This blog post is courtesy of Sheena's Place, a community-based centre offering hope and support services to individuals, families and partners affected by eating disorders.
Yesterday marked the beginning of Eating Disorder Awareness Week (EDAW). This week (February 2nd-8th) is extremely important, as it presents a great opportunity to break the stigma around eating disorders by having open conversations about them and raising awareness. To start, eating disorders are not a choice, they are not “just a phase” and they are not a teenage girls’ disease. Eating disorders do not discriminate; they affect people of all ages, sizes, genders, races and abilities. They are a serious and complex psychiatric condition and they are not to be taken lightly. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate out of any mental illness and they are not as rare as some people may believe. While it is crucial that we take EDAW as an opportunity to spread awareness about eating disorders, I also urge everyone to take time this week to analyze the kinds of messages we’re regularly shown about ‘health’ and the kinds of attitudes and behaviours they consequently encourage.
We are surrounded by media messages and advertisements every single day. All too often, these messages equate health with thinness; negatively impacting our body image and our relationship with food and exercise. This is a serious problem that currently, we are not having enough open conversations about. Advertisements for health foods which discuss only their low-caloric content or for gym memberships that discuss only appearance-based motivators send confusing messages to the public about health. What does it mean to be healthy and to live a healthy lifestyle? When we are constantly being shown ads for food products tag-lined with “guilt-free” as a selling point, or ads for gym memberships which use fear of unattractiveness as marketing strategies, we are being told to believe that health is a look that we can achieve. Even more disturbing, that health is the look of one particular type of body, and an unattainable one at that.
The serious consequences that this kind of health messaging has can be seen through various research studies on body image and eating behaviours with children and adolescents. For instance, it was found that 30% of children aged 10-14 are currently dieting to lose weight, despite the majority of the sample falling under a healthy weight range. Even scarier is that there has been a 119% increase in hospitalizations of children just 12 years and under with eating disorders from 1999-2006. Finally, hitting closer to home, a study of adolescent females throughout Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa, found that 13% of girls aged 12-14 produced scores qualifying higher than the recommended cut-off for disordered eating on the Eating Attitudes Test-26, with this number increasing to 18% for girls aged 15-18 years. These statistics are scary, but important to consider, especially during EDAW.
Health is not a look that can be bought or earned. Health comes in all shapes and sizes. During this week, I ask that we engage in self reflection about what motivates us to live a healthy lifestyle. Are we motivated with the promise of a particular type of body? Do we equate our personal health with how thin we believe ourselves to be? Media messaging is so pervasive that it is next to impossible to not be affected by it. That being said however, this week, and all weeks, increasing awareness around the importance of media literacy is crucial in order to dispel the myth that public health is public thinness. Instead, we should be encouraging media messaging that promotes self-love and self-compassion, as it seems we are lacking these crucial traits.
Yesterday marked the beginning of Eating Disorder Awareness Week (EDAW). This week (February 2nd-8th) is extremely important, as it presents a great opportunity to break the stigma around eating disorders by having open conversations about them and raising awareness. To start, eating disorders are not a choice, they are not “just a phase” and they are not a teenage girls’ disease. Eating disorders do not discriminate; they affect people of all ages, sizes, genders, races and abilities. They are a serious and complex psychiatric condition and they are not to be taken lightly. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate out of any mental illness and they are not as rare as some people may believe. While it is crucial that we take EDAW as an opportunity to spread awareness about eating disorders, I also urge everyone to take time this week to analyze the kinds of messages we’re regularly shown about ‘health’ and the kinds of attitudes and behaviours they consequently encourage.
We are surrounded by media messages and advertisements every single day. All too often, these messages equate health with thinness; negatively impacting our body image and our relationship with food and exercise. This is a serious problem that currently, we are not having enough open conversations about. Advertisements for health foods which discuss only their low-caloric content or for gym memberships that discuss only appearance-based motivators send confusing messages to the public about health. What does it mean to be healthy and to live a healthy lifestyle? When we are constantly being shown ads for food products tag-lined with “guilt-free” as a selling point, or ads for gym memberships which use fear of unattractiveness as marketing strategies, we are being told to believe that health is a look that we can achieve. Even more disturbing, that health is the look of one particular type of body, and an unattainable one at that.
The serious consequences that this kind of health messaging has can be seen through various research studies on body image and eating behaviours with children and adolescents. For instance, it was found that 30% of children aged 10-14 are currently dieting to lose weight, despite the majority of the sample falling under a healthy weight range. Even scarier is that there has been a 119% increase in hospitalizations of children just 12 years and under with eating disorders from 1999-2006. Finally, hitting closer to home, a study of adolescent females throughout Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa, found that 13% of girls aged 12-14 produced scores qualifying higher than the recommended cut-off for disordered eating on the Eating Attitudes Test-26, with this number increasing to 18% for girls aged 15-18 years. These statistics are scary, but important to consider, especially during EDAW.
Health is not a look that can be bought or earned. Health comes in all shapes and sizes. During this week, I ask that we engage in self reflection about what motivates us to live a healthy lifestyle. Are we motivated with the promise of a particular type of body? Do we equate our personal health with how thin we believe ourselves to be? Media messaging is so pervasive that it is next to impossible to not be affected by it. That being said however, this week, and all weeks, increasing awareness around the importance of media literacy is crucial in order to dispel the myth that public health is public thinness. Instead, we should be encouraging media messaging that promotes self-love and self-compassion, as it seems we are lacking these crucial traits.
