While America is known to be a relatively obese country, our obsession with vanity and the way others perceive us cause 30 million of us to have an eating disorder at least once in our lifetime. But what about the people that suffer from chronic dieting–the socially acceptable eating disorder that isn’t recorded? How many people do you know that claim they’re on diets, and reduce their food intake in fear of gaining weight? Instead of listening to our bodies and eating when we’re hungry, a lot of us feel guilty when we go out to dinner with friends and don’t order the 180 calorie salad we tell ourselves we should be eating. No matter what shape and size we are, we all seem to be on diets. It’s easy to hide behind this fact, and mask it with the term “healthy living” by going on juice cleanses and snack on gallons of lemon water. Society’s biggest fear is weight gain.
Those Instagram accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers who preach the “fit and nutritious lifestyles” are commended for not looking like skin and bones. What they don’t realize is that many of those people have the same mindset and symptoms as those with Anorexia Nervosa do. The obsession with what they eat and compulsive exercise is what the two have in common. They’ll often state in the captions how guilty they felt for missing their daily workout or having a taste of ice cream that day. Even though these people look physically healthy, their minds may not be. If you find that you set your schedule around food, you think that everything will be okay once you lose the weight, or you feel like everyone is paying attention to your size, you are most likely suffering from this obscure disorder.
Trying to eat healthier and dieting are two separate things and make you think differently, but not everyone can see that. When you try to eat healthier, it’s like saying, “Instead of eating this donut, maybe I should opt for an apple with peanut butter.” It’s not restriction and scolding, but it’s choosing the healthier option that is still enjoyable. A diet is more meal-planning, and living in fear of falling off of track. Although, not everyone who tells themselves they’re on a diet necessarily has an eating disorder, but when it’s affecting the quality of your life, that’s when you know. The line is incredibly fine between these two, because one is shamed and the other is praised.
There aren’t just three eating disorders, like the well-known ones such as Bulimia, Anorexia, and Binge-Eating. There is a scale to all of those, and there are more as well. Some examples are Night Eating Syndrome, Purging Disorder, or an Unspecified Feeding or Eating Disorder. These are called Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS).
I personally believe a lot more than 30 million Americans have/had a bad relationship with food that affects them mentally. We need to stop being so obsessed with what goes in our bodies, and focus on what makes us feel happy and energized. We just need to feel good, and that is what healthy should mean.
