It'll Always Be There...

Rather than posting about facts and figures I realized it's time to maybe make things a bit more personal and unguarded. This weekend I returned home and it was the first time I had access to a scale in a little over a month; something that drives me absolutely insane. It's a dual-edged sword though; the lack of scale in my apartment makes sure that I'm not obsessively checking my weight, however on the other hand I'm unable to check my progress in gaining. Needless to say the first thing I did after greeting my family when I got home was hop on the scale. I was finally over the 100 mark for the first time since sophomore year of high school and truth be told it was a strange feeling. I was so used to seeing double digit numbers for the past 4 years of my life and there was a sense of pride because I feel like I had succeeded but also fear had overtaken me.

I still have the mentality that this weight is essentially disgusting. I saw the "103" displayed on the digital read out and my heart began racing. On one hand I knew that this is a "normal" weight and logically I am by no means overweight. Then I continued to look at myself; the way my thighs are considerably bigger than they were over the summer when I was at an all time low weight, how my hip bones are less prominent, and how my jeans are a bit snug. I was terrified; terrified that if it was this easy for me to gain weight since September what's saying I was going to stop? What if I just continued gaining? Then I realized that if I checked my BMI this may settle my mind. I plugged in my height (5 foot 4 inches) and weight (103 pounds) into an online BMI calculator and awaited my results. I checked the side bar of the site and anything below 18.5 is considered "underweight". A small part of me was hoping for results yielding a number well past this value. The read out was 17.7 and sadly, I was ecstatic.

I took a step back and thought of what I was worried about and realized that this mentality of weight obsession may never ever, ever go away. Although I am not actively trying to starve myself as I once was, I am still overly conscious about what and when I eat. I avoid the campus center like the plague because it's too tempting to get chicken nuggets. My meals consist of water and soup, sometimes a Mountain Dew Code Red if I feel sleepy from not eating until 5 PM, but at least I'm eating right? If my friends propose a late-night trip to Wawa I begin to make up excuses as to why I can't go. "I have homework" or "Well my first class is at 8:30 tomorrow morning" gets me out of the field trip when in reality I don't eat past 10 PM because late-night eating slows down one's metabolism. As I write all of this I realize I am not "better"; I don't think one can ever be cured from a mentality wholly. Yes, those of us who have struggled with ED's can stop the extreme actions that made us "sick", but it's a constant battle with oneself. My weight is always in the back of my mind as something that can make or break me and I'm not too sure if the constant humming of my weight consciousness is something that can ever go away.

Pro Ana Plague

This is the "ABC Diet";  A fifty day starvation method under the guise of a "diet".  The essential theory of the "diet" is based on the concept that calorie shifting is the easiest and fastest means to lose weight. When you reduce your food intake so sudden the idea is that your body shifts into "starvation mode", which is an evolutionary defense mechanism that causes your metabolism to become more efficient in order to cope with the sudden shortage of food. Since calorie intake varies day by day, for example a day of 300 calories followed by a day of 800 calories then a fast, your body assumes it prevents the body from going into starvation mode. Instead, your metabolism anticipates another calorie intake on the fast day, thus your metabolism continues to try to burn any remaining calories.

Obviously this is one of the least healthy ways to diet, however there are these "Pro Ana" diets plaguing the internet. On any blogging site it's not a difficult task to find Pro Ana pages devoted to pictures of hip bones, collar bones, and "Thinspiration" quotes. In my opinion, the internet has made finding things like this dangerously accessible. With just a few touches to the keyboard and the click of a mouse, one is able to find the most efficient way to starve themselves.

Posts such as this one promote a mentality that food is no longer necessary for nourishment, but something destructive and degrading. Years ago the media was blamed for corrupting society's views on how a woman should look; stick thin models and petite celebrities were considered the "bad influences". Now, it's everyone. It's young women blogging from their bedrooms about their weight loss progress, delivering an "If I can do it, so can you" message. I was floored upon reading some of the Pro Ana blogs out there and even more upset by Thinspiration messages such as this one.

What does it take to be considered an epidemic?

epidemic |ˌepiˈdemik|
noun
a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time : a flu epidemic.
• a disease occurring in such a way.
• a sudden, widespread occurrence of a particular undesirable phenomenon : an epidemic of violent crime.

Now consider the following statistics concerning college age women:


• 91% of women surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting. 22% dieted “often” or “always.”5
• 86% report onset of eating disorder by age 20; 43% report onset between ages of 16 and 20.6
• Anorexia is the third most common chronic illness among adolescents.7
• 95% of those who have eating disorders are between the ages of 12 and 25.8
• 25% of college-aged women engage in binging and purging as a weight-management technique.3
• The mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa is 12 times higher than the death rate associated with all causes of death for females 15-24 years old.4
• Over one-half of teenage girls and nearly one-third of teenage boys use unhealthy weight control behaviors such as skipping meals, fasting, smoking cigarettes, vomiting, and taking laxatives.17
• In a survey of 185 female students on a college campus, 58% felt pressure to be a certain weight, and of the 83% that dieted for weight loss, 44% were of normal weight.16

What is it going to take for society to view eating disorders as something far more than just a "phase"? When I came across these statistics  I was utterly shocked to find such a prevalence of ED's in young adults my age. Often I feel as if the term "dieting" is used as a socially acceptable means to mask the act of fasting or skipping meals. The amount of times I've uttered "I had a big lunch" or "Breakfast gives me a stomach ache" is countless. But unless I was lying in a hospital bed, I never considered myself "sick". I didn't need help because I suspected I could stop just as fast as I had started. I was so uninformed about the disease I had.

In school, health classes often consist of information about sex, drug and alcohol abuse, and STD prevention. Why won't these classes inform the youth of America about healthy eating habits and the prevalence of eating disorders among the youth/young adults in America? The fact that a majority of college age women begin eating disorders at the age of twenty shows that society has indeed ignored currently as well as during their younger years. 

 If 86% of the population of a certain demographic had a cold, it would undoubtedly make headlines. The "Swine Flu" was the topic of ABC news for no less than four months. Why are eating disorders any different?

Luckily there have been advances made in more recent years to bring this issue of lack of self esteem to America through campaigns such as Dove.

Exploring TED

I've been thinking about the TED Talk that we have to do since the beginning of the semester. I do have so many interests and I'm fascinated by so many things. Everything from astronomy, to music, to photography, to politics interests me and it's so difficult to narrow it down to one sole thing that I want to talk about. When I sifted through all of these interests I thought, none of this is personal enough for me to create a ten minute talk.

I was considering doing a talk on music. Music is such a broad, unspecific word in my opinion. It's like "love" or "a lot"...so abstract. I can recall how music has been such a prominent role in my life since I could remember playing around with the karaoke machine I got for Christmas at the age of five. I thought I had a pretty solid topic and could've focused my talk around the different sorts of music I liked and why I have certain songs on my iPod that I will never ever delete because they can bring me back to a certain time where I can basically feel, touch, taste, and smell the memory. I thought I was set.


Over the weekend I hopped on to one of my favorite websites, PostSecret and did my usual Sunday routine of checking out the latest posts. I always found these "secrets" inspiring and relatable; this website has made me feel not so alone for about seven years now. I was scrolling down the page, headphones blasting, all comfortable in my bed then stopped in my tracks upon reading this confession:

Unfortunately, it got my mind racing back to the past 4 years I had suffered with an eating disorder. Although never as extreme, a majority of my adolescence into young adulthood was a constant battle with the scale. Today, I feel like there isn't all that much awareness about the severity and prevalence of eating disorders among older groups of girls. This post caused me to go exploring on my other blog  to past entries concerning my weight. I found this one from this past May and it helped me figure out exactly why I want to do my talk on body image.

"I hate those days when you look in the mirror and hate everything you see. Every flaw seems magnified thousands of times; your nose, every spot, the way your eyes are a bit uneven, the funny way your upper lip disappears when you smile, the fat from your thighs, each pudgy finger, the way your legs are bowed from dancing, poor posture, everything.

I HATE when people say girls only express their insecurities because they’re fishing for compliments. Anybody who has ever said that should honestly reevaluate how they think about other people. Both girls and boys alike don’t just say these things to hear someone say something positive that they won’t believe anyway. Why can’t anyone accept that people do feel like they’re flawed and do wish they can change themselves? I find it so messed up that society automatically thinks people are out to only benefit themselves or that someone who feels negatively must have an ulterior motive to expressing what they dislike about their appearance. I’m rambling I know but it’s just something that’s bothered me for a while. Next time someone expresses something they dislike about themselves, even if it seems like the most minute thing, think twice before you jump to the conclusion that they just want to hear something you assume they already know."


Of course this is a rather broad topic but I really think I can narrow it down and try to make people in the class care about it because it does affect more people than we realize and it's a societal issue that will most likely not go away.

First time posting...

This is awful I feel like I'm cheating on my tumblr.Now here's a cat because I feel as if I'm going to undeniably be one of those ladies with 37 cats who knits. And Professor Hall asked us to insert a picture. But I did both a link and a picture. Heck yes.