Posted on 05/31/2005 5:13:44 AM PDT by Momaw Nadon
From a pro-Ana website:
Thin Commandments
1. If you aren't thin you aren't attractive.
2. Being thin is more important than being healthy.
3. You must buy clothes, cut your hair, take laxatives, starve yourself, do anything to make yourself look thinner.
4. Thou shall not eat without feeling guilty.
5. Thou shall not eat fattening food without punishing oneself afterwards.
6. Thou shall count calories and restrict intake accordingly.
7. What the scale says is the most important thing.
8. Losing weight is good/ gaining weight is bad.
9. You can never be too thin.
10. Being thin and not eating are signs of true will power and success.
Scary stuff.
Ther're just putting into words what Hollywood and the fashion industry have been telling women for years.
They've taken the gay male dominated fashion industry's blue pill of lies.
You hit that nail on the head.
Also from a pro-Ana website:
ANA CREED
I believe in Control, the only force mighty enough to bring order to the chaos that is my world.
I believe that I am the most vile, worthless and useless person ever to have existed on this planet, and that I am totally unworthy of anyone's time and attention.
I believe that other people who tell me differently must be idiots. If they could see how I really am, then they would hate me almost as much as I do.
I believe in oughts, musts and shoulds as unbreakable laws to determine my daily behaviour.
I believe in perfection and strive to attain it.
I believe in salvation through trying just a bit harder than I did yesterday.
I believe in calorie counters as the inspired word of god, and memorise them accordingly.
I believe in bathroom scales as an indicator of my daily successes and failures.
I believe in hell, because I sometimes think that I'm living in it.
I believe in a wholly black and white world, the losing of weight, recrimination for sins, the abnegation of the body and a life ever fasting.
I could give examples of some of the behaviors of these women and the long term effects, but it's beyond your wildest imagination and I won't go there. Just go visit a regional psychiatric hospital which specializes in eating disorders. They run $1,000 per day. The sights and stories you'll experience will boggle the mind. Another thing to realize here is that the article seems to think starvation is the issue, it's not. Most eating disorders are binge eaters who then vomit. Very few percentagewise starve themselves by not eating. They eat all the time. Food in pockets, their glove box, car trunk, desk drawers, etc... They can puke in buckets, soda cups, etc... like a normal person would burp. Their abdomen and stomach gets trained to puke on demand.
You don't see too many poor people with eating disorders as a generalization and in all the years of my exposure to the condition I've never once seen a black woman effected by it.
Ana is, in a spiritual sense, just another blood thirsty pagan diety calling upon her followers to committ the ultimate in self-sacrifice - to kill themselves.
This is really sad. I post on a weight loss board and this mindset is rampant there. These women go from one extreme (overweight) to another (thin at all cost). It's that all or nothing mentality that never gets dealt with that is the culprit.
What a sad story. It can be beaten, but only sort of. It's like alcoholism in that regard, you have to first want to beat it and then you have to make the commitment to never tempt it again... Ever. That includes no junk or trigger foods in the house, and never eating to the point you're full and get a "oh s**t I ate too much" feeling. I'm thinking that those bulimics with an anorexic component have a much easier time of it because of their incredibly focused perfectionist mindset.
Sounds about right. :( How did your wife (or ex-wife, as the case may be) turn out?
Even scarier when it is your X wife's dogma and your daughter has been inculcated with it since birth...
This article would seem to contradict that notion. These anorexics realize that they are anorexic. They do not deny their condition; they revel in it.
Was I misinformed before? Or are we seeing here something different?
She's been hospitalized a few times and unfortunately psychiatric care thru HMO's only makes these cases worse. She at one point actually had a psychiatrist prescribing her amphetamines because they made her "feel better". Well of course ED victims will feel better on amphetamines! Idiots in that profession!(most)
I've been fortunate enough to have had three kids with her and enjoyed her company for so long. I've gotta raise the kids though, because she's got it so bad.
One medication alone seems to help signifigantly, and that's olanzapine/Zyprexa. It makes the metabolism pack on pounds. It's scary to them though, but at least they aren't in that brain eating itself meltdown when on it. The trick is to allow them to control most of their behaviors as their own to succeed or fail, and only step in if it falls outside some arranged boundries established. This seems to work as well because they live for extreme discipline over foods. Let them not eat their plate to anything beyond half, and encourage them to eat only very nutritious foods in small quantities. Every pound they gain is seen as losing control, so you've gotta give them as much control as can be. She's been as low as 82 pounds and is presently at 110 pounds after a hospitalization. She's working at 120 as her goal. She was ok with the rise up to 110, but is really showing signs of panic over the next 10 pounds.
I work with one. She is 35 and 5 foot and weights 90 pounds. She just advised me that her fat body index went up 10% in the last month. She is always dieting, she is a size 0. She looks haggard and old. Anyway I feel so fat after this weekend. I feel like I have J LOW butt and here is my co-worker telling me she is fat! She is a great girl and there is no one to help her not even her mother.
I am not one to say this sort of thing but people who follow this really need G0d in their lives.
It works for JLo, if I had her butt I would be real happy. ;) That's the one thing I like about her, she apparently is happy with her body and doesn't allow the ptb to pressure her to starve herself to look like a skeleton with skin on.
I know several people like your coworker. It's sad what people do to themselves trying hit some magical number on a scale. Health means nothing to them. They are mentally ill.
I am reading a pretty good book by Deborah Low right now called: "The Quest for Peace, Love and a 24 Inch Waist". She addresses the problem with the constant dieting mindset and how we as women miss out on living our lives now chasing the perfect body.
Wow, what an amazing story. It must be very, very hard dealing with a burden like that... The love for your wife really shines through that post. Does she really want to be cured or is she trying to make you & others happy?
I've came dangerously close to going down that path, but around 2 years ago or so I took a good long look at those close to me who suffered from it for decades. They were/are living in slavery and I was starting to get chained to the scale too. The only way I could be an individual with a free will was to overcome it, and I did. It was tough because we also have mild hypothermia, but a rigorous exercise program, and a focus on building muscle did the trick.
Makes me wonder if this is all genetic, or if it is triggered by generations of obsessive parenting/behavior...
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