The Thin Commandments
Find a Conversation
| Mon, 06-20-2005 - 2:57pm |
Below are the ten most common eating disorder "commandments" I came up with out of countless interviews with patients. In treatment these cognitive distortions are confronted and the meaning behind them uncovered in a slow and careful process.
The 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.
Carolyn Costin is an expert in the treatment of eating disorders.


Pages
I would certainly like to have seen the "counter arguments" against these ideas included in this post. Do you have access to them, and if so, can you post them? I guess I'm confused, because I dont' really see the point of the post w/o her suggestions to counter these harmful idea.
Thanks in advance.
dawn
No, I don't, sorry. I copied it from somewhere else. Just thought it was interesting.
Susanne
I think many of us can identify with these feelings and these "commandments."
I'll see if I can find out where it came from.
Susanne
Here is the link to where this came from.
http://www.edreferral.com/thin_commandments.htm
Susanne
Thanks for the link.
I'm taking a little study break because this post has bothered me since I first read it.
The Thin Commandments are interesting, but I'm not sure if they're really appropriate for or applicable to the people posting on this board. After all, almost every single one of us is here because we are overweight--dangerously so--and losing weight is NOT a dangerous or unhealthy goal. These commandments were developed to help treat the 80 pound women who subsist on 500 calorie diets and work out for hours at a time. Most of us are posting here because we obviously don't have an aversion to gaining weight or eating--otherwise, we wouldn't be 100 pounds overweight.
Quite frankly, most of us ARE going to have to count calories and restrict accordingly, we are going to have to pay attention to our scales, and we are going to have to decide that losing weight is INFINTELY better than gaining weight. So while I appreciate the spirit with which this was posted, it might be more helpful to post articles related to the needs of this board's posters, and not those who are dangerously underweight.
Well I will throw my opinion into the hat too....
I kinda read them and thought that this list
I don't know Jess.
I realize that a lot of these points are applicable to us as overweight women, but that's not necessarily bad. I'll take them in turn.
"1. If you're not thin, you're not attractive."
I guess my problem with this statement is that when an anorexic woman believes it, she's doing it to lose even more weight, below a level that is healthy. She has a totally distorted body image and BELIEVES that she is fat when she is knocking on death's door, and she will go to drastic lengths to ensure that she doesn't gain an ounce.
Overweight women certainly have body image issues, of which I am well aware. And most days I feel totally unattractive. But I'm also overweight, and losing weight is a realistic and appropriate goal for me. It won't cure my body image issues, but my body image issues don't have quite the same effect on my health as they would if I were an anorexic.
"2. Being thin is more important than being healthy."
Again, for anorexic women this is a problem, because their thinness is UNhealthy. For us, being thinnER would likely (assuming it's done properly) be an improvement in our health, not a decline.
"6. Thou shall count calories and restrict intake accordingly."
Yup, I do this. But I'm overweight! I count my calories to make sure that I don't continue the eating patterns that made me morbidly obese in the first place. This is standard advice for losing weight, and it's one of the best predictors of whether one will be able lose weight and maintain the loss. Now, for anorexics who DO NOT need to lose weight, this is dangerous behavior. But it's totally different for those who genuinely need to lose weight.
"7. What the scale says is the most important thing."
I agree that we shouldn't be obsessed by what the scale says, especially if there are other signs that we're losing weight (measurements changing, looser clothes). But we shouldn't ignore what the scale says. After all, we NEED to lose weight. Again, anorexics and bulimics DO NOT.
"8. Losing weight is good/gaining weight is bad."
Again, for those who are seriously overweight, losing weight IS good (caveat: if done in a healthy manner). Gaining weight is not. That's not true of those who are dangerously underweight.
I guess my point is that it's NOT unreasonable, dangerous, or unhealthy for an obese person to count calories or think that it's better to lose weight than to gain weight. There's a vast difference between thinking you need to lose weight when you're 250 pounds and thinking you need to lose weight when you're 90 pounds. The former is healthy and reasonable, the latter is not.
Pages