to think disordered eating amongst women is more common that you'd think?

[Ikeagreen]

So until last year I had a very bad relationship with food. I was definitely a comfort eater and habitually ate certain foods to help cope with stress and anxiety leading to significant weight gain over the year. I big part of this was that I was always thinking. I'm going to start a diet tomorrow or next week so I best get in all my favourite "bad foods" now because I won't be allowed to eat them later.

After a lot of reading about disordered eating, journaling and so on I decided to stop dieting or trying to and to just try and develop a better relationship with food. I started cooking more, making my own bread, and yogurts, and cakes. I stopped cutting things out but added things in, healthier options and focused on nourishing myself and over time that has led to slow and steady weight loss. I still have treats, I ate a magnum at the weekend and really enjoyed it. If I'm making a veggie burger for my dinner at the weekend I have a cola with it but I no longer over eat crap like packets of ramen and chocolate bars. I think more about what I eat now, how to balance it and I know that eating high sugar snacks regularly only makes me crave more and more even when it isn't really satisfying me. I am trying to be healthy without attaching any sense of morality, virtue or guilt to food. The main thing was that I went from having high blood pressure, high cholesterol and being prediabetic to being in the ideal ranges in all of them in just 6 months.

I suppose because of my issues around food and body image I would look at my friends and other women and think that they were all doing well and were really healthy about food because they were a normal, healthy weight. I'm more aware now though that lots of women seem to have issues around food either restricting, bingeing, feeling guilty because they ate something or virtuous because they restrained themselves. I met a friend a couple of weeks ago, she has always been really slender apparently effortlessly we got some takeaway cake and coffee and sat in the park. we were eating our cakes and my friend who was smoking asked me if I wanted the rest of her cake, I said no and was about to say just take it home and eat the rest tomorrow but she'd already stubbed out her cigarette in her cake. I asked her why she did that and her answer was that if she hadn't she would just have eaten it all. Looking back I can remember her doing similar things at university.

Another friend only never eats breakfast and only has a banana or apple for lunch and then dinner before eating a packet of biscuits in front of the TV at night. She always says her mum would tell her as a teen that only fat women eat lunch.

My sister in law swings between periods of eating freely and extreme restriction. When I think of women's I worked with conversations were often about slimming world and various diets even if they were not overweight. My own mum ate quite a restricted diet when I was growing up everything was highly processed but low fat options and often her lunch would be a cup a soup and a low fat cereal bar. She was always slim so felt she was winning and being healthy but now she is in her 60's and has sarcopenia and osteoporosis from malnutrition as does my friends mum who told her lunch is for fatties.

I am not posting any of this to judge anyone. I get that it is really hard for many women to maintain their weight in a healthy way. I still have a way to go and I find it hard to try and maintain a healthy attitude to food while working towards weight loss and I had to accept a really slow rate of loss and my goal weight is now a good bit higher than I would have found acceptable in the past. If I get to that then I will see.

I am not advocating for fat acceptance or overeating but I am just surprised to notice now how prevalent disordered eating and ideas about eating are amongst women. As a fatter women I mainly saw myself and other overweight people as having issues which is true and I would assume that if a person was slim they were really healthy and must be fine around food but it seems that often that isn't the case at all. I just think its a pity food has become so loaded an issue for so many.

Eating disorder since I was 13, have been many different BMIs from 12 at my anorexic worst to possibly in the obese category when I was late teens (I didn't weigh myself when I was that age). Currently a 'normal' BMI of 19/20 but struggle a lot with the thoughts.

I think eating disorders (wrongly) are more commonly associated with slim/thin women - my lived experience is that there is more sympathy towards anorexia, whereas bulimia and binge eating disorder are viewed generally as a 'lack of control'. This is NOT my opinion, but is what I have experienced. When I was at uni in the mid 2000s I was told I would get no NHS help for my severe bulimia (which nearly cost me my degree) until I had a BMI of <15. Indeed it took me later developing anorexia and a very low BMI to get help.

I think it's a huge positive that BMI is being taken less into consideration when diagnosing disordered eating and that there is a lot more understanding around eating disorders outside of anorexia. I apologise if any of what I have said is offensive to anyone. My experience is that disordered eating is absolute hell on earth for any sufferer, no matter how others perceive your weight or physical symptoms. Sending huge empathy to anyone with disordered eating who clicked on this thread x

Yanbu. I've also had disordered eating and a bit of "drunkorexia" to boot 😬. I've recently quit drinking and also quit dieting. I need to not do either for the state of my mental health. I am sure people can do both without the same issues, but I don't appear to be one of them

@pinkflamingo83 I agree with you, I was guilty myself of that kind of thinking like if you are a "normal healthy" weight then who cares how you do it kind of thing even if there is major disorder and illness. Its like a "normal" size body trumps all. I agree that help for eating disorders should be available much sooner also a big cultural shift would help.

@Reallywittyusername Best of luck to you and kudos for doing what you need to do, its really not easy.

Totally agree OP. I could feel of a half a dozen names of people I know who seem healthy but actually have huge issues around food, have been bulimic or are hugely controlling around food etc.
People learn to mask really well.

Disordered eating is obviously very common among women. This is glaringly obvious from the extraordinary number of clinically obese women I see every time I leave the house.

So true! Masking and also getting very defensive and snarky as you see quite often on MN unfortunately. It's really sad to see

The 'Almond mom' trend type videos were eye opening to me. The comments were filled with people claiming it was normal to have these highly disordered habits.

Indeed.

I agree OP but I think some women are so conditioned (from an early age) to ‘not get fat’, they might not even KNOW they have a disordered relationship with food.

All the women in my family struggle with our weight and I remember as a child, my mum was desperate for us to not gain weight (she was bullied as a kid for it) and I always knew there was ‘good’ food and ‘bad’ food. We ate ‘good food’ during the week and then come Friday, out came the weekend treats, trip to the chip shop etc.

My mum was the absolute best mum but she replicated what she had always known - it was always feast or fast and there was no middle setting.

I’ve struggled with my weight my whole life and I’ve been 10 stone and 17 stone and every weight in between. I’m now on mounjaro and while that’s not for everyone, I like many others, I’m also saying ‘oh, is this what it’s like to have a normal relationship with food?’ For the first time in my life I’m eating normally, not planning my ‘Friday feast’ on a Monday morning, not feeling deprived every time I say no to a biscuit, not pining after all the lovely buttery, creamy, things I love in the supermarket. I just don’t care - I LOVE food but food is fuel and not the centre of my social life.

Of course, this will one day have to stop when I come off the drug (hopefully by end of the year) so I’m trying really hard to reset my relationship with food. It’s not an easy task to undo a lifetime’s weird relationship and to stop seeing food as ‘good or bad’.

Well done on your journey. Did you do any reading, listening to podcasts etc as you processed this all? I’d be interested to k ow.

Not untrue but I think the point of the post that it's not just obese women who have a disordered relationship with food. I think obese women are more likely to admit to disordered eating and being unhealthy than a slim woman who thinks everything is fine just because she is slim.

I agree OP. Of just my close friendship group (6 including me) only one of us has what I'd call a healthy attitude to food and body, and sadly it's not me! I've only realised in the last few years what a disordered eating pattern I've fallen into and it's proving difficult to get out of it.
I desperately don't want the same life for my DD but she's already heading the same way as me as a child- 98th centile for height and weight. I don't want to put my 8yo on a diet, or plant the seeds of an eating disorder by obsessing about food and calories and what she looks like, but I don't want her to be bullied for being overweight either. It's such a trap.

I have a very good friend who is fatphobic and obsessed with what people are eating - all the time. She comments on it and in people’s food and their appearance. As I’m pretty chubby myself I find it the worst thing about her BUT I know it’s coming from a place of self hatred of herself … she’s slim but has barely eaten most of her adult life to be that way.

Yes, I know someone who is like this too. She is not slim, but is losing weight and does make a lot of comments about other people's bodies. It's a bit obsessive and I don't think can be good for her. I love her and agree it isn't malice, but self hatred from a strange upbringing which is at play

Yes

Equally glaringly obvious from a casual reading of any thread about eating on Mumsnet, as they pretty much always degenerate into 'Fat people are disgusting' and 'I look like a decaying manatee at size 8'.

Not so much common as virtually universal in richer countries.

Totally agree. I think if you deep dived into a lot of women’s mentalities, even the thin ones, you’d find a lot of body dysmorphia and self hatred that isn’t dealt with because they are a ‘healthy’ weight

Thanks everyone and yes I suppose my point was not that overweight women like myself don't have issues with food, I believe most us do but that it was a rude awakening to realise that for many women what is regarded socially and medically as a healthy weight can also be something that is frequently reached and maintained with what could be described as disordered eating habits.

For me my recovery from disordered eating was always imagined as being able to eat healthy balanced meals in appropriate and satisfying amounts, have the odd sweet treat and get regular exercise and that that I'd be able to be slim or have a healthy BMI by doing that and it was a shock to realise that often women who I thought already had that really don't, they often struggle and fight with food just as much as I have.

I have great empathy for them because its so much closer to my own experience than I could ever have imagined and it just makes me wonder why it has to be like this?

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have issues with disordered eating. I was underweight as a teen and was diagnosed with what was called EDNOS at the time, I believe they call it OSFED now, and fifteen years later I’m obese and although I’ve managed to get my weight down to a healthier weight several times I’ve never successfully kept it off. I’m thoroughly ashamed of my weight. I’m aware my relationship with food needs to change but it’s a work in progress

@threeeggsontoast Sorry to hear you have been through all that it really is hard isn't it? I was so tempted to try a GLP-1 and I'm not against them at all I just felt it wasn't right for me as my psychological issues around food were so big.

Resources I found really helped were The Binge Eating Therapist on youtube who I think is amazing, she is a former binge eater and I just really resonated with her style. Books I read and felt really helped were The Body Image Workbook and Eating Less: Say Goodbye to Overeating eBook : Riley, Gillian: Amazon.co.uk: Books were both really helpful for me. I also read Tim Spector's book Spoon Fed and Ultra-Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken which I found helpful in really putting me off some of my go to impulsive eating foods.

Meditation (it doesn't really matter what type I don't think its all about calming your nervous system down) also helped as well as getting a good nights sleep, adding in some fermented foods, good hydration and journaling.

@JeremyBearimysTimeKnife Its so hard isn't it and the help just isn't there. The big media and food corporations who literally predate on people simply don't care. I do think trying that trying to heal that shame you have around your body would be a big step towards recovery for you. I get that its really hard because like you I didn't want to accept being fat and I literally couldn't because I was becoming metabolically ill, headed for heart disease but in a way you have to accept yourself as you are, where you are in order to escape the cycle.

I agree!! Im
a dietitian, although that’s by the by really! I see it a lot, always have but I think it’s escalating… within my own friendship groups not one of them is happy with their weight!! They all constantly strive to be slimmer and weight cycle and fall for many short term fixes. Deprive themselves even when eating out occasionally!! It’s exhausting to hear about! I’m not a stick insect but I eat normal foods, cook good food mostly and eat balanced meals but not to obsession! If I fancy a chocolate bar, I’ll have it. Constantly denying yourself and over restricting can lead to a preoccupation with food! Thanks simplistic but I see it a lot! It’s also fuelled by the constant repetition of nutrition/food/ diet fads, wellness trends etc TikToks aiming to sensationalise one aspect of eating to gain views! Ugh!! Tbf, I’m my experience, most dietitian’s I know are like me… I really don’t like going in and in about wellness etc etc I find it boring but I also know enough to be able to ignore most of the absolute BS about diet that I see in the media and scroll past! Disordered eating and ‘Othorexia’ is a big risk to health and can lead to poor health in the pursuit of wellness / being slim, so it should be taken seriously

Excuse the typos 😆🙈

I agree, there are the extremes where someone is too thin or is obese but there is a huge spectrum in between. There is a lot of defensiveness around the issue though so I wouldn’t expect a reasonable discussion as on MN anyone who isn’t a size 16 must have an eating disorder as that is ‘average’ and therefore seen to be instantly healthy.