Key in a Lock

Cue massive yawns;

For 10 years, my problem was too little, rather than too much, food. What could I, recently recovered from anorexia, possibly know about fatness?

Well done, in not bothering to find out whether that is 'the problem' for all fat people. It's true though, that anorexics should have the closest understanding of what its like to be fat. Not because they're alike, but because fat people are treated as if we have an eating disorder that will kill us, regardless of our personal situation.

You cannot weigh behaviour. Anorexia is a disorder, fatness is weight. 

In my experience, many of the more vocal often middle class anorexics don't understand a whole lot about anorexia past their subjective interpretations. Basic understanding is recognising something in its original setting. Deeper is when you can recognise it other contexts. These anorexics failed for instance to spot that it is effectively the prescription for 'obesity'. Many still find it hard even after it has been pointed out to them;

For so long I wondered how most women can diet and exercise and not develop a full-blown eating disorder, whereas I started losing weight and exercising excessively and got sucked into the spiral of anorexia. When I see the girls in the office tucking into chocolate brownies for someone’s birthday, moments after announcing their new diet regime, I wonder if eating disorders and disordered eating are actually part of the same spectrum; whether self-starvation is simply a more extreme form of female dieting. I see a lot of anxiety about weight around me; I hear a lot of guilt about food. Sometimes it seems that ‘normal’ dieting and anorexia are worlds apart, sometimes they seem very close.

Dieting is like a key, anorexia is like it fitting a lock and turning. Only one in 200-250 people have this lock or susceptibility to anorexia. Though that varies in strength too, unless you have it, then your body is unlikely to succumb to full blown anorexia. However, dieting does unbalance the mind and body. A lot of fat people have that almost anorexia and/or other symptoms, due to the extent and duration of their dieting careers, which often start in early childhood.

There are also other 'locks' bulimia, hyperphagia. Yes, a lot of people don't realise, an excess of appetite is often part of the body's way of fighting off your attempts at calorie restriction.

Think about it, if your body increases your hunger signals, that's makes resisting hunger far harder work than even it is normally.  There are other exposures to ED's. Lack of money. Some stop eating because they find it easier than eating then having to stop again when they run out of money or food. Some develop under-eating patterns so as to relieve the pressure on parents and develop that massive anxiety about eating that many with ED's get-not only anorexia.

Binge cycles can be established by having more money at the start of the month and none at the end. And this can raise hunger to the point where people would rather do with the minimum of clothes to ward off their excess of hunger signals. People become expert at getting maximum calories from minimum resources. This can also unbalance their appetite and hunger signals.

I didn't realise people conflated thinness with anorexia till I encountered thinsproana. I've known too many thin people over the years and their attitude to food was so normal compared to mine to consider they have anything to do with anorexia. Which to be honest, can give off a certain vibe. That's why I simply do not see thin people as anorexic. Though at the same time realise very low weight is more likely to be a symptom of wasting.

Many of thinz, along with others helped me to have an idea in my head of what normal eating meant. Anorexia is further from them than me in the days of my 'healthy lifestyling'!