For 17 years I suffered from disordered eating. I wasn’t anorexic. The Diets I followed usually came to about 1200-1600 calories. Only on occasion did I starve myself but it never lasted. My body would rebel and bingeing would follow soon after. Bingeing wasn’t about eating crap food or enjoying rich food. (As I mentioned last week, fat people are allowed to have splurges). Binge eating is eating a lot of food with no enjoyment and ignoring hunger cues. No one told me any of these behaviors were bad or unhealthy. I was given kudos to any weight lost and I was chastised for my binges.
A study in Pediatrics discovered that even teenage girls with normal weight are showing signs of anorexia. Although the study was small, it found that these signs increased between 2005 and 2009.
In her study, which included 99 teens aged 12 to 19, Whitelaw found only 8 percent of the patients had EDNOS-Wt in 2005, but more than 47 percent of the patients had it in 2009.
The cause, they think, is an obsession with fatness.
The reasons for the apparent increase in these patients is less clear, but both Sim and Whitelaw said it is likely a combination of increased awareness of the problem and an increased focus on obesity.
This study was small but I bet if they looked at a larger amount of girls including girls of all sizes, they'd see the same behaviors. We’ve made obsession with fatness a national pastime and we push impossible ideals with rail thin airbrushed and photoshopped models. We tell fat kids they will die before they are 30, are diseased, and the worst thing in the world is to be fat. I’m not surprised that eating disorders are becoming more widespread.
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