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.

I've never noticed this to be true on here at all.

Me either. I have seen a lot of “anyone who isn’t a size 8 is an unhealthy greedy pig” though!

I eat very similarly to you OP. My aim is to be healthy and nourish my body properly, and to stay a healthy weight, so I follow a whole food vegan diet in appropriate sized portions. Where we differ though, is that deep down, I don't want to eat this way. My health and weight makes me happy, but its a sacrafice because I want a magnum every night. Family bags of crisps in front of the TV. Takeaway, chocolate, cream teas, biscuits, pizza. And lots of it.
But being healthy matters more, so I'm constantly aware of the need to keep myself under control, and would do similar things to your friend with the cake to prevent myself eating what I'd like to. I'll also do loads of excercise to offset any overeating, and I most definitely think in terms of good (healthy) and bad (low nutrient high calorie) foods, and feel guilty, and even disgusted if I've eaten the bad stuff.
So, many ticks for disordered eating. But what can I do? My appetite and food preferences don't align with the state of health I want, so I can't forget about food and eat intuitively.

I've done restricted diets etc and actually it was working with a personal trainer that totally changed my attitude to food.

I'm much healthier about it now e.g. aim for 80% good and like you say have more awareness of what feels good.

I've actually put on about two stone and am now at top end of my BMI, but the best thing I did was stop beating myself up about it.

My tuppence is that 1) people do have different eating styles and too often we are trying to follow one that doesn't suit us 2) the biggest problem we have isn't actually about obesity i.e. being over fat, it's about being undermuscled (and lack of moving enough).

I'm careful about what I eat and like to stay slim. Is that disordered or just self control?

I’ve also seen a lot of “anyone who is a size 8 is a miserable competitive undereater who is constantly hungry while denying themselves what they really want”.

Other people’s eating habits bring out a lot of judgement, as well as a lot of people projecting their own issues onto others.

Yes I’ve seen a fair bit of that, but much more fat shaming, and I’m currently a size 8 so I’m not projecting. Any thread on here about weight ends up being very toxic which, I think, proves OPs point somewhat!

Yes sorry I didn’t mean you were projecting.

I agree about the way the threads turn out. I also think that of course a lot of people on here will agree with the OP, because of a lot of people view all sorts of things as disordered eating. A thread I vaguely remember about how many biscuits do you eat in one sitting had people clearly judging others for their “disordered eating” because they ate too many, while others were clearly judged as having disordered eating for saying they only ate one, or didn’t eat biscuits. Sure, some of the women will have disordered eating, but I think a lot of it on MN is different appetites assuming that the other is either a binge eater, or highly restrictive.

I was wondering exactly the same.

I've never been overweight.
But I don't think of food as good or bad or treats.

When I have started to gain weight like when I went into the menopause, I reduced what I ate.

I have never really thought about food too much until the last few years and now just try to eat as well as possible.

I realised my mum has an eating disorder. The 'slim at any costs' was definitely her thing but she didn't have access to the information we have now.

Pretty similar here.
I've reached the age of having to be more mindful about what I eat, but I do it more by tweaking portions and ratio of food rather than "diets", exclusion and denial. It's a balanced diet, I'm healthy and I enjoy food and life without guilt.

DM was young in in the 60s and spent middle age hating that she didn't still have a 22" waist. One of her biggest achievements in life was leaving the maternity hospital in her jeans
Fortunately I was a naturally lean child so didn't get the brunt of her comments growing up, unlike other relatives, so that spared me a lot of baggage.

"Disordered" is a broad term and includes over eating as well as under eating.

Society having veered from prolonged rationing to an abubdance of processed, calorie rich food has damaged peoples' ability to regulate to need and there's a lot of generational baggage carrying through society.