How Thin is Too Thin?

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Our society is warped. Twisted. A veritable fun-house of fat and thin mirrors when it comes to body image. One on hand we have Kim Kardashian, queen of curves, compelled to exclaim in an interview, "I look a lot bigger on TV. When I meet people, the first thing they say is, 'Wow, you're so much smaller than I thought'. I look about 15 lbs heavier. I'm only 115 lbs, and everyone thinks I'm like 130 or 140. It's bizarre. I'm a US size 2!"

On the other hand we have Kai Hibbard, a finalist on Season 3 of The Biggest Loser, interviewing about how the show gave her an eating disorder to the point where she was eating 1,000 calories while working out 5-8 hours a day. Says Kai about the consequences of her experience, "It gave me a really fun eating disorder that I battle every day, and it also messed up my mental body image because the lighter I got during that T.V. show, the more I hated my body. And I tell you what, at 144 and at 262 and at 280, I had never hated my body before that show."

Kim Kardashian and Kai Hibbard I am not (and not just because my name doesn't start with K) but I really sympathize with their feelings about being on TV and dealing with the resultant body image woes.

I've gotten a lot of interesting feedback from my 20/20 piece but one of the most common comments I've got is some incarnation of "But you never looked that skinny." The implication of course is that I wasn't skinny enough to have an eating disorder. I first encountered this during my pre-interview process with Fox News. The producer kept asking me for my "skinniest skinniest pics, the ones that show the most bones." I knew what they wanted. They wanted to see a 64-lb walking skeleton with a nasogastric tube and furry arms. Because that's good television. From the very beginning I told them I never got that thin but sent them some pictures from that time period. They weren't satisfied and kept phoning, texting and e-mailing me for better pics all the way until I'd boarded my airplane. If I were more technically savvy it would have driven me to Photoshop, I swear.

The Skinny Pics Debacle Take 2 happened after the 20/20 interview taped, but before it aired. The producer for the segment e-mailed me many times asking for better shots with the implication being skinnier shots. But it wasn't limited to just TV people with their characteristic penchant for extremism. My own family joined the chorus. In an e-mail to my uncle about the piece, my father wrote, " I saw her frequently through the whole time period in question and yes, she was slim, but she was healthy, energetic, and happy (as far as I could see), and so I was never worried. I admit freely that she cares about food in ways I don’t, but hey, different strokes for different folks."

I love my dad dearly and consider him a great friend as well as a great father but his seeming dismissal of my illness stung. Friends and acquaintances jumped on the bandwagon as well - some by comparing me to the super-skinny Johnny of the 20/20 piece and others by comparing me to popular TV or movie stars. "Well, you were thin but not like Angelina Jolie thin. And she doesn't have an eating disorder." To my crazy mind all of these comments came out sounding like "You weren't thin enough as a normal girl and you certainly weren't skinny enough as an anorexic/orthorexic. Even when you're bad you're not good enough!" How skinny would I have to get before people thought I was actually sick?

Here's the thing: I had a BMI of 17. According the World Health Organization anything under 18.5 is considered unhealthy. But in a world where Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham subsist at about a 16, I do look kind of porky. And it wasn't just low weight. I lose my period when my BMI dips below 19 - a fact I've discovered on several occasions in my post-pubescent life. Amenorrhea is indicative of such poor nutrition that the body feels like it cannot support a baby. I had low iron, whacked-out electrolytes, vitamin deficiencies, a suppressed thyroid, heart arrhythmias and hair loss. But worst of all was the mental damage. I was depressed, neurotic and withdrawn.

It's true that I didn't break any bones, lose teeth or end up in the hospital with a tube up my nose - a fact for which I am deeply grateful. But I did hurt. It's just most of the hurt was emotional. And that's the wound I'm still working on healing.

At my thinnest - and most fragile mentally - I got tons of compliments. Everywhere I went people commented on my physique. One woman at the gym even told me I had "the perfect body" (as if there is such a thing). I loved how I looked in clothes, even while I was secretly horrified at how I looked naked - since I lose weight in my upper body first, my chest looked like a xylophone while my legs still kept their fatty bits. My therapist maintains that the compliments came because of my increased self confidence - and she may be right - but I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we are conditioned to appreciate only extremely thin women.

A lot of women with eating disorders look "normal" to us.

My dirty little not-so-secret is that I would love to be that weight again, ribs and all. But I can't do it and remain healthy. Some women probably can weigh what I did and keep their periods and their sanity. Not me. Not my body. And so I choose to maintain a weight higher than what is comfortable for me and waffle back and forth between self -hatred and -love because I know where the alternative leads and I can't pay that price anymore. Even if that makes me look 15 pounds too fat on camera.

What about you - does the weight you personally like yourself best at correspond with the weight other people think you look good at? Have you, like Kai, ever felt worse about yourself at a lower weight?

Confessions of a Cardioholic [My Life as a Cautionary Tale, Part 625]

This image was titled "What Not to do in an Earthquake." Good advice.

What do I live for if not to be the poster girl for What Not To Do? In March, I was Fitness Magazine's freakshow of the month in an article by Jessica Girdwain titled "Confessions of a Cardioholic." You'd think after being on ABC's 20/20, Fox's Morning Show with Mike & Juliette and in publications to numerous to count talking about my various permutations of eating disorders that I'd be used to the public scrutiny. I'm not.

(Tangent: A friend new to the area told my husband that he had heard I was some sort of local celebrity causing me to exclaim, "People do know the difference between notoriety and celebrity, right??")

The reason that I keep doing these interviews - despite being horribly misquoted on at least two occasions (my fave was the writer who entirely fabricated an interview with me from start to finish, saying that I "always hugged the back wall of fitness classes or used the last elliptical because [I] was too afraid of people staring at [my] huge butt." First, I am always annoyingly front and center in any fitness activity and second, for all my insecurities, my butt really isn't one of them. It's cute and perky and despite being minorly dimpled I love it. Truly, I have enough crazy for 10 articles, you don't need to go making stuff up!) - is because I am hoping to help other women not make the same mistakes I did. Or, if they already have, know they aren't alone. Lots of other people have done just that for me and it has made a huge difference in my life! It's not a desperate bid for attention (and, for the record, I have never ever been paid to do an interview so it's not a money thing) - I just want to keep the good mojo going.

And I do think I'm helping some people. At least, after every media appearance, I always - without fail - get quite a few e-mails/phone calls/comments telling me how I helped them or a family member. I'm still getting e-mails from that 20/20 segment and it's been two years since I filmed it! No joke: Someone even wrote their graduate dissertation on it. (To all of you who have taken the time to write or otherwise contact me, I want to thank you with all my heart - you have no idea how much it means to me.)

But I still feel weird when I actually see the interviews on screen (confession: I watched my 20/20 interview exactly once and still cringe any time someone mentions it) or on paper. They always parse it so that all my lovable nuttiness gets smooshed together in one big block of crazy. I swear I'm not that insane in real life. Or maybe I'm deluded? Anyhow, with no further ado, I present to you the scanned version of my Fitness mag interview (click pictures to enlarge):



Now that you've read it, you will inevitably ask - people usually do - "But you're better now, right?" I am. I'm better than I used to be. But I'm not cured. I think I'll always trend towards the disordered side of things; I'm compulsive and perfectionistic by nature. That doesn't mean I won't stop working on it but don't expect me to be perfect either. Exercise addiction is as insidious a disorder as any eating disorder. If you, or someone you know, (yeah, I just broke out the after-school special trope!), suffers from exercise addiction or exercise bulimia or compulsive over-exercise or cardioholism or whatever you want to call it, here are some additional resources:

From me:
The cost of excessive cardio
How to recognize exercise addiction
Bad things happen when you exercise too much
How over exercising made me gain weight and fat
Confessions of a compulsive over exerciser
Building in rests to your workout
Confessions of a pregnant compulsive exerciser, Part I
Compulsive over-exercise in pregnancy, Part II

From others:
Heather Eats Almond Butter recently blogged about breaking her addiction to cardio

Mark Sisson of Mark's Daily Apple is a former elite triathlete who had a cardio addiction epiphany and now educates the masses about the physical toll of too much exercise.

Quix at Adjusted Reality recently wrote about how running a lot led to weight gain and overall frustration.

NY magazine has an article about the effects of prolonged exercise.

What about you - have you ever been addicted to exercise in an unhealthy way? How did you conquer it? What's your view on cardio: cardio queen, everything in moderation or hate it?