You and I Are Too Old to Still Believe That Being Thin Equals Vibrant Health
Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society
The emphasis on thin above all else is killing us. Nearly killed my mother and nearly killed me, too
The photos are gone now, thank goodness. I was about 112 lbs when I was at my worst from eating disorders. At 5’9” I had no business being that thin. Like the woman in the above photo, I was perilously close to starving. I was so proud of my moral superiority. That’s the sickness that thinness, and its false promise of love, acceptance and all the other lies our society bleats at us.
How awful it was, and is for all of us, to finally reach THAT NUMBER, only to realize that reaching THAT NUMBER on the scale delivers nothing of the Promised Land. No adulation, congratulations, no relief, nothing. Only more years of being terrified to gain an ounce, being horrible company, and consumed by body issues.
I fought those disorders for four decades. It cost me all kinds of things: my teeth and serious health issues. I beat the disorders in 2011. I now eat well and regularly. The extra ten I carry these days is a small price for health and longevity.
My mother, in her eighties, had macular degeneration, wasn’t terribly steady on her feet, and was tethered to an oxygen tank. She got it in her aging head that she needed to starve herself skinny to win the love of an old family friend.
During a particularly bad winter night in Denver, I received a panicked call from her facility. She’d been eating nothing but saltines for weeks. The resulting effect on her cognitive abilities led her to put a note on her door that said,
Help me I’m dying
She was found wandering in the snow in her bathrobe and bare feet in dangerously cold temperatures. After she was moved to assisted living and back on three squares a day, her brain and body recovered, and so did her quick wit.
Just to be thin, as though thin solves all of life's ills, as opposed to causing so many.
One commenter really sums it up for me. Perhaps for all of us.
Sheilaiswriting’s Substack offered a comment here that is so important that again, as with so many excellent insights from Dear Reader, I had to share. I did ask permission but didn’t hear back, so I’m hoping this is all right. This is terribly important to take into consideration. Bolded sections are mine.
Sheila writes:
I grew up in a home of all the fad diets and counting of numbers. Be it calories, dress sizes, meals, grams/ounces, days till the holiday/wedding/party/Christmas or days on the die/till the diet starts.
I somehow side-stepped that need and thankfully I am aware dieting doesn’t work. Ever.
Five and a half years ago I got sick, really sick. Doctors were chasing symptoms round my body and I was losing weight fast. I couldn’t keep meals down and dropped all those numbers, it wasn’t scary because I was too weak and was trying to survive. I remember wanting to look thin, but not because it was beautiful but because I wanted people to see on the outside how sick I was feeling on the inside.
Thankfully we found a meds combo and got me booked into surgery. When I reappeared into the world again I got so many compliments on how beautiful I looked, that I looked like a film star and looked better than before… At the time I was eating next to nothing, taking 15 pills a day and awaiting what would be two surgeries. I was the sickest I’ve ever been in my life.
Ever since I’m conscious when people lose weight I ask if they’re okay, weight loss isn’t always healthy (mentally or physically!).
So now I can have the coffee ☕️ I do! And I enjoy every single sip. Grateful that I can drink the coffee, that I’m well enough to. Having had it taken away I have a lot of appreciation for what I can eat and I savour it.
***
That really says it for me.
As we age, eating disorders can affect us or resurface if we’ve had them before. Later in life it might be from a variety of different sources or reasons, but it still can kill, or as with my mother, have terrible consequences.
Here are three critical sources to keep in mind either for you or a loved one:
Anorexia of Aging: Risk Factors, Consequences, and Potential Treatments
Older Clients and Eating Disorders
Eating Disorders in Midlife and Beyond
Thin is way overrated. Just like the struggle to normalize morbid obesity is misguided, it’s dangerous. Each of us has a setpoint. Since I’ve been both obese (but not morbidly so, to be fair) and dangerously skinny, I have a personal reference point to these extremes. Doesn’t make me an expert but it does allow me some insight, and most assuredly, empathy.
What healthy looks like wears eight billion different faces, changes as we age, shifts as we are sick or well, and evolves in a unique way defined by our personal relationship with Mother Nature.
Thin isn’t for everyone. Despite the well-wishers who coo about how we look like a movie star, kindly. I’m no longer convinced I’d take that as a compliment, if it meant I was the walking dead in order to achieve it. The price isn't worth it.
Being fully in life requires health. Health requires that I eat well to build strength and muscle and energy. Health requires that I move, a lot. Those allow me to play.
Whatever play looks like for you, I want you to be able to participate.
So let's stop obsessing about thin. If our lives are messy already, getting tiny isn’t likely to transform much else other than what we see in the mirror. Addressing all the other wonderful, myriad aspects of a happier life is far more likely to give us joy than simply being thin for thin’s sake.
Let's get functionally fit and healthy for us. Then,
Let's play.
As always, thanks for coming along for the discussion. These topics are intimate to me and very real as they pertain to our quality of life and long-term health. If it was useful to you, and gave you any kind of peace around body image, please consider
If you know someone struggling with eating disorders, please have mercy on them. It’s brutally hard to stop, and “just stop” is both unkind and unrealistic. Most of us can’t “just stop.” Above all, create space for them to find their way, offer help, counseling can make a difference. The above links might offer some paths forward.
Hi Julia, I have been troubled with disordered eating almost my entire life. I've been anorexic, and I've been very overweight. I'm am currently very overweight. I refuse to refer to myself as morbidly obese because it's a charged, shaming label created by the insurance industry and by the fatphobic medical community. And eating disorder is definitely not something someone can just stop with willpower. It runs so much deeper. There are lots of avenues to healing, and for me, what's been very effective is a 12 Step program that addresses eating disorders with kindness and compassion and emphasizes attaining balance, eating healthfully, and discourages restriction of any kind. There are no good foods and bad foods. We do not call ourselves food addicts as another program does. We are encouraged to stop weighing and measuring––our food and our bodies. It's been super successful for me, and combined with working in therapy and with a nutritionist trained in working with people with eating disorders I'm on my way to being free of behaviors. It's not a straight line to recovery, for sure, but every day it gets better. One of the takeaways for me that's been most powerful is that it isn't about gaining (unless one is severely anorexic and dying because of it) or losing. It's about accepting oneself as one is, and taking the best care of ourselves as we can. I have a newsletter on Substack called The Next Write Thing. Many of my essays are about my recovery process. I hope you'll give it a look! Thank you for writing this piece. It's so important to have this conversation.
Thank you for addressing the important topic. I e struggled with food issues since I was 14. I am sad how I abused my body - alternating between over eating and then starving myself. For years I kept it a secret - out of shame- now I can talk about it and in doing so hope to help others come out of the shadows.