I'm with you, and recently learned of atypical anorexia which I wrote of briefly in my piece regarding body image (when my stepfather told me I didn't have the body to be a dancer). I didn't think I was skinny enough, in any situation, and not even skinny enough to be diagnosed with anorexia! Talk about a defective mindset and low self worth, to think I couldn't even succeed in anorexia with a resulting underweight BMI. I've had a typical BMI, because I had a lifestyle of obsessing over controlling my food, diet, exercise. Atypical anorexia isn't about the body type, it's about the mind and the mental torture of it. That's where this topic is important.

Anyone who has suffered mentally regarding their body image, food intake, exercise sufficiency, obsessing over how every bite and every calorie expenditure will effect them, is grappling with an eating disorder. It isn't from a place of balanced health, it's from a need to control... how I look. And when I deprive myself more to weigh 3 pounds less, I get the expected praise from society. Which makes me push even harder in the cycle.

If I'm offered dessert, I have an exhausting mental battle, considering every pro & con. That is not a sign of health, regardless of how my body appears. Understanding this diagnosis led me to initiate healing it. One day, my body image and food intake won't be a fight, it will be a peaceful relationship. Nourishment will win over self-depriving, controlling behaviors. Thank you for this.