#diet culture has convinced me that gaining weight is bad even though I'm underweight and need to

[radiqueer]

I'm sorry if this is an intrusive question, but in your knowledge, how does ednos manifest? Both for you and people you might know. I know for a fact that my relationship with food is not fucking normal, but I don't exactly know what to make of it and...wth...

ednos stands for “eating disorder not otherwise specified” which means it reps ALL eating disorders not covered under other diagnostic criteria. most, something like 70% of eating disorders fall in this category.

MY ednos looks something like this: i have an avoidant and distressed response to food and being told to eat. i tend to delay eating for as long as possible. i’m underweight and too thin for my age+weight, but i don’t have body image issues other than a generalized gender dysphoria that can’t be solved by transition. often, i delay eating for as long as possible. often this results in headaches and chronic exhaustion, shaking hands, nausea, loss of ability to focus (compounded by adhd). for example, right now I’ve eaten food equal to one slice of toast and one cup of tea since i woke up at 9am - it’s 2:20pm as i write this. 

it’s hard for me to push myself to eat because i have adhd; executive dysfunction makes completing the steps of acquiring food difficult. i have autism and texture issues due to that which make eating a lot of food difficult. the food that i can stand, i often still need to be pushed into eating. i hate when people tell me i need to eat or gain weight and sometimes refuse to do the latter out of misery and spite. depression adds a layer of weight on top of all of this. 

fundamentally, my eating disorder is about my desire to avoid eating because i feel like it’s unnecessary, distressing, and repetitive. there’s no solution for this that i can envision.

a friend was kind enough to share their experience with me also:

my eating has definitely been disordered at times and I’ve only just now, in my thirties, gotten a handle on it

so, I grew up in a house where my mother (whom I love) was always insecure about her weight and always dieting. so the language she always used - and still uses - about food is very morality-based. some foods are ‘bad’, others are ‘good’. if you have a bad food, you’re being wicked, and even if she says it with a sort of humorous thrill, as a kid you still internalise the guilt

it was also a house where, for various reasons, we never really had any chips or chocolate or candy or snacks like that around, only basic ice cream sometimes and never soda

so the combination of this meant that, when I did encounter junk food, I’d go buckwild and compulsively stuff my face, because if it was my only opportunity to eat it, then I had to eat AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

the added result was that, if I ended up with a surplus of junk food, like from easter or christmas, I had to eat it all IMMEDIATELY, because if I ate it all at once (in my mind) then I was only being bad once, and that was therefore better than eating a little each day and being bad each day

plus, I couldn’t control myself

which was one thing when I lived at home and didn’t control the shopping, but as an adult I’d never learned self-control or how to stop eating junk when

I was full, because I’d developed a compulsion around itthe fact that I can now have a tub of ice cream in the house and not eat three bowls the day I buy it, or have chocolate and not eat it all at once, or anything like that, is a development that’s really only been true for like… a year? if that?

like, I was making progress towards this state of affairs for a while, but the fact that there are uneaten lindt balls in my cupboard right now would’ve been impossible a year and a bit ago

plus the whole 'food is my only comfort while pregnant’ thing probably set me back a bit

but I’ve really worked at being mentally calm around it and reminding myself the food will still be there tomorrow and that’s okay, that looking forward to it for tomorrow is nicer than stuffing myself now when I’m already full

so that’s another way it can manifest. and here’s yet another:

I grew up in a household that is, uh, increasingly fucked up about food - - it's worse now than when I lived there - - but I dealt with most of it (along with the rest of the emotionally shitty aspects of living there) by just... mentally withdrawing from anything that wasn't safe. We ate meals together when I was little, so maybe food tied into that, idk.

I'm also autistic and not super in touch with my body at the best of times. So... it was pretty easy to just... forget to eat.

I found some risk criteria for developing an eating disorder sometime in high school, and accurately recognized myself in the parts that were focusing on "perfectionist" and "very focused on self control," so I made a very deliberate effort to Not Diet pretty early on. I was the only non athletic family member (still am--everyone else will run marathons or 5ks together on family gatherings) in part because I couldn't breathe when I ran, and I'm also the fattest person in my immediate family.

I tend to stop eating and think of food as actively unsafe and hostile when I get stressed out, and my willingness to eat tends to be one of the first things to deteriorate when my mental health does. I tend to eat high sugar things when that happens, trying to get calories into me, and that sometimes crashes my blood sugar and makes everything worse.

As an adult, I've also been broke for most of my adult life and very conscious of my finances. If I haven't planned ahead and brought food with me, I often find it hard to convince myself that it's worth it to spend the money on a snack or meal for myself - - which means I skip a lot of meals and then wind up wondering why I'm in a brain fog.

I avoid diet talk very rigidly, in part because I am really worried about what might happen if I picked it up. It's really tempting sometimes to just not eat anything at all, maybe have a Real Problem someone might care about, get that positive validation about my body even though said body doesn't work so great in terms of breathing no matter what.

if any of these experiences, or aspects of these experiences resonate, consider that you may have an eating disorder.

here is one description of what a healthy relationship to food looks like. because we live in a diet culture, it’s often really hard to tell what’s normalized dysfunction, what’s a diagnosable eating disorder, and what is healthy and normal - and sometimes, healthy and normal aren’t the same thing. people with healthy relationships to food will

eat when they want to

eat as much as they feel like eating

eat what they feel like eating

not hold their habits and needs against themselves

give their body as much energy as required to sustain AND thrive

have compassion with themselves for shifting needs - more food on one day is as valid as less food on another.

do not weight- or body-shame themselves or others

respect their bodies capacities, limits, and needs

(one thing you hear when looking for recovery tips for eating disorders is to “respect and honour your hunger” and “to make peace with food” but if your ED is anything like mine, you can see how difficult this is. my problem isn’t a lack of peace with food, it’s that eating is inherently distressing for me and everything else just keeps making it harder and worse.

but you know what would help my ED? eating foods one-course meals (which I do already) and eating things which don’t require assembly or complexity. foods like pasta, pizza, sandwiches, curd-rice, are all easier for me to eat than anything else. i try to snack on chocolate and chips and fruit, because they’re easily accessed and provide energy. my goals for myself are small: eat, as much as you are able to, do not unduly distress yourself.)

don’t punish yourself for having to figure out your access needs around food from scratch. don’t hurt yourself for what you need to eat and what you find easy.you can have an ednos at any weight. remember that more weight is better than less weight - more IS healthier. take care of yourself

recovering from an ednos looks different for everyone because ednos ARE different for everyone. it’s up to you to figure out your balance, but of course there is help and resources available. check out blogs like @heavyweightheart. try to cultivate a body positive and disability positive environment around yourself, because that helps no matter what you have going on. best of luck!