Health is about exercise and green veg. But if you’ve had an eating disorder, it’s not that easy

an article by Megan Nolan published in the New Statesman

A desire to change your body could drag all of that history back.


MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES

The fundamentals of health are simple. Move a lot, eat green, leafy vegetables, consume as few harmful chemicals as possible. It’s not difficult, nutritionists and stringy, gym-lean personal trainers tell us on television.

My doctor says it too, when he forces me to be weighed before he will renew my contraceptive pill. I’m not particularly overweight, he tells me, so why don’t I just follow the rules a little better? It wouldn’t take much. It wouldn’t take much for me to be in the green weight category rather than the orange. Just do what you have to do. I know that if I did those things I would be healthy, and I know that I should want to be healthy. But do I?

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Anorexia not just a psychiatric problem, scientists find

an article by Ian Semple, Science editor, in the Guardian

Discovery of metabolic causes opens door to new treatments for dangerous eating disorder


The study revealed eight genes that linked anorexia to anxiety, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, all of which was expected. Photograph: Lane Erickson/Alamy Stock Photo

Scientists have found that the devastating eating disorder anorexia nervosa is not purely a psychiatric condition but is also driven by problems with metabolism.

The finding may help to explain doctors’ poor record in treating the illness and pave the way for radical new approaches to predict and treat those who are most at risk.

Researchers made the discovery after comparing the DNA of nearly 17,000 people with anorexia and more than 55,000 healthy controls. Those with anorexia submitted their DNA through the Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative or the eating disorders working group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium.

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And yet another “it’s all in your head” illness is found to be, at least partly, in other parts of the body as well.

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8 Ways Creativity Helps Us Connect with Ourselves and Get What We Need

a post by Lori Deschene for the Tiny Buddha blog

When I look back at my life, I recognize that some of the most pivotal moments revolved around creativity and self-expression.

As a kid, that meant community theater. My first solo was “Part of Your World,” from The Little Mermaid. Though I felt incredibly insecure in my green spandex pant-fins as a fairly thick twelve-year old, I was able to tune that out when I made my way center stage.

It was just me, my heart, my voice, and the spotlight. And that song felt written for me, as I felt like an outsider pretty much everywhere at that time in my life.

Around the same time I found my passion for writing—my first foray into the world of self-help, actually. To deal with bullying at school and a difficult home life, I began writing myself a series of motivational essays, little things to boost my self-esteem in a world that seemed to want to tear it down.

It was fairly mortifying when I noticed the boys huddled in the cafeteria, laughing, while reading from my well-worn spiral notebook, which they had stolen from my backpack. But those essays weren’t for them. They were for me. And they helped.

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How I Healed from an Eating Disorder and Stopped Hating Myself and My Body

a post by Roni Davis for the Tiny Buddha blog
Please remember that this is one person’s story. Her road may not be the one you can follow.



I remember looking at the nutrition information on the bag of jujubes I had just eaten and feeling utterly and completely disgusted with myself.

That was my first binge. Little did I know how much worse it would get.

It was four days in to the first official diet that I had somehow managed to stay on for more than one day.

I had dieted on and off most of my life, but any time I tried a diet that told me what I was and wasn’t allowed to eat (Atkins was the first of many), I never managed to last longer than a day or two before I’d “blow it” and give up.

Prior to the day of my first binge, I had actually lost a lot of weight on my own, simply by counting calories, but I hired a trainer because, while I reached my goal weight on my own, I still hated my body and wasn’t happy.

So, I did the only thing I knew to do at the time—pay someone else to tell me what to eat so I could have a perfect body and finally be happy.

Ha.

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How to Get in Shape When You Feel Lazy and Unmotivated

a post by Timothy James for the Tiny Buddha blog


“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” ~Jin Ryun

Can I be brutally honest with you for a moment?

I was the “fat kid” growing up, and I’ve struggled to find the motivation to lose weight and lead a healthy lifestyle my whole life.

I first realized I was fat when the teacher asked for a volunteer to play Santa in the third grade Christmas play, and Aaron Valadez loudly blurted out, “Tim would be perfect for the role since he’s already got the belly!”

I literally died right there. Mortified.

This was the first time in memory when I turned to food to numb my pain and embarrassment. Congratulations to me, I had discovered the emotional rollercoaster known as binging! A rollercoaster which I would struggle to get off for my entire life…

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6 Powerful Steps to Stop Binge Eating for Good

a post by Maria Marklove for the Tiny Buddha blog


“As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than wrong with you, no matter how ill or how despairing you may be feeling in a given moment.” ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Binge eating is hard. For me, winter time has always been hardest.

The winter of 2011 was particularly bad. It was then that I sat, hands clasped around my knees, thinking about how best to kill myself.

Hopeless only scratches the surface of what I was feeling—that same feeling I’d had on-and-off for fifteen years. I was twenty-three. I’d spent half my life in darkness.

I went over the mathematics: Depression + Eating Disorder = Agonizing Existence.

I was finally ready to admit I needed help. So as I sat there, I vowed to put an end to my suffering. I told myself “I’m going to give this one final push. I’ll put all of my energy into stopping this continual depression, and these cycles of binge eating and starving myself. If it still doesn’t work, I’ll just kill myself.”

It really was that simple.

By the end of 2011, I didn’t want to kill myself anymore. A few years later, I’d stopped binge eating completely. These days, I’ve never been happier. I don’t get depressed anymore. I am healthy, mentally and physically, and I try to live every day in gratitude, happiness, and well-being.

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I know that having a role model is a good idea but following in someone else’s footsteps is not always possible as we are all different.
All Maria’s suggestions look good to me but I have never had a problem with food so am not able to judge fairly.

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