martianlost - Tumblr blog

martianlost · 7 years

Text

Regarding Food, Diets, and Eating Disorders

I wish it was as easy as “just eat healthy and you’ll feel better and get better.” I wish I could “exercise and you’ll eat more and gain weight.” I spent about an hour last night reading about eating disorders on NEDA for at least the 3rd time in 6 months and around the 20th time in a couple of years. Things are added and updated over time, even since the last time I was in there. At least, I hadn’t noticed the section until last night. I learned a few months ago that I more closely identify with ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder) which has helped me understand myself better as I had previously said, “it’s like anorexia but without the obsessive control over calories and fear of weight gain,” which I think confused the listener even more. I went with EDNOS for a long time, but that sometimes felt even harder to explain.

I do hate that I suffer from an eating disorder. I get more frustrated with myself every time I think about but can’t be bothered to eat. However, the most frustrating part for me is being berated, nagged, fussed at, lectured, and belittled by people who don’t get it and, honestly, probably never will. At least not entirely. Even someone with one eating disorder talking about theirs with someone with a different ED most likely won’t understand each other’s. That’s not the bad part. It’s the lack of trying to understand, the lack of empathy, that’s awful to me.

If you want to know about something that a loved one is dealing with, or are even just curious about different mental illnesses, but are unsure of how to start, if you know what it is (e.g. depression, PTSD, or in this case an ED) start by looking up what that means. Then learn how not to act and what not to say to or about the sufferers. There are articles of almost nothing but things people with specific mental or physical illnesses are asking people to not say; some of them include alternatives that may or may not be helpful to the person you’re going to talk to so take them with a grain of salt. If nothing else they’ll give you a different way to see it from the POV of someone who’s dealing with it.

The term I learned tonight is s something I’ve been noticing a lot among people I know, follow on Twitter or Facebook, and across social media in general. The term is Orthorexia. NEDA, the National Eating Disorder Association - found here - https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.com - explains that while it’s not an officially recognized eating disorder in the DSM V it is a form of disordered eating. It describes orthorexics as people who start out trying to eat healthfully but become obsessed with it to the point that it affects their life, work, relationships, and health in negative ways. They sometimes even see others in a negative way if their foods aren’t as “healthy” as their diet.

This description clicked with the attitudes that have more recently been directed at me. I was told not long ago that if I’m trying to eat more, then I should focus on eating only healthy foods. It’s not as easy as that sounds to the people who say things like that. My short response is that it’s not that easy and “it’s complicated."

While I’m struggling to eat a single meal every day, which I’m not able to do often, I’m just trying to eat what I feel up to making. Sometimes even heating something up in the microwave is too much for me. Cooking a meal, even to do “meal planning,” requires a lot of energy and time that I rarely feel able to put into that. Even though I usually have the time, the energy I’d have to put into it over the required time is daunting at best. It quickly becomes overwhelming to plan it in my head. In dealing with my other illnesses it’s overwhelming for me to fold and put away my laundry. Not in an “I don’t feel like it” way but a “I can’t handle this” way. The “I can’t” part deserves its own post. Later. Please try to understand the difference though.

I struggle to do so many things that come easily to most people, and that on its own is frustrating. To be told to “just do this and it’ll get better” frustrates me further and sometimes sets me back more. Healthy eating costs more, your diet doesn’t work for everyone, some people, like me, physically can’t exercise in ways you suggest would be beneficial, and you may be doing more harm than good. If your mentality is strict about how you diet when not for reasons like autoimmune disorders, diabetes, celiac’s, and such, then that may be worth looking into as well.

Please respect the person’s struggles and try to understand that they’re not able to “just do” a thing. It’s not that simple. It is complicated and complex. Do some research, look up what others dealing with the issue have to day, then ask questions if the person is open to it. It will help you understand if you try to, and it will hopefully help that person be less frustrated when talking with you about their struggles.

0 notes