ED Qs: EDs & the weight of others

Do they (you?) see overweight ppl as less than a person?

No. It's very hard to explain the conflicting points of view that somehow share the same space in an (my) eating disordered brain, but it goes something like this: no matter how thin you are, you never think you are thin enough. You are never good enough. You are never enough, and yet you are entirely too much. You fixate on other people thinner than you, not because you think they as people are better or happier (you know they're not, you know they're sick and miserable and the human part of you wants them to get better), but because you want their disorder. You want to be that much sicker. It doesn't matter that it won't be enough; it doesn't matter that you will never, ever stop wanting to lose more. Eating disorders are massively comparative, which is one of the reasons people get SO BITCHY over them and why it can be SO HARD to talk about. Ultimately, we're not upset with anyone but ourselves. We just take it out on other people.

I am a huge supporter of "love yourself, whoever you are, whatever you look like." I yell at people when they call themselves ugly or fat. I get angry over beauty contests or anything that makes the way someone looks into a competition, as though that were the most important part of them. I don't think your body defines who you are, I think it's a product of genetics and circumstance.

I'm also a HUGE believer in the idea that your body really does know its shit. It knows what to do (not counting various diseases, of course). I get pissy when people talk about eating "healthy" and try to feel elitist over it. You want to eat ice cream? Eat fucking ice cream. Eat whatever the fuck you want. You will start craving "healthy" food eventually, when your body needs it, if you truly listen to it and override the signals society has branded on us. Yes, I know it's more complicated than that, with processed food and chemicals and blah blah. But go check out this article and remember that EVERYTHING IS CHEMISTRY, guys.

I wish my parents hadn't been SUCH MASSIVE sticklers on healthy food. I wish I hadn't had to count out 20 m&ms for dessert, or been allowed ice cream once a week on saturday night like clockwork. I wish I hadn't learned that some foods are Good and some are Bad. It's all food, and if it hadn't been so forbidden to me as a child I would never have begun to crave it the way I did. I've spent the past (holy shit almost 4 years) trying to learn to listen to my body and undo the previous 22 years of learning bad habits ("bad habits" being those our society would definitely praise. Brainwarp, anyone?) People complain about large portion sizes in restaurants etc etc and honestly, I love them, because then I get leftovers which make me happy. I walk a lot because I love walking, but that's the only exercise I do. We seem to have forgotten that for several hundred thousand years our bodies have done just fine without diets and exercise plans. If we stopped paying so much fucking attention to to what we were eating and how many calories we were expending, I think we'd have a lot less of a problem.

*gets off soap box*

So no, I don't think anyone's body makes them less of a person. In our society people who are overweight are shamed quite often, and while it may seem hard to believe, people with eating disorders feel that same shame. It's simply that they place it on themselves (for those not already overweight), rather than society forcing it on them. The hatred of "fatness" that we feel isn't a judgement on anyone but ourselves. I personally would rather be morbidly obese and happy than have a "perfect" body and be miserable.