Sorry, dude, you do have an unhealthy relationship with food. And while not clinically diagnosablean eating disorder, close enough to be in the way there as this is precisely what lies at its core.
Surely, if you were a woman, you’d likely have gotten much more flack for your habits rather than the seemingly lenient response you’re getting for your “quirkiness.”
And who gets dietary and health advice from YouTube?! Sheer idiocy.
4
I know several woman who are anorexic; they think they are normal. It is a very sad disease state.
3
True hackers have extensive knowledge of the entity that they are messing with. Life hacks, body hacks, etcetera, are, at best, an ironic use of the term.
1
The author by his own recounting has essentially lurched from diet fad to diet fad.
To term this, "biohacking" - which implies a certain level of sophistication and care in terms of studying nutrition and habits and their affects on the human body and health, is a misnomer ...
There is a wellness community (from Dr. Andrew Weil to Nutrition Facts with Dr. Geiger) that in a sophisticated manner explores food as medicine and related concepts. It is a shame that this article was written by an individual unacquainted with issues of the bimolecular impact of various molecules in food, and such issues, and instead by an individual focused on his own eating disorders.
3
There are many things to unpack here, from the parallel epidemics of obesity and boyhood body dysmorphia (we critique Barbie but not male action figures) to the quick-fix fad culture, but one unmentioned fact leaps out at me. In the US, there is not one significant nutrition-oriented weight-control program aimed primarily at men. The two largest organizations, Weight Watchers and Noom, have memberships that are 95% female -- in part because they make virtually zero effort to market to men or provide an environment for men who are uncomfortable the sole token male in the program. Who IS marketing to men? Nonsense "Andro-Blast" type supplements, "Nutri-Lose" protein shakes that do not provide lasting results, and flavored liquids to "Turbo" your whatever. These useless products enjoy massive sales despite --or perhaps because of-- implicit bias in the industry that presumes that women diet and men take pills.
4
Ive always considered coffee a cooked food— maybe thats where I went wrong.
3
So a bro in his 30s epiphanizes: eating disorders are about control. Had he asked his "thoughtful, sensitive" women friends or the teenage girls he stereotypes, he might have learned that we've understood this as long as we've struggled. (51 years for me.) Welcome to the club.
11
Though you seemed to have developed your eating disorder later in life, and learned to overcome it, I would point out that some levels of it appear to remain. A 5:30 mile, in high school, is not the mark of a respectable runner, it’s is the mark of a fantastic runner. So it seems, even now, you struggle to acknowledge your physical fitness.
16
So far, in the comments I've read, I haven't seen a clear distinction between the authors' excellent and moving writing about his eating disorder, and a well-considered healthy effort to eat well and be healthy.
Nowadays, simply declaring that one prepares most of one's own food, and chooses healthy (ie, generally side dishes) meals when one eats out, can be seen by some as obsessive.
if you add to that someone who gets the recommended 90 minutes a day of exercise, some consider that twice as obsessive.
It's a shame that at least some people who get no exercise and, never think about switching from unhealthy diets which cause severe illness and early death, perceive those who take a healthy attitude toward physical well being as obsessive.
6
@don salmon
I know that people who read the main comments don't always check the replies, but in case you do:
I want to make clear, I'm fully aware there are people who **think** they're just eating a healthy diet and getting sufficient diet who, from an objective viewpoint, are doing so in an overly obsessive way.
I'm just saying (to repeat myself, hopefully to make it clear), from my observation as well as research i've read, there seem to be quite a few people who have a hard time distinguishing between the real effort it can take in today's world to live a healthy live and an overly obsessive attitude toward healthy living.
6
@don salmon
sigh, no spell check:
I want to make clear, I'm fully aware there are people who **think** they're just eating a healthy diet and getting sufficient exercise who, from an objective viewpoint, are doing so in an overly obsessive way.
I'm just saying (to repeat myself, hopefully to make it clear), from my observation as well as research i've read, there seem to be quite a few people who have a hard time distinguishing between the real effort it can take in today's world to live a healthy life and an overly obsessive attitude toward healthy living.
2
Anorexia is ultimately about control, especially if one feels that one's life is spinning out of control. And, no, it is not limited to women, or young teenage women, as many, dare I say, men, would like to think. The late Steve Jobs was known to have extreme diets, and dubious beliefs about how diet affects health. The other theme is self absorption and the quest for perfection. Who said that one can never be rich or thin enough?
12
Steve Jobs had one of few medically treatable forms of pancreatic/liver cancer. He chose to forego treatment in favor of a diet regimen. Unfortunately, the diet he believed in did not cure his cancer. At the time of his death he was aware of the folly he had pursued and regretted it.
In my own family there are individuals who believe that the right diet will cure any ailment. Thus far none of the diets has worked. One of the most vocal family members claims that any non-food medicine is “poison” . However, she developed insulin dependent diabetes, despite of Atkins, green algae, the Biblical diet, raw foods, veganism, and every bit of quackery known to man, and is now injecting insulin several times a day.
Another friend, in the two years I’ve known her, keto, intermittent fasting, paleo, etc.,etc.
6
I disagree with the commenters who find the author's comments to be sexist.
Our culture and the so-called "women's magazines" have promoted absurdities like "Lose 15 Pounds by 7:30 Tonight!" for decades, but the mainstreaming of body dysmorphia among men is a relatively recent development. The stereotype of the thin, perpetually dieting woman and the "who cares" male persist.
Increasing equality was supposed to free women from unrealistic physical expectations. Instead, we've just expanded this toxicity to men and made everything worse.
9
There's no such thing as an eating disorder. That's like encountering someone breathing laboriously in an attempt to summit Everest without oxygen and saying they have a breathing disorder.
Eating disorders are appetite disorders. Appetite disorders are when an appetite for one or more essential things people need in life get mixed up with an appetite for food. Food can substitute for love, control, sex, meaning, chemical or mouth stimulation, relationship needs, variety -- it varies. Disentangling all these mixed-up appetites requires special insight -- it's like reverse engineering Aldi's Tikka Masala sauce, which has 33 ingredients. Understanding appetites is serious business.
The author's characterization of his situation I find profound. However, I don't think it's funny, I think it's interesting. The next step is for him to ask himself why he chose to reveal the result of the online survey to two women and millions of NY Times readers.
This author reminds me of myself -- interested in the motivations behind my atypical behaviors. Everyone who seeks answers, I believe, will find them, but it takes real courage to dive down to the core instincts and deeply inculcated mantra-like messages driving our behaviors.
We all want to believe we're in charge -- but in many ways we're not. We're driving by ghosts of the pasts and personal demons and religious beliefs and cultural practices and family-of-origin weirdnesses, both sad and happy to say it.
8
What one does is what determines outcomes. If one does not eat to satisfy the needs of the body because of motivations produced by disorders of mood or depression or OCD, the problem ends up being a nutritional one, of not eating as one should.
4
@Casual Observer -- Disagree. The "problem" is still mood disorder or depression or OCD or anorexia. Not eating is a symptom. If you tell an anorexic person "the problem" is that they're not eating they simply tell you they already know that and why are your charging me $150/hr. to tell me what I already know.
In the end, we may find out that in fact the "problems" are actually warfare, cruelty, destruction of the planet, emotional violence, hoarding of resources, taxing the unborn for aggressive wars of choice, loss of functional religion (which used to deliver meaning to culture), and so on, and that I we call "problems" might be turn out to be "triggers" and cues for deep anxiety about the rush to a biologic apocalypse.
4
Human DNA evolved to accommodate about six hours of hunting and gathering per day, but American society requires zero exercise and constantly supplies unlimited calories on a limited budget. No one wants to die young, or appear out-of-shape, but the social and cultural pressures of eating and drinking and driving a beautiful car with your friends are extremely effective. Is it any wonder we reach for an easy answer; a "magic bullet" that will allow us to defy our DNA and enjoy life's pleasures like everyone else seems to be doing?
6
It's always interesting how so many humans think that when an idea pops in they're mind it somehow obviates 1000's of generations of genetic selection.
5
Any group of rituals that a group does, especially what the broader society would consider very extreme ones, separate that group from broader society but draws the group closer together. Often this is associated with religion. Think Christian Scientists refusing medical care.
In this case it is unusual diets or wellness regimens. It starts with basic flattery. -- 'most peope are out of shape and eat poorly, I won't be one of them! -- but then quickly morphs into further and furher extremes. The extremes, of course, being the makor point rather than the health goal.
The author needs to get over himself, eat generally healthy foods at a calorie level to maintain a reasonable weight, and then find some purpose to his life that is actually meaningful.
1
@TMDJS
With all due respect, it is difficult to just “get over” an eating disorder. Once it becomes entrenched, it is like any other addiction—you need it to get through the day. It becomes your only coping mechanism for dealing with anxiety, stress, trauma, and/or depression. Those of us who struggle need care and patient help to develop alternative strategies, not the summary judgment of others who are fortunate enough to have healthy coping skills already.
6
Just eat the healthiest food you can afford most of the time, and do some physical activity whenever you can.
I'll never understand diet fads and exercise fads...Aside from being greedy ploys to get money from devastatingly superficial people.
7
The deep seated roots of eating disorders begin with insecurity and a perceived lack of control. To gain that lacking control, people start micro-analyzing their every bite, move, etc and internalize every bite, pound or mile ran as a good or bad thing. The self-flagellating over every detail feeds their desire for control. It is a sad and self-destructive habit that perpetuates a person’s sense of inadequacy. This author has all the hallmarks of this obsessive behavior and this ritual of self-control, self-abuse, loss of control and regret. Its a damaging cycle that I hope he gets help for before he suffers long term effects of this behavior.
9
Like anything else, it's all about the "WHY".
Why are you doing it? To sleep better, feel better? Be on the cutting edge of life hacking? Or simply to lose weight to conform to some idea of what youth and healthy looks like? Yep, I tried them all for all of those reasons. Now I just want to sleep better. So I can live better. But I'm not sure that's the motivation of the writer. Food for thought, no pun intended.
2
I don’t see wild animals sitting down three times a day to eat. They eat when they can, so there have a lot of fasting time in between meals, and they are much healthier than millions of people who eat every single day, whether they are hungry or not and in portions much bigger than they should. There are also ancient fasting traditions worldwide (including Jesus, who fasted for 40 days) that o close priests, shamans and other spiritual people. Neither animals nor communities who engage in spiritual practices eat processed food. So I think it is worth to question our eating habits, and refer to Mother Nature to find out what is good for us and what is not, because our current ways don’t seem to work all that well judging by the diabetes, obesity and other diet-related illnesses.
2
The eating habits of animals follows their diet. Herbivores eat constantly. Carnivores often gorge and fast for extended periods. Omnivores fall in between. They all use fat storage to protect from famine.
21
We’re not animals and it’s 2019. There’s a lot we no longer do for good reason. Fad and extreme dieting are eating disorders. People who frequently partake have mental health issues. Just socially encouraged versions.
5
The bottom line is science doesn’t yet have an answer to what is a “good” diet for any individual for a given lifestyle, genome and microbiome combination.
There isn’t a single recommendation that will work for everyone in every situation.
Until science advances to that point all we can do is experiment, perhaps in “moderation”.
3
"Then suddenly I sputtered, feeling an unambiguous alarm go off: Tank is empty, sorry, this is the end of the line."
This is what we commonly refer to as "bonking" in endurance sports. You quite literally run into a caloric wall. Bonk! At the same time though, high activity levels suppress appetite. Sometimes for hours after you actually stop exercising.
This happens to me occasionally when hiking. You need to get from point A to B in a certain amount of time. You can't stop and hail a cab. If you find a decent cadence, the tendency is to keep going. The terrain will determine mileage but once you find that optimal heart rate, you keep the engine in gear.
Cycling is the one where it'll really creep up on you though. You don't even realize the calories you're burning until it's too late. The only solution is to eat small portions continuously. That's where all the synthetic food packets come in. A simple banana will work fine too but you have to remember to eat it. Again, cadence is a deterrent.
Oddly though, these habits spilled over into my more generic work life. I grew up working an odd array of service jobs too. I could finish a full-day of physically demanding retail and go bike 20 miles fixed-gear on little more than granola bars and dried mango. I'd stop at the grocery store on my way home for a pint of potato salad and some beer. Going all day without a real meal still doesn't seem weird. I eat when I need to, I dine when I'm done.
4
Sometimes dehydration feels like symptoms of low blood sugar, so if one is starting to feel a little weak, check the water.
4
Your body moves on energy from sugar or fat. The fat metabolizing for intense exercise requires about five to ten minutes to work. Until then, he body relies upon blood sugar and reserves released by the liver. If the sugar is used up before the fat metabolism kicks in, you hit the wall and can feel weak and sick. Athletes need to pace themselves to avoid this.
2
If one has an opportunity to listen to lecturers from medical research who both study and practice with patients, one realizes that a lot of people’s efforts to help themselves with diet, supplements, and exercise are just uninformed. Healthy young bodies adapt very well to just about anything people do, but that does not mean what we do under the idea that we have gained some crucial insight about some substance or behavior being crucial to health or illness is actually what is best for us.
The body is a product of evolution and a reliable users manual for it has never been found. It is still a subject of intense and productive research and new knowledge.
Good science tends to reveal that what one study indicates significant is not confirmed by others. So just because one reads that something like fish oil will rescue us from some malady, a couple of years later, subsequent studies force the scientists to conclude that it may not be as useful as once thought.
Talk to a good practicing physician to make sure that your latest effort with diet, supplements, or exercise does not involve any well confirmed risks.
3
When I was a high school junior in a ballet program, I watched a classmate go into anorexia. The same thing happened to another classmate my senior year. There was a lot of dieting and training in my ballet high school cohort. Little of it was as extreme as what this article describes. Yes, Mr. Stackpole, you have an eating disorder -- or disordered eating, or an obsession about calibrating your eating. Call it what you will in order to address it. When eating becomes about issues of control in your life, it's out of control.
21
This story is like an outline of modern dietetic neuroses. None of this nonsense occurs in traditional societies, and occurs far less often in societies with a strong, distinct identities. Diseases of prosperity, poverty, stress have coincided with growing overall ease and access to food. I'm guessing this is because the getting food and the eating food in general have become more detached from what formerly were quite important aspects of our lives such as daily trips to the market, growing the food, ceremonies and food traditions. Unfortunately Americans are at the spearhead of phenomena. Its the dark side of our mobility, freedom, and individuality.
1
Great article! I would suggest the author read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and particularly the section on the Master and Slave dialectic. Biohacking isn’t really about finding shortcuts to good health, it’s about mastering the self through rigorous self control.
2
In a world where you have to go out of your way to get fresh fruits and vegetables but a double bacon cheeseburger, deluxe Cafe Mocha and extra large double fudge brownie (or iced frappuccino and double chocolate doughnut) are around every corner, is there anyone who does NOT have an eating disorder?
158
@Dave
Define "eating disorder".. because like so many terms these days.. it is getting stretched and bent all over the place to fit whatever narrative a person is prosecuting in social media, blogs, etc.
13
The natural taste preferences and stimulators for appetite favors high macronutrient foods with concentrated fats, carbohydrates, or proteins, and salt. We have plenty of them and the fruits and vegetables which were once most available, and also did not stimulate such strong cravings, have become harder to acquire. Our environment is unlike that in which our bodies evolved.
9
@Dave Yes. People who routinely cook balanced meals made of real ingredients, then sit down to enjoy eating with friends/family, instead of relying on what they can scarf up away from home.
6
A male relative of mine has anorexia, and it presents in a similar way to the author's eating disorder. My relative's eating disorder is closest to orthorexia, an obsession with eating only healthy food. Eating disorders are closely related to OCD and reading this article sent up many red flags for me, as did some of the comments. You may not be starving yourself to death, but you are likely spending many of your waking hours thinking about diet and exercise and developing rules to follow. Your mind is a prisoner to your obsession. Having observed this close up, I can say that it is a sad and lonely way to live.
212
@Liz In your estimation is it possible for someone to focus on eating healthfully without being a prisoner to this obsession and being sad and lonely as a result? From reading your comment it would seem not. Your male relative may suffer from anorexia, but this author does not and people who follow intelligent ideas around health, fitness, and diet and not disordered -- it is the rest of the people who are disordered, or at least not tuned into living well.
9
@Jon
Anorexia is not the only eating disorder. Orthorexia is a real thing, as is “bigorexia” within the bodybuilding community. The common thread is a progressive loss of control over your own thoughts about food and your body to the point that you’re living in a mental prison.
At my orthorexic worst, I literally spent every waking hour thinking about food, planning “perfect days” of clean eating and exercising. Anyone who was looking in from the outside would have thought I was super healthy. But I was miserable, living inside a restrictive circle of “safe foods” that grew smaller every day. I eventually reached the point where I was only able to consume fresh-pressed juice that I made myself. Objectively, everyone would agree that I had an eating disorder. But I shouldn’t have had to sink that low for people to say I needed help. The juice phase was like having stage four cancer. I should have gotten help at stage one. And if more people had been willing to question my motives, I might have acknowledged I had a problem before I did permanent damage to myself.
The point is this: eating disorders are not behaviors—they’re systems of thought that manifest as behaviors. You can be healthy and eat clean and lift weights all you want, but if you feel compelled to do it because the internal noise is too loud when you don’t, THAT’S an eating disorder. You might be able to biohack with clean eating, but eating disorders biohack YOU.
71
Jon,
This author clearly has disordered eating, an eating disorder, call it what you want. It’s clear that the male gender has been very slow to recognize and accept that they too can be affected by these devastating mental illnesses.
15
The nutsy eating fads always remind me of the behavior of "saints" in the early Christian era, like the Stylites -- a significant subset of human beings have always found satisfaction in extreme "mortification of the flesh." Presumably, it arises evolutionarily out of the survival advantages yielded by the ability to exercise self-control, but just gets ridiculously out of whack with a given subset of people.
4
@Rachel Kreier. This is a great comment. Perhaps a significant proportion of the people for whom this trait "gets ridiculously out of whack" haven't found a "productive" or constructive outlet to express it. For these people it might be much more helpful to accept this as part of their personality and search for a better means to express it. For the rest of us, it is a good idea to avoid pathologizing human behavior wherever possible.
1
@Rachel Kreier
The early desert anchorites(hermits) had 7 drops of oil a day with their bread...8 was too much and 6 was too little so it only reinforced the ego.
1
Leave it to a dude to think he’s discovered that eating disorders are not about appearance. Psychologists have long known, and a simple search of the literature would easily reveal, that eating disorders are about control. And yes, clearly you are dealing with disordered eating in an effort to find control.
21
What occurs to me when I read this is how America is always at war with the capitalist driven food/indulgence empire. So much food everywhere - delivered at your doorstep, all manner of choices - advertised everywhere, even at gas stations and on airplanes. Everywhere you look is an image of food staring back at you. Cheap food, expensive food, whole television food channels. Food stars. We know that climate change is happening and much of that has to do with how many of us there are and how much food and what kinds of food we both consume and waste. The other industry of food hacking seems to try to subvert this. Keto, for instance, tells you you can eat all of the fat and meat you want - yay, fat and meat. But for what? To what end? To satisfy that endless taunt staring us down every second of every day everywhere in America. Someday people will look back on this era and be horrified at us.
1
If you're referring to something other than cutting something with heavy blows or gaining unauthorized access to a computer system, you're pretty much an unrealistic person who is trying to find a shortcut.
I hear people now talking about hacking work/life balance, weight loss, or household chores.
Time honored methodologies, discipline, and patience work for all of those. "Hacking" has become a narcissistic and unsavory term for shortcuts, and it's no wonder people end up disappointed.
6
I may not be right, but this is what goes through my mind. Some men take hormonal therapy for bigger muscles and I’ve often wondered if there should not be drug tests for these aggressive stimulating therapies in authoritative jobs like police work.
Look at photos and video’s from the 60’s and see the physique of frankly both American men and women. The assassination video in Dallas of President Kennedy is a case in point. Hardworking folks standing along the parade route. And no one is highly muscled up like today.
5
@Ray. While it definitely started in the U.S. the muscle mania is spreading around the world, or at least as far as Europe. On my most recent vacation I came face to face with the freak vision of an extreme bodybuilder heading toward the beach in Cadiz, Spain. And I've observed a substantial proliferation of visibly muscled up males on my annual visits to London over the past five years or so. I'm almost afraid to go back to Paris to see if they have succumbed as well.
3
There are so many ways to get life wrong. In this case the writer's compulsion to talk about diet and fitness seems to be the hidden driver. I feel bad for his co-workers.
4
It's all about balance.
The slim people I know are all fairly active without going to the gym (they spend time doing physical activities they enjoy). The fat people I know are couch potatoes who eat poorly.
Even if you only burn off 100 calories per day with a brisk walk, over a month that's close to a pound of weight.
Add that to a decent diet with lots of vegetables, fats and proteins and few empty carbs and you're on your way to a healthy body.
2
@LauraF--Well, you must know a VERY unusual bunch of people. Just among my own acquaintances, I know several slim people who never exercise and eat tons of junk food, hamburgers for lunch every day, and so on; and I know a lot of fat people who eat very healthy diets and exercise daily. For myself, I cook almost all my own meals, avoid refined carbs as much as possible, gave up red meat in 1976, have not had a sugared soda since 1982, stopped drinking even diet soda 3 years ago, walk four to five miles every day rain or shine, never eat second helpings, have dessert only once or twice a year on special occasions, etc., etc. And yet I remain fat (BMI of 35).
4
@me
That's interesting, me. Sorry to hear it's been difficult (i'm assuming you're motivated to lose weight).
Do you have any idea the level of your daily caloric intake? (I know - it's quite possible to lose weight without thinking about calories, but whether one thinks about them or not, it makes a difference - and contrary to Gary Taubes, virtually every controlled study I've seen - with inpatients getting exactly the same amount of calories - concludes that calorie intake is the single, greatest factor in losing weight)
1
@me
If they're fat, they are not eating a healthy diet, not in terms of quantity. If you consume fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight. This is simple physics.
BTW...walking burns very few calories.
1
Michael Pollan talks about "nutritionism," when we started to see specific nutrients lauded or condemned in the press. Remember the anti-fat craze? "Wellness" is more about marketing things to us than cultivating real. long-lasting well-being. I appreciate how Mr. Stackpole has come to see what he's doing as disordered and how he's recognizing that it was difficult to see it that way because of the gender bias in our society. "Women and girls have eating disorders; men and boys do not" has been the message for decades, as flawed as it is. I'll once again reference Pollan with the best advice on eating and well-being I've read: Eat food (that your great-grandmother would recognize as food), mostly plants, not too much. Not too much thought has to go into it, which, of course, is why it's not that appealing when you're caught in the trap that you can think yourself out of the inherent impermanence and instability of life.
5
Not eating enough to achieve the thin look of models has been a big problem for girls. Boys are more likely to be overeating to become more powerful looking. Both are eating disorders.
1
We are bombarded daily by diet advice from "experts" of all types. The latest diet fads are advocated relentlessly. It becomes almost impossible to ignore our bodies and what we put into them, no matter how hard we try. Over the past 60 years, I've tried to control my weight through diet and exercise, and now, at 80, I'm at a healthy weight with good blood pressure and a healthy heart. However, at the age of 75 I found that I had many other ailments that may or may not be the result of dieting. In spite of a healthy heart and good blood pressure, I'm almost an invalid. I think if I had it to do over again, I would have eaten what I wanted, when I wanted. Maybe I wouldn't have made it to an infirm 80, but I would have enjoyed life more. I do love to eat.
8
This is the story about too many Americans' relationship with food. I studied in Europe for two years the early 1970s. As poor as a church mouse, I lived on real food to survive. My friends were Europeans with continental eating habits. Today I eat everything (even sweets, though less sweet). I'm not a vegetarian and have my cheeseburger and fries once a month. I drink coffee with whole milk. I eat vegetables, lots of them. I am slim. I look around me and see a generation of Americans 40 years my junior making appalling food choices. Americans of all ages eat few plant-based foods other than bananas and salads. The exercisers/runners I meet live on protein shakes and advocate a bland, abstemious diet. It is all pathologically disordered.
11
YOU CAN'T CONTROL WEIGHT THROUGH EXERCISE. It does, of course burn some calories, but not enough to overcome irresponsible overeating.
It's simple physics. If you consume more calories than you burn, you gain weight.
I'm 62, 5'9", 160 lbs, with a flat stomach and solid muscles (the reason I exercise is for cardio fitness and muscle tone).
My maintenance diet is this:
I eat whatever kinds of food I want, counting calories every day. I make sure that I get a well balanced diet that includes all food groups, with sufficient sources of energy, minerals, vitamins, and proteins.
I also start every day with a protein shake and vitamins, and no other breakfast. I eat several times a day, but very small amounts, which helps control feelings of hunger...NO BIG MEALS!
8
@Raz -- "A protein shake and vitamins for breakfast." Your comment makes me sad -- and it wasn't posted yet when I wrote my own comment (directly above yours). FYI: I am a little over 5'9" and weight 160 pounds.
2
@Mason
I just got in from picking peas, potatoes, and broccoli in my garden. I START day with a shake. I didn't say that's all I eat. :)
2
@Raz -- I understood that, but why replace real food that has delicious possibilities with artificial shakes mixed with water? Every day? Only in America -- or mostly, it seems.
3
I know that you acknowledge the gendered stereotype of eating disorders, and state that “not all” such EDs stem from vanity, but the way you describe these stereotypes and unconvincingly debunk them tells me that you yourself have not been able to escape attaching these associations. I know this because I struggled with eating disorders for years: anorexia, bulimia and exercise addictions. Sometimes it would occur in phases, and no, I was never hospitalized, nor would outsiders necessarily have been able to tell (not all people w/ EDs are skinny; that’s a fact). The standard for an ED isn’t really your weight, or proximity to death. It’s the mindset. And the mindset you describe is exactly how I felt. It was the rush of obsession and the way it orders your life and gives you purpose. And most of all, it was about that feeling of control, and extreme willpower. I first became anorexic when I was 14. It had nothing to do with body image or weight or “vanity”. Honestly, I looked great beforehand. But my life was chaos, and it felt like the world was spinning out of my control. Anorexia—the ability to bend my body to my will—made me feel like I was in control again. That was the same thing that motivated every ED I had. It doesn’t matter whether you call it an eating disorder, disordered eating, or biohacking. Call it what you’re comfortable with. It all comes from the same place.
14
I suppose I am lucky that the first anorexic I met in the 1960's was a young man. I never once thought men were free from obsession, especially having lived in a gay communities my whole life. As a hairdresser I can tell you that men know every hair on their heads, while women are always looking for an illusive perfection, knowing it's illusive. It's no shock to me that the 'extreme' movement is abounding during this current time in our history. While we feel power being ripped from our hands we are trying any way we can to gain control. Know this and temper your reactions. I'm not saying it's easy, nothing is easy.
7
I would be interested to know about the recasting of men with eating issues in regards to personality disorders. For decades women with eating disorders tended to be a tip off in the mental health community for a possible personality disorder diagnosis. Sexism can go both ways - perhaps more men are struggling from personality disorders than we realize. If so, how can we make mental health professionals more aware of this situation?
3
Women have coped with their low status and lack of power by subjugating their eating bodies for decades. In our new world of severely imbalanced accumulation of power and wealth at the top, many men are experiencing it too and, sadly, adopting the same strategy.
10
All of these bio hack diets are ridiculous. If a man wants to get lean and slim he has to eat high protein low carb and get to the gym and weightlift. End of story.
6
This could only be about a millennial because the content is so irrelevant to the problems of the world and the nation. Do you not understand that this self obsession with diet and body image and imagined health is a disease. If you are spending this much time thinking about ways to improve health and fitness, then why not just do that rather than trying to hack it. The fads you subscribe to will have long term metabolic consequences and who knows what kind of damage you are doing to your organs by binging on temporary diet regimens and silly foodstuffs that may have been worthwhile 100000 years ago but now are foolish because the intestinal biome you try to utilize takes years to develop. Maybe you need a new obsession. That would be not being so self obsessed.
4
Worse than people that are obsessed with politics.
5
I feel fortunate that I read your entire article and did not understand a single thing. My suggestion. Give up diets. It seems as if they’re rewiring your brain to be addicted to interruption and inconsistency. And though excessive “busyness” and “fussiness” of one’s body might seem like a sign of importance, it’s really just a disease, a worn out and weary myth that the more time you spend analyzing it, the better off you’ll be.
4
An eating disorder.
5
You more than likely have anorexia with exercise purging. Please get help. I highly recommend the UC San Diego program. It's heartbreaking this has been missed because you are a dude.
9
Nothing is transcendent in life today...especially "wellness hacks". Give it up and stop being obsessed by your body, Thomas Stackpole. Obviously you haven't hit your mid-60s or 70s yet, when you learn that disordered eating and extreme dieting isn't good for you. Eat what you want, when you want, not too much, get a little exercise, not too much, and care more about your friends and family than your body. Worry about the climate, not your flesh waxing thin and fat, as we know the way of all flesh. A word to the wise is sufficient...
11
Kindred spirit, indeed.
2
Very thoughtful article. I know very much what you describe here, although I’m female. It’s the dance around a true disorder. It’s only a disorder if it disrupts your functioning or if it is unhealthy for your body. Perhaps, you have crossed the line by over exercising, I’m not sure. The dance however gets darn close, and people who don’t experience it don’t understand it, as evident in many of the responses here. Sometimes my health crazes are a kind of hobby using my own body as an n=1 experiment. If I drink celery juice every morning and see if I feel better or try a certain exercise in a controlled manner to see how my body responds to it. Alternatively, getting up close to the “disordered” by doing a Keto diet even when I can’t quite think straight at work because I’m throwing my body into a tailspin trying to find itself a new equilibrium. I recognize I have to be careful about my dance with this, but I also don’t need to check myself into a clinic over it. Thanks for sharing your experience, I think it will benefit people by understanding it from a male perspective.
8
Extreme dieting is just another example of our obsessive culture, particularly among young urban professionals. Everything needs to be done to the extreme -- working extreme hours, extreme exercise, extreme dieting, extreme vacations (for the few who take them), extreme socializing. The foundation of this, I believe, is deep insecurity that we're not keeping up with our peers. No wonder everyone is on antidepressants and antianxiety meds.
7
I have suffered with an eating disorder for most of my life. My son almost died of one. There is help. OA has saved my life. Please find help. Disordered eating often turns into an eating disorder. This is not a female disease. It is a universal one.
10
There seems to be a hidden assumption being made that we have evidence of a correct, healthy diet. I think there is a difference between those who are experimenting with new diets, wading into a field with very little consensus in good faith, and those with true eating disorders. Not that this biohacking experimentation cannot go wrong. But I think it is to some extent a logical reaction to uncertainty around the perfect diet and problematic recommendations from doctors and the government (e.g., the food pyramid).
7
I found this story of a person's obsession with his body quite disturbing. I do not believe the issue here is about an eating disorder. That is, at best, a mere symptom of a much deeper problem - an increasing problem among well-off first world types. The real problem is an inability to find a way to be in the world in any meaningful way. This is sad. The author has spent his life trying to relate to his own body rather than looking outward towards others and towards community to find real connections, connections that will make him and society better. I sense a level of despair in the author and I truly hope he finds a better way to express himself.
10
Women were always judged on their appearance & thin has been in for the past century or so.
But now men too, are shown constant, absurd, super-hero bodies by our media. The fashion world has replaced the forgiving suits of the past with ridiculous tiny, single breasted suits that look too tight on everyone except very tall anorexics. You know, models.
Lo and behold, men's media have started on focus on fitness and diet just like women's always have. And yes, Mr. Stackpole, your relationship to your body sounds disordered.
Welcome to our world.
16
@Oh Please
I think you make a great observation when you note how men's fashion has morphed so it often seems like only tall, skinny men look good in the tiny, single-breasted suits. Male 'fashion' is emulating the absurd world of female fashion and trends.
Good catch, Oh Please.
4
Everyone has a weight that fits the sunny side of their personality. Find that weight and eat to maintain it. In some cases it might be a slight overweight, in others a little underweight. I know a man who was jolly and made us laugh, laughed at our jokes and was fun to be around. He was a little overweight. He is thin now, a gaunt and serious man, not much fun to be around.
56
@SP YES! This is exactly what I've needed to hear and what so many of my friends need to hear. When I was at my thinnest, I was on edge and was no fun to hang out with because of my dietary restrictions. Granted, these restrictions were due to some food intolerances in my baby whom I was breastfeeding, but I loved being so tiny and all the positive feedback that came my way. I knew it was not sustainable: no dairy, wheat, corn, soy, eggs, or alcohol. I've been hard on myself for not being as thin as I was post partum and your words really put things in perspective. thank you! It's also a reminder to tell people they look great at any weight because the positive feedback can fuel the obsessive patterns.
10
@SP I disagree. Perhaps this man had medical issues, from depression to cancer (and everything in between), that caused him to lose weight. There's no medically valid link between weight and disposition, and obviously many overweight people obsess over their weight but feel powerless to control it---which is just as little fun as being thin and obsessing over maintaining it or obsessing over putting on mass. Every body is different, just like every person.
That said, the author of this piece clearly has an unhealthy relationship with food. Going to extremes with your body is rarely a great idea.
8
@Paul Holtz. No Paul my friend had no medical issues...was doing it to lose weight. I thought that was understood. There is a strong link between disposition and weight within a person. It does not show up statistically over a large group, which is where you are correct, because the large range in that relationship over varied dispositions and weights. Each person, however, knows the relationship within themselves, and one must get in touch with that not only to know the correct weight but also to muster the will to get there.
1
You are completely correct that eating obsessions/disorders aren't always about aesthetics. You may be aware of these books about medieval ecclesiastics and their spiritual "anorexia": Holy Anorexia https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo5954712.html and Holy Feast, Holy Fast
https://amedievalwomanscompanion.com/holy-anorexia-how-medieval-women-coped-with-what-was-eating-at-them/, which explore the nuances of food symbolism in a different context. I see that Rudolph Bell has a new book out on men and anorexia.
I've just spent the past 6 months struggling down to my perfect weight, last seen in college. (Twelve stubborn pounds/6 months!) Next struggle is to maintain exactly there. Here's some things I've realized along the way:
Never doubt that this is about control. I started dieting a week after losing control of an essential feature of my life.
Achieving my weight goal has helped repair my other loss--I've reassured myself that I can survive losses through careful self discipline. Now I'm ready to address the original loss.
Don't ever believe that achieving a perfect weight will make your life perfect--far from it. It's just one item on the checklist.
If weight is* your *method of asserting control, combine it with cooking and love of food, not junk food diets. I've expanded my repertoire of wonderful recipes thanks to NYT's cooking section. Eating more vegetarian. But eating smaller portions and weighing daily for life now. Pleasure is in taste; not quantity.
If you don't want to cook, then weight loss might be a dangerous way to try to assert control. What about something entirely different--learn to play an instrument? Learn to invest successfully? Learn to play a social sport such as pickle ball or pingpong?
Whatever you choose as your way to assert control, make sure it enriches your entire life going forward. Make sure it's a skill you can discuss with others with pride, and--best--that you can share.
7
Perhaps this writer should, instead of looking to sociology for answers about his see-saw approach to food, study the basics of nutrition. He might consider how athletic champions fuel their bodies for the tremendous stresses they place on their bodies in training and competition.
How does Usain Bolt eat? What are the eating cycles of the Simona Halep and Serena Williams both in training and the day of competition? While he is at it, he might consider the same mental rigor he applies to writing to preserving and developing his health.
The positive part about this article is that the author reveals how quickly people are duped by the latest fads in nutrition. Go back to the basics of meat, fish, and vegetable protein, the roles of fruits, vegetables, and fiber.
7
The term “biohacking” implies that the human body is a mechanical machine like a computer; upload new software or add a piece of hardware and, voila, your human ‘machine’ will run faster, be more efficient and be more productive.
But our bodies are not machines with replaceable parts. You can’t “hack” your body unless you really understand the human metabolic process. Our bodies need a variety of nutrients and a proper balance of vitamins and minerals to survive. A diet selected solely because it's the fad of the moment—and without knowledge of whether that diet is nutrient rich and balanced--is very dangerous. The wrong diet can easily lead to an imbalance in potassium/sodium levels or in blood glucose levels that can permanently damage organs or even lead to death. Not enough calories can also be devastating and prompt the body to devour its own muscles and organs.
It is frightening to see so many well-educated people who don’t understand human metabolic/nutritional needs. A number of different diets can meet human needs and fasting can be part of a healthy diet, but any diet that restricts to only a couple of foods is suspect.
People take better care of their cars than themselves! We know that not keeping water in the radiator and fresh oil in the oil pan can destroy a car’s engine. Why are so many of us unfamiliar with basic nutrition? The writer’s “bonk” from not having enough glucose in his body for a run is not an example of “bio-hacking” but of bio-destruction.
8
Sounds like extreme narcissism to me. How about a balanced diet that doesn’t harm the planet ?
8
I am not a psychiatrist but I think I’m saavy enough to recognize when a person needs one. Kudos to the author for sharing this but *please* get help!
9
The author had an eating disorder. Moreover, this behavior will eventually "send him to the hospital". Eating disorders (and the accompany obsessive exercise regimens, are and have always been about control. Body image is just the cover issue. I hope he gets help soon.
9
Our culture does not encourage balance in one’s life. We celebrate the extremes in behavior, attitude, and mindset. The author shared how this has manifested in his life. How has it manifested in yours?
6
I agree with many of the commenters' critiques , and I empathize with the author's struggle. He recognizes his rationalizations. However, we will all struggle with these body issues until we recognize that diet culture tells us the only acceptable body is a skinny one, and reject this idea. Slowly but surely!
3
The "media," of which Mr. Stackpole is a part as a senior editor at Boston Magazine, is a big contributor to this problem. Constantly promoting "alternatives" and "choices" under the guise of "new information" and "scientific research" has legitimized this behavior to the point of collective destruction. The rapid, unfiltered spread of such "free" information through the internet makes it readily accessible and consumable. This article illustrates how consumable the "story" is. There is no going back. We have more information than ever, yet making little progress in our natural world.
3
I believe it is much more complicated than this author writes. The foods in the supermarkets are not the correct foods for a healthy life. Most people know this. I have never felt I had a weight problem and I felt I ate mostly well. But I felt terrible and all of the things I had done in my life with exercise and food no longer felt good and my body was breaking down and not working properly. My doctor was useless and put me on Prilosec and a FODMAP diet that told me I could not eat anything. I tore my meniscus, I had diarrhea every day, I felt tired etc... Over the last few years I have used many of these strategies and I have had great success with many of them. For me it is about finding the right combination of things at the right time. For instance, I started with a gut makeover diet for 6 weeks. This worked for me and I began to feel better. Then I started adding things back to my diet but decided I no longer wanted to eat cereal and chips. And so-on... These changes have changed my entire life (less depression, better attitude, I read the news less etc...) and now my body works and I feel great on most days. So those of you reading this, sure, if you feel you are doing crazy diet things and you feel horrible about yourself then perhaps you have a problem. But for those of us that are feeling better and there is progress I say keep on trying new things because our current doctored health system does not have better solutions and answers.
4
There's another aspect of this phenomenon that exemplifies a common trend in the culture. I don't know if there's an actual term for it, but I call it the "Oprah Effect." It's our penchant for following bold yet spurious pronouncements from so-called experts who have left science behind in order to sell us magical fixes to life's problems. Hence, books like "The Secret": just visualize whatever you want and voila! attract it to yourself. Take homeopathic drops (i.e., water) and cure your migraines. Nutrition science? That's for amateurs. Just eat a little bit of certain magic foods, or maybe nothing at all, and be healthier and fitter than ever.
Obviously, there's plenty of variety in how people eat around the world, and there's no one-size-fits-all in terms of a healthy diet. But within all the variation, the bottom line is the same for all of us. Human beings need specific essential nutrients (the ones our bodies can't create) and in certain quantities. The search for an off-side diet that will make us beautiful and superhuman speaks to our attraction to pseudo-science and magic.
5
I'm glad we're finally seeing that eating disorders are not only a problem for young girls. Men, women, young and old--anyone can develop an unhealthy relationship to food that becomes obsessive, and there are many reasons why someone would fall victim to this. I currently have a friend, a woman 65 years of age, who has anorexia. She is getting smaller and thinner, but cannot see it and is starting to develop health problems. That this struck her so late in life is proof that stereotypes about who can develop these disorders keeps us from recognizing sufferers.
6
Men have always suffered from anorexia - just in much smaller numbers than women. As the push to be inclusive and emphasize gender equality in our culture grows (a good thing), some of the less desirable aspects of growing up female (a pathological diet culture all young girls are subjected to) may crossover. The diet culture, with its emphasis on rapid weight loss is pervasive in our society. All of its unhealthful manifestations (keto, fasting, raw food, etc) are harmful to human metabolism and ultimately backfire (why everyone grains the weight). Now that it’s “bro-y” only shows it’s spreading, and not in a good way.
3
For my weekend breakfast treat, I had bacon and eggs, with the eggs cooked in bacon fat, a large slice of fresh bread with butter and marmalade and a pot of coffee. And I read the NYT when I ate it. Heaven!
16
We live in a disordered food/activity environment. We are surrounded by food carefully engineered to make us want more and by treats and empty calories everywhere we go. At work we are required to sit all day, now understood to be as unhealthy as smoking. I appreciate the honesty and the sincere self-disclosure but I think the author needs to examine his behavior with a more critical look at the context. Most of us are obese and flabby. Who and what is disordered?
2
“We typically tend to think of these behaviors as feminine ones. As a result, there’s often an impression that they’re primarily about appearance and, sometimes, vanity.”
This section makes me sad on every level.
Why do we assume a woman’s primary concern is appearance and vanity? The author never clarifies this or walks this back. He just puts the generalization out there, as if it has validity, out there while claiming a search for control as the goal of men.
10
@Clare
Uh...because the near entirety of the Female POP-Culture in the US, is geared up for that! ???
There is very little in pop-culture that is about girls, females that is NOT about their appearance and vanity. Even a great deal of the alleged Empowerment Culture is about appearances. "Be who you are, but make sure you dress the part - spectacularly!!"
Women/female culture IS appearance culture. And vice versa. Its been that way for sometime now. Look around you. Compare the women's magazine industry (then in its hey-day and now) and whats its main focus? How to dress. What to look like. How to appear to be X, while you're Y on the inside...how to be the taken-serious worker, but the playful kitten at home...
The point is valid...mainly because women have been saying it for decades now! Why some have been pushing back at how fake the women's culture is, how it erases flaws and presents "perfect" role-models.
Its only recently that Male popculture has adopted some of the same things and methods to sell it to males. In the past it was subtle. A few random fashion pieces in a sports magazine...some athlete talking about how likes to dress-up after a tough day on the court, field, ice...saying its empowering to dress like a serious adult.
But its ubiquitous now. Men's fashion, fitness, sports media outlets have adopted the same tactics as their female and longer-at-it counterparts. And its starting to have real effects on men, eating disorders are more prevalent.
1
It is not misogyny to identify misogyny.
3
Bio-hacking is just another word for disordered body image and way too much free "first-world" time that manifests itself in unhealthy eating and exercise practices. I would recommend that the author consult a health coach or therapist to learn what is driving this behavior, what story it is telling about and to himself and how he can maintain his health while still enjoying food and physical activity. He may also want to find some other outlet for his energy and passion--feeding the truly hungry, for instance.
9
Actually the research shows that intermittent fasting does NOT lower the metabolism. Low calorie diets with 3 meals a day does, however.
6
I haven’t been exactly where you are, but I’ve been in that neighborhood (more with exercise than with food). It’s hard to figure out when you’re doing too much. Your triathlon, 10k and marathon times falling seems like a good thing. You have great blood pressure, great blood work and a super low heart rate. All of that seems good too. And you look good.
But if you’re not getting paid for clocking fast times, you have to admit that there’s a fine line between good health and unhealthy obsession.
I’m old now (54) so my body tells me where the line is. For a couple of years I got overuse injuries: tendinitis, stress fractures... You know, you’ve had them too. So now I limit what I do to avoid injury. I’m doing less, but I’m also happier. I don’t obsesses over the clock. I got rid of my heart rate monitors. I took the computers of my road and mountain bikes. The lack of metrics means that I’m guided just by a sense of feel. And I’m having way more fun. Good luck to all of you in finding a balance that works. It’s out there.
15
as a woman who struggled with bulimia in her 20s, I have no trouble thinking of disordered eating as being about control. I also agree that what you are describing is disordered, just not as extreme. as some things.
10
As you age, you’ll find that wear-and-tear on your joints and a slowing metabolism may force you to adopt moderation and a more self-compassionate regimen.
At least for me, a lifelong ballet dancer, not even eating disorder therapy could stop my recourse to the thrill, abandon and weight loss of too much movement. Not dancing, I ballooned into a depressed Michelin Tire (wo)Man. Dancing, it peeled off and my moods would rebalance. A meniscus tear and worn-out cartilage eventually made even tango a chore.
My sixties started with despair. Then I moved to a country where my body shape (exactly that of my bubbie) is the norm. I walk everywhere, eat flavor-packed fruits and veggies and cheeses, drink red wine, and wake up a little thinner and a little happier most mornings. It takes me by surprise that yes, men are sincerely flirting with pudgy me.
Maybe our broken American society is the biggest part of the problem.
21
I’m a woman, but my my eating disorder began in adulthood as a response to the stresses of motherhood. I dealt with the loss of control by throwing myself into CrossFit and “clean eating,” otherwise known as orthorexia. I saw plenty of men at my gym who were in the same obsessive boat as I was. We spent countless hours talking about the protein bars, Olympic lifts, and the benefits of fasting. The difference is, I realized I had a problem when I broke down at a child’s birthday party over a piece of cake. How many of them are still going under the banner of bio-hacking?
16
I've never considered disordered eating just about food. It's about mental health. Perhaps the stigma surrounding mental health is too great and people would prefer to safely be within the margins of "disordered eating", "biohacking", "wellness inspiration", "thinspo" and other fluffy jargon. Men and women are equally under pressure to look good at all times, thanks to endless 24/7 media and internet imagery. When it comes to eating and food, however, it's pretty obvious when someone has mental health issues over consumption and their body. They would best be seeking counselling or therapy with a professional over the underlying issues. I don't believe a dietician is really the answer. I've had the unfortunate experience of sitting next to a coworker who, after an international vacation, quickly boasted they did not eat much (and zero mention of any sightseeing, travel stories, noteworthy cultural highlights), and would exclaim unprovoked toward the end of the day that they didn't eat breakfast or lunch. It's not normal conversation or behaviour and it's not about food at all.
11
Structuring your life around extreme "wellness" fads does not make you healthier. Rather, it's a symptom of mental illness. And the more you lean on these eating and exercise patterns to self-medicate, the more entrenched the damaging behaviors will become. Increasingly, you will have two problems to deal with: One, whatever led to your insecurity about your body and food in the first place, and two, the neurological changes that follow cycles of calorie deprivation and entrench you further in unhealthy eating.
Get help. Go see a therapist with expertise in addressing emotional issues around food, eating, exercise and body image.
8
Wow. This man has no insight. “It would perhaps be too much to call this an eating disorder,” are you kidding me? I am amazed at the way men have turned this into a perverse positive while we are all supposed to pity women who do the exact same thing.
20
Perhaps the problem lies in pathologising human coping behaviors. What do these labels really offer?
1
good topic but I wonder; do you have goals that last for more than a few weeks and if so, what are they?
you seem to drift from here to there with no idea where you want to go. stop twitching, sit down and actually think things thru for more than 5 minutes, come up with a goal (or not), write it down (if so) and then plan how to get there w/o going all short-attention span OCD getting there.
I do intermittent fasting, which has been done harmlessly for centuries tho mostly out of lack of food, and a keto lite (full blown is hard to stay on permanently for most). and I do it for a reason and with goals; to lower total cholesterol to keep me off drugs, keep inflammation as close to zero as I can as its implicated in virtually every major illness you can name, and keep my insulin sensitivity high too for the same reason as I have a genetic condition that could kill me tomorrow. so theres a goal. and when not if, I slack off there's always the thought of why I do it to remind me to stay the course so I dont make my kids millionaires from my death benefits. let them do that themselves if they can or want to.
6
Me too, Thomas. Me too.
1
I have watched my best friend suffer from an eating disorder the entire time I have known her. More recently, one of my dear mom friends has watched her daughter fight fiercely for her life against anorexia. This article takes a pretty flippant view of the disease - and yes. The author has a problem. A pretty obvious one, I think. This isn't about eating or not eating. Its a mental illness that can take over ones body until organs are digested instead of food. Where osteoporosis begins in the tiny frames of young girls - and yes, even grown men. Please know that this article, in my opinion, is incredible irresponsible. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. I'm disappointed the NYT decided to put yet another piece of fodder out there. Check your facts next time, instead of offering up some kind of mainstream validation for this very prevalent problem facing people (men and women) of all ages. https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/information/anorexia/anorexia-death-rate
https://www.mirasol.net/learning-center/eating-disorder-statistics.php
10
I'm sure some have covered it already in comments, but this sentence derailed me"
"We typically tend to think of these behaviors as feminine ones. As a result, there’s often an impression that they’re primarily about appearance and, sometimes, vanity."
Surely, the author missed his duty to call this an issue of sexism, or does he really mean to suggest that femininity is about appearance, and perhaps vanity? Beyond mere stereotyping, this sentence verges on misogyny,
176
@CJ He's saying that in general, society tends to stereotype eating disorders as female and thus through that sex-based lens assumes it's appearance-driven when in reality it's driven by control and a myriad of other mental factors that are universal across genders.
He calls it out by saying he falls into the eating-disordered but isn't what most people would picture when discussing it:
"But nor do I have a healthy relationship with food or exercise, a fact about my life that up until recently has been more or less obscured by my gender. After all, if I asked you to picture someone grappling with disordered eating, would you imagine a skinny teenage girl or me — a 33-year-old man who weighs 200 pounds and is flirting with exercise bulimia? I bet you a cookie you picked the former."
37
@CJ, I don’t know whether it crosses the line into misogyny, but the statement is patently ridiculous. True eating disorders (as opposed to the more general term “disordered eating”) are not gender specific, and they are often rooted in trauma or complex psychological pain. Not a “teenaged girl” thing.
This entire essay set my teeth on edge. The writer seeks to tag — and indirectly elevate — the so-called biohacking trend as a distinctly male (“bro”) pursuit. He implies that it is not about “appearance” and “vanity.” He even goes so far as to state, “There’s a machismo to this sort of explicit bodily abuse that simple healthy living doesn’t offer.” Rubbish! I know as many (super competitive) women as men who are caught up in this Self obsession (CrossFit, anyone?). It is, in fact, all about vanity, and ego. The burning desire to have a longer and healthier life so you can do more in your lifespan than the rest of the less-fit (and, by implication, less smart and worthwhile) people out there (this is an obsession particular to Silicon Valley) presupposes that you are somehow above the fray. Elite.
Wouldn’t it be nice to put all that energy into improving the life of others?
35
@CJ That blared out at me too! Jarred me out of some degree of empathy with the author.
14
I do think the writer should see a therapist.
I don't say this lightly.
His self-description of his behavior and his views is alarming.
13
This is a parody, right?
9
"It would perhaps be going too far to call this kind of behavior an “eating disorder”; those are conditions that send people to the hospital and sometimes kill them"
Sorry Mr. Stackpole. What you describe is an eating disorder and all that this implies. Some of this behavior should land one in the hospital.
Abuse your body, even in the name of "health" and it will break down.
20
I'm astonished that the New York Times felt that what Mr. Stackpole had to say here was new and in any way revelatory. The fact that extreme eating and dieting patterns are not about vanity but about control has been long established. The idea that any person of any gender identity adopts extreme eating/dieting as a way of asserting control over the world or their emotions and anxieties--that fact has been long known and understood. The quickest skimming of any book about eating disorders would have told Mr. Stackpole what he asserts here as his own wise discovery. This is basic stuff. Tell us something we _haven't_ known about eating disorders for the last several decades. Then you'll have something worth printing in the Times.
10
Dude, Thomas Stackpole, seriously? the human body needs carbs, protein and fat. You can mess with the ratio minimally but not in any major way - yet. Until we can re-engineer the human body till some yet unknown scientific method you have to ignore Dorsey or other new age "bio hackers."
Good thing you did not try to run a marathon in the Mojave desert. Your bones alongside the freeway would be some sort of a mile marker. Did you know the runners run on the paint in the middle of the road? the pavement would melt their shoes. Imagine what that weather would do to your body...
3
The heroes of my teens were like Leslie Howard, the Scarlet Pimpernel. How were the men of that generation so nicely thin? Did they purge, suffer, or what? Can someone explain?
2
The men of that generation—and women, too—ate no trans fats, bioengineered corn and wheat, and foods altered to smell and taste irresistible. They were not bombarded with fast food advertising, print or electronic, tuned to trigger hunger and cravings.
Magazine ads, for example, would highlight ingredients for home cooking and show pictures of dinner on the table, instead of strippers lasciviously downing dripping burgers the size of a cantaloupe.
Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland et al had more intact social lives, and movie and theater cast and crew often dined and socialized together in canteens and NY theater restaurants. Performers stayed in modest theater hotels on the road.
Today’s world is tuned to keep us glued to desks and screens 24/7 in a shadow world of deep loneliness.
11
I call this article troubling. If you feel you are the wrong weight talk to your doctor before you try any of these fads. The author goes thru so much here that is not a good idea. People cannot starve themselves for life. Check with someone with knowledge before you try crazy stuff, please.
2
In my late teens, I was about 25-30 pounds heavier than I am at the moment, but I can’t recall a single time in which I thought about, let alone worried about, my weight. Now I’m at a “normal” weight but I can’t stop thinking about it and obsessing over it. Some of the behavior the author recounts here sounds very familiar. Sigh.
5
This is horrifying - not because of Stackpole's fixation and body shame - but because he is clearly an intelligent man with financial resources far beyond what many of us have. I suggest he re-focus his obsession on doing something about hunger in his country or even caged children along the border.
8
So many of the messages besieging us are extremes it is hard to know what normal looks like. Everyone is smiling in a beer commercial; there are no hangovers. Celebrities and other dreaded "influencers" tout extreme visions of nutraceuticals, foods and regimens best left to concentration camps.
From the Thigh Master to the anabolic steroid precursors and congeners, we have been systematically deceived because of the greed of marketers.
We are also willing to believe climate change a hoax or trickle down economics a miracle because some huckster tells us so.
More than anything else, we need to develop our "brain muscles" to understand claptrap when it is offered up to us as the Second Coming whether the subject is food or health or politics or personal finance.
4
Thank you for the courage to write this article. Disordered eating does look different in men. Previous comments have said what I would. Our society has really screwed up views of beauty and food. And as a mental health professional I encourage you to talk to a therapist specializing in disordered eating.
7
- It would perhaps be going too far to call this kind of behavior an “eating disorder”.
No, I don't think so.
Just because an unhealthy attitude to food and exercise doesn't kill you in the short term, doesn't mean that you aren't doing serious damage to your health and body in the long term.
Apart from a less than optimal quality of life. Seek help. This is not normal.
5
Overeaters Anonymous is a 12 step program without dues or fees that says: "You are not alone anymore! No matter what your problem with food — compulsive overeating, under-eating, food addiction, anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, or overexercising — we have a solution." The only question you need to ask yourself is if you relate to the 1st step: "We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable." If so, check it out. I've been eating and exercising normally for years. It took many years find normality and peace of mind, but OA worked for me.
5
“But nor do I have a healthy relationship with food or exercise, a fact about my life that up until recently has been more or less obscured by my gender.”
Mr. Stackpole, judging by your essay the problem is less your gender and more your excellent health.
Not very bright. Foolish in fact.
Every athlete knows that you need energy in the form of carbohydrates to fuel exercise. Best if they are good quality carbs, and a variety.... but the amount needed also needs to be scaled to your actual level of athletics.
Sedentary people... should limit their carbs to complex carbs only... and again.. in scale to their sedentary life.
1
I saw my son fall into disordered eating (or eating disorder?) in his first year of college with weight restrictions on a sport. I recognized the signs of "I can't eat that" (say, a cookie) as harkening back to my own disordered eating of my youth, trying to be like Twiggy in the 60's. (Never mind that I was built more like Marilyn than Twiggy...)
Women have done this forever. Sadly, now men have bought into this insanity. I see how futile and stupid it all is now that I am older. I would tell this author to just stop. Love yourself and enjoy good food. Let go of the MANIA...it only makes you more unhealthy! Meditate and get to center. All else will fall into place.
6
Vanity isn't always about appearance. All vanities boil down to showing that you are better than others. So-called bio-hacking is a kind of arrogance or intellectual vanity.
But I get that disordered eating or exercising can also be about fear and control.
5
"We live in a time of wellness not as health but as transcendence." Not as health OR transcendence - but as industry. Just admit that it is just another scam to con underconfident people into buying something or doing something that makes no sense when one stands back and thinks about it. As PT Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute, and two to take 'em." The cons change, but the principles remain the same.
1
I appreciate, respect, and learned from this article. But it rubbed me the wrong way when Stackpole said that now we can learn what eating disorders are really about, stripped of gender norms.
Anyone who has paid attention to the experiences of women who struggle with ED knows how centrally they are about control, not vanity. That’s why sexual assault is such a typical precursor to an ED.
Maybe what Stackpole really meant is that now we will learn because we will listen to men’s experiences, in a way we never have women’s.
21
My (step)son wrestled in highschool. He was goo at it.
His coach was one of those who exhort their charges to lose weight -so that they can compete at lower weight categories. Lower, I mean, that their natural healthy weights for active teens.
SO that was how I was introduced to male "disordered eating_ -- obsessions with weight, and intake and irrational ideas about health and strength. Actually, it was when I found him deliberately vomiting a few days before a meet.
He didn't remain obsessed. I wonder how many others that that stupid coach did push into bad habits or lifetime problems.
And while I read this understanding that the writer has come to doubts about this approach - - - young guys looking for an edge would probably comb it looking for new ways to get an edge...to gain more illusory control.
8
As a physician, I look for facts. The literature is filling with studies showing longevity benefits of daily fasting windows. Ketotic diets have helped many get off meds for hypertension and type 2 diabetes and lose serious weight. The dogma of conventional nutritionists Is a bit harder to tolerate. They have a lot of trouble explaining their “low fat 3 meals a day” goblygook for the last 50 years. The ADA diet is not helping most type 2 diabetics. Sorry bud, labeling a proven diet as “fad” or “eating disorder” does not look at the entire picture.
9
Also known as the Adonis Complex
1
No, Mr. Stackpole does not have a psychological disorder. He is just another media exec whose self promotion activities includes aggressively-seeking body perfection...and talking about it.
I wouldn't call diet/fitness obsession a Millennial thing, or a Silicon-Valley thing either. The typical 33-year-old coder is munching Goldfish throughout the day, and his workout consists of 30 minutes on the elliptical machine.
It's the bro who wants to look hot on his book jacket photo, or standing at the dais doing his Ted X talk that goes for all this stuff.
3
I lost 50 pounds in past year by cutting carbs and sweets. Maintain it by consuming less than 1000 calories a day. Fast one day a week.
1
@Saundra Raynor
It isn't at all healthy to be consuming fewer than 1000 calories per day. I very highly recommend seeking out a nutritionist to help you figure out how to maintain a healthy weight healthily.
7
As a 52 year old female having grown up in the usa I of course was obsessed with dieting exercise since I could read a magazine, and started drinking diet soda quite young was the same with all my girlfriends in high school and college.
And yes diet challenges where we would see who could lose the most in a week, but luckily did not end up in an actual eating disorder.
not blaming the magazine or the soda, but luckily have got much smarter as I grow older.
So i understand the siren song of fad diets and extreme exercise when you are young.
I now adhere to a premise that everyone needs greens, some people fruit some not, and pick your choice of protein whether veg or non veg. the more you workout the more carbs you can eat.
I may be the last person alive that can use regular milk in their coffee and no problem with dairy products in general, but for others I know the various milks are helpful and dairy is an issue.
And get some form of exercise several times a week.
I am lucky that all the fad diets I tried did not impact my health as I got older, and lucky I have really good genes, I am not on any meds which for my age is pretty rare.
So whether a disorder or not, I just advise to get to the doctor on a regular basis to make sure that any extreme diet or exercise is not impacting your health in the long run.
2
@marie
We spend a fortune on unnecessary visits to doctors. Meanwhile, the cost of caring for the truly sick soars. Many who are truly sick cannot afford to see a doctor while the worried well consume resources. If you're not sick then you don't need to see a doctor.
1
How do we know when we are sick? Postmenopause, I gained weight. My thyroid was underperforming. My doctor put me on levothyroxine and I lost 30 pounds. I’m now 135, whereas most of my life I was 112. I understand this is a good weight for me now. My leg hurt when I rose from sitting, but I could walk miles. To check out this limited pain, I had an MRI at 59 that revealed my femur head had died. I had a hip replacement. If I don’t go to the doctor occasionally, someone else’s life isn’t bettered.
1
A really simple hassle free way to control your weight is to weigh yourself EVERY morning when you first get up.
That's it, the entire program, No charts. no schedule, no rigid diet, no mandatory exercise, no fees, no ....
After a month or so, you'll be down a pound or two, maybe 20 lbs after a year - assuming you have the "excess" weight to lose.
Just this simple step allowed me to take (and keep) off 40 lbs for more than 20 years now. Sometimes in the course of a year maybe I'll go up 5 lbs or so, but it always goes away.
The key is EVERY morning, not just once in while.
5
YOU OWE ME A COOKIE
15 years ago I read a study about eating disorders and gender. Turns out, it's pretty much the same number when measured by age. Moreover, looking at old studies, it was concluded that it has been an issue since women started having the issue.
Incidentally, that's thought to be when people started buying clothes at the store.
It's sad. Six packs are the thigh gap of dudes. Sometimes you are just striving for something your body is never going to do.
3
@Kate A six pack is rather different from a thigh gap, though. Developing muscle (working out your core) is a whole different animal than changing the actual frame of your body or losing enough fat (overall! you can't target just the fat in your thighs) that said anatomical frame doesn't matter.
Highly recommend meditation twice a day, 20 minutes each. No mention of the brain which communicates with the rest of your body. Highly recommend that you start doing some serious reading. There are also a number of Ted Talks on YouTube that might be helpful as well. There are plenty of experts that are spending their lives researching mind/body functions that don't involve following fads.
3
As someone who has been there, done that, and found a way out that has kept me at my ideal weight for decades without dieting or obsession, may I suggest three areas for exploration when/if you meet with a therapist:
1) The cost of this obsession in terms of time and emotional energy. What is the obsession preventing me from feeling or doing?
2) The need for control and the fear of losing it.
3) Learning to experience and accept the body you have.
Facing and exploring these questions like a curious scientist is neither quick nor easy, but it's the fascinating road to healing. Keep us posted on your progress.
6
Mr. Stackpole may or may not have an eating disorder. A screening test for risk is not a diagnostic test.
The fields of nutrition and exercise physiology are rife with as much pseudoscience as real science, and Mr. Stackpole, along with many others, seems unable to separate the wheat from the chaff, to use an apt metaphor for his eagerness to try one fad diet after another. He also does not to learn from his experiences that these do not live up to the hype surrounding them.
In the end, despite his statement that he does not have a healthy relationship to food or exercise he seems content with his approach to nutrition, exercise, and health. He will not change no matter how he describes his condition. He has much less insight into this than he believes, and I do not think his insights will be helpful to others who have eating disorders or think of them as applying only to females.
10
@MEM
Excellent and insightful comment. In my view, this comment deserves a gold star. Hilda Bruch coined the term 'eating disorder' in her 1973 book. I have a copy of a first edition in hardback. How many here commenting are even aware of her book, let alone have read it?
3
I read that book in 1976.
Fascinating and insightful.
Thank you for your honest vulnerability. This obsession with perfectionism and control over our lives and bodies as perhaps a response to “a sense that the world around us is spiraling out of control” makes sense to me. We need to have compassion for ourselves and others and try not to abuse our bodies, minds and souls so much. We know how and what to eat to be well: fresh healthy foods in sensible portions that taste good, like the Europeans do! Sometimes we forget what we already know and keep trying to re-invent the wheel. Let’s relax and Enjoy the good foods we are fortunate to eat...
4
While I am sure this has already been mentioned in the comments I want to point out to the author that classifying and eating disorders as “conditions that send people to the hospital and sometimes kill them” is reductive and partly untrue. While many people suffering from an ED may be hospitalized or even die, many others do not show clear physical symptoms that they are struggling. Many people with an ED are overweight, many people with an ED are not losing weight, and, just as you did, many people with an ED feel that because their body is not in such an extreme state of collapse as to require hospitalization they aren’t really suffering from disordered eating. However, as is the case with many illnesses, EDs have many different presentations and degrees of severity. It would be incredibly hurtful and destructive to tell someone struggling with depression that they aren’t really depressed as they haven’t yet tried to kill themself. Saying EDs and hospitalization go hand in hand creates a twisted litmus test for being “truly sick”. At best this can dissuade people suffering from getting help, and at worst it can push people even further into their illnesses by lifting hospitalization as some sort of accomplishment. I know that your point was to explore some these ideas, but please know that
1. Many people with and ED will click on this because of the nature of the title and 2. This sentence will be all that they leave with.
15
@Julia Berghoff
Very good comment. I agree. Unfortunately, just as those with clinical depression or lifelong melancholy may get very little relief from seeing a MD, GP, psychiatrist or any other medical expert including psychotherapists, so will many with experiencing eating disorders.
There is no simple solution to all this. In many ways, eating disorders reflect the hopelessness and complexity of the human condition. Life is complicated in so many ways.
4
Only in the US you read about these crazy people doing extreme diets and extreme physical activities. I am yet to meet or read about these type of people when I travel to other countries.
@Socialist How would you so easily know in other countries? There is nobody more secretive than somebody with an eating disorder. Perhaps only in the US are these subjects actually discussed more openly now but I can tell you from first hand experience of living in the US, UK, France, Japan and Singapore that I've known people in all these countries who fall under the behaviours described in this article. Actually, in Japan and Singapore the need to be thin resulted in some of the worst eating disorders I've learned of. Several of my coworkers (female) in these countries had alarming bulimia issues. And nobody EVER talked about it.
I'll take the American open approach to talking about this issue anyday.
14
@Socialist I have personally known multiple friends and acquaintances with eating disorders or who undertake extreme physical regimes or challenges in England, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Switzerland, and Norway, and have heard about the extent of these problems in even more countries. They include people who admit to having a problem with eating or exercise even if they look fine to strangers, and those who are severely emaciated or obese, and/or have physically damaged their bodies to the point that they cannot disguise their problem. Read some newspapers or publications from other countries, and I am sure you will find plenty of evidence that it's not "only in the US."
5
Mr. Stackpole: I'm not a doctor but the only health problem I can identify based on your self-description is a surplus of good health that persists despite your strenuous efforts. I suggest patience and rest -- if you live long enough the problem will wander away on its own.
3
We will never know if this "bio-hacking" is successful until the hackers reach healthy ages of 90, 100, 120. I may not make to 100 but I am not obsessing about food either. I suppose I have no desire to live a longer but more obsessed life.
3
Check out "Bright Line Eating" if you want to keep weight off, have peace of mind around eating, and a kind of freedom from these compulsions. It's working for thousands of us.
If we did not have so many neurotransmitter signalers in our food, overeating would not be a problem. If we did not sit in front of a computer 12-18 hours a day exercise would not be either. The writer is adapting to stresses imposed on all of us by our ceaseless promotion of profits over people and the notion that only lazy people are unable to work insane hours...
7
We should recall that Hilde Bruch coined the term 'eating disorder' in the title of her 1973 book 'Eating Disorders: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, And The Person Within.'
While almost everyone has accepted for many years that anorexia nervosa and bulimia are eating disorders, that is not the case for obesity where there has been an enormously successful push in the USA and in other western countries amongst the overweight, the obese, and amongst many mainstream feminists in particular, aided, abetted and funded by the US fast food industry, to ensure that obesity is not seen as a disorder of any kind.
4
@Colenso
When the majority of one's citizens are obese is it a disorder any more? Or is it just the new "normal"
1
Thomas, Your article failed to hit on what is the most essential aspect of this discussion; what is a healthy weight and does it really matter enough that we should attempt to reach it? This all began with the nurses study many years ago that established the BMI scale. At that time the research established that a BMI of 18 to 21 was the baseline for the most favorable outcome for mortality and morbidity. Even way back then the researchers did not recommend that weight to the public instead using 19-25 ( a BMI of 25 is 6 times more likely to develop diabetes than 21 ). You never revealed your BMI and if you are aware what a heathly BMI is for your height and age.
You seem to not have investigated the source of the diets you have adopted such as intermittent fasting to see if there is scientific basis for its safety. Perhaps more research and a science based goal would help you.
4
After a cancer diagnosis and a consult with an integrative oncologist, I became a 'biohacker' during my treatment, fasting before every chemo (thank you Dr Valter Longo!!) taking food based supplements like reishi mushrooms, curcumin, etc. My integrative oncologist also had me doing interval training during chemo to keep my heart healthy. I kept to a low carb (zero empty carb) diet. I began taking metformin and melatonin for their anti-cancer properties.
In between chemos, I felt fantastic. No more aches or pains, plenty of energy. Fat melted off me (though not obese, I am now about 25 lbs less than I was pre diagnosis). My BMI was low when I was diagnosed (23?) but it is a lot lower now. And I still have some bodyfat and do not look skinny.
I intend to stay on a "nutrient dense foods" diet for the rest of my life. I have not gone back to any of the high carb foods or booze that I gave up a year ago, except now I permit myself a couple of "treats" a month (whether a cocktail, some good bakery bread, or a serving of fries). I keep my window of eating to about 11 hours. I do not buy any processed foods. I am the weight I was 30 years ago and I do not intend to pack it back on!
We not only eat too much, we eat frankenfoods. If it does not mold in a few days it is not a live food.
When we think about evolution, our bodies have evolved to eat mostly veggies and fruits, and to have 'feast/famine' cycles.... today it's just feast, feast, feast on a 24 hour basis.
7
"We typically tend to think of these behaviors as feminine ones. As a result, there's often an impression that they're primarily about appearance and, sometimes, vanity."
Why would this be? Why does a "feminine" behavior equate to being "about appearance and, sometimes, vanity"? It's limited, frankly simplistic view of things. It assumes that appearance is the most important thing, which it may be in the eyes of the beholder, but this is not necessarily true for the woman herself.
Maybe, just maybe, she's not doing it for you. Maybe it has nothing to do with you.
I'm truly sorry that it takes a man personally experiencing disordered eating to realize this, but perhaps the realization itself is a positive step.
8
Going to the extremes of any activity whether it's eating or exercising, generally is not a good thing.
1
"In an era when so many of us feel the world spiraling out of control, maybe it’s just the promise of being able to control something — to will a change, any change, into being — that’s the draw."
Over 40 years ago, when I was 12, I became severely anorexic & nearly died. It had nothing to do with appearance or vanity. Mr. Stackpole's sentence above pretty much describes what I believe to be the main cause of my eating disorder. I am a female but I'm thinking the issue of feeling in control is a big one for both sexes.
Thank you Mr. Stackpole for this article.
4
I am in my late 60's. Last year I was feeling bad about the extra thirty pounds I was carrying around. I went on line and found a German wonder powder that promised all the nutrition I needed. All I had to do was drink a glass of it three times a day and supplement with vegetable broth and lots of water. I amped up my exercise and after a month I had lost 10lbs and after 3 months the rest of the 30....I then spent the summer climbing mountains in Europe and New England feeling twenty years younger...since then I have put back around twenty pounds because I love to eat and drink (wine being a killer to any diet) but I am getting ready to give it a go again. Call me a yo-yo...I say I have the discipline to enjoy life and then to pay the consequences for my excess. It would be nice to be in perfect balance but I am not built that way.
2
@Jemenfou
Your German wonder powder was likely skimmed cow's milk powder reinforced with vitamins and minerals, like any one of the many reinforced skim milk powders made by Nestlé etc.
Other animal proteins such as from chicken eggs, or dried goat's and sheep's milk, and plant derived proteins such as soya bean powder may also be used. Because none of them are complete foods for adult humans, they must all be supplemented with added vitamins and minerals.
2
My whole life, my father wanted to get back down to his college wrestling weight.
He walked and bicycled, one time even taking a trip to Ohio on his bike. He did as much physical labor as he could so long as it was at least moderately intensive. Things like raking the leaves and mowing the lawn got moved to me in my teens.
Long ago he bought into the idea that eating fat is what makes you fat (which, we now know, generally is not the case). When I showed him research that butter was a bit better for the body than most margarine, he still refused to buy butter because it "tastes fatty."
Dietarily, he ran into trouble when he was told to eat less protein. He had written off fat as trouble. He didn't think highly of sugar and had been trying to cut some carbs. He did lose weight, but it wasn't like his joints needed it. He was constantly cold, even wearing a padded parka on a hot July day in Lexington MA.
Even when he finally reached that target weight, his long-cherished goal, he said he wanted to lose just a few more pounds. His health was poor and he was taking unproven dietary supplements, but he still focused on that single metric of weight as if it were the most important part of his health.
My father lived longer than his father by over a decade, and his attention to health was part of that. His eventual obsession with his weight above his general health contributed to him passing away earlier than he otherwise might.
Rest in Peace, Dad.
9
I live in a city often cited as the fittest in the country, and obsessive, disordered relationships with food and exercise are pretty much the standard among a certain class of people. Men and women, alike.
Go out to dinner and one third of the table won't touch gluten. The second third is keto and the final third is on the Whole 30. When you announce that you, "eat anything," the other diners gasp and laugh. It takes a little joy out of shared meals, with all of the nitpicking over ingredients with the waitstaff and virtue signaling, along with the 30 minute conversation about that day's workout that inevitably follows!
37
@M I was just visiting Boulder and I can concur.
2
I have struggled with weight for my entire adult life, losing and subsequently regaining ever larger amounts of weight until, at age 53, I had a BMI of 41.3. I lost 100 lbs over the following year and have kept it off. It's now been 4.5 years. I feel great and look, well..., I look like an old man. But I feel great. And my BMI is under 30.
I know I have a dysfunctional, pathological relationship with food. I will not change that. What I can do is stop the yoyoing. I no longer truly enjoy food. I eat "favorite" foods with the trepidation of a whipped dog getting affection from her owner. I take it. I want it. But food has become corrupted. I cannot trust it. I now deliberately eat lots of mediocre food, carefully chosen fast food like the Egg Mcmuffin or I try to think of it like fuel.
It isn't ideal. But ideal needed to start about 35 years ago. It's just what I have been able to do.
6
I wonder if the author has taken into account the potential negative impacts on his body from all the stress and concerns he described? Good health results from a harmony of all factors, not just weight control. It doesn't sound as if his mind is at peace.
7
This is just another symptom of a seriously ill society. It is the obverse side of the overt consumerism that may well destroy humanity. Or more accurately, it's a consumerism of the soul - an effort to achieve happiness by suppressing consciousness of the true core of unhappiness: a deep and abiding sense of alienation from the world.
7
Humans have thrived in all corners of the world eating an incredible diversity of foods. There is no such thing as a magic diet.
13
I think the author hit the nail on the head in mentioning that it gave him a sense of control. As a former anorexic, that sense of control along with a heady sense of power and accomplishment is so very familiar.
10
Biohacking, or in general the process of zeroing in on the methods of arriving at optimal physical and particularly mental (cognitive/emotional/spiritual) health?
Ideally you want to start with a healthy, and as well functioning body/brain system as possible. Prior to modern medicine people sadly died for a number of obvious reasons, but just as obviously certain people not only survived but thrived to lead to modern humans existing at present day.
You want a body/brain system to begin with which can withstand and overcome multiple stressors, everything from disease to missing pieces of necessary information in the environment, which is why historically the ideal human is closely associated with the multiple environment standing and adventurous and crafty nomad, and why advances in computation, A.I., seek a system which needs to cure itself as little as possible while reaching out and processing in valuable fashion as much of the environment as possible.
You want a body/brain system which needs to cure itself as little as possible, but curates as much as possible, adds as little of the unnecessary to itself as possible, and grows, develops, transcends by only the addition of the necessary, and this is the basic premise of everything from forming an army to creating a work of art, and to developing a scientific theory.
Modern life for all advances, additions over previous ages, overloads humans with the unnecessary, and should add only the conducive to roving animal.
Please revise this statement to remove the gender bias and misrepresentation. A mental health issue is not about vanity:
"We typically tend to think of these behaviors as feminine ones. As a result, there’s often an impression that they’re primarily about appearance and, sometimes, vanity."
11
@M.H. Exactly. And no "we" don't think of these behaviors as feminine ones about appearance and vanity, if by "we" you mean anyone who has spent more than ten minutes learning about eating disorders.
@M.H.
The author is making the same point you are. "We typically tend" = "we usually think this, and we're wrong."
2
The exact point the author made was that we should NOT accept the stereotype, that it is a mistake to believe this is a “female” issue.
4
People who have body issues or food issues do have problems with extreme diets. While these diets may be effective for some, they can be very unhealthy practices for others. In my 12 step Overeaters Anonymous group, we welcome not only compulsive overeaters, but also bulimics and anorexics. Many among us have gone up and down in weight our entire lives. Many have exchanged one addiction for another. We have those who have gained control over their food addictions, but who now have an exercise addiction. Our society in particular is one of extremes. We have so much obesity while boutique, highly priced gyms are all the rage. We have Costco selling huge quantities of processed foods, and we have foodie shops and restaurants. We need balance and sanity. OA and other 12 step programs offer free therapy for anyone who is willing to admit they have a problem with any drug, activity, or substance such as food. Mr. Stackpole try a month's worth of meetings there.
5
As the mother of a 14 year old boy, this is now on the radar.
About a month ago he mentioned a friend told him if he exercised before breakfast, it was more 'effective' in terms of losing weight.
Since my kid is just starting to develop, I was like, 'hey, you need to grow, not to diet. It'll happen. You'll lengthen out'. He's not overweight by any means, and is very sporty, but he just has sort of plumped up in the middle. Our paediatrician assures us is perfectly normal, and will pass.
It bothers him anyway.
It starts early, and it isn't just girls.
24
There's a lot here. Some with which I agree and some I do not.
I've been using prolonged fasts for over twenty years as part of my overall health regimen. There's a large and promising body of peer reviewed research demonstrating its health benefits, notably by Dr. Valter Longo at USC and Dr. Jason Fung.
Results may vary for readers. I can only offer that the physiological and even, yes, spiritual benefits I obtain from prolonged water-only fasting are remarkable. I'm left with an envious physique, and during and after the fast I experience deeper meaning in life, reduced cravings for alcohol and myriad other bad habits.
It's somehow impolite or impolitic to say it, but very simply, as Dr. Fung will tell you, nearly all obese Americans would benefit tremendously by simply NOT EATING for prolonged periods. Be it a "time restricted" window each day, a prolonged strict fast, or something in between. We've all been brainwashed that you need to eat constantly, and snack. You do not. Stop eating, folks.
225
@Southwestern squatter
I am not familiar with Dr. Fung but I am pretty familiar with Dr. Longo and the research he has done, and he does not promote prolonged fasting (he also says whatever the benefits of intermittent fasting are, the timed window of eating, he says that doesn't do the same thing as genuine fasting). His approach is to do fasting 2-4 times a year for a week, and the people who do regular, prolonged fasting may end up doing themselves harm (there have been a number of the vegan crowd over on you tube who suddenly have these videos saying why they aren't vegan any more and state all the ills of eating a plant based diet..but don't mention the ridiculous fasting they are doing).
Dr. Longo also found through research a diet that mimics fasting because he points out the obvious, fasting is very, very difficult for people, and if Dr. Fung says the answer for obese people is to stop eating for prolonged periods, he is coming at this with the holier than thou, it is simple to lose weight neo puritanism that simply doesn't work. Dr. Longo's longevity diet is basically a relatively low protein, mostly plant based diet (with some fish thrown in), that incorporates fasting (or a fasting-mimicking diet) several times a year for 5 days, which likely would work better for obese people than prolonged water fasting, which few can really do.
23
@Southwestern squatter
There is no question that most Americans eat and drink too much; however, anyone that has been paying attention in the last 40 years also knows that prolonged fasting slows downs the metabolism in an adverse way.
There IS something called moderation. The all or nothing mindset is dysfunctional.
76
@Morgan Thank you!
18
Just wanted to know if you know how to cook?
I just made a sesame crusted ahi tuna for my wife and I with snap peas and scallions. It was delicious.
I work out every other day for strength and ride bike seven days a week.
I'm 5 lbs. over high school weight. 180lbs/6'1"
Never had a problem with execise or food. They go together.
Remember "If you eat you must exerise."
PS. I do love my BEER.
7
There's a reason bread, cheese and rice (even beer and wine) have been around for thousands of years, and the fad diets mentioned in the essay come and go in a flash. Forget about calories, cholesterol and carbs and focus on protein, vitamins and minerals. The body will settle down to a proper weight and respond with the vitality that Mr. Stackpole needed after a half mile into his run. It's really not that complicated.
6
Another sign the structure of our society is not supportive of its members. Too much alone time, few valued roles for most of its participants, and lacking daily meaningful group interaction. We aren't made for this.
4
A very disturbing story in regards to what we think about our bodies. Instead of celebrating our body as wonderful engines of life, for some reason we feel we must control every aspect of our bodily functions. Within the article we can hear the self loathing that some people feel about themselves.
It is not until our bodies begin to fail, do some of us realize that waking up each morning is a miracle.
Hopefully this article we be a wake up call to many who don't realize that there thinking might be slightly distorted.
7
@Tony
Right. Also we think waaaaayyyy too much about appearance. It's as if we have a moral imperative to take up as little space as humanly possible, except for those areas that emphasize our sex.
There is no end to peoples desire to be healthier than healthy. It was called snake oil back in the day. Today its GNC, keto and biohacking. Its all an illusion. There is nothing, repeat - nothing, in GNC that will make me healthier than a balanced diet, adequate sleep, work/life balance, whittling my to-do list, and strong relationships. That the myth is perpetuated in glossy magazines and social media is shameful. Nutrition research is infamously hard to conduct, consequently there is next to nothing the scientific community can say for certain about diet other than eat minimally processed foods and not too much. The rest is human's insatiable appetite for wishful thinking.
8
I wonder how many of these concerns existed before industrialization? People either were hungry because they had no choice or worked up an appetite by the mere physical demands of living. If anyone had occasion to be worried about weight it was the rich, but back then a "robust" frame was a hallmark of wealth. "Rubenesque" women were sought after; they were probably healthier and more fertile overall during their childbearing years because of the extra poundage.
The idea of someone spending hours hoisting chunks of iron over their heads to no obvious end would have struck these people as absurd and likely some form of possession. It's only within the last hundred years or so that we have become so divorced from the stresses that formed us over eons that all sorts of drastic substitutes have had to be devised. And the ultimate irony is, why do you need a bodybuilders physique at all in this society, to look at your phone, sit in your car, or ride on an escalator?
10
When I was a teen, I was slightly chubby and was occasionally subjected to disparaging remarks from my parents. At one point, they even sent me to see a dietician who took one look at me and asked "Did your mother talk you into this?" She then proceeded to give me some healthy eating tips but nothing extreme.
Fortunately, I was a self-confident teen and focused my efforts on eating well and being able to complete fun runs/ hike up mountains rather than on my weight or appearance. I never developed any eating disorders and my mom consistently took credit for the weight loss that came along with my eating/ exercise habits although in reality, her nagging didn't help one bit.
Years later in medical school I was complimented on my ability to talk to patients about their diet, exercise, and weight management. What my professors did not realize was it was based on life experience, not on my schooling.
I congratulate Mr. Stackpole on recognizing his own issues and trying to work on them. For most people, moderation/ unprocessed foods is key and I see most diets out there as fads. Also, I counsel people to focus on what they can or want to do - e.g. walk 20 minutes 3x/week, eat more veggies -- rather than weight/ appearance as a goal. Often, their weight/ appearance improves by simply adopting healthier behaviors consistently.
14
I'm honestly so grateful that this discussion is reaching further than just the female population now, and bringing awareness to other types of eating disorder. I think support for men with EDNOS has been suspiciously lacking for so many years now and this is a wonderfully eye-opening piece that can help shed more light on these issues. It also sparks a line of recognition with my own habits; as someone who has been walking the line with orthorexia for years now I'm hopeful this is a movement that will give a platform to men to speak out about these issues and maybe prompt a rise in help for those at risk.
3
One of the biggest problems with our current economy is the sheer number of sit down jobs. Sometimes I sit for six hours straight without standing up. The whole time staring at a computer, not running a machine, which would have taken some muscle exertion. The writer tried to get ahead of this and went to an extreme but at least he has tried.
6
My father had what we called "an unhealthy relationship with food" for my entire childhood. He was underweight, refused to see doctors, and exercised compulsively. He would run 13 miles on Saturday mornings and pushed both of his daughters to commit similarly to being "tough". We never had family meals together because my father followed a strict regimen of black beans, greens, and grilled fish, and he made his own separate dinner, the same thing, night after night. He also suffered from panic attacks and excessive rumination, but I guess for the reasons Mr Stackpole has described, we figured he was beyond help, and his routines seemed to make him happy. Nothing changed until my sister developed severe anorexia when she was 13, and our entire family had to go in to her residential treatment facility for counseling on the weekends. At the hospital, we saw eating disorders of all kinds, people of all ages, shapes and colors. My sister, too, was a strong and committed athlete. She never looked "sick", but her heartrate was low enough that she was sent to the emergency room and permanently damaged some of her bodily systems. I am so thankful that we are beginning to talk about the different variations and narratives of eating disorders (because that IS what they are). I hope that as we progress and educate, people and young men like Mr. Stackpole and his peers will seek the same treatments we prescribe to "real" eating disorders.
15
When I first began teaching two decades ago, we worried about the girls developing eating disorders, anorexia, exercise bulimia, etc. Now we worry about the boys too.
4
We're constantly bombarded with messages that we're broken in some way, and those fads are the solution that's going to repair us. Even with the knowledge that it's all nonsense and exploiting our vulnerabilities to make a buck, the messaging penetrates us because it targets our insecurities about who we are and what we desire to be. There's a truth to it - that we (more and more of us) are overweight, sedentary, and eating poorly. And that's a huge problem going forward when the problem is getting worse and the efforts we put in are often in vain to change things. Being able to separate out what makes a healthy lifestyle and what the article identifies as an obsession with being a path to success is important, because those same obsessions and force of will required to meet the basic health guidelines are becoming indistinguishable these days.
2
@Kel and the medical community is no better thrusting people into a BMI category box instead of putting focus on healthy eating and a bit of exercise. Every time I go to the doctor and have a weigh in those in front of me are taking off shoes, belts, removing change wallets, socks, and more to have a scale weight reduction.
4
I have only read the top few comments up to this time, not read them all.
But I am surprised no one has given this type of disordered eating it's name of orthorexia: an eating disorder or type of disordered eating that takes a focus on healthy food to an unhealthy extreme.
It may start with innocuous or laudable goals so it goes unnoticed or even encouraged, but it goes far beyond that to unhealthy and sometimes life threatening.
24
@S
Oh please, there is no such medical condition as 'orthorexia'. Let's not add yet another pseudo-medical label to the hundreds already being used to pigeonhole persons.
Orthorexia nervosa is not currently recognized as a clinical diagnosis in the DSM-5.
Orthorexia nervosa was and remains simply the term coined in 1996 by Steven Bratman to describe Bratman's own obsession, as Bratman had come to see it, with eating perfectly.
Essentially, the term was Bratman's way of humorously and wryly deprecating his own food foibles by taking the existing name of anorexia nervosa, which is a very serious and often lethal medical condition, and forming a neologism in dog Latin.
I cannot emphasise this strongly enough. Orthorexia nervosa is not a recognised clinical diagnosis or recognised clinical entity. Even Bratman himself, who essentially coined the term tongue in cheek, recognises this.
1
It's never about the food, or the exercise, or even the "ideal" or "goal". It's about the illusion of control over the one thing there is any hope of influencing, ourselves.
8
A thoughtful piece worthy of serious discussion. There is some reality and research behind the idea that adults need less calories as we get older, especially if we don’t work manual labor. Sometimes what we think is poor eating is simply adjusting to getting older. That said, it is still critical to take in fiber, nutrients, water, if our bodies are to function correctly. There is also something to be said for balance in all aspects of life. Why do people need to be so extreme?
1
Men have always had a much more constrained relationship with food than what you'd believe if you spent more than ten minutes researching various eating disorders. I remember as a kid watching a morning talk show that highlighted unusual mental health issues, and one of the segments was dedicated to "manorexia," one of the many unnecessarily gendered terms that means "anorexia, but boys do it though."
As a teen and young adult, I struggled a lot with my weight and undoubtedly had an eating disorder of my own, but I was easily able to go undetected thanks to the excess of weight I had. When I shed most of it, I was congratulated rather than approached with the concern that I needed, and even after I fainted during school one day, nobody really cared to take much notice in how little I ate.
I came to terms with all of this and fought these battles on my own, as many men who struggle with their self-image, body and eating do. The actions Mr. Stackpole so candidly describes almost certainly fall under the scope of EDNOS, or eating disorders not otherwise specified. I'm unsure if this nomenclature is still relevant, but this was the term used for EDs outside of anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating in the mid-2000s when I was a kid. Thank you for sharing your experiences. I hope more men can seriously consider the potential seriousness of similar extreme actions through the lens of an eating disorder.
9
I confess that I constantly judge all strangers I see as to the shape of their bodies. Yes, I compare my body to the in shape guys I see and think some more chin-ups can regain for me a flat stomach at my age of 67. However, I now eat so many healthy foods that I can easily gain weight. This healthy diet compulsion started after I read a New York Times article in 1975 about the Georgian centenarians eating yogurt and drinking white wine. In fact, most of my healthy food advice comes from this fine newspaper. Okay, time to go out for a run to burn off the turkeyburger and IPA I had for dinner. I always get an IPA because of a NYT article about how healthy hops are.
10
@Jeffrey W. Trace
but did you read about the calories those IPAs ?
We can argue about what exactly human beings have been eating for millennia, but one thing we know for sure is that fasting has been a commonplace throughout most of human history. Human beings are well adapted to going without food periodically when food is scarce (though of course many humans have died of hunger). Science has also found that there are improvements in longevity among people with lower caloric intake (within reason). It seems like a stretch then to call conscientious fasting disordered eating, especially when the much bigger problem in our time is overeating.
14
While I agree that the biohacking world is overwhelmingly male, and give props to the writer for sharing such a personal story, I am a female who has benefited from fasting. When paired with a low-carb, high fat, moderate protein (i.e., ketogenic) way of eating, fasting comes rather naturally when you become fat-adapted. I came into this way of eating because my partner had cancer, then paired keto-eating with chemo and radiation, rapidly shrinking large tumors. Fasting helped alleviate chemo-related problems such as nausea and hair loss. I'll never forget how the oncology nurses, shocked at his fast progress, chirped: "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it!" It's been five years now (four years in remission), and we're both adamant on staying keto-ish the rest of our lives, using (both intermittent and extended) fasting as a way to stay healthy. When you're about to lose your life, as my partner faced, and when you're about to lose your loved one, as I did, you do what you can to survive. Now we're both thriving. Once diagnosed by my GP with prediabetes with a HbA1c of 5.9%, I'm now in a normal range. My chronic asthma is gone, and the best part is that I've weaned myself off, along with the help of my doctor, all anti-convulsant and other meds I once took for bipolar disorder type 2, depression and ADHD. I'm nearing 50 and look and feel younger and stronger than I ever did in my 20s and 30s. Both my husband and I are looking forward to many years with our kids!
20
I read this with compassion. Of course, you’re faced with disordered eating. Having dealt with this my entire adult life, finally largely free of it, I send you all best wishes for transforming your relationship with food and your body. We all need to eat, and how we do that best — well, that’s the touchstone for wellness.
9
You have touched on something that is a more serious problem than many people realize. It's not just adults, but young boys who have turned obsessive thoughts into unhealthy obsessions with healthy food and lifestyles, and, unfortunately, there is no dearth of so-called health experts and protocols and diets that they can tap into on the Internet, as well as many irresponsible people and companies that thrive on the demagoguery of extreme health. This is a serious matter. It can be life or death for the younger people who jump into some extreme program with abandon and see their grades, their relationships, their emotions, their brains, their futures, hurt by the all-consuming fads and the deprivation. Something needs to be done to counter the preachers of extreme diets and at least keep the children safe.
107
@Manu--I agree with everything you say, Manu. But it strikes me as absolutely bizarre that we use the words "health" and "healthy" to describe what, by this author's own account, are horrifically UNhealthy behaviors. There is nothing "healthy" about starvation, and nothing "healthy" about restricting oneself to only one or two foods (ground turkey and broccoli for two months?!?) None of the behaviors this author recounts can possibly be described as "healthy eating," if words mean anything at all.
33
@me Exactly! This is a true eating disorder and has a name, orthorexia, very much recognized and treated by eating disorder professionals. I should know. I suffered from this condition and it nearly ruined my life, both physically and emotionally. Thankfully, I underwent excellent professional treatment and dug my way out of the rabbit hole.It is important for anyone and everyone to call out the multitude of self-appointed "health gurus" as the snake-oil peddlers they really are instead of just watching them laugh all the way to the bank. It is also important to lobby for more accessible/affordable treatment for the many who are not as fortunate as myself.
7
@Manu I recommend the carnivore diet -- my rule is that nothing that comes from a plant should cross your lips or enter your body (I make exceptions for coffee, tea, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and herbs and spices). You may think this is an extreme diet -- almost all calories come from steak, eggs, fish, and dairy -- but it has transformed by health for the good and my physique has dramatically improved as an unintended side effect. I'd be an idiot not to continue down this path and encourage others to do the same.
Has Mr Stackpole ever considered consulting a registered dietician to assist him with creating a healthy diet? When my doctor diagnosed me as seriously underweight as well as obsessing over what to eat or not eat, due to me being supportive of my husband's successful WW led loss of 75 lbs, she was alarmed and sent me to an expert. The dietician reinforced that I needed to eat for me, not him, and that healthy complex carbs were essential to my health. I am back to a healthy weight, and my husband has maintained his weight-loss. Win-win.
151
Glad this conversation is finally reaching men, though many women who have experienced eating disorders likely read this article thinking this man is deluding himself if he thinks he doesn't have one.
Anorexia and bulimia are two types of eating disorders, but there's also many people suffering from EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise speficied), the catch-all for people who don't quite fit the specific definitions of the first two, but whose relationship with food is significantly affecting or impairing the way they go through life, often with long-term health implications. We've long known they're not about vanity -- and though they often have much to do with control, it's too reductive to say they're purely about control. And it's important to remember you often can't see an eating disorder by looking at someone -- for instance, the average person with bulimia is slightly overweight, despite TV shows and media often implying otherwise.
When you've (mostly) recovered from an eating disorder, you realize how alarming it is the way our society encourages and glorifies many of the behaviors and mindsets that fuel them, and just how inescapable they are in mainstream society. I've always thought that obsessive bio-hacking has been a thin excuse for behaviors that are, at the end of the day, just disorders.
210
@G
Actually, people (including women) who have been treated for anything are likely to recommend seeking assistance sooner.
I can’t think of a woman who, upon hearing these eating plans, would think that they were ok and would worry for any male who thinks it is. Even when we do this to ourselves, we would never allow a friend to.
7
@G as a former bulimic I have spent my life trying to conquer disordered eating. Recently I have read about an eating disorder called “orthorexia” where people become obsessed with eating “correctly”. Veganism can be a gateway to orthorexia, and what this writer describes seems to fall into that category as well.
I agree that anyone with an eating disorder would recognize this behavior as disordered eating.
11
@G
I think it is long past time for eating disorders to be redefined out of their narrow parameters of anorexia and bulimia.
8
Julia Child said everything in moderation. Thank you, Thomas, for a thoughtful, smart and honest essay about our obsessions. I have had an obsession with food and how it makes me feel almost all of my 60 years. I still grapple with it. Only with such open ended essays can we (you, me, all of us) approach grappling with the truths about ourselves, our bodies and our minds.
One point that gets missed is that people who are obsessed with their own weight and fitness are inevitably judging the bodies of other people. The whole point of this concern about appearance (sometimes called "wellness") is comparing to others. If you are so focused on losing just a few more pounds yourself, can you possibly be generous and kind toward people who are not? There is such hatred and cruelty directed at people who are quote/unquote overweight, or not as fit as they "should be." There is ample evidence that weight and body shape have a strong genetic component. (Sorry, folks, so do heart disease and cancer.) Yet we judge, judge, judge ourselves and others as failures.
254
@Reader Severely eating disordered people actually generally don't think much about themselves in comparison toward other people (media images, yes, real people, no). The disorder is defined in part by extreme hatred of the self - and that self-hatred is so intense that others almost don't exist. Anorexics aren't sitting around calling other people fat - they're too busy calling themselves fat.
73
@Reader, you asked: "If you are so focused on losing just a few more pounds yourself can you possibly be generous and kind towards people who are not?"
Yes actually, very much so.
One way to challenge the overly punitive self talk many with eating disorders engage in is to ask yourself whether you would talk to a friend or loved one the same way you talk to yourself. Many of us are much kinder to others than to ourselves.
22
@Reader No, that's just not true, at least in my example-of-one.
I'm obsessed with my own body to the point of insanity. Have been since I was kid. I'm not always in perfect shape, but the self-loathing and self-destructive behavior I engage in when I'm not is, objectively, horrifying. (Why I'm like this really doesn't matter, here.)
I truly don't, and never have, cared how fit my friends or family are, from a visual standpoint. I love who they are; how they look isn't what matters to me, at all. I could care less what strangers look like. (I suppose I get a little grossed out by extreme obesity, but whatever...it's not my business and it's not something I pay much attention to.) I'm attracted to men who are reasonably in shape, but an extra 10-20 doesn't bother me (yes it's shallow...going for honesty here, not tact.)
I was anorexic for several years in my teens; for many years after that I remained underweight by severely restricting my food intake and exercising (a lot). I kept a journal dedicated to criticizing my body starting in 4th grade.
30 years on, I'm still extremely critical about my own body. If I have ANY visible flab, I feel anxious, embarrassed - to the point that I won't date, and certainly won't have sex, for years on end. Thinking of being intimate if my body doesn't feel "clean" (=lean, without any squishy bits I don't want) makes me feel horror and panic. I wish this weren't so. Knowing intellectually how nuts this is doesn't make the panic go away.
26
When I was a teenager, every day after school I would spend at least an hour picking out white sand from the rice my mother was going to cook for the family meal. It was an onerous task - I had to spread all the rice grains in a single layer, making sure no sand left among them, and it was my sole responsibility to make sure my family wouldn’t break their teeth on pieces of sand. I never thought of complaining, and everyone thought it was normal. We all understood it made plenty of sense for the farmers to mix sand into the rice they were selling to the city folks - if they mixed one pound of sand into every 50 pounds of rice sold, they would have one extra pound of rice saved for their own family. Rice was precious, so was every food item. We didn’t know any “unhealthy” food. It was hard enough not to go hungry; we cherished everything edible. Now, having lived in the US for more than 20 years, I still don’t understand why people have such widespread love-hate relationships with food. Isn’t it because food is too readily available? Just to think of it - we exploited the world, devastated the environment, depleted energy sources, and as a result expanded our heftiness. Now we have to struggle with such a ridiculous task called “losing weight.” Don’t we have better things to do?
365
Agree with you but it does not lessen the pain of being overweight and having a lonely relationship to food. There is a reason why cultures of plenty have people with eating disorders. It is complex and worthy of its own NYT article., if the studies are out there.
33
@Phat Katt
I am puzzled and curious. Why didn't you rinse the rice in water? If water was also precious, one could imagine letting the sand sink to the bottom of the water, draining the water, and then using the same water to cook the rice. I suppose you would have needed a sieve. Maybe that is why. But you can make a sieve by poking appropriately-sized holes in an object. Maybe it was meditative. I can sorta see that. But for a teenager, I would also imagine that such a daily meditative chore might get old right quick.
Those are all the reasons I can think of for not using a sieve, and they're not very good reasons, so please let us know why you chose hand-picking sand out of mono-layers of rice instead of using a sieve.
37
@Phat Katt excellent comment and enjoyed reading your thoughts. “Food” for thought.
10
All three of my closest friends (all male) in the military cycled through extreme, arbitrary, and oftentimes harmful 'diets' as soon as we settled in to our first duty station together.
We were young and had little control over anything in our lives. At the time I wrote their behavior off as ill-fated attempts to maintain their physiques without the rigorous exercise our heretofore training required.
With time, and a partner who worked at one of the few inpatient eating disorder facilities (they only accepted female patients), I saw their eating habits in a different and more sinister light.
They've all left the military now, and have more control over their lives. But as they navigate the unique stressors of college, pernicious diets like the author describes reemerge.
We need to pay better attention to eating disorders, and it is about time we include men in the discussion.
203
@Fourteen14 - "To stop all that, the number one thing is not buy what everyone else in the supermarket buys. "
Depends on your supermarket. One of my markets is Asian and everyone there buys vegetables, fish, rice, and noodles. Everything is fresh (except the noodle packs) and by and large, everyone is trim and mobile even though they look like they are in their '80's.
19
@Fourteen 14
You consume carbs, because if you did not you would be dead. They are the body's prime energy source.
Consume no carbs and your body will start burning fats and proteins for energy. Continue not consuming carbs for a month or two, and you will be dead. 100% dead.
40
@Fourteen14 The mania against carbs in the USA is ridiculous. Having grown up in Italy and moved around the world, I have always eaten pasta, which is a healthy food, and excellent bread, and good quality, home-made pizza. I prefer whole-grain carbs. My weight has always been stable and I perfectly fit into all the charts of healthy weights. I exercise regularly through hiking in the mountains, swimming, skiing; no weight lifting. And I am 58. So really this anti-carbs mania in the US is totally weird.
24
Thanks, Thomas, for sharing these intimate details.
I am forty-seven, but when I was sixteen, I was diagnosed with anorexia. At the time, it was considered a rich, white girl's illness.
While I was only considered anorexic for about two years, it took me about ten years more to "get normal" with food. For me, perseverating about food and my body allowed me to numb and distract myself from what I was actually dealing with: Bipolar 2 disorder. Our brains are so clever!
Do you have an eating disorder? I don't know. Whenever I check in with my psychiatrist, he says, "So Sarah, tell me this: do you feel like you are your best self right now?" He really means: Am I peaceful? Do I feel like I am living the life I was meant to live? Am I present to the people who matter to me? Do I feel joy and contentment, or do I feel like there's a hamster wheel with six frantic hamsters in my head? I think those are good questions we can all ask ourselves. Maybe the answers can help us see just how disordered we are.
I do know this, Thomas: your honesty gives others--beyond rich, white girls even--permission to contemplate and explore the role that food, diet, and exercise play in their life.
Thank you for that, brave fellow!
284
@Sarah C.
Interesting, the Biopolar 2 intersection. Thank you so much for sharing that.
Wishing us all ... Well.
18
@jazz one
Yes! When my doc told me that people with anorexia often have low levels of serotonin (as do people with clinical depression) I found it oddly comforting. It meant, maybe, the anorexia wasn't a choice or a sign of vanity; rather it was how I coped with a mental health condition that, at age 16, I didn't know how to manage or even identify.
How "funny" that I would rather have a mental illness than a rich, white girl illness.
Have a great day, Wisconsin Jazz.
23
@Sarah C.
My major problem was depression, and (of course) anxiety, and I would binge eat at times of extreme stress. Which we do because for a moment it alleviates some of that. (The image of the 6 frantic hamsters is sooo evocative. It also makes me laugh, so maybe visualizing anxiety as a bunch of hamsters will help alleviate anxious feelings!)
It takes time to get right with food when the original connection got messed up; and a rejection of lots of judgmental messages that are constantly shot at us.
Of course it doesn't help when our bodies/ brains have their own responses - - but it's just what life handed us: we can arrange to care for ourselves using diet, exercise and the advice of a good counselor, as you have, to shape our lives.
15
I used to look through Men's Health magazine that some of my guy friends had laying around. I was very surprised at the emphasis on food and dieting, although it was not presented that way. But the recipes gave the ingredients in weight, in grams, and were hyper-vigilant in the amounts, especially fats (e.g. 13.6 grams of organic, cold pressed extra virgin olive oil). And there were specific sequencing in how and when to eat. I found the whole thing very stressful, and I consider myself well informed on diet and exercise. I can see the attraction to fasting, providing some freedom from incessantly thinking about what to eat.
3
Eating disorders don't always land you in the hospital. They are nagging trolls that live in your head. They lead one to risky and harmful behavior. Starving, unnatural weight loss or gain are both harmful the the body as is trying to control the body through excessive exercise.
As an older person, of 66 years, I look back at the demands I placed on myself and wish I had understood these legs, hips and back of mine need to last a bit longer.
If you have to ask if you have an eating disorder you do. The solution is not in what you eat or don't. Perfection is not simply illusive, it is an illusion. There are better ways to look great. My advice is get a good tailor and make friends with yourself.
20
My husband has been fasting for 19 hours each day, eating only dinner, beginning with fresh fruit at 5pm, for several months. He has lost about 25 pounds during this time. He intends to continue eating this way since he needs to lose more before he could be considered at a healthy weight. I admire his will power and envy his weight loss. Our internist does not approve of this "extreme" method, but I believe we need to start where we are. I have followed this method before, lost a few pounds and then fell off the wagon. I need to try again.
10
As someone in recovery from an eating disorder I find the broscience and biohacking troublesome. Obsession with food and body, behaviors that lead to isolation, and extreme behaviors done in the guise of healthfulness are all red flags. However I think nonexperts are quick to call out ‘eating disorder’ - it’s a conversation between a person and his/her doctors and psychiatrists.
This article alludes to the privilege required to live this lifestyle: time, money to spend, internet to ‘research,’ podcasts and lifestyle books at hand... I question the perspective of commenters who encourage this lifestyle because America is in an ‘obesity crisis.’
15
I wonder if restricting eating, to a few hours a day, is our more natural biological state. The constant feeding and food focus, one culturally advocated and reinforced by the food industry, is where the disorder lies.
21
Clear thinking and admirable honesty. Without having anything close to a diagnosable eating disorder, I’ve known for years that I have a very different relationship with food than most of the people around me - more about control, less about impulse. When we feel like the world is spinning away from us, we grab onto anything we can. It’s refreshing to see acknowledgement of how much compulsive behavior comes from similar roots, regardless of gender or economic status or anything else.
7
I’ve always been naturally skinny. I’ve never had to watch what I eat, except for a few periods when I had to consciously *increase* my caloric intake in order to avoid getting overly thin.
On that background, in my mid twenties, I started weight training and quickly put on fifteen pounds of muscle. The physical changes were noticeable - and gratifying. I derived a real sense of power and control. “If I impose this discipline on myself I can change my body’s shape - fast - and in a way the world finds attractive.”
I thought at the time, “This is how anorexia works.” What you eat and how much you exercise is something only you control, and especially for people who lack control in any other respect, the power to make changes in how their bodies look and feel is intoxicating.
26
@Aaron Walton
Can we just defer to some experts please? Eating disorders are quite complex. The author brushes the surface of tendencies that reflect our times and concerns, and yes, he would do well to examine his situation with a professional. But please watch the analogies: Yes, eating disorders can have roots in a need for control, and therefore of course in the degree of anxiety or fear (sometimes about physical or social development) that underlies that need. But when normal growth or development or life habits are disordered, it is usually because of the vicious bio-dynamic circle of near-delusional, certainly deceptive, disordered sense of self, or improvement, or achievements that can spiral out of starvation and related behaviors. Like addiction, ED can go from controlling something you do to those compulsions controlling you, and they can be very insidious, hard to treat, and in too many cases, fatal. Yes, men can fall prey to ED - even in the 1980s I knew a lovely guy in his 20s who struggled with one. Much respect to anyone on that hard road, and compassion for their families too. As with many human tendencies, urges, habits, and related behaviors can be a difficulty or a bother, but when they threaten health, work, life, there may be more to grapple with than what is apparent.
3
@Nell
I don’t claim to be an expert in eating disorders or to offer anything approaching an etiological theory. I am, however, a medical doctor, and have long experience managing the medical complications of behavioral disorders such as anorexia, substance abuse/dependence and personality disorders, and I would suggest that your blanket rejection of analogy as a means to coming to grips with such protean behavioral disturbances and your deference to “experts” - experts who have been unable to agree on a single understanding of anorexia, it should be said - is misplaced.
@Aaron Walton I don’t think this is how anorexia works for all. The brain changes, and the reality of what the body needs to survive cannot be seen by the person: it is not control but trapped biological obsession that can kill. Refeeding and getting the weight up enough to change the brain may be effective-
It's troubling that he thinks his new intense interest in health and wellness is ultimately negative. He suggests our current approach to food is what we should personally strive for. In fact, our current approach is terrible--2/3 of American adults are overweight or obese. We eat too much unhealthy food too frequently. We allow food corporations to continue to manufacture cheap food that is chemically programmed to addict us. We allow children to become addicted to unhealthy eating habits that are difficult to change later in life. We don't offer any real nutrition education--what we learn in school is often put out by junk food corporations spewing lies. We barely do anything to curb sugar consumption. The fact that it took a ton of political pressure for the negligible improvement of putting "Added Sugar" on Nutrition Facts labels is testament to the anti-health system we've created. To top it all off, studies in epigenetics indicate these issues compound over generations.
It's not fair how much knowledge and discipline you need to be healthy. In any sort of decent society, it should not take this amount of effort just to avoid getting fat and, more importantly, developing metabolic syndrome. However, while we're subject to the prison of addictive food and socially ingrained perpetual eating, we can't succumb to corporations' sly plan to make us think our current eating habits are a "healthy relationship with food".
16
Well said Jay, the way the circus is set up perpetuates the cycle for generations to come. For now, as you pointed out, it is a privilege to be able to break the cycle, when it should be a basic right.
I would also add that the current set up is feeding the climate cancer (we are past stage 2 “climate change”).
We lack the sense of urgency to address these issues by design. Shame!
5
@Jay "It's troubling that he thinks his new intense interest in health and wellness is ultimately negative." That is why its a mental health issue, for him. He largely was talking about himself. And whether it's internet porn, food, booze, exercise, all can become mental health issues, get to a point where its having a negative impact on your life. And he's doing something about it, talking about it, taking an on-line questionnaire that indicated he might want to go see a therapist. Sounds pretty functional, intelligent, mentally healthy (in general) behavior. Until you experience such a thing, humans can have real trouble with empathy. We think everyone else is like us and should be and if they aren't, we get very uncomfortable about it. We frequently ascribe a failure of character to the person or tell them to "quit whining." We want them to stop talking about it because it bothers us because we can't relate to it. And to humans, in general, different and difficult to understand equals bad. But that's more of a reflection of our stuff, both individually and societal. If you read this and can't relate, be thankful you have the problems you do and not someone else's. And maybe, if you're nice to someone about their problems, someone will be nice to you? Just saying.....
1
Life to a certain extent is a crap shoot and taking action beyond not smoking, not drinking to excess, exercising moderatly, wearing a seat belt and driving safely there is little fad diets, cleanses etc can do to prolong ones existence.
To think otherwise is magical thinking and folly.
7
@Edward B. Blau consider reading the research on fasting and intermittent fasting you might be surprised....
5
No but they can reliably shorten one’s existence.
@Ryan Nagy I fear "research" is a euphemism.
1
"if I asked you to picture someone grappling with disordered eating"
...I pictured morbidly obese people. Anyone else?
15
I pictured an anemic size zero model or gymnast.
1
Sounds like the author has a boredom problem as much as anything. If he were to redirect his energy toward other pursuits he might face equal or greater risk. Maybe dial it back a bit but we all have our quirks
6
Pizza is your friend.
6
Yeah, please stop abusing your body because it's the only thing you feel you have power over. Treat it kindly, as you would any friend.
7
Think back...Macrobiotics...
The swinging 60s. Zen Buddhism. Yin and yang. Eat raw brown rice to clean out your "system."
Popularized by George Ohsawa. "Sanpaku" (Not good) He died of a heart attack in 1974...
8
@Joe Blow
If I recall.. he was also a chain smoker.
Nothing wrong with a macrobiotic diet... but it needs to be properly tuned for the person consuming it.
1
There is an appalling level of disinformation here. Among other things, the author did not ever create a calorie deficit to lose 10 lbs of fat in 7 days. Simply not possible.
4
@Mrs H He doesn't say he lost ten pounds of fat, just ten pounds. When one begins a keto diet, the glycogen, and the water attached to the glycogen, is flushed out of the muscles forcing the body to turn to fat for fuel. The water stored in the muscles can easily weigh ten pounds in a 200-pound man. I lost about 8 pounds my first two weeks of keto and I'm a petite middle-aged woman.
5
So--did you go see someone?
7
There are more eating disorders than just bulimia and anorexia nervosa. This author is describing not "biohacking" but orthorexia nervosa---an unhealthy obsession with eating "healthy."
32
In addition to control, anorexia involves body dysmorphia. None of us look at ourselves in the mirror in a completely objective, factual way, but for some, the distorted perception is severe. When I look at some of the bulked up, vein-popping bodybuilders, it's hard for me not to imagine that they see something very different in the mirror than what the world sees.
12
The "healthy relationship with food" we were programmed to have was "Eat as much as possible so you can store your fat for the winter" while we walked for 13 hours throwing rocks at animals to kill and eat them. Maybe not so good any more.
2
I’m glad that the female friends caught themselves when they laughed. Many men are affected and struggle with body shame. The fear of fat is ubiquitous in NA. I noticed it in my daughter recently after her first year of high school. It’s sad and part of me gets really scared but then this fear of fat has become normative! I’m mad about it too.
13
Read Eating Disorders by Hilde Bruch. The best book about eating disorders that I have ever found. Not many people know of it.
2
It’s not the strict calorie restriction (Dorsey style) that is disordered eating, but the fanatical and sequential attachment to the latest diet fads. I think what Dorsey is doing is very healthy, for body and mind.
For years I commuted by bicycle. It took about an hour each way, and that kept my weight within an acceptable level. But as I got older and had a few accidents (damaged knee, broken shoulder), I decided I'd done enough exercise for a lifetime and stopped. Rising blood pressure proved otherwise.
Here in Japan, a company can push you into retirement at 65, even when you feel you're not ready for it. However, I guess I was considered enough of a health risk for the school to send me out to pasture. A sudden change in lifestyle caused the blood pressure to come down, so here I was feeling a lot more fit, but out of work.
Six months later in May, I was called back to fill in for a teacher who suddenly quit at a branch school up in the hills. I found it was only a 35-minute hike there and have made it my morning routine. I'm drenched with sweat when I arrive, but I bring clean clothing to change into. As a result, my blood pressure is still down and I sleep a lot better.
I'll turn 66 in August, but I feel I can keep doing this forever. Extreme dieters, take heed.
13
I know a teenage boy who one day just passed out, went from standing quietly in a room to sprawled on the floor.
After a fair amount of panic, we learned that he'd "gone vegetarian" without actually knowing what he was doing. His diet was missing so much that he just fell down, passed out.
I wonder if this author knows any more about what he is doing to himself, or is just waiting for the day he makes himself fall over.
9
Concentrating so profoundly on how one eats, exercises, looks, and then researches every latest diet, supplement and training schedule does speak to control. Control is often ephemeral and mostly denied.
All one has control over is finding purpose and meaning. Pick something that inspires you. Quit investing in the illusion of control. Beneath the quest for control is the subtext of happiness, the most elusive of states. Happiness is a byproduct of life's experiences. Don't mistake it or control for a goal.
13
This is nothing new however, and a mistake to equate it with broish biohackers in Silicon Valley primarily. Even a decade ago, fasting was taking on speed for age restriction and cellular resetting (TIME notably had a one page piece around 2008 or 2009 titled "Diet Trick? Stop Eating") and I've been doing it for years. Three years ago, it was proven that total fasting for only 48 hours resets and rebuilds the immune system from scratch. What we need to do is rexamine our eating habits and ceremonies; breakfast and 3-tiered meals were created by companies to make a profit. Fasting is a tried and true method of total health that far exceeds trends being discovered just now by people who are uneducated on it.
12
I think you missed the point
11
Control issues and diagnose-able disorders aside; It's a shame you did all that experimentation and didn't take notes. If you are going to bio hack, at least do it systematically with the known biology and medicine as your staring point. (eg. muscle destruction (exercise) requires protein for repair). Some of it seems random, but the unsustainable status quo of the food supply is palpable and sure to at least cause anxiety if not full on eating disorders.
3
I was skeptical about where this essay would go, but found it to be thoughtful and insightful. Nice job!
10
I would recommend that the author look into the statistics around eating disorders and men more closely. It is very common for boys/men to have them even if it isn’t talked about. It seems to be a ever growing problem. One we should all be taking seriously.
8
I take issue with the phrase "healthy relationship with food," especially the word "healthy." What people actually seem to mean by it is something more like "average," i.e. "not involving much thought or effort."
If a person wants to achieve an unusually high level of bodily function and/or appearance -- athlete-level strength/stamina, or model-level leanness/tone -- then their relationship to food cannot be average or unthinking.
People who eat in an average, unconcerned way do not have elite bodies. A key part (indeed, probably the most important part) of achieving and maintaining elite physical condition is eating in a very precisely targeted way. This doesn't always mean eating *less*, especially for people focused on strength or hypertrophy. But it *does* always mean paying very close -- unusually close -- attention to what you put in your body, how often, and how much. It also requires you to persevere through food-related discomforts, e.g. hunger pangs, specific cravings, or feeling uncomfortably full.
Now, some people in the world do eat so much or so little that they become morbidly obese or dangerously thin, or their psyche breaks down under the strain of obsession. *That* is what we should call an "unhealthy relationship with food." It results in poor health -- hence, "unhealthy."
But a strong, fit, attractive person who is unusually careful and disciplined about what they eat? That's the furthest thing from unhealthy.
21
@rumplebuttskin My experience is that exercise is a more important factor than diet, assuming that you aren't eating total garbage.
That aside, I find Mr. Stackpole's reflections to have the ring of personal truth. Not an easy subject to discuss in a forum with open, public comments!
2
@blm
Yes, it depends on the goal in question.
If your goal is to win a powerlifting competition, exercise is probably more important than diet (although you're going to need to eat a lot and emphasize protein).
If your goal is a top-shelf "beach body" look, diet is much more important than exercise (although you will benefit from strength training, especially if you want a stereotypical male beach body).
1
The obsession makes it unhealthy. Plenty of “fit healthy” people are eating disordered. But it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks; addiction is best treated if self diagnosed.
2
Eating disorders _are_ about control. This author makes it seem as though eating disorders are a) only for women, b) only the sort that become so extreme one ends up in the hospital, and c) that they are "only" about body image. One's relationship with food, eating, and exercise, can be very complicated and makes for a lot of inner conflict. That is true for me. Call it whatever you want. I think the point is that, if it makes you unhappy, effects your quality of life and relationships, it might be worth looking at and thinking about. I do that - on my own and in therapy.
45
@Rachel V
This is exactly what I was about to write. Thank you for getting there first and saying it well.
2
@Rachel V - I think you and the author are actually in agreement. He seems to be saying that, like many people in our society, he originally THOUGHT those things you mention were true. But then he realized that his own eating habits are also disordered, even though he's male and they haven't sent him to the hospital, etc. Good for him and for those who read this.
10
@Rachel V - Thanks for bringing up the control issue. If you spend any time on the ED forums, most folks will admit that at their core, that's what EDs are about.
When my wife proudly told me two years ago that she had lost over 70 pounds on a low carb diet and then said that I should do the same, I pointed out that if I lost 70 pounds, with my 6 ft height, I would be considered anorexic at 115 pounds. She has since gained back 40 pounds. I have since lost 15 pounds. The New York Times health editor said that no one would consider that a diet.
10
@John: among the many reasons that DIETS DO NOT WORK….is that the results are temporary.
Your wife did pretty well lasting for 2 years and keeping off 30 lbs.
But I am sure she wanted to maintain that 70lb loss.
Why did it STOP WORKING for her?
Two years is not very long in terms of dieting.
Unless you've kept the weight off 5 years, it really does not count.
Low carb is very hard to stick to, because most foods have carbs in them. In fact, your body NEEDS carbs and will turn up your hunger until you crack and eat some.
Your digestive system turns literally EVERYTHING YOU EAT into glucose as that is what "runs" your body and your brain.
I continue to slowly lose weight, maybe a pound every two months. Like I said, it is not a diet.
I think it all depends what works for you - in terms of healthy weight and mental health. Personally, 1 meal per day works for me. I’m in my mid-40s and have maintained the weight I was at age 20. I can’t imagine eating 3 meals per day .... unless my work involved hard physical labor.
8
@GBR - I don't think the main issue is what and how people eat. Rather, it's the obsession, and need for extreme control, that the author describes which are evidence of a problem. If you comfortably eat one meal a day and don't spend much time thinking about it, that's different from someone who forces themselves to do so, regardless of how it feels, in order to reduce feelings of something being wrong with their body or health.
19
Everybody is genetically and metabolically different. No single food composition and consumption pattern is best for everyone. Hey, a 6 h fast may work for some people, but it wont work for everyone. Same for a low-carbohydrate diet. Lacking guidance from the scientific community, because they have no idea, it's kind of up to each person to do their own experimenting to figure out what works best for them. Is trial and error really the best we can do?
4
The cruel/dismissive/condescending tone found in so many of these remarks moves me to comment publicly on a NYT article for the first time, if only to be sure the author knows that I deeply appreciated his piece. Folks preoccupied with adjudicating whether Mr. Stackpole has a right to claim for himself the title of “eating-disordered” or “biohacker” have missed entirely the point of his reflections. It is very brave thing to think publicly about this insidious zone of self-sabotaging behavior. Thank you!
572
@Kristi
Amen! I'm not sure why people have to be so unkind to others who are taking a risk and sharing "their truth." Three cheers for brave writers!
57
@Kristi: I agree. Perhaps the negativity stems from a defensiveness when the topic is too close to home ( regardless of the readers gender).
9
@Kristi
The one and only biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit human race species began in Africa 300, 000 years ago.
Our biological nature is programmed to crave fat, salt and sugar by any and all means necessary for active hunter gatherers whose life expectancy until the last century was 35 years old.
Contrary to the past 300,000 years fat, salt and sugar are now easily and readily available. And humans are sedentary and are expected to live at least 2x 35 years old.
There is no such thing as a human ' eating disorder'. Craving fat, salt and sugar is the natural human dietary order.
5
This piece examples the flip-side of the US female's weight and body issue problems. The difference is we blame and shame the females, while we root for the males because its not been linked to any one industry - fashion, diet fads/aids, and magazines - as it is has been with females. Women have long been targeted by various industries for not being good enough of a wife, a girlfriend, sexual partner or simply a regular female. Targeted - tons of money spent - to do all sorts of harm to their bodies and brains, so to achieve some heightened state of Womanhood.
All while men and boys were encouraged to pursue similarly harmful pursuits of perfection - but left alone by the patriarchy. Mostly. The marketing was for a long time very subtle. Sports was a sponsored avenue to control male behaviors. Used as a positive modeling system. Meanwhile real athletes were harming themselves for fame and fortune, while spewing the agreed upon scripts about proper manly behaviors.
If avg. women were using steroids and other PED's in their local gyms the way many males have been over the decades...it would have been deemed shameful and an epidemic. They would have been pilloried, called gullible as we normally do with females.
But Bro's...nope. Just boys being boys. Bro's relying on "science", bio-hacking gurus, and a billion dollar supplement industry selling all sort of potions to be more of a man. Originally in sports and "fitness" mags for decades, now on various social media sites.
18
@Boregard I also love the fact that we assume with women it was about vanity and not control despite women living in a world in which they had little to no control.
15
Only someone with ready access to food would play fasting games like this. I doubt too many South American refuges on a trek to safety would have much inclination to bro it up like this. Disgusting. But in a way, it explains to some degree why we have Trump. We just have too many things to entertain ourselves with to actually think or care about anything or anyone else.
11
@Danny Right on.
1
And, just think, it's been just a few days since the bizarre hot-dog eating contest took place on Coney Island, with contestants downing scores of hot dogs in rapid succession - and people viewing the extreme spectacle.
"Extreme" is a silly goal. "The Triumph of the Will" translated into eating only in a 6 hour period?
At least the author is looking at his behavior rather dispassionately. That's a rare ability!
2
I'm a little surprised by the intensity and negativity of some of these comments. I found it to be a thoughtful and well-written piece, with the one caveat that I agree with Emily that I suspect women with EDs develop them not out of vanity, but for the exact same reason as men: as an attempt to exert control over one element of life. Anyway, thanks for writing this piece: I definitely recognize elements of my own behavior (and of other men I know) in here...
457
@Adam
Yes control, especially after being attacked.
I had no interest in appearing attractive, quite the opposite.
8
@Ivy Agree! My daughter, at age 16 was very pretty. Strangers told her that on a daily basis. Then she was sexually assaulted. She became anorexic and restricted calories with a goal of weighing 97 lbs in an effort to exert control over her life (but the ED actually derailed her life.) She hated her attractiveness. Thought it made her a target for the assault. Recovery is a long journey.
15
@Adam
Some commenters are superior human beings and always right, and so they must be careful not to allow themselves to consider the nuances and full human complexity of what anyone else says, lest the surety of their lofty perfection prove more fragile than they dare admit. I wish I were still surprised by the intensity or negativity of such comments.
9
Yes, seeking control — “to will a change” is a great way to put it — is a big part of dieting and disordered eating. Ultimately, though, a person with an eating disorder will lose control. The disorder takes over, gradually. If you find yourself thinking it’s a good idea to do a long run after eating a fistful of raw kale, that would be a good time to pause and reflect.
7
All the hand-wringing over people who rebel against the massive overconsumption in our society is completely misguided. By far and away, our biggest problem is excess nutrition. That's the epidemic that needs to be addressed. Interventions such as intermittent fasting are scientifically validated (see Longo at USC, Mattson at JHU, Panda at the Salk Institute, etc.) The criticism heaped on Dorsey and others is incredible when more than half of Americans are obese.
14
My therapist used to say "Its not a problem until its a problem." I have mild OCD and I create lots of rules for myself, about eating and exercise, yes, but also about laundry and grocery shopping. Its not about the topic, the rules make me feel safe and in charge, just as Mr Stackpole says his strange eating choices do for him.
So, when is it a problem?
I've spent some time in an Eating Disorder clinic and I can tell you with certainty ED is not about vanity. Its about a deep hatred of ones own body in its natural normal form. I would say you are walking the line when you say: "The delicate balance of appreciation and loathing I felt for my body tipped — I felt it was betraying me and spiraling out of control."
Loathing your body is not healthy. Feeling that it is betraying you and needs to be controlled (and maybe punished) is a problem.
53
“I dare do all that may become a man, who dares do more is none.”
I’m not quite sure what might be involved in the compulsive pursuit of diet crazes, as though they could ever possibly fill the emptiness that is being human, but this kind of pattern behavior seems like it must inflict a devastating toll on a person’s body.
‘Wellness’ is a completely meaningless concept. You’re either well, or you’re not.
An overwhelming amount of scientific studies have identified a healthy dietary pattern -- lots of fruit, veggies, whole grains, low-fat dairy and not a lot of foods from animal. Not a lot of processed foods or foods with added sugars. There is a huge amount of latitude there for personal preferences. I work for a health organization and read thousands of scientific studies a year. Fad diets make me sad -- they are an expression of a need for control, lack of trust in our corrupted food system, mistrust of health organizations etc. Its just a lot of misinformation.
31
@Goldie
I can't take seriously anyone who uses the phrase "processed foods." It's a trendy but entirely bogus generalization.
Anyway, nutritional science is still little more than a tangled boatload of correlational observations. We have little idea which specific foods might actually cause good or poor health.
5
To the author and readers, other ways of relating to food are out there. Check out the books Intuitive Eating and Health at Every Size, classics in the field. How we relate to food matters greatly but is often ignored. The research is there--dieting doesn't work for losing weight and keeping it off. Diets fail us, not the other way around.
7
@Matt
Neither of those books are supported by a shred of empirical evidence. The best diet is still the one promoted by the government - balanced and combined with moderate exercise and regular sleep.
And those two books are 'diets' just carefully disguised diets.
Here is the NYT review of Intuitive
https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/19/mind-what-you-eat/
1
I guess the 'eat many small meals a day instead of 3 large ones' advice is officially 'old'. The 'window eating/fasting' trend will also pass.
What remains is, to quote Fran Drescher, "It's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you."
22
"During my adolescence, I’d had a critical but mostly accepting relationship with my body. I’d been a high school runner who could clock a respectable 5:30 mile but just have always had the kind of body that hangs onto a probably fine amount of fat."
Mr. Stackpole, I say this out of honest concern: I think you had/have a critical relationship with more than just your body, if you aren't comfortable saying that running a 5:30 mile is anything more than "respectable." That test you took was telling you something. Please listen.
32
@gmg22 - :)))))) These days, running a mile is more than respectable, period.
4
@gmg22
For a high school track athlete, 5:30 is nothing at all to brag about. He's being realistic.
1
@rumplebuttskin Well, I looked him up, and he didn't run track, he ran cross-country. For a high-school cross-country runner doing 5K races, a 5:30 mile pace is very competitive.
People who are this competitive and this hard on themselves sometimes develop some coping mechanisms that aren't always healthy. That was my point, not whether his athletic achievements were or were not anything to "brag about."
5
Recently, three young male relatives -- 18 and younger -- have dedicated themselves to vegan. (for ethical reasons )and despite laying hens in the backyard) And I am concerned-- about sufficient intake of various nutrients -- calcium, protein, iron??
Maybe they'll change their minds again?
What's wonderful about human beings is how adaptable we (our systems) are until we (they) aren't!!
4
well, look on the bright side. you won't need to worry forever. eventually everyone dies -- well fed or not.
1
@Auntie Mame Don’t worry. It won’t last.
1
@Auntie Mame
Don't worry! I'm over 65--been vegan for 15 years (plus veggie before that), and I'm shockingly healthy. You do have to pay attention, though.
And this is another topic: but having a "healthy relationship with food" might best include awareness of its sources.
1
Perhaps way down the desire to control One thing
really means fear of death? Scratch the current
'Wellness' craze surface (and heck it's been around for
decades) and it circles back, as usual, to fear of dying.
Maybe peek into the Buddhist Bardo? The new book
In Love With The World is fabulous--might touch you
in surprising ways. Good on you for your article--
there's a ripeness about you that is delicious.
5
As soon as one professes one’s interest in extreme exercise or dieting, the naysayers and sedentary will project their own insecurities. It’s not PC to fat shame, so why shame calorie restrictors? It’s weird to constantly eat and overeat. Why do people eat in movie theaters? Why do gas stations (!) serve food?
8
I, too, took the National-whatever survey and was flagged for referral to a mental health specialist for possible syndrome of some type, all because I don't want a 5-pound gain to inexorably turn into a 50-pound gain which is the norm in America.
But people who take 17 different prescription drugs daily, all with multiple known side-effects--they are doing it for their health! Just so we're clear, THAT is not body hacking, it's doctor's orders!
8
I’m surprised not to have found one mention of mental health in this piece. Words like “obsession” and “disordered” were there. But it doesn’t delve for even an eyeblink into why, exactly, the author—or other men—is so obsessed with his body that he repeatedly torments it with the faddish diets. “It’s never about what it’s about” is a good rule of thumb, and it fits the diet-obsessed well. Is it fear of getting older? Is it fear of not being found attractive? Is it a tormenting memory of being a chubby kid? Surely self-esteem is a factor, or rather a fragile sense of self-esteem. There were no answers here, only a description of the problem.
101
@John-Manuel Andriote He explicitly says it's about control:
"But what these crude approaches do offer is a sense of control in the moment — a way to tell yourself that you’re willing some change into being...In an era when so many of us feel the world spiraling out of control, maybe it’s just the promise of being able to control something — to will a change, any change, into being — that’s the draw."
8
@John-Manuel Andriote why do you consider it an obsession for a person to want to eat well and have a healthy body? Or if this sort of focus is an "obsession", then why is it a bad thing? Why is anything obsessed with anything? Why was Picasso obsessed with painting? To my mind this author is living intelligently, becoming healthy, and thriving overall. There is no disorder here.
4
It's called body dysmorphic disorder, Mr. Stackpole, Eat a healthy and balanced diet; talk with a therapist trained in treating this disorder; and recover. Good luck to you.
34
It seems to me that obsession over food and your body is itself unhealthy, in whatever form it takes. Unless perhaps you are actively managing or treating a specific, diagnosed illness that is significantly impacted by diet.
4
It is profoundly not surprising that all of the articles I read on food and exercise in mainstream media are sorely void of any scientifically based nutritional or biochemical information.
I understand that the focus of this article is on the obsession with diet and exercise.
I'd posit that if received even a basic education regarding nutrition, biochemistry and physiology, we'd have a much healthier population less obsessed with appearance and more able to 'hack' our own health.
3
@LaTalullah - I am 60 years old and think of all of the things that doctors told me were good for me like cigarettes. About every decade, everything doctors told me gets tossed out the window in favor of new "findings". Scientists are just like politicians, bought and paid for.
4
@tom harrison I turn 61 in a couple of weeks and never did a doctor tell me cigarettes were goo for me. They told my Mom that in the 50's, but by the 60's that behavior by doctors went virtually extinct. If you were born in 1958 I doubt that a pediatrician told you cigarettes were good for you - maybe you mean your parents were told this? The first Surgeon General released the first report of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health on January 11, 1964.
If a doctor was advising you that cigs were good for you (in your age group), then you had an incompetent doctor.
2
Thank you, Mr. Stackpole, for having the courage to write this piece. As a woman, who spent 15 years living with an eating disorder, I can say that it is not easy to talk or write about the stranglehold that food--what to eat, when to eat, whether to eat or fast--can come to have over one's life and one's sense of self. I can also say, as several readers do here, that most eating disorders and the suffering they inflict on millions of people are rooted in a quest for control. How ironic then that many of us, in our need to establish more agency in our lives through our relationship with food (and often exercise), unintentionally find ourselves hostage to extreme--and often harsh--measures such as those detailed here. Again, my gratitude to the author for shining some welcome light on an issue that is often shrouded in secrecy and shame.
9
When I picture someone with an eating disorder, I do not picture a teenaged girl. I picture my elderly mother, who was obsessed with control all of her life. When she could no longer keep the chaos at bay by cleaning the house, she began to starve herself. That didn't work, either. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, and it can be extremely difficult to manage. Mr. Stackpole, I urge you to get help.
25
@Ellen: my mom's best friend had a mother, who - -in her 80s -- developed terminal cancer.
Naturally what with chemo and radiation, the woman lost a great deal of weight.
Mom's friend went to visit her mother…and found the old lady twirling delightedly in front of her mirror!
"Look darling! look! I'm a size FOUR AGAIN!" she crowed with joy!
She was dead of terminal cancer 4 months later. I am sure she left behind a very very thin body.
That is how crazy the craziness is.
An 84 year old woman, who cared more about being a size 4 than living to see her grandchildren grow up.
2
It should be no wonder, we are bombarded with all kinds of things daily dealing with health and nutrition, we see the obesity rates soaring, we are told we need to eat clean, we are told that the packaged and processed foods are a disaster area, fast food is dangerous... and then you have the diet and health gurus who write books, give seminars, and these days are the darlings of you tube and instagram, touting things, from intermittent fasting, to the biggie these days, Keto, the pro plant based crowd, and people get the idea that they just have to find that golden way, they try some of these, and find they don't work for them, or don't improve what they want improved. Doctors are no help, you walk into a doctors office and they either are telling you to diet, or are obsessed about numbers like HDL/LDL ratio that may not mean anything, you can't count on them for help.
The basic problem is we are being told we are a disaster waiting to blow up, and if you keep telling people that, they end up getting obsessed trying to find that magic way.
What we really need is true research on diet and nutrition and longevity, what we have today is a fragmented mess. Research that is done is often biased (like a comparison between eating soy and eating meat, where the soy ingested, I kid you not, was wrapped in suet....study done by cattle association funded people,nuff said), small scale, or meta analysis that has serious flaws.
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Humans evolved biologically DNA genetic evolutionary fit in Africa 300, 000 years ago.
Our biological nature and nurture craves fat, salt and sugar from a time and place where all were very hard to find.
Active hunter gatherers didn't have to worry about a bounty of calories as their life expectancy was 35 years old until about a century ago.
Domestic plants and animals plus antibiotics have doubled our life expectancy. And given us sedentary access to unlimited fat, salt and sugar.
The best diet is portion control and timing. Active lifestyle helps. Along with an awareness of your family medical history.
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The problem with this article is that it seems to try to generalize the author's personal problems, which I don't doubt exist, and paint anyone who is into trying to intermittent fast or eat healthier type diets (whether they be raw, Keto, Vegan or other) as having eating disorders. I don't think the majority of people that do those diets or fast have disorders. There is a lot of scientific research finding health benefits to fasting and eating healthy whole food type diets over the standard American diet. If the goal was to shine a light on a small percentage of people who might be using health trends to cover up disorders then fine, but that's not what's implied here.
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@Peter
If it were a small number of people in this country with eating disorders there wouldn't be so many overweight people, or people obsessing over how to be "perfect". Everything is a generalization because nothing you can say about humans pertains to all of them. It doesn't mean there is only a "small percentage". And btw, binging , purging, and starving oneself aren't the only eating disorders out there.
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@Peter I have to say, this is about the 5th comment I've encountered so far lumping veganism-with-food-only, i.e. plant-based dieting, into this category, when in fact it is the only one of these diets that is about someone *other* than the person doing the diet. Fasting and eating raw, stuff like that, it only benefits theperson doing it-- if anyone at all. Plant-based dieting has broader implications.
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Thanks for your courageous article. I want to add, though, that out of curiosity, I took the screening test mentioned in the article. I have had a stable weight most of my adult life, I love eating and have never been on a diet, I exercise regularly but moderately, don't worry about my weight, etc., and I also received feedback that I may be at risk for an eating disorder. Just fyi.
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Thank you very much for a thoughtful, and thought-provoking, essay. I am very glad you shared your perspective!
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I have been similar - except for me it was fear of heart disease and later cancer that has led to extreme diets and intermittent fasting. The problem is: nobody really knows what works. It keeps changing. I went cholesterol free for years, but then it turned out cholesterol is not the root cause of heart disease - and I may have damaged myself in doing so (especially with high doses of statins in tandem, which I was happy to quit). We have been lab rats to capitalism - both on the 'wellness' side of things and the big pharma side of things. The evolution has been painful and so often wrong. I do know how to maintain a washboard stomach though: Intermittent 18 hours fasts a couple of times a week combined with a sugar/grain free world works for this 52 year old. Thanks for the piece.
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People prone to eating disorders will always find a cover. Men with intellectual pretensions call it bio-hacking. Both men and women from various religions have portrayed extreme fasting and obsessing over permitted and non-permitted foods as a path to spiritual growth. Macho men tell themselves they are building muscles and strong, manly bodies. Orthorexic vegans think they are saving the planet. Simone Veil, an anorexic who committed suicide by starvation, claimed that her restricted diet was a way of showing solidarity with the French suffering under the Occupation.
That's not to say that spiritual exercises, political protests, scientifically supported fasting regimens, ethical eating, and bodybuilding are bad things, but they can be a pretext for deadly self deception. An eating disorder is an eating disorder, and there is nothing holy, glamorous, or intelligent about it.
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It sounds like this writer is on the borderline of what can be classified as an eating disorder. Just because you are male, it doesn't mean that you are immune to eating disorders.
These "extremes" must be doing some anount of damage to the body. Especially if you are actually feeling it (i.e., running out of steam so dramatically and quickly during a run that you were previously able to easily finish.)
It's not good. Find a balance.
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"If fasting started as a life hack for the billionaire class"
Sure, if you ignore thousands of years of history.
"One time, I ate almost nothing but lean ground turkey and broccoli over greens for maybe two months"
Well, that sounds awful. Then why do something so dumb?
Lots of people turn to unconventional diets in ways that don't guarantee nutritional deficiencies. Just a thought before you disparage it all as Bro Science.
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@BW
Without disagreeing with you, the problem with fasting (which has some serious research behind it now) and plant based diets is that they are promoted through the 'bro chain' often well off celebrities crowing about how this is the way to go (not to mention the 'celebrities' on you tube that gather people subscribing to their channel, and they make money when advertisers start promoting them), or then the guys at the gym are touting keto, or *grinding teeth* twits like Gwynneth Paltrow claiming to be the goddess of all things healthy, and it becomes bro culture.
Fasting has been around a long time, though keep in mind for much of that fasting was often either promoted as a way to show obedience or as part of acscetic traditions (Janism comes to mind, or some branches of Christian belief), or to achieve some mystical state, rather than health per se. It is only in recent years that fasting has gone from being some kind of mystical/religious/diet guru kind of thing and where science has shown what it does, why it does it, and how to use it as well (long term water fasting, for example, can cause serious issues with gut bacteria and can lead to serious problems). Keto is like that, people point to lowering LDL, reversing type II diabetes as fat is reduced, as proof it is healthy eating (doesn't hurt that it is fun being able to eat bacon, cream, etc), when long term its benefits fall off, and if my suspcions are correct, long term is going to cause issues.
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The fashion for stunt-as-hobby, carefully documented for social media, has been around for a while. Back in the 80’s you got on TV on “Real People,” now you have blogs and Instagram.
Live biblically and give away your wool blend sweater! Own the number of possessions 100 minus your age! Use nothing disposable and agonize over not celebrating your friend’s birthday because the Chinese place wraps the fortune cookie in cellophane! Live off the grid with your six kids in a yurt! The possibilities are endless.
Diet/wellness is just the latest topic and soon it will be something else.
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@Di
So living off the grid in a yurt is a stunt? Strange how you're so confident of that. Of course, strapping yourself to a 30-year mortgage to live in a McMansion barely warrants discussion, as it's the standard goal and therefore a non-stunt.
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@BW
Not everyone, but it is if you’re spending inordinate amounts of time blogging about it and everything is a picture perfect adventure and occasion for philosophical reflection, as opposed to just, say, living your life.
Otherwise how would anyone even know you’re out there?
People in their 20s often have a similar realizing about alcohol consumption -- they read the definition of binge drinking and realize that what they have been doing, which is socially accepted or at least not stigmatized, is actually pretty bad for them and is a recognized part of a public-health risk.
If Mr. Stackpole's diet choices are causing health problems or are getting in the way of how he wants to live his day-to-day life, they could constitute a mental illness. I guess you'd have to talk to a pro about that?
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Remember, a solid reserve of body fat is necessary to survive a sudden serious illness or injury.
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@Fourteen14, when making statements like this, it would be very helpful to cite your sources:
"Fasting also doubles the success rate of chemo while decreasing side effects. In fact you can greatly decrease the chemo."
Thanks!
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@Florida's Dr. Bob
Depends what you mean by a solid reserve of body fat. I have heard seriously overweight or obese people say that by having that much fat, they will be able to withstand if they get something like cancer, because when the weight loss hits they have 'reserves', and that is just trying to justify being in a precarious position health wise.
On the other hand, some body fat is needed, the people who have hyper low body fat, the fitness competitors and the like, don't maintain the very low levels they have when competing. For women, too low body fat screws up their hormone balance because fat is used in synthesizing hormones like Estrogen in the body. Men, too, need a certain percent. But the idea of having this 'reservoir' of fat to withstand an illness has limits, because that fat not only can make the illness more likely to occur, it also can hurt the bodies ability to fight it. For example, when people have cancer and are undergoing chemo, they are told by the oncologist they should eat anything that feels good, to try and keep up their weight, told they should be eating excess calories..yet there is some evidence that it would be better for the patient to fast going into chemo, that fasting+chemo improves the outcome tremendously (Dr. Longo has written about this; though he is careful to point out that currently no controlled studies have been done so can't be considered proven),.
4
Anorexia and other eating disorders are ... disorders. there are significant known negative health consequences, and they impair one's ability to function well in society. Anorexia often involves pathological, often psychotic-level, self deception and deception of others.
Chasing wellness fads is not a disorder unless it actually hurts you or your life in some real way. I would say most people like you are wasting their time and money. So cut it out, you could be watching more Netflix.
Maybe the real question here is why some people seem to be reaching to diagnose themselves as disordered. . .
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Thank you for the courage of writing this. Exposing yourself, your fears and dilemmas, is not something most people would do.
We evolved as a species to get as fat as we could, with the only limit being the amount of food we could catch or find. As a result, when we have an unlimited amount of food, virtually everybody has a bad relationship with it.
So Mr. Stackpole's dysfunctional relationship with food is the norm, not the exception. And when I say "dysfunctional" I mean that not as a criticism but as an example of how almost all of us have a dysfunctional relationship with food. We either eat too much (dysfunctional) or use all kinds and manners of restricting food (which is dysfunctional).
I don't get the criticisms he is getting here. Most of the criticism is from people whose own relationship with food is dysfunctional, as is mine.
Everybody has their own theories, which they rarely believe is a theory but, because they believe it so strongly, they believe it is an established fact, a truth.
Obese people believe they have a metabolic disorder, thin people swear that the Mediterranean Diet or Vegan Diet or water diet is the explanation. Theories theories theories.
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@Travelers
Anyone can have a theory, the real answers are found in research and long term studies. Unfortunately, research into health and nutrition is poorly funded and often is funded by food industries eager to promote their product (want to know why Keto is so popular and why there are so many so called "studies"? the meat and dairy associations are backing studies, and those doing them know they are there to promote the product and find ways to 'prove' it is healthy). The government when it funds studies likewise does so out of political reasons, for example, studies to show that eating grains as the main part of your diet is a good thing (and think about this, 98% of farm subsidies go to the three big grains, corn, wheat and soy, 2% vegetables).
"thin people swear that the Mediterranean Diet or Vegan Diet or water diet " Therein lies a big part of the problem, the idea that thin necessarily equals optimal. While excess body fat and weight is a root cause of health issues, especially type II diabetes, the real problem is that we are judging based on look (thin versus fat) rather than healthy vs unhealthy. What we need is real research, not hype. What is scary is that doctors are promoting things like Keto, without there being any serious research into long term consequences (even as a short term diet to lose weight, it may have risks). We need research like what Dr. Longo is doing, based in real studies and experiments, based in real science, not fads.
3
@Travelers. Excellent comment, thanks.
1
The extreme, actually, is eating four or more times a day as most people in industrialized countries do, and never going for more than about ten hours without food. The extreme is eating sugar, eating hydrogenated fats, and eating processed foods, all while doing virtually nothing with your body except pecking away at a keyboard and staring at a screen. These are all new behaviors for human beings and must have been very rare or not present at all in our evolution.
The author is clearly a bit odd, but lumping together one meal a day with his nutty turkey-and-broccoli regime and other such stuff is not at all well thought.
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@Letmeout
Thank you for that glimpse of sanity. Let them continue to eat the garbage that they have grown accustomed to eating and continue to equivocate. We’re the unhealthy, and most likely unhappy ones, right. I don’t obsess about eating well (and what I consider just), I just do.
2
Dear Mr. Stackpole, with all due respect. If you want to biohack, or simply live longer while enjoying food and life, look at diets that have taken centuries if not millennia to develop such as the (real) Mediterranean diet and the Japanese. I have lived in this country for 30 years and although food quality and options have improved tremendously, I am still surprised by each new diet craze: paleo is my favorite one these days, but you also have to love the non-celiac anti-gluten preachers. What will be next? I can't wait to find out.
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@David S
There are so many diet crazes in this country because it's the good old American Way. People that come up with them know that there is a tremendous amount of money to be made by doing it.
2
@David S i think you might want to re-read the article
I appreciate this thoughtful piece. Couple things:
1) People with EDs come in ALL shapes, genders, ages, sizes.
2) Women with ED's do it out of vanity? I guess I don't really understand what you're saying, but I think you might've unintentionally come across as sexist.
3) Yes, your extreme dieting counts as disordered eating. I'm sorry your coworkers laughed, because it definitely isn't funny.
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@Emily I do think that the pressure to achieve a degree of thinness that can only be described as unreasonable is probably the most common trigger of eating disorders in women - regardless of their actual size. Once the disorder is triggered, it takes on a life of its own. The resulting cycle can look very much like what the author describes in his own behavior.
18
Thank you for this article. As the author alludes to, many of us have a hyper-mentalized relationship with food, counting macronutrients, restricting meal timing, etc. What's lost is a more intuitive connection with the many types of hungers that our bodies and minds communicate. Eating becomes a cognitive task, rather than a somatic experience that can bring pleasure to the senses. I recommend Dr. Jan Bays' book "Mindful Eating," which elaborates on the idea of different hungers and permits using food for emotional comfort, as long as it's accompanied by inquiry and awareness.
28
@Jordan I agree. I lost my sense of smell/taste for almost 7 weeks after a cold, and three weeks in I decided that if it never came back, I'd just use food as fuel. It really made me feel like a machine. I started eating in a more calculated way like my son, who is a type of biohacker. When my sense of smell returned, my appetite for life and eating kicked back in. It also prompted me to ask my son how his sense of smell was. We discovered it's not very good for some reason. Should have known, he uses copious amounts of spices and seasonings on everything. Makes me think that if the enticing smells of delicious foods are easily ignored, there may be something wrong with one's olfactory nerves. Perhaps the author should visit an ENT doc.
2
@Jesse
I use food as a fuel. I eat because I have to, not because I want to. Many people I've mentioned that to, think I'm weird. I don't have this love of food. If it tastes good and I'm hungry I'll eat. I'm a Marine, so I have to stay within height/weight standards and so I exercise regularly. If I didn't have to eat food ever again, I would not be upset or sad.
1
Please stop giving fasting a bad name by associating it with tech bro fads -- it's an ancient practice involved in every major religion.
I think fasting (during recent times at least) is the natural next step in the war against metabolic syndrome and its consequences that have devastated the lives of millions over the past 50 years. But there's little to no money to be had from fasting, and much money in keeping the status quo, which will certainly slow fasting's widespread adoption. Many have vested interests in the population eating constantly throughout the day - food companies, pharma companies, you name it.
Yes, fasting is great for developing discipline and letting your mind control your body. But the best about fasting to me is its ability to combat the root cause of type 2 diabetes, hyperinsulinemia. The key to controlling blood sugar is not more insulin -- diabetics are full of insulin already. It's like taking Tylenol to cure Lyme disease. No, I'd rather address the root of the problem -- too much insulin -- by fasting, becoming insulin sensitive, and forcing the body to burn off its excess blood sugars before they wreak havoc throughout the body. The current standard of care is instead to inject more and more insulin and to label Type 2 diabetes irreversible.
Unfortunately, there is an all-too prevalent myth that fasting is dangerous and that we need meals/sacks all day to stay healthy. But I think things are changing.
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@Hurlbut B
Very much agreed. The solution to diabesity is really very simple, and will save you money. Just stop eating all the time.
Intermittent fasting (combined with low carb) allowed me to drop 30 lbs in 4 months and finally get below 200 lbs for the first time in 10 years.
It's the only thing that really put me in control of my weight again.
27
@Mathew
While I am not going to argue that intermittent fasting and full fasting can work for people, and have health benefits beyond losing weight (both promote fat loss, and both cause autophagy, where the body goes into garbage collection mode and cleans out defective cells, strengthening healthy ones), and while it obviously worked for you which is good, it also is not as simple as 'not eating all the time'.
Some people simply cannot do intermittent fasting, there are people who try it who literally end up sick from doing it, because not everyone reacts the same way. More importantly, intermittent fasting or longer term "true' fasting (intermittent fasting is not the same thing as extended fasting) alone doesn't improve health, even if a person loses weight, it is what they eat as well. Eat only in an 8 hour window but eating packaged foods or fast food or a diet high in saturated fat or sugar isn't going to lead to improved health. One of the proponents of calorie restriction and health, Dr. Longo, promotes a mostly plant based diet w some fish along with fasts during the year, and others of the fasting school of thought mention about eating right. The biggie isn't weight loss, but body fat, extreme fasting or not eating the right foods and you lose weight, but are losing muscle mass, not body fat, and that isn't good.
The true answer will be when they can run tests on a person, assess what the optimal food profile is for them, not 'this is the answer for all"
5
@Hurlbut B
Yes fasting is an ancient spiritual practice ....to trivialize it into some wellness hack is really sad.
5
Disordered eating can sometimes present differently in men (sometimes closer to orthorexia or "bigorexia" because of the pressure to have muscle) and the stigma regarding eating disorders is a large part of why many don't seek help.
The fixation is probably a proxy for other things perhaps harder to control.
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