Why your lowest weight does not matter

Hello – itt’s eating disorder awareness week so I am going to try and be more active on both this blog and my youtube during the week. Today’s topic is why your lowest weight doesn’t matter. This I feel is a pressing issue, especially this week where I’m sure there’ll be an influx of before and after photo’s. You know the ones the ematiated anorexic on the left with the barley healthy weighted recovering anorexic on the right.

Because I know these can be triggering to may people, especially due to the competitive nature of eating disorders and the manipulitive nature of eating disorders making tou belive that “you wearn’t sick enough” because you wearnt as thin I’m going to share with you why your lowest weight is not important.

1. Eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes- All people of all body shapes sizes and weights can have an eating disorder. Not everyone with an eating disorder has Anorexia. There’s bulimia, EDNOS/OSFED, Binge eating disorder, Night eating syndrome, Pica. The list goes on. And they are all disorders in there own right. Mental disorders which with the exception of Anorexia are not catagorized by being clinically underweight. You can be at any BMI and have an eating disorder.
2. Low weight is not a measure of how sick you are/were. Physically or mentally. Take me for example. During my most recent relapse I was quite severly physically comprimised before being underweight. And I was never that ematiated anorexic we all envision when eating disorders are mentioned. Yet physically my heart was so fast that according to my friend I should have been in hospital. My blood pressure was low. I struggled to walk to the bus stop. And mentally, When I was at my worst with anorexia, despite never being that underweight compared to most anorexics I was scared of apples because the sgar content and I thought water would somehow make me gain weight.
3. That was in the past – yes. Low weight doesn’t matter because that was the past. Something which I know you’ll never forget if you’ve had an eating disorder and you will probably also have in the back of your mind but it is also not relevent to the you, you are now, The healthy happy you that I am hoping you found in recovery.
4. Eating disorders are mental not physical disorders – surley because of that physical characteristics such as weight shouldn’t matter or be relevent to just how sick you were.
5. Progress is not just physical. This ties in with my last point. That eating disorders are mental disorders. And yes part of recovery is physical but it is a very small part compared to what has to be done in order to heal the mind.

So thats why I believe lowest weights do not matter! If you think your suffering from an eating disorder please don’t convince yourself your not sick enough and get help. I know It can be hard because unfortunatly many health proffessionals also have the same biases in that if your not stick thin or making yourself sick your don’t have an ED. I’ve had my fair share of experience with that. But the help is out there and you deserve to get better just as much as that ematiated anorexic. If your in recovery please don’t give up because “you we’re never sick enough.” You were. I promise you that.