Starvation is not morally superior

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Between my bipolar and hypothyroidism my appetite has some pretty funky days. In the past week or so it's manifested as a lot of nausea when eating so I've eaten maybe half a meal a day or so. Yesterday, for instance, I ate half my dinner then pushed it away, unable to even look at it without feeling sick. Today I woke up late, had a therapy appointment, then came home around noon, dealt with some activism business, did some scrapbooking and around 3 or so started realizing that I was finally hungry in a non nauseous way. Yay for me! Right....?

The fact is that part of me didn't want to eat because I just knew if I could keep up this habit of not eating I'd.... I'd what? I've long past given up goals of weight loss. So what did I think not eating would accomplish? I'll tell you what- superiority. Not over anyone else per se, but over myself. My eating self. As sanctimonious as it is, I felt morally superior to the me who ate regular meals. I felt like I was accomplishing something.

Anyone with an eating disorder probably is shaking their head right about now. It's a pretty common feeling- that feeling of accomplishment when you don't eat or purge or exercise until you're ready to drop. But we all know this is complete bullshit right? Because, as much as society wants you to believe this, starvation doesn't make you morally superior to anyone. Not even yourself.

It's easy to feel this way when everyone is telling you that starving yourself is the right way to go. Men, the medical establishment, psudofeminists who preach against diets only if you're thin enough, the diet companies, your family, your friends, the plethora of diet books even on the shelves of whole foods as if they weren't already everywhere else on the fucking planet and.. *takes a deep breath*. Okay, you get the idea. It's a whole lot of ignorance and capitalism coming from a long line of hate. But you've gotta remember that that's what it is... first and foremost it's capitalism. It's about driving profits up up up and this year the diet industry is going to reach 66 billion dollars. That's right, I said BILLION. That's a whole friggin lot spent on trying to make ourselves perfect and presentable and yes, skinny.

We all remember when Kate Moss said, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." Maybe I feel a bit of that when I haven't eaten for a few days. It starts out innocently enough with being too tired to eat or too sick to eat and then it spirals into disordered eating thoughts. Thoughts we've probably all experienced. Thing is that it's completely and utterly false. There are lots of skinny people who absolutely deplore their bodies and lots of fat people who are comfortable in the skin they're in. In other words, skinny doesn't necessarily feel any certain way, especially good, when you're surrounded by body hate and maybe especially if you got skinny through body hate.

Okay, I recognize that at this point I'm rambling but the point is that I ate a damned tomato sandwich and I enjoyed the hell out of it. And I'm far enough in my journey (I originally wrote that as fat enough in my journey.. lolz) that I don't let it bother me much.. even if I'm still struggling with the desire to eat nothing  (which I find feels a lot like other self harm thoughts. Hummm.). I know not everyone out there is as far along and that's fine.. we're all making our journeys one step at a time.

But, just to reiterate my original point (which I've meandered far from), starvation is not morally superior. It doesn't make anyone a better person. So to all the diet preachers and hateful bigots out there, you're not better than we are. Hell, if starvation did indeed make you morally superior then most fat people would be superior to most thin people anyway. have you seen how much we diet? But luckily for you and for us, eating is a positive activity in most cases. It keeps us alive and sustains us, gives us energy throughout the day and provides comfort and damn it tastes great and gives us so much pleasure. Our culture has created an atmosphere in which people are literally so afraid to eat they'd rather hide it or die. Can we please say no more?

So go on! Go have a fucking sandwich- it's delicious and it won't make you worth less.