amounts of food at once * obsessive preoccupation with body image * frequent crash dieting * depression, anxiety, social isolation In short, you can never judge whether a person is going through an eating disorder just by looking at them. You don’t have to be “skinny” to have an eating disorder, and you certainly don’t have to be underweight to be in danger of dying from your eating disorder. Help those suffering by looking for the signs and educating others on the misconceptions of eating disorders. |
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December 2016
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