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[trifle]

I'm currently reading "Wasted" by Marya Hornbacher which is a memoir about her life as a bulimic and later anorexic.  I'm having trouble putting it down to go back to grading finals, and what somewhat horrifies me is how similar some of her experience/feelings etc. are to how I felt while I was cutting myself.  The separation of "self" and body,

Comments

[bloodstones]

I actually did a lit review of the research on the intersection of eating disorders and cutting, and because it also came up in the research I found, alcoholism. There is some comorbidity and one of the things that all three have in common is the awareness of how self-destructive the behaviors are when present in intelligent, well educated, suburban white girls who tend to be held to very high standards and yet have almost no control over their lives. There was a very interesting case study of a woman who could clearly articulate that if you prevented her from doing one of her self destructive behaviors, she would just find a way to do one of the others. So while I don't think everyone fits in a box, I'm not at all surprised that there are common themes.

[signsoflife]

The followup, Madness, is equally riveting, and, I think, highlights how dangerous some of those boxes are.

[in_parentheses]

how widespread is disordered eating (not eating disorders) in our culture?

That depends on how you define "disordered." I would argue that being disconnected from our food sources and obsessed with little numbers that represent calorie and fat content and nutrients (what Michael Pollan calls "nutritionism"), is disordered... which covers pretty much all of American culture.

[martini_corona]

On a more concrete, personal level, Mark Bittman (who I sometimes find annoying for socioeconomic reasons -- like the fact that he wants you to replace all of your spices once a year and only use fresh herbs) was on NPR last night talking about his new book, which is a Pollan-style call to "conscious eating." His best line on the show ("On Point") went something like this:

"People think about sex all the time, but they don't HAVE sex whenever they think about it. And everyone wants to take a nap after lunch, but you don't just DO it. For the same reason, just because you feel hungry doesn't mean you need to eat something. It is OK to feel hungry sometimes. You will not die. [Again, I am paraphrasing.] Americans tend to forget that, and immediately sate any hunger with snacking."

Certainly there are exceptions, like diabetics, and anorexia takes the whole thing in the other direction -- but for the majority of overweight, desk-sitting Americans, he has a point. For this reason alone, I'd argue that we all have "disordered eating."