Columns, Opinion

MINTZ: Walking into Diet Culture

Since I’m new here, there are some things you should know about me.

  1. I like to write about illness and how it shapes my life. I also like to write about what I notice about the culture we live in, through a very distinct lens.
  2. I am fully recovered from my nine-year-long stint with an eating disorder.
  3. I downloaded a pedometer app.

To someone without an eating disorder, this is not a big deal. A pedometer app may even be helpful for some, if you’re using it for the right reasons. It’s good to get out and walk around. It makes you healthier and more alert. I also am totally not against people wanting to lose weight for health reasons. I get it — not everyone is going to develop an eating disorder just because they want to lose five pounds. I know that I am in the minority.

However, in a terrifying turn of events, the minority is becoming the majority. Statistics from the National Eating Disorders Association support this. Each decade since 1950, the rate of diagnoses of anorexia in women ages 15-19 has risen. And between 1988 and 1993, the rate of diagnoses of bulimia tripled. Think about what a massive jump that is, and that’s only over the course of five years. Keep in mind that that statistic is from over 10 years ago. Imagine how much that number has probably risen.

There is a biological component to eating disorders, the element that draws a firm distinction between an eating disorder and a diet. Still, not everyone who is biologically predisposed to an eating disorder will develop one. So what separates someone with the eating disorder gene who develops an eating disorder from someone with the gene who doesn’t?

Well, back to my pedometer app.

I can think back to as early as elementary school and remember how my friends used to talk about how fat their thighs were. It was before I even knew that “skinny” and “fat” were words that people besides adults use. Maybe that’s where we learned it from; many from the generation before ours instilled in us the principle that we must be skinny because skinny equals successful (which is BS, but that’s beside the point). From listening to our elders reject the notion that food is necessary, we, however subconsciously, stored that information in our impressionable brains and began obsessing over it from an earlier age than any generation before us.

And now, here we are at BU, with its campus that is, according to Google, just about a mile-and-a-half long. But even if I had not googled it, I would know how long it is. Why? Because no one ever shuts up about it.

In my few weeks here, I don’t think I’ve had one meal that hasn’t been prefaced with, “It’s OK if we eat this. We walk so much that we’ll just burn it off anyway.” As freshmen, we are all terrified of the infamous “freshman 15,” but “we won’t gain it here because we burn so many calories walking across campus.”

Before I even realized it, I too wanted to figure out just how much I was walking, so I downloaded that pedometer app. The homepage shows how many steps you have taken (obviously), how long you have spent walking overall, the overall length you traveled and, of course, the calories you have burned taking all those steps.

Every time I opened my app to check my steps, I was assaulted by these numbers that I thought I had stopped caring about long ago. Why do we care so much about counting calories when calories are merely units of energy that we need to live? I could write an entire novel about why the concept of counting calories is completely unrelated to health, but that’s a column for another day. The fact that these arbitrary numbers — calories eaten or burned, weight gained or lost, steps taken — dictate our lives and our choices in such a profound way is so telling about the way this society normalizes diet culture and glorifies thinness.

“Fat” does not always mean unhealthy. “Thin” does not always mean healthy. Yet we terrorize people about the “freshman 15” while lauding the people who’ve lost weight due to an eating disorder. Our culture and its perception of ideal and healthy is not okay. We need to purge ourselves, if you will, of diet culture — right now.

And so, I have deleted the pedometer app, because I, like everyone else, should be able to walk when I want to, take the BU Shuttle or the T when I want to and eat what I want to and not worry about how many calories my Cheeseology mac & cheese contains. I encourage you all to do the same.

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One Comment

  1. Hello Casey,

    I’m writing both to thank you for your helpful article, and to let you know how impressed I am by both your recovery, and your clear writing and critical thinking.

    I hope your article will give pause to other college students, and help them to resist and speak out for ending

    weight stigma,
    fear-mongering about the “freshman 15,” and
    pressure to “burn off” calories.

    The calorie/exercise “Fat Talk” you’re overhearing is, as you might agree, contagious and does harm, in one way or another, to everyone within earshot.

    I hope my experience might also help anyone who doesn’t understand why they can’t stop themselves from overeating.

    It’s dieting–intermittent under-eating–that’s probably causing any over-eating and weight gain. Not “being a freshman”!

    Under-eating causes over-eating. Primary under-eating leads to secondary over-eating.

    Starving causes bingeing.

    In order for over-eating to stop, the under-eating must stop, first.

    Because I am now plus-size, caused by years of restricting causing bingeing, I didn’t think anyone would think I had an eating disorder, given I didn’t have anorexia or bulimia, the only “official” EDs until recently.

    As a result, I didn’t get into ED recovery until mid-life. I’m in my 50s, and have been struggling with an ED for 38 years now, by which I restrict and then overeat, which has tripled my weight since I was first put on a diet at age 14 by a truly insane pediatrician. (I hope that will give pause to anyone dieting.)

    (I was thin at the time I was put on that first diet, but my ignorant pediatrician mistook what I now know was my normal, necessary female puberty weight gain of ~10 pounds from age 13-14 as a risk for continued weight gain. In fact, his diet accomplished that, as it required me to under-eat and literally be starved by day, causing me to start overeating each night, for the first time in my life. My ED of restricting and then bingeing started my very first day on my pediatrican”s diet. Mine is an example of why no one should ever be put on a diet, as restricting or under-eating by any amount, of any food or nutrient, for the intention of weight loss, is neither physically nor psychologically healthy, given it’s not based on honoring the body’s hunger, appetite, and satiety needs, and will either result in anorexia, or a cycle of restricting, bingeing, and possibly purging, any of which can become very serious and difficult to recover from.)

    Back to the pedometer.

    I need to exercise more to lower my blood pressure, and have wondered if a) it would be worth it to invest in a pedometer, and b) if it would trigger ED thoughts and behaviors. I used to compulsively exercise as part of the weight loss efforts, and have racked up so many injuries that it has become difficult to exercise at all. Fortunately, walking is something I can still do.

    What usually motivates me is enjoying the scenery, and moving to feel good, but where I live at the moment is a truly ugly commercial district and I am too disabled to drive much to get to a more aesthetic location daily.

    I don’t want to walk for weight loss, as I’m an advocate of Health At Every Size (R).

    I found your article by googling “pedometers + eating disorders”.

    Thank you for writing this helpful and well written article. It’s wonderful to read of someone recovered, and with years of recovery.

    Your experience gives me pause regarding getting a pedometer, or if I do, spending much on it, as it could end up in the trash pretty quickly if I find it harmful for my health. (I wouldn’t want to give it to someone else, and have it cause problems for them.)

    In particular, though, I am writing to let you know how impressed I am by the quality and clarity of your writing, and the quality of your critical thinking. I couldn’t believe, as I got further down the article, to discover that you wrote this as a college student, and apparently a freshwoman.

    My compliments to you for your writing and thinking ability. With your abilities, and the determination you’ve shown by recovering from an ED and willingness to write about it to help others, I am sure you will go on to contribute great things to this world.

    My best wishes to you, and thank you again for your helpful article.