If you had to choose between being slim and eating disordered, or "recovered" but chubby

[BamburyFuriou3]

Which would you choose?

I can maintain a BMI of 20-21 (and look good) but it's a constant fight against my old anorexia /bulimia and it's hard to stop losing weight. Constantly hungry, feel cold, numb toes, obsessional thoughts etc.

Or my weight stabilises at about a BMI of 24, with no eating disorder thoughts etc. But I'm chubby, and clothes size 14/16 with a waist of 30 inches.

I was stable and "recovered" for a decade, but try and lose weight and the eating disorders just come flooding back. But I hate being fat. And not particularly healthy either.

Said gently, if BMI of 24 means chubby, you're not recovered.

Get some support to help you focus on improving your eating and enjoying a level of physical activity that's healthy for you and your body might well settle somewhere not at either extreme of the range but more in the middle. Realistically I'm never going to be happy, I'm always going to be 2kg above where I feel I should be however much or little I weigh so a bit of radical acceptance might help.

To be fair I'd choose to be large and embrace it if I could. Would be so nice. BMI 24 is completely ok and healthy. Just something you resist and your best goal would be working towards being ok with it.

"Slim is healthy, chubby and fat isn't."

The OP says here BMI is 24. This is perfectly healthy, despite her own personal opinion that it is 'chubby'.

Slim. That's how I know I'm not recovered. I've managed to eat vaguely normally for nearly a decade, even lost my baby weight without going overboard & I'm currently a healthy weight but I hate the way I look. Nobody knows how I feel in RL. DH knows about the ED but thinks I'm more or less ok now. It's shit. Every day is a struggle & food is a constant source of stress & quilt for me.

BMI 24 for a decade
Bloody well done Bambury , that is one heck of an achievement.

I doubt you are a size 14/16. A 30" waist is officially a 12 but in my experience a 10 usually fits better depending on the brand.

The healthy BMI range is 18.5 to 25 and the recommendation is to have a waist

I've had disordered eating most of my life and can't imagine I will ever recover completely, it's all or nothing with me, I either eat whatever I like and put on weight or try and be healthy and it will just escalate into extreme calorie counting or bulimia. After the last dramatic weight loss I did my hair started to fall out and my periods stopped, that's never happened before so I guess my body just can't cope with it any more, I'd rather be chubby and healthy but can't see it happening.

"try and lose weight and the eating disorders just come flooding back."

I don't think those 2 are your only choices, OP. How do you try to lose weight, btw?

fwiw, I would value good mental health over the nuisance of chubby.

(Hunh, I have waist of 28" & need a 12 usually, I'd be size 16 if 30" waist)

24 is healthy. I'd go for that.

Than again, I know that at 24 I don't look chubby, wear a size 10 (sometimes smaller, given how sizes have changed) but would have quite a wide waist, simply because my body type has always been rather straight at the sides.

(at BMI 19.something, waist is still 27inches and no amount of exercises aimed at toning obliques seems to shift it further, at 24 it would be around the 29inch mark)

Could you do BMI 24 via eating well, but add exercise in to make you feel better? Sorry if that doesn't make sense! Just more focusing on health?

Sorry can't reply properly right now - PIL popped round and kids playing up, but thanks for the responses will read them later x

Oh yeah, my bmi is currently 21 (down from 31) and I find it hard to know what weight i ought to be even without an ED messing up my thinking.

Have you thought about exercising to build up muscle? I am pretty muscle-y at the min and use up about 1600 cal a day just living.
And a pretty hot guy told me I look like 'Sarah Connor or Lara Croft or something' this week, which is good. 😁

A BMI of 24 is in the healthy range and a waist of 30 inches is only a smidgen above a size 12.

Healthy and recovered for me, no contest. Look up bodyposipanda and Aliss bonython on Instagram as examples of women who have recovered from eating disorders and embraced body positivity. There are many other body positivity instagrammers, they're just the ones I remembered first. They look so so so happy.

My sister has a mental illness (not an eating disorder). When it is really, really bad, she is thin. When it is not so bad, she is sometimes a bit on the chubbier side. I much, much prefer her as a size 12 than a size 6; so does she. For my sister, her family and friends, life is much better when she is a size 12 but her mental health is better.

So long as your waist is less than half your height, you are OK

if its more than that you are carrying too much visceral fat and putting your long term health at risk.

Ignore clothes sizes (they are too random and artificial to be a good guide)

BMI is a proxy for body fat, but waist / height picks up dangerous fat

Recovered, definitely. I had an eating disorder that left me extremely unhealthy and many people actually commented how terrible i looked. I did, but i was just too engrossed in losing weight to notice. Life is a million times better without counting every calorie.

A BMI of 24 is in the healthy range
Only just, and for somebody with a light frame it will involve dangerous levels of body fat
and a waist of 30 inches is only a smidgen above a size 12.
But if the person is less than 60 inches tall, that waist implies a dangerous level of visceral fat

Ta1kinPeece I see your point, but then the lowest healthy BMI would be just as unhealthy for someone with a larger frame. I have a BMI of 24 and am a size 10-12 at the moment. I'm muscular with a large-ish frame and a BMI of even something like 21 makes me look unhealthily skinny and gives me problems such as being cold all the time, brittle nails, hair falling out etc, yet BMI states that's i could go even lower and be healthy. It works both ways.

I'm 5'6" so a 30" waist isn't great but not awful. I suppose I could squeeze into s size 12 bottoms but prefer my clothes looser.
At my worst I was 5 stone.
I don't have time to do much exercising - I have 3 very demanding children, two of whom don't sleep well, and the toddler barely naps either. I manage to get away for 2 or 3 30 minutes a week and that's it.
To get down to bmi20 I'm on 1600 calories and I'm still breastfeeding loads. More than that and I gain.
To be bmi24 I ate pretty healthily - no alcohol/ takeaways/ minimal treats - but still a large waist, fat on hips and tummy.

There’s a big school of thought these days that thinks that ED behaviours will be triggered when you’re in a calorie deficit if you have a genetic predisposition towards ED. Tabitha Farrar writes a lot about it - she’s well worth a read.

You know that the right answer is BMI of 24 and finding a way to accept it. Otherwise you stay in your ED, or at least disordered eating and you’ll always be a slave to this. That is not a real life and whilst you’ll be “thin” you’ll not have the trappings of happiness (even though ED will tell you that it will make you happy). Chubby isn’t a bad thing, even if you’re into the overweight BMI range, which you won’t be at BMI 24. It’s just a thing.

Can you see someone for some counselling to help you with this before you slip back into really disordered behaviours?

For what it’s worth, whilst I’m talking the talk here, I’m weight restored and I hate it. I fight every day to not overexercise or restrict or purge. It’s shit but my therapist assures me that it will get better and I will start to feel comfortable with my new body. I know that I’m physically healthier, and mentally whilst things are tough I do have much more ability to address stuff these days whereas when I’m restricting and under my natural weight (not actually underweight) all my emotional energy is taken up by food.

When I was bmi24 I was totally fine. Didn't restrict at all and the idea seemed bizarre that I could ever relapse!
But then I had my last baby, and thought it a good time to shift the baby weight, cut sugar and carbs a bit.... And then all of a sudden it's back. And I lose two stone! And everyone is congratulating me on my weight loss and how great I look, when really I just feel like a fat anorexic.
I even went to the gp who looked at me as if I was nuts, because after all, I'm a healthy weight and nowhere near underweight!

Your GP is wrong. Eating disorders exist at every weight. OFSED is the most deadly ED out there, and it’s the most common one (basically is the catch all for ED behaviours but without v low weight of lack of periods or similar). You clearly know somethings a bit wonky for you as you’re asking the question and you know your behaviour/thought process is a bit off.

It does sound a bit like BMI 24 is your natural weight (something I railed against in therapy the first time) as you can eat comfortably and stay there, and your thought processes around food are healthy.

Please try and see another GP or call beat or abc for some support. There are beat recovery groups around the country and online which might provide some support if you can’t access NHS therapy or find a private counsellor.

OP I don’t know whether to pose this as a warning or not but I was drawn to this thread because I have terribly disordered eating.

Basically what Worra said.

Maybe have a think about the other effects of your eating disordered behaviour, such as whether you really want your children to see you eating that way and thinking about what that teaches them about food and self worth. You know that it's a problem or you wouldn't have asked - staying mentally healthy is so much more important than fitting into a smaller dress sizzle.

Also, a friend of mine stopped eating last year due to stress. She lost over 2 stone very quickly and went from a size 12 to a size 6. So many people complimented her and said how amazing she was looking, which made her restrict her food even more, but she actually looked terrible - so ill and frail, and behind her back everyone was saying how worried they were because she looked so ill. It seems to be a 'thing' to tell people they look great when they e lost weight when what you really mean is "you look thin" - which may or may not be a good thing depending upon how much the person has lost, whether it's healthy and whether it actually suits them.