Eating disorder "logic"
To build on yesterday’s post… I have quite a few “rules” that seem very logical to me. Not really eating disordered rules, like “no liquids with calories”… although some of those do still linger (at the height of my disorder, I could have probably written a book with all of my rules). No, these are different — we’ll just call them “Grey Logic.” Obviously they are influenced by recent events / arguments.
1. You must abide by “ED recovery etiquette” – By this I mean, no matter how crappy you are doing, when you go out with a friend that you know has an ED or whom you know from treatment, you better suck it up and act as normal as possible… because triggering a friend is not okay.
2. If I can’t get a salad for dinner, neither can you – And I can’t, because then it would be considered eating disordered. So order something else.
3. It’s not fair for you to skip breakfast and skimp on lunch, and then give me crap when dinner isn’t my largest meal of the day – While you were sleeping, I was enjoying the most important meal of the day (breakfast). All meals being equal, your skipping 1.5 of them doesn’t put you in a position to be criticizing my dinner.
4. Please please please don’t order the same thing as me at a restaurant – Because restaurants are challenging enough, and I don’t want to be comparing how much I ate to how much you ate.
5. Don’t eat my yogurt – I’m sure this is unique to me… but there are 100 kinds of yogurt in the world — why eat mine? I think it’s more the switch from a different yogurt to my yogurt that bothers me…
6. Things you can’t say: You’ve lost weight. You haven’t had an appetite lately. Wow grey, you’re always cold — you must have no metabolism. You’ve doubled your workout plan lately. You’re not eating ____ food anymore. Our friend has lost so much weight. Our friend needs to gain weight — she’s too thin.
,,, I could go on, but I’ll stop. feel free to add your own 
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anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder, eating disorder treatment, mental health, mental illness, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder rules, logic, losing weight
Grey,
Life would be much easier if more people could abide by these rules. Haha- maybe we’ll have to do lunch sometime…
- Don’t tell me you are on a diet when you won’t allow me to be on one, as if you are really “allowing me” much of anything… muchless going on a diet.
- If you can just have coffee and a newspaper for breakfast, then I can have just my cup of tea in living room while watching the news on television.
- If you can “not be hungry” and skip a meal, then so can I. It just isn’t fair for you to keep track of how many times we do this in a row… because I am the only one allowed to count, as I am the one who created this rule.
I agree. I remember being in treatment and taking trips to a restaurant to practice eating out in public, eating with others in a public setting, and practicing our meal plans- and ordering a salad was a no go. A salad could be the side, but not the main course. I don’t abide by that rule anymore.
I agree with all of these rules, and wish more people in my life would follow them! Ideally, I would like to expand the list of “things you can’t say” to simply “Don’t comment at all on my appearance, my weight, my food, or my exercise habits.” And overall – “if it would be considered disordered for me to talk about it/eat it, you can’t talk about it/eat it.”
Other specific additions:
- if you can get skim milk in your coffee, don’t give me grief for putting skim milk in mine
- if you can work out for 2 hours a day, don’t act like my 30 minute workouts are too much
- don’t tell me that I look like I have lost weight, because I can assure you that I have not. Especially since I am not supposed to own a scale, so I can’t tell you that I in fact know that I have not lost weight
- along those lines…If you confiscate my scale, you can’t keep it for yourself!
- don’t complain about how full you are, because I can assure you that I am just as full, but I can’t complain about it.
And to tie both this post and your last post together, “eating disorder recovery etiquette” is exactly why I do my best when surrounded by my other ED friends. I don’t have to worry about people skipping meals or commenting about my appearance – too bad the entire world can’t abide by ED recovery etiquette when it comes to food and exercise!
I would love to be able to reply with some of the “mind play” stuff I got in treatment. After they say how full they feel. I would love to say, “full is not a feeling.” There are only 5 or 6 basic emotions, witch ones are you not recognizing……………..I would get so sick of this. Some times, I just feel full!
If (insert food combination/meal and newspaper) are considered your “morning routine,” they cannot be considered my “ritual.” A routine does not make a ritual.
If we both drink caffeinated beverages (and I am not subsisting solely on caffeinated beverages ((with no liquid calories
) ), then your beverage is just as much a “drug” or “use of stimulants” as mine. Undiagnosed coffee and soda drinkers don’t get a health pass for caffeine — we’re all junkies with different problems. Some of us just got help.
When you have an eating disorder or once you have ever had an eating disorder, suddenly you can’t eat like everyone else — even in recovery. You can’t “fast for religious purposes” or “skip a meal because you feel sick at your stomach” — you can’t do ANYTHING a normal person would you because once eating disordered, always eating disordered… at least in the world’s eyes… NOT FAIR!
You can share and list what you ate today, yesterday or anytime but do not expect me to compare with you.
You can pinch your stomach and complain about your size while I cannot complain dysmorphically about healthy weight gainbecause I am or was smaller.
You can try to healthfully lose weight but do not ask me for tips on how to develop an ED/starve.
I think you made some really good points I would liked to have said to many of my friends… sometimes what they say or do can really trigger or upset me.
Sometimes this is why I’m glad that my mother never understood my eating disorder – she never admitted that I had “disordered eating” and so she can’t watch for the signs of disordered eating. Most of the time this isn’t the greatest thing, but It makes me take responsibility for myself.