The Competitive Nature of Eating Disorders

TRIGGER WARNING: EATING DISORDERS (Very triggering and goes into detail, sorry)

If you have never had an eating disorder it may be difficult to understand how an illness can be competitive. I’m sure this isn’t the case for everyone with an eating disorder and the reason why you may be competitive in terms of your eating disorder may be different because each type of eating disorder, each experience of a mental illness and each person is unique. 

Maybe it’s because you are a perfectionist. Maybe the prevalence of numbers in eating disorders, gives the illusion of some quantifiable failure or success (spoiler alert: it doesn’t). Maybe it’s because in a ‘pics or it didn’t happen’ world where we need to ‘see it to believe it’ we feel the need to physically prove ourselves, whether it’s proving our self-control or proving that we need and deserve help. The sad truth is that people who have never had an eating disorder tend to measure the severity of a mental illness in terms of the physical symptoms displayed.

 “They are weight restored, they are recovered!”

 “Look! He’s eating! He clearly doesn’t have an eating disorder!”

“She doesn’t look underweight so it mustn’t be that bad!”

But the thing is, simply returning to a healthy weight doesn’t mean you have a healthy mind. Just because you saw them eat something doesn’t mean they kept it down, they ate anything else that day, or that they won’t relapse. Even if they are eating ‘normally’ that doesn’t necessarily reflect the seriousness of their mental illness.  You can’t always tell if someone is underweight simply by looking at them and how underweight someone is doesn’t necessarily correlate with how severe their eating disorder is or how badly they need help.

Scales can’t measure the severity of someone’s eating disorder.

How are you measuring their mental turmoil? The amount their brain obsesses over calories? The amount they want to die because they ate a piece of bread? Or because they can’t work out? Or because they saw a photo of themselves when they were skinnier? Or because they heard someone talking about a new diet?

You cannot judge how ill someone is simply by looking at them.

You cannot judge how mentally ill someone is by focusing on the physical.

Pro-Ana, Pro-Mia and Pro-ED accounts on social media provide the perfect breeding ground for this kind of competitiveness. You log on to twitter and see that someone worked out for 2 hours so you immediately go for a run even though you feel faint and have already been to the gym. You go on Instagram and see that someone only ate 102 calories so you make a silent promise to only eat 50. You see that someone went a day without eating at all! I’ll do the same and I’ll work out and be sick and take laxatives but I’ll still not be as skinny as them and oh my god what is the point I just want to die. This competitiveness is why I will never buy a Fitbit or download fitness or weight loss apps ever again.

At university I was invited to an eating disorder recovery group and immediately I knew that attending would not be a good idea for me. I’m not saying these sort of groups aren’t helpful for others, it’s great to have people you can relate to but I knew that the moment I surrounded myself with other eating disorder sufferers any progress I had made would be lost. I can’t even hear the word ‘weight-loss’ without questioning whether I should stop eating or whether I deserve to live because I’m no longer underweight and because I ate lunch. I know that the more I distance myself from the weight loss and eating disorder community, the better.

Competing With Yourself

It’s not just about comparing your step count, calorie intake or weight with others, there is also a great deal of competitiveness with yourself. A determination to eat less and workout more than you did yesterday. An obsessive desire to be as skinny as you were 5 years ago. A self-set goal weight that gets smaller every time you reach it.

If I see an old picture of me I am immediately filled with this sense of jealousy and competitiveness to not only return to that (unhealthy) weight but to become even skinnier. Every time you eat something, your eating disorder tells you that it is too much and that you need to be sick right now - or else! Every time you work out your eating disorder tells you that you need to work out longer and harder and more often – or else! There is this intense sense of urgency which accompanies the competitiveness.

Nothing is ever enough because you could always be doing something to fuel your disorder. You’re sitting in class or work or bed and your disorder is shouting at you because you could be working out or being sick or taking laxatives right now you know.

Logically, I know that I was no happier then than I am now and I was definitely less healthy but the thing is, mental illnesses aren’t logical. It’s not logical to see who can eat less. It’s not logical to compete for the ‘unhealthiest’ or ‘least likely to stay alive’ trophy but this is often such a big hurdle to jump over during recovery and not talking about it simply because people find it an uncomfortable topic won’t help anyone. 

“…people with eating disorders tend to be both competitive and intelligent. We are incredibly perfectionistic. We often excel at school, athletics, artistic pursuits. We also tend to quit without warning. Refuse to go to school, drop out, quit jobs, leave lovers, move, lose all our money. We get sick of being impressive. Rather, we tire of having to seem impressive. As a rule, most of us never really believed we were any good in the first place.”
-Marya Hornbacher

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