Tag: eating disorder | A Banana Peeled

And what?

Posted on May 12, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Thinking more about the fat thing (ha, I wrote phat first, which is funny) because it’s irking me. I watched a few minutes of a Dr. Mike video in which he talked about BMI. He was careful to say that it’s just a tool and that blah, blah, blah, but then he defended it as legit. I turned off the video because while I find him to be informative and caring in general, even he has bowed down to the myth of BMI.

It’s so fucking frustrating how deep run fat phobia is in this country. The undercurrent of what Dr. Mike was saying was that it’s wrong to be fat. No matter how carefully he put it, that was his message.

And it’s all bullshit. This I know. BMI was never meant to be ussed for individuals. The guy who came up with it has said it himself. He was a mathmetecian (!) and it was supposed to be a quick and dirty way to judge the obesity of a general population, not an individual. Here’s an article on NPR/MPR explaining why the BMI is bullshit (restraining heated comment on their parting comment on obesity). I especially appreiate the bit about how because of the way the chart is structured, people who are considered obese will often have a high BMI, but correlation is not causation. As the article points out, those who are heavily muscled will have a high BMI. That was me.

The moment I realized that at my skinniest, when I was anorexic and bulimic with a thigh gap and fainting because I wasn’t eating enough calories to not faint, I was still considered on the cusp of overweight was when I knew for sure that BMI was bullshit. Not to mention that the MATHEMATICIAN who came up with it was doing it based on the ‘common man’. Which, yeah. You can understand why that worked out so well. This was early 19th century to boot and a lot has changed since then. So even the bemoaning of how obese Americans are is bullshit beacuse it’s based on BMI.

Putting that genie back in the bottle isn’t going to happen. Anyone mentions BMI without saying it’s bullshit? I don’t listen to them. That’s such a faulty premise that it’s like someone saying that the earth is flat–except it’s given much more gravitas. It’s unthinkingly accepted by the medical community–which is annoying as fuck.

Ita’s easy for me to say it’s bullshit. It’s much harder for me to fully embrace that the obsession with weight that America has is bullshit. But. Even if I can’t do that. Even if I were to agree that Americans need to lose weight, I cannot get aboard the train that shaming and blaming is the way to get Americans to change.

I thought the same thing when the push to make people feel terrible for smoking went full bore. This was right around the turn of the millennium, and the place I worked (county government) made it so you could not smoke inside. I didn’t care. I only smoked out of my home when I went out drinking. I will admit I was a bit miffed when bars went nonsmoking, but that was because Minnesota is fucking frigid in the winter. Which in itself would not be terrible except there were no places to safely smoke outside.

‘Healthy’ is a yet another dog whistle

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I hate food culture in America. I just want to say that up front because I’ve been thinking about it lately. I re-read posts on Ask A Manager, and I’ve been absorbed in one about a nonprofit charity that deals with people with a certain chronic disease (and how to help them eat healthily*. That wasn’t what the letter was about. The letter was from someone who worked there who asked how to implement a:

healthy eating policy that is respectful and non-judgmental.

My immediate response on re-reading that question was, “There isn’t. Next?” Which, to be fair, many, many, many people pointed out. But, reading the comments reminded me again about how deeply endemic these issues are in our society.

To be clear. The vast majority of people were against the policy as it stood. Oh, the policy would be…not even sure, but something about eating similar to what they’re pushing their clients to eat? I don’t know, but the letter writer, named QuestionSubmitter, elaborated in the comments. They were shamed for bringing chocolate into the office so ended up eating it in their car. They said in their letter that there were people who ran their food program who were frustrated that they “had” to police their coworkers food choices. I put had in quotes because they didn’t have to. They were doing it all of their own volition. What’s more, there wasn’t support from the uppers in this push for ‘healthy’ eating. The uppers wanted cupcakes at meetings, which did not bode well for a policy.

Alison’s response was wonderful and hit most of the important points I had in mind. It was interesting to see how people pushed back, though. There was a woman who compared a food policy to a dress code, which, no. I mean, I think most dress codes are ridiculous, too, but in most cases, you can’t get sick from those restrictions. The same woman said something like we can all agree that certain foods aren’t healthy–like Skittles. Several people pointed out that Skittles were perfect for diabetics who needed a quick hit of sugar.

Other people said it was getting into not everyone can eat sandwiches territory (adhering to the very special/rare cases), but it’s not because a blanket policy will affect many different people in different ways. In the comments, people were giving their specific dietary restrictions such as several needed to eat more salt than was recommended. Another could not eat leafy greens. Then there were those who were celiacs and/or had Crohn’s disease. The point being that what was healthy for some was not healthy for others.

Other people said it’s easy to eat healthy by societal standards (lots of vegs and fruits), but they included a lot of meat beacuse they lift weights. Somebody pointed out that lots of meat would be considered unhealthy by many doctors, which is true. It was discouraging that a very vocal minority wanted to dismiss food deserts as a problem.

What a weighty matter

Posted on October 20, 2022 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I’m fat. I have been fat all my life except for the two times I dealt with anorexia (and bulimia to boot one of those times). My mother put me on my first diet when I was seven and has harped on my weight all my life. She is Taiwanese and grew up with very toxic and harmful ideas about girls and weight, and she has never gotten over it. For the first thirty years of my life, she was obsessed with losing those mythical five pounds (and only stopped when she actually did it). She is 5’2″ and was 90 pounds when she moved to the States. She gained a lot of weight because of her love of American ice cream (she told me this frequently as well), and that caused her to be self-conscious about her body.

I’ve documented several times how dying twice and coming back to life has made me do a 180 on my body. I used to hate it with a passion. Taiji helped me calla an uneasy truce with it, but I still did not like it. I hated looking into the mirror, and I refused to let anyone take pictures of me.

I had to explicitly tell my mother by email when I was in my thirties that she was not allowed to mention my weight. I preempted her by telling her that no, she could not do it under the pretense of ‘health’ or being concerned for me because that ship had well-sailed. When I had anorexia for the second time, her only comment was that my waist was smaller than hers, and it was said in a tone of jealousy. She never mentioned either time that I was dangerously thin (which was most definitely bad for my health!) and all her comments were focused on how fat I was and how it marred my looks (“Your face would be beautiful if you weren’t so fat.” Actual thing she said to me when I was a kid.) So, yeah, no. Suddenly switching to concerns about my health was not going to fool me. She meant I was a big fat cow and she was disgusted by it. I know she saw it as a reflection on her and she was horrified to have a disgusting blob for a daughter. Because she never went after my brother about his weight. She never told him he could lose a few pounds (that I can recall). He was never as big as I was, but he certainly could have been called chunky as a kid. He was a boy, though, so it wasn’t as important than he be skinny to get a man and. Seriously. That was the whole undercurrent of what my mother was pushing: You need to be skinny so you can snag a man and have children.

Yes, it’s horrible outdated and outmoded, but that mentality still exists, sadly. And, even without the ‘so you can attract a man’ part being explicitly said, the mentality of a woman is always better if she is smaller is definitely still prevalent. No ‘but the health though’ glow-up can hide the fact that it’s not about health. Before my medical crisis, I had low blood pressure and was the only one in my family not on high blood pressure meds. I had no indications that my weight was a negative on my health. What happened to me last year was not weight-related at all.

Tag Archives: eating disorder