A reminder about fasting

You don’t have to fast if it will endanger your health.

If you need to eat when you take your meds, you can.

If your meds dehydrate you and you need to drink, you can.

If you have a health condition that requires you eat regularly, you can.

If you are recovering from an eating disorder and food restriction will interfere with your recovery, you don’t have to fast.

If you have no specific health condition but you are getting dehydrated or you feel faint, so can eat or drink if you need to.

Your health comes first. The Torah tells us to “live by” the commandments. Live. That means following them in ways that help us live and aren’t detrimental.

If I may? You are not permitted to fast if it will endanger your health. If you need to eat when you take your meds, you should. (Also you should not forego your meds in order to be able to fast: take the meds and eat the food.) If your meds dehydrate you and you need to drink, you should. If you have a health condition that requires you eat regularly, you should. If you are recovering from an eating disorder and food restriction will interfere with your recovery, you shouldn’t fast. If you have no specific health condition but you are getting dehydrated or you feel faint, you should eat or drink if you need to. Your health comes first. The Torah tells us to “live by” the commandments. Live. That means following them in ways that help us live and aren’t detrimental. This includes the mental/emotional aspect of fasts and days of mourning as well. If you are not, psychologically, in a position to mourn; if you are already dealing with self-loathing and grief and feelings of worthlessness, you are not obligated in that aspect of the fast because it is dangerous for you and undermines your well-being. Mental health is still health, and your obligation to take care of yourself comes first.

this whole thread is making my heart break 😩

Just a reminder that this organization exists! Eating disorder rates among trans people are alarmingly high, so groups like T-FFED are vitally important. 

Click the link above to visit their site, and find them on Tumblr, Twitter, and FB. They also have an online support group here.

people are sooo against eating disorders until they take away the names and switch it to “dieting” or “health tips”

like ohh you don’t support eating disorders and think they’re terribly tragic? then why are you constantly talking about how you eat too much? why do you separate foods into categories like “guilty pleasures” and “guilt free treats”? why do you insist that the ultimate healthy diet is eating less and working out more? why do you think you have to work out a lot more if you ate something “"bad”“

why are eating disorders only bad if we’re being hospitalized, but if we’re drastically losing weight and dont have a diagnosis we’re “doing great”

why did i have to hear more and more compliments about my weight loss than people concerned because i was getting weaker and becoming even more tired than usual? why did people make me want to go back to starving myself because i want the compliments that they gave me when i was rapidly losing weight?

eating disorders are only seen in a bad light when people are either dead or dying, but if we’re just getting skinnier it doesn’t matter how we lost the weight- we’re seen as a success story because we turned out thin and thats what really matters right? being thin? thats the only goddamn important thing in this world

Multiply this by a thousand if you’re fat.

Most of “dieting culture” is actually deeply rooted in orthorexia, an obsession with only eating “pure” and “healthy” foods in controlled amounts.  It’s currently not classed as an eating disorder in itself, but rather a symptom of disordered eating behavior that goes hand in hand with anorexia or bulimia. 

It’s an obsession with eating only “the right foods” or a perception of “healthy, pure foods” and having “cleanse” days and “detoxing” when you slip up and eat either the wrong food or too much of something. Now, tell me that doesn’t sound like something you might read under Cosmo’s “top ten tips to lose belly fat for summer”, or hell, literally any health vlogger on youtube with thousands of subscribers claiming they cured their depression/cancer by doing the banana cleanse, which yes, is actually a real thing. Don’t do it. Please. Love yourselves.  

A UK based study (can’t find it right now but I will add it in if I can) on eating disorders noted that those most likely to suffer from the symptoms of orthorexia are people who think they are “just dieting” or trying to be really healthy by following popular “pure” food movements like veganism and paleo, but to unhealthy extremes. Usually because they’ve been suckered in by popular food vloggers who argue violently against the validity of the term, or the notion you can ever eat “too healthily”, despite the term being coined by Dr Steven Bratman back in 1996, a physician well known for being an advocate for safe, alternative medicines and therapies for better health—so not just a “western physician” ragging on “pure alternatives” like a lot of these diet frauds claim.

Eating healthily is not about deprivation. The human body needs fat, it needs carbohydrates, it needs salt, and a whole host of other things people will try to convince you you need to eat 0 of, in order to be healthy. 

Most of you know I got super sick at the start of the year from an horrendous virus that meant I couldn’t eat solids for almost six weeks, I lost a lot of weight very quickly, over 20lbs. And while I’ve managed to gain some of that back as I’ve gradually been able to increase my food intake (I am now up to roughly 1200 calories a day which is still too low for my size and age, but much better than the 200 I was living on for over a month) I’m still suffering the side effects of being forced to eat nothing but organic oatmeal and bone broth for all those weeks, including but not limited to hair loss, broken nails, skin that looks like absolute shit, and not to even mention the mental and physical fatigue I’m still suffering from over six months later. 

And don’t get me wrong, I was eating healthy foods, I was enduring the “detox” dream so many magazines and health vloggers rave about. But the truth of it is, healthy humans aren’t made to live on those things alone, (and that’s not actually how the body detoxes itself, but that’s another rant for another time)—regardless of how healthy those things are. 

You need to eat.

You are allowed to eat. 

Fuck these disordered ideas of societal norms. You can be healthy and happy and worthy, without being thin.

And you ARE WORTHY, no matter what.

I also have to add that orthorexic/other disordered eating behavior is positively encouraged among people dealing with certain medical conditions. Very much including by health professionals.

All of this can be very dangerous even for people who have no existing ED history, never mind those of us who do.

i also want to talk about how dysphoria can fuel eating disorders to the point that thinness maintained by a restrictive eating disorder can feel like an integral part of gender expression for trans people & how the demonization of fatness in our culture can hugely hinder the recovery even of people whose eating disorders always revolved more around dysphoria than the fear of being fat

i want to talk about how the culturally enforced ideas of thinness as the epitome of androgyny, thinness as the epitome of femininity, & “maybe not thinness but definitely a lack of curves that can sometimes only be obtained by thinness” as the epitome of masculinity poison our thinking as trans people & contribute to an overwhelming epidemic of eating disorders in our community disproportionate to even the epidemic in wider sociey

i want to talk about how controlling our food to control our bodies & to control our minds & to feel like we have some control over circumstances that are wildly out of our control is horrifyingly commonplace in the trans community & no one is talking about it

a little comic about trauma with the meta ending nobody asked for

hey man i haven’t seen a single similar post (concerning???) so i feel like it’s important to make this.

tomorrow is ramadan. your eating disorder will not magically disappear in ramadan.

allah will not hate you if you relapse in ramadan. be it that you faint or you binge, if you need to break your fast because of your eating disorder THEN YOU BREAK YOUR FAST.

You are not supposed to fast when you are sick. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO FAST WHEN YOU ARE SICK. IT IS HARAM TO FAST IF YOU ARE SICK BECAUSE IT BRINGS HARM TO YOUR BODY. If you start feeling horribly sick and you know, you haven’t had sufficient suhoor or iftar for a few days or anything of the sort, it is okay to break your fast and even go to the hospital if you need to.

habaybi that have eating disorders, PLEASE take care of yourself during ramadan. It is a month of cleansing and forgiveness, so forgive yourself if you relapse. You can always redo your fast after ramadan.

Jazakallah please reblog this post and ramadan mubarak to you all! ♡

(Ramadan 2017 in United States of America will begin in the evening of Friday, May 26 and ends in the evening of Sunday, June 25)

Originally published by The Nib.

hey so quick warning. some maybe hard to hear shit wrt eating disorders coming up. i know this is really specific & might not help anyone else but i just had an honest to every god out there epiphany like in the fuck damn movies & if anyone else out there needs to hear it then i need to say it losing weight isn’t going to bring them back to life. like dead is dead & starving or bingeing or purging isn’t going to do shit or if it’s not death then whatever heavy shit is in your life right now that just so happens to oh so coincidentally coincide with your eating disorder getting bad or your urges acting up- that thing that matters- it’s what matters. not your weight. your weight doesn’t fucking matter. it doesn’t. no one fucking cares, & on the tiny off chance they do. they’re an asshole if you’ve got some other shit going on & being the size you are suddenly seems to be unbearable & you feel like you need to deal with it, like you just need to deal with your weight desperately, like if you could get it under control everything would be under control at least a little bit more your weight isn’t what you need to Deal With. you need to deal with The Thing. i know that’s terrifying & dealing with your weight & controlling your food feels easier & more right & maybe like home but you’re slapping on a bandaid that’s been marinating in a cesspool & it’s just gonna make things really oh my god holy shit just So Much Fucking Worse your eating disorder isn’t going to fix your problems & you can’t fix your problems in the depths of your eating disorder you need to confront the real shit

hey man i haven’t seen a single similar post (concerning???) so i feel like it’s important to make this.

tomorrow is ramadan. your eating disorder will not magically disappear in ramadan.

allah will not hate you if you relapse in ramadan. be it that you faint or you binge, if you need to break your fast because of your eating disorder THEN YOU BREAK YOUR FAST.

You are not supposed to fast when you are sick. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO FAST WHEN YOU ARE SICK. IT IS HARAM TO FAST IF YOU ARE SICK BECAUSE IT BRINGS HARM TO YOUR BODY. If you start feeling horribly sick and you know, you haven’t had sufficient suhoor or iftar for a few days or anything of the sort, it is okay to break your fast and even go to the hospital if you need to.

habaybi that have eating disorders, PLEASE take care of yourself during ramadan. It is a month of cleansing and forgiveness, so forgive yourself if you relapse. You can always redo your fast after ramadan.

Jazakallah please reblog this post and ramadan mubarak to you all! ♡