Eating Disorders: Why I Won't Share a 'Before & After' Photo

Before and after pictures have been popular ever since I can remember and although they can sometimes help the individual posting them, they can also be extremely damaging both for them and others. These posts have impacted me and my recovery and I know that I am not the only one who has been effected in this way and so I thought I would write a post explaining why I won’t be sharing ‘before and after’ eating disorder recovery photos.

1.       Being Weight Restored Doesn’t Mean I’m Recovered

      Just because someone looks ‘recovered’ doesn’t mean they are. It is a complex mental illness and unfortunately gaining weight doesn’t immediately erase the destructive urges or damaging thought processes which accompany eating disorders. I am weight restored but I still fight the urge to throw up every single time I eat, I still can’t eat in front of most people, I still ask myself every morning, “Should I eat today?” and I still ‘freak out’ if I can’t make it to the gym when I planned to. I am weight restored but my eating disorder still negatively effects my life every day. I am weight restored, but I am far from being recovered.

2.       They Can Discourage People From Seeking Help

I’ve talked about this before but when your eating disorder includes an obsession with wanting to be thin and lose weight, you may want to recover but the disorder convinces you that recovery isn’t worth the weight gain. It’s a constant battle between wanting to recover and be happy and healthy and wanting to lose weight and be ‘skinny’. Before I entered recovery, seeing other people’s before and after photos discouraged me from seeking help for two reasons:

A) I was completely and utterly TERRIFIED of gaining weight and being forced to eat without being able to make myself sick. Although I hated purging and I was scared of what it was doing to my body the thought of never being able to do it was unbearable.

B) When I saw other people’s before photo’s, I was convinced that I had to lose more weight before I could get help because I didn’t think I was skinny enough to have an eating disorder, even though I was underweight, even though I was starving myself or purging when I did eat, and even though an eating disorder is a mental illness which cannot always be recognised by someone’s physical appearance. 

3.       It Conveys the idea that Mental Illnesses are Less than Physical Illnesses

By sharing a before and after picture, we are, in a way, feeding the misconception that a mental illness is only valid if and because of its physical symptoms. But someone still deserves help even if they’re not underweight.

4.       It Can Trigger Others

I’ve already talked about how before and after photos can discourage people from seeking help but they (specifically the ‘before’ photos) can trigger those trying to recover. In a previous post I wrote about how competitive eating disorders can be, and when I see what someone’s lowest weight was I get this dangerous desire to ‘beat’ it, even though I’m terrified of returning to my old ways.

5.       It Triggers Me

Any time I see an old photo of myself I am immediately filled with self-hate and get the urge to revert to my self-destructive ways. I think “If I thought I was fat then, what the heck am I now?” I get upset because I spent so much time worrying about weight loss and I missed out on so many experiences because I was too insecure and I have to try my hardest to leave the past behind, grieve the memories I never made, and focus on the present.

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
– Arthur Ashe

6.      They Simplify a Complex Illness

Focusing on weight fluctuation overlooks an incredibly important component of eating disorder recovery: the mental health of those struggling. When it comes to a mental illness, physical appearance can only show you so much. You don’t have to be a specific weight to have an eating disorder and there are different types of eating disorders, and they all impact people of all different ages, genders, body types, weights and so on. Weight restoration simply shows that someone has been eating, it doesn’t show that they ate voluntarily, because they wanted to, or without tears or an internal battle.

A before and after picture doesn’t show you that I haven’t purged in a year, despite thinking about it every time I eat.

It doesn’t show you how I can eat something without writing down the calorie intake.

It doesn’t show you how I ate ice cream with friends this summer when my first therapist set the goal of eating an ice cream by the end of summer 2012 and I didn’t achieve it.

It doesn’t show you that I deleted all of the fitness tracking, weight loss and calorie counting apps which previously ruled my life.

It doesn’t show you that, although I still feel guilty after eating my fear foods, I am no longer tortured by suicidal thoughts when I do.

It doesn’t show you that I am so much more comfortable and happy than I was when I was skinnier. 

“Either I will find a way, or I will make one.”
– Philip Sidney  

If you liked this post you may also like:
1. Wanting to Recover VS Not Wanting to Eat

2. The Competitive Nature of Eating Disorders 

3. So You're Fat