Editor’s note: This article contains discussion of eating disorders and disordered eating behaviors.
The pandemic has been a special time for many of us, to say the least. Maybe you learned how to make your own bread from scratch or binge-watched a new Netflix original TV show you never would have watched if you weren’t stuck at home.
For many, it was a time of growth and reflection.
The first few months of quarantine weren’t that time for me. People are now forming romantic relationships on social media.
I have always struggled with body image issues. Growing up, especially as a dancer, I struggled with having to look at my body for hours on end in skin-tight leotards. In my experience, quarantine was just a time to focus on my insecurities and try to “fix” them.
I won’t go into details, but long story short, my attempts to “heal” my body resulted in me being admitted to a residential treatment facility for 42 days.
Even though I was away from friends and family and the only movies I watched were Maleficent and Over the Hedge.,” I am grateful for the time I spent there and what I learned there.
However, while the program I was in prided itself on being one of the nation’s top treatment programs for addiction, eating disorders, and mental health disorders, I was never told how to deal with what was going to happen. Real World.
I’ve been getting used to being just a girl among 25 other people for weeks, but eventually I have to remember how to be a real person and deal with the daily challenges. did.
I had a terrible awakening when I realized that society has normalized diet culture and even some eating disorder behaviors.
Food culture is hidden everywhere. Companies sell “meal supplement” protein bars, but these don’t provide enough nutrients to be considered a meal. Celebrities promote weight loss supplements They create diet plans to make a quick buck, but don’t really care about the impact on the consumer. Thousands of fitness influencers on social media are telling us what to eat and what not to eat, but they all contradict each other.
There was no crash course in living in a world obsessed and contaminated by food culture, so I had to teach myself.
If you’ve ever read any of my articles or talked about anything for more than an hour, you know that I prefer to solve problems the way I do them: delete social media.
In all seriousness, social media is a major source of disordered eating content, and as users we are consuming harmful content without even realizing it.
Flinders University Professor Marika Tiggeman said: conducted research To better understand why adolescent girls desire a certain appearance, the most influential factor encouraging thinness was the media.
“Social media is the holy grail for promoting ED culture, and when someone suffers from such misconceptions, it’s very easy to slip into a harmful mindset.” Abi Svitlik, a junior at DePaul He said:
It’s sad to admit, but I’ve been using Instagram since 2012. I can confidently say that if she hadn’t started using social media at the age of 9, she wouldn’t have the body image issues she has today, especially body image issues. The harshness of four years ago.
After recognizing that social media is one of many problems, we have taken action to ensure that social media is a safe place and what is forcing eating culture and disordered eating habits. You need to learn to recognize what you are doing.
“The first thing to do is clean your feed,” says Amy Goldsmith, founder of Kindred Nutrition, a private practice of nutritionists and therapists specializing in eating disorders and sports nutrition. “You can take control of your feed by unfollowing any diet culture or removing yourself from automatically sent blogs and newsletters.”
Still, it’s important to be wary of the influencers you follow who promote body positivity and dietary freedom, as they can do more harm than good.
For example, when I finished treatment, I read dozens of pages on eating disorder recovery, hoping that I would be offered a better community than before.However, these accounts are posting a large number of posts body check, which is relatable but only serves as a comparison for the viewer. These accounts also talk about the actions they took when they fell into the depths of an eating disorder, providing inspiration and tips for those who have not yet reached the recovery stage, which only adds fuel to the fire.
Even though this is my favorite piece of advice, deleting social media won’t stop the problems we face in the real world. I’m still trying to figure out how to live this life without falling back into the situation I was in four years ago. But if I could give you any advice, it would be to communicate.
Not everyone knows what you don’t want to hear. Imagine my frustration when I finished treatment and was thrown back into a world where no one was even allowed to talk about food and it seemed like all people wanted to talk about was food. However, if you don’t want to talk about something, like food or triggering behavior, you have the right to say so.
“It’s okay to reject diet culture and ED propaganda and to hold your own boundaries. The more you set boundaries about what you’ll tolerate in a conversation, the more “People will respect your stance.”
It’s a scary thing to live in this world, but social pressure to look and live a certain way doesn’t take any weight off our shoulders. That’s why it’s important to put our health first before listening to the eating disorder propaganda plaguing our world.