Anonymous asked: Hi, do you feel that the general public assumes fat people cannot have eating disorders? If thin people participated in The Biggest Loser (6 hour workouts and immense dietary restrictions) it would be an eating disorder, but it's okay to abuse fat people in our society. It hurts me because I'm a fat girl, and people come up to me in public to tell me diet tips to 'save' me, and due to my disordered eating past it is triggering.
Yeah, I think the general public definitely assumes that, as they aren’t educated correctly, and unless you do the research on your own, you won’t understand. I remember watching an anorexia PSA in 6th grade staring a skeletal girl who wouldn’t eat until her father literally force fed her peanut butter sandwiches. It was incredibly weird and disturbing. I believe there was also the implication that anorexia led her down a road of drugs and partying and rape and she was like a zombie. Every kids science book or health class just shows these sad, bony girls hunched over toilets or counting calories and it’s showing a margin of anorexia.
I think the public generally assumes that fat people can have over-eating disorders, but that’s it. I watch The Biggest Loser, and while I don’t consider it abuse, I think it’s unrealistic and gives the public unrealistic ideas about weight loss. They barely touch on nutrition, just noting that you have to burn/cut 3500 calories to lose a pound. They don’t discuss how many calories you should eat when you’re working out 6 hours a day. Another issue is that they do 6 hour cardio workouts. No one with a job or without a personal trainer can do that and they’ve always kind of hinted that they’re working out for that long, but only showing us a few HIIT workouts. People think they can lose 200 pounds in 16 weeks, but unless your ass is on the treadmill 6 hours a day, it isn’t happening. There are also claims of dehydration and extreme calorie cutting before weigh ins. Whether that’s true, I don’t know, but I do know that the entire program is impossible to maintain. I get that the point is to get the weight off, then later maintain it, but it still has to be a huge shock to go back to real life.
While I believe in getting healthy, the public needs to know that not all fat people are unhealthy and not all thin people are healthy. I am disturbed by the amount of kids sitting around playing video games and going online all day, but that’s because I think kids should be having more social lives. If you want to go sit on the lawn and talk to your friends all day and not move once, go ahead!
America needs to get healthier, that’s true, but they don’t need to get thinner.
