I was watching The Devil Wears Prada the other night, and throughout the whole movie they kept calling Anne Hathaway fat. Also the Emily Blunt character was basically anorexic and they just joked about it. It was upsetting honestly. Thank you for talking about this
I think that's meant to show how radical the fashion industry was and is. Anne Hathaway was the voice of reason until she got sucked in, but at the end she goes back to her ways. I don't think that movie was glorifying eating disorders or suggesting that the fashion industry is healthy in any way. People lie and cheat and step over each other. Nothing about that movie suggested that you should follow it. If anything, it is saying to quit while you can to get away from the horror.
I remember thinking when I watched it ‘good, they are making fun of this bullshit,’ but then the main character reveals she was down a dress size. Ugh. The point was ‘beat them at their own game.’ No. Nooo! It should have been ‘fuck their game.’
It has always been damaging to hear my Mom laugh and joke about the line Emily has about eating a cheese cube when she feels like passing out.. It didn't make my ED worse, but it felt so wrong to hear someone joke about something like that.
@@alanmorris4896 There are several kinds of eating disorders, with a great many causes. Genetic disposition is known to be a contributing factor, but a person's environment can be enough to encourage disordered eating and body image troubles.
@@alanmorris4896 there are many possible causes -genetic predisposition -societal pressure -trauma -other mental health issues it’s an addiction. a way of seeking control in your life. also some people use it to numb emotions because when you are so focused on tracking food and/or purging it is difficult to focus on anything else
Could you please tell me what happened to you? My life-long friend occasionally goes on no-food days and shes really struggling with recovery. Maybe that would help her.
I have been fully recovered for 5 years and was sick with an ED for 5. I still have: -lanugo -dark hair all over my body except hands, toes and ears, which I have to shave every week -gastrointestinal issues -bone issues -heart issues Don’t do this please
The hormonal effects are ones rarely discussed yet can be so prominent in ED. I wonder if these things were highlighted, if it would deter others that might otherwise have not have been. I'm glad to hear that you're fully recovered, I'm very sorry for the pain that you went through.
Heed Angela's warning. ED in my 20s has cause long term effects well into my 40s, particularly acid reflux and IBS. Spend well over $1k for electrolysis to deal with the unwanted body/facial hair that started growing because malnutrition and stress destroyed my hormonal balance. Please take care of yourselves
Also TEETH. It was so h o r r i f y i n g when mine just started deteriorating!!! out of nowhere (or so I thought, until I took a close look on my diet!), one cavity after the other and after the other. I would literally book dentist appointments several times a month on different teeth. It was awful, and they're still pretty brittle to this day Please PLEASE be careful with that stuff, if you don't care about your health, at least care about your money... dentist work certainly ain't cheap!!
it's seriously crazy how quickly it can catch up with you. even if you don't engage in restrictive / purging behaviors, it can seriously mess you up. be safe everybody and research harm reduction methods if you aren't ready to recover!
I'm a guy and I fell victim to a lifelong eating disorder starting in middle school around 2003 and even to this day I still struggle with severe body image issues because this shit hits all of us - regardless of gender - and can really affect our self esteem and is not to be taken lightly. Thanks for sharing.
I’m 24 now, but I didn’t realize at 20-21 that my body was changing in a normal way and it did concern me at first and almost pushed me to make dangerous choices. Nobody told me as a female human being that I’d experience anything drastic in-between puberty and menopause. I thought puberty then adolescence were really the last noticeable changes I’d see in my form until 40-50. Nobody told me that women CAN develop in their late teens and early 20s, and that many DO. I was barely an A-cup through high school and college with no discernible hip shape. I joked often that I was built like a pencil, like my dad, and became accustomed to that shape. Then, around 20-21 with no less exercise or diet change, I went up a full cup size and my hips and thighs clung to fat in a way they never had before, filling out my silhouette. I was confused, concerned, and resentful. Nobody mentioned to me EVER in a health class that I could potentially develop beyond puberty. Nothing about my body noticeably changed from 12-19, so I thought I was done. I’ve since realized my BMI is still alright (if those can even be trusted anymore) and this was a normal progression. I think educating young girls and young women about the natural course of female development is a good place to start. When you’re newly free of your parents at the ripe age of 18, you suddenly call the shots on what you eat or don’t eat - and if you don’t know to expect some fluctuations in weight during your early 20s, you might mistake that as something awful and make dangerous choices. Education. EVERYTHING starts and stops with education. Education early as prevention, so it doesn’t need to become intervention later. Just thought I’d share my experience, because I’m realizing now how common this is amongst women my age.
I can imagine that that was a very scary thing to happen. To have your body change so dramatically out of nowhere. When were little kids not only are we prepared for it but we eagerly anticipate it. After we reach adulthood, we assume that our bodies done doing the important stuff and now it's our job to keep it healthy. To go through puberty like that has got to be traumatizing. I'm really sorry that you had to go through that. I remember researching when women stop growing because I refuse to accept the fact that I would stay 5'2 tall. I was 21 at the time and elated to discover that I had another two years to potentially grow. It never happened mind you, but I really had to dig to find this information.
I am so glad you shared this, I went through the same thing! Nobody tells us that our bodies can change in our 20's but they can! I didn't know that either.
Thank you for sharing this! I'm in my early 20s and have always been stick thin but now thats changing in a way that I wasn't prepared for. Its really noticeable in my thighs and I'm just coming to terms that its natural and that nothing is wrong with me
This happened to me too. At 21 my whole body developed out of nowhere and i felt quite embarrassed having to have back pain and chest pain at 21 because my boobs just decided to grow, and buying clothes that would conceal my new figure because i felt too exposed. My thin body didn't catched as much atenttion as my new bod and now i'm still trying to feel confortable showing my new body (that i like but i don't like the stares), but, for now hoodies and mens clothes are my besties.
This really happens to most women and say it all the time. If you look at a teen girl versus a woman in her mid-20s the body shape is completely different but you’re right nobody talks about it and I also had that crisis
it's so sad that people take that horrible stuff as inspo, but unfortunately it's simply a mental ilness that makes one view the world differently. no wonder you didn't know but you're a sensible person and i knew you would set things straight about this. luv ya
I honestly didn't believe it when I first saw people bringing it up in the comments. I genuinely thought it was the usual group of melodramatics but it's too risky when it comes to the health of others to let that kind of thing slide without at least looking into it. I should have included this icky stuff and the painful side in my original video however hindsight is 20/20!
I remember being a young teenager during the Y2K era, and being devastated that I was 'too fat' to wear any of the popular trendy clothes that were being sold in most stores at the time. But I was not fat- my rib cage was too large to squeeze into even the 'XL' sizes. No one was around to tell me that skipping meals, taking pills, and doing whatever it takes to lose weight was bad for me. Angela, I can't imagine it was easy to share in such detail your ED struggles, but this is such an important message to put out there and could possibly save some people. Thank you for making this video 💙
When you're so entrenched in the moment, logic kinda goes out the window. Even though it's legitimately your bone structure it becomes this frantic need to 'shrink'. Back then it was a total free for all when it came to weight loss. That body image was such a standard that anything above skeletal was seen as unhealthy/unattractive and there was this intense pressure that you needed to size down and do it fast so eating disorders were normalized. They'd see you restricting your eating and call you disciplined, you'd fill your plate with only salad and lean meats and they'd praise your will power. When my family/friends heard about my laxative use they said referred to it as determined and expeditious. They were taken aback by my ingenuity. It was a crazy time.
Angela it sucks there was no one to tell you what you were doing was unhealthy. Im so glad you're still here with us today to be able to share you're story. I dont have an ED but I've had digestive issues since birth and sometimes have to take laxatives to encourage my body to go (cause if i don't pay attention I'll go three weeks without pooping) and yes the cramps are horrible!! I would be rocking back and forth on the toilet failing to alleviate the pain and there were many times i've ended up with booty burn so bad i had to sit on ice packs so PLEASE you guys do not abusive laxatives, cause as someone who has to take them for medical reasons it sucks even then
Honestly, same. Since I watch angelas videos I take so much more care of my skin! I think she made a video about her skin care once. And she also mentioned that when she was younger, she "acted like a vampire" so she always avoided the sun.
just want to reiterate what i said about genetics here. i have been living like a vampire since age 15 and using sunscreen any time i went outside. i take very good care of my skin, am hydrated healthy and sober.
GG i hope you keep that attitude! i felt like saying something because in the same way that y2k fashion can harm people's body image i think so can social media of today with its filters and influencers who can afford cosmetic surgery and fillers and things like that. (i'm NOT saying this is angela though.) i think the message of unrealistic beauty standards holds true in both realms. i wish we didn't care about ageing :(.
im so sorry for you… for us who went through this. I had my own problems too. Im type 1 diabetic and skipped insulin to thin down. I was praised for getting thin so quick but I was vomiting and was nauseated due to ketoacidosis. my body was so sick and had gone hospitalized several times for it… now that im older, I have diabetes complications with my eyes and kidney problems needing a kidney transplant. i mean… this is life now and i have accepted and taken better responsibility for my health now but dang… I wish we were better guided when we were younger
diabulimia is a real thing and I still don't understand why it isn't taught in schools just like other ED's as it's the most dangerous by nature and there have been countless documentaries and studies on it. I wish you all the best in life and health and hope you can get your kidney transplant soon 💜
This is a very important follow up and you have my respect for being so frank. My ED lasted from about the early 90s to the mid 2000s, now I am in my 50s... the effects are impacting. Not going to go into too much detail but my digestive system is toast. No one tells you how isolating that is, having to really watch what you eat because of the pain and discomfort. Thank you Angela for being real, I admire you even more now.
Thank you :) The physical impact this disorder remains even well after recovery. It seems that the digestive system is the first to take the hit. When you're in that mode where you just want to lose weight, you want instant results so the idea of engaging in damaging behaviors can be alluring to some. If there's one thing that people can relate to it's pain. Hopefully hearing that side will make them think twice.
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You and I are not far in age..I'm 36 and I remember those days...I feel you 100%. Clothes back then did really make a person look way bigger than they were. Kate Moss really was considered the standard then. I fell into abusing laxatives and diuretics and it's hard to get off them cause they give you "instant" results on the scale. I also have serious gastro issues resulting from it. It breaks my heart to see so many young ones glorifying thinspo..
Well... This is how eating disorder works. You subconsciously search for "thinspiration" in content that should be quite the opposite, thinking you'll get some tips of how to be "perfect". How to achieve particular type of body. It pushes you deeper into sickness, but it feels so good at the same time. Cautionary tale becomes motivation and unfortunately , Angela, you can't do anything about it. You're not responsible for twisted thoughts of somebody. It's impossible to prevent such thing
I never had an ED but videos like this asure me that the things i thought were terrible in disorders like this, are actually much worse. Thank you for sharing your story ❤️ The 00's really left a stain into our generation isn't it? ☹️ I wish peace to those who had and are suffering from ED's watching this video.
You should check the comment section of my previous video on the matter. If the video triggers you, skip watching it however you'll find hundreds of people in the comments who have gone through the very same thing. Their stories are painful but hopeful because it shows that we're not alone.
i was sick as a boy and had vomitting common for decades by age 15 i was 49 kg and pale and thin and very weak also it took years of taking heathy eating and gym until i am 110 kg and can lift like a gym bro
In 2002, I was five going on six. I had no concept of eating disorders or body image, and our fashion taste was whatever was the most colorful and most whimsical. In 2006, I was nine going on ten, and I was unhappy with my weight and wished that I had lost more of my baby fat, and elementary girls would call each other fat as an insult, even if they were healthy and thin. Not even children were able to escape this :(
Yeah! I was born in 1997, and I remember my classmates exhibiting some eating disorder type behaviors in the mid 2000s. Many girls at that time were restricting the foods they believed were "fattening" (pretty much anything that wasn't salad or crispbread) and were calling themselves fat, even though none of them were.
Yeah, I remember Disney--freaking Disney--had to even step in and tell teen and pre-teen girls not to try harmful diets and have healthier body image. Do you know how bad something has to be for Disney to have a moral high ground? Yikes.
I'm 25 now and was a little kid during the Y2K era and I remember seeing all of those girls and women and thinking that those body types were normal! Everyone praised them and loved them for their sickly thin bodies and these are the people that I looked up to at the time as a kid! I used to use Y2K as thinspiration and I used to see them all over pro-ana sights. I have been struggling with Anorexia for the past 11 years and have been in recovery for the past 7 and am now not only struggling with my chronic anorexia (although I am happy to say that I am healthier and at a healthy weight now!), I am also struggling with health issues caused by my eating disorder. My ED took so much from me and made me miss out on so much as a teenager and as a person in my early 20's. Please, if you are struggling, no matter where you are at in your ED or recovery or even if your not sure if you have an eating disorder, ASK FOR HELP!! There are consequences to doing these kind of things to your body!
Same here Amanda. As a gen-z girl growing up in the 2000s and the early 2010s I was bombarded with super skinny size zero bodies. I became curvy after puberty, so I developed eating disorders. First, I stopped eating fatty foods like butter and ghee. Then, I stopped eating carbs. And my eating disorders became so extreme, that I ended up eating NOTHING!!! I was literally starving. Still I could NEVER become skinny, due to which I nearly killed myself by overdosing with paracetamol. Finally, in 2019 I decided to embrace my curves. No matter what. After using the body type calculator, I found out that I have an hourglass figure. I started wearing skinny jeans to show off my curves. I have fully recovered recently. Now, speaking of Y2K and the so-called "skinny revival", I am angry. I do NOT want to go back to the self-loathing stage anymore. I could not care less. Y2K fashion sucks. Skinny obsession can go screw itself. Weight loss industry can choke on a cactus🌵🌵🌵
I still have a E.D and still have the voice in my head. I still have body dysmorphia. I started sticking my finger down my throat at 12 and years later started laxatives, and added the finger as well too. I am vegan and don't fear potatoes anymore. I went from Anorexic to bingeing. My hair use to be thin and falling out, I don't miss sitting on bone or feeling cold all the time. I go to the gym now and I am learning self love and self care.
I haven't watched the other video yet. However, i have been meaning to thank you for a VERY powerful message you had left on an old Dorian video. It was very personal on your part so i won't go into details. But it was heart-felt, and you really opened yourself up. Thank-you for that.
So much this! I can remember texting my boyfriend at 3 AM, sobbing because I thought I was going to die and was too scared to admit to my parents what I was doing, promising myself that I would never take laxatives again because I was in such terrible pain and nothing was coming out! His reply every time, knowing what I was doing and encouraging it was simply, you're fine, you're just over-reacting. Let it pass and you'll be fine in the morning. And no matter how often I tried to stop the laxatives, how many hours I spent at the gym, I would always go back after a week or two because that little tummy bump, the natural healthy tummy bump, would come back and I couldn't have that showing over the top of my waistband because then my boyfriend would start to badger me over the fact that he thought it looked like I was pregnant. That went on for nearly 5 years. Now I'm in my 30's and dealing with IBS, sometimes I can't go for weeks and have to drink a natural tea my Dr recommended to help keep me from developing a blockage and sometimes I end up on the toilet constantly because my system is so screwed up it can't regulate itself naturally anymore. Eating disorders are no fun, you're so busy watching your weight you forget to enjoy life and then you spend the rest of your life dealing with the consequences of your actions.
There was a movie a long time ago that my mom had me watch and it was about an anorectic girl who was hospitalized for her low weight, and in the hospital was a girl who was in the hospital for her ow weight, but she was bulimarectic (my story), and while the movie was meant to raise awareness and help, it fueled my obsession to become and more skeletal, At its most basic, disordered eating is a mental illness of perception, but it has no end, it is not based in logic or reason, and can often take years to recover from, if not a lifetime for some. In severe cases though it is much more deeply faceted than just wanting to be thin, and long term treatment is necessary. Scare tactics rarely work, but it is good to illustrate the horrible aspects and consequences even after being in recovery for years, so that the disordered behavior is not glamorized. I would argue though that it was not the fashion of the time that was causing this in people, it was definitely perpetuaing unhealthy ideas. The story i has been going on for a while. My major struggles were ending around the time you are speaking about. I remember being in collage and some of the friends that I had at school, knew about my disordered history (that had moments of remission, due to hospital treatments and behavior modification) and they would ask me to teach them how to purge. I refused, but that just shows how strong the obsession to be thin runs, and how far a lot of people will go to create an image of themselves, but it is not only about the image it is also about food obsession to a large degree. The disease is complicated and nuanced, and some will still persist despite your efforts to illustrate the dark and dreadful side. The fact that your boyfriend at the time saw nothing wrong with what was happening with you shows how sick he was too. Often the people around us are just as distorted in how they see reality. can
If people watching this video or reading this comment please be yourself don't worry about what others think of you & if you need help I beg you to ask for it.🖤
I am very sorry that there are people who are using your information as thinspiration. This was a traumatic time for you and you're trying to share that story to help other people learn from your experiences. Personally I appreciate your willingness to share your story and this information, and I am sad that there are people who are abusing it. I think for the most part many of us who lived through Y2K have horror stories in this vain. I know I was just kid, like 11 or 12 years old, and I have quite a few myself. At the time it was so normal it was practically inescapable. I grew up with an ED by proxy I guess. My mother had a very sever ED that no one really acknowledged because she was over 400 lbs. when she started. I know now they have changed the criteria and now she would be a prime candidate for the diagnosis, but at the time no one considered her ED. She was just losing a lot of weight and everyone praised her for it, and for the most part ignored how we, her children, were being affected. (brief clarification: my mother believed that kids needed to eat less then adults, so if she didn't need to eat much then neither did her children)
Personally while I don't follow your channel for this specific topic I do actively seek it out on other craters pages as a means of trying to understand the mentality of people affected by it. I don't think your story and mental state at the time is anything the same as what my mothers was, but closer to the state of the people who saw what has happening and ignored it or didn't intervene. I do hold a lot of contempt for myself and everyone who was around at the time for excuse it. Though stories like yours and many others, it helps me understand that people who were seeing my situation, witch was so obviously not okay, probably couldn't do anything about it because they were also not okay. Your story and the vast majority of others available have helped in at least being able to forgive the people around at the time, and to finally put some of it behind me. So thank you for giving me this!
a lot of people in the comments are sharing their health impacts and horror stories so i just want to share that life after ED recovery can also be amazing. i used to think that people would love, respect, value, and admire me more if i was thinner. in reality, all the time i used to spend obsessing over food and body image is now time that i can spend being present and connecting with others, and i have so much more love, respect, and validation in my life now than i ever did back when i was chasing a body standard. recovery is so worth it, i have wonderful friends and a wonderful partner who bring me so much joy. i have energy now to travel, go on adventures, see nature, and pursue my goals because i’m not undereating and my brain isn’t taken up by obsessive thoughts about food. i distinctly remember sitting in my kitchen one day and thinking “i don’t think there will ever be a moment in my life where i can look at a piece of food and not immediately start adding up and calculating calories in my head.” i was wrong. no matter how far gone you think you are, you don’t have to be there forever. the voice and the calculator will fade away over time if you keep working towards your recovery.
Thank you for sharing your story Angela. There was a lot of pressure at that time, and I felt it to. This issue affected so many people, and I'm glad you're speaking out about it.
Thank you for making a follow up video. It’s a good example of someone with a platform listening to the concerns of their audience & finding a way to be responsible and address it
My pleasure! It was a disturbing thing to hear so I had to see it for myself to make sure that this was indeed the case. Thank goodness for TH-cam analytics. It was right there, plain as day!
thank you for sharing your story. it’s more than relieving to hear someone else talk about what i’m going through. i threw away all my laxatives right before writing this comment.
Ty for this vid, Angela. Like tons of other commenters and yourself I dealt with ED for a long time. I think it was really great and responsible for you to look more into what people were saying about the triggers (learning about the analytics was pretty fascinating). I’m in my mid 30s, and back when I was dealing with the ED and went to treatment 15-20 years ago there wasn’t really such a thing as the culture around being triggered in the way that word is used now. They knew about thinspiration and we did still use the word “trigger” in therapy as a means to show what made us want to engage in negative behaviors, but it wasn’t memed like now, and it sucks that it’s become that way. Ty for sharing your experience and thoughts, and for going into the truth of how shitty things can be (quite literally). It is so insane the shit that was practically encouraged to fit into the clothing of that era. I am very glad the views around body image have changed - not that there aren’t still issues, but at least more people are speaking out, celebrities included.
You're very welcome, I'm happy like that. The fact that people might be using my story to harm themselves was far too much of a risk so unlike other videos where people would pop off in the comments, I felt that I had a responsibility to validate the claims and act accordingly. I come from a period where trigger wasn't a word in our vernacular either. I hope that the pain and general ickiness which is the reality of these things will help deter people and sway them into a healthier alternative to weight loss.
I dunno if it's just me, but back in the day, almost everyone I knew had some sort of an eating disorder. Everyone was trying to be super skinny. It was almost like a trend to have an eating disorder. I saw many of my friends stop school to deal with their eating disorder. I didn't fall for the peer pressure in high school, but I felt terrible about my size because I just didn't look skinny enough. Started university and I caved and lost so much weight that I lost my period. I got scared so I quickly tried to gain a bit of weight, but just that one year of being very underweight has caused heart palpitations for me now. I loss all my strength and muscle mass and now I'm working every day to get my muscles stronger so I don't shake when I bend down. I said it in the last video, but I'll say it again. It's alright to enjoy Y2K fashion, but please don't glamourize that time and think that your body is ugly just because you can't wear those types of clothes. The majority of us who went through that time had a hard time wearing those clothes too and now that I'm an adult, I realize Y2K fashion has some of the most unflattering shapes and cuts. Don't get me started on how toxic everything was, like how they treated celebrities. That's a different topic for another day.
It's not just you. More often than not, the people I knew around that time were engaging in some sort of damaging behavior due to their weight or at the very least on some diet fad. To lose your period like that, your body had been through trauma. I'm so sorry. I hope, I sincerely sincerely hope that if the trend goes more mainstream, they don't use the same body types as the spokespeople.
I had restrictive anorexia where I still ate every meal a day (and snacks!)...it only lasted months but caused permanent damage to my nervous system. I have horrible IBS, my stomach doesn't empty correctly, etc. It's with you forever. Sucks!
I applaud you Angela, for being brave in talking about your ED and for taking on board the criticism of your last video. I understand that as someone who only recently realised you had an ED, you would not know about the toxic competition with numbers, images, "tips" etc that so many people with ED look for. Instead of just dismissing it, you did the right thing in asking yourself if it was true and doing your research. I will say that as someone who had an ED and probably still does, we seek out anything and everything related to this topic. When I post online about my ED I do not mention the lower weights or specific ways my body looked then as I know someone will try to compete with it. I'm so careful with what I say and tell people, like you have, the gory/terrifying reality. Even so, on IG I still got likes and follows from pro Ana accounts. I don't like seeing Ana pics and have reported a certain TH-camrs account on IG (along with thousands of others) because pics/vids pop up of her everywhere and she is actively encouraging others to kill themselves like she is. Social media platforms protect her because she makes them money. EDs are on the rise, partly because no one looks real anymore with facetune etc and with this person flaunting her bones in deliberately chosen tiny outfits and poses. You will always trigger someone with ED content but you have handled this really well and I just want to say that I'm sorry you have been through this. You are absolutely stunning and it just shows EDs can happen to anyone. I wish you well Angela.
Thank you for sharing the details that no one else will. Some girls on this path may be too young to understand the value of their own future health and fertility, but may pay attention to the much more immediate and counter-productive effects you mentioned.
You're welcome. It's hard not to get sucked into a glamor of being thin. Many even romanticize eating disorders. No use trying to lose weight to impress your crush when you Hershey shart yourself right in front of them.
I love that you're putting yourself out there and talking about the aspects of EDs that can't be glamorized. Because emaciation and malnourishment, everyone finds the way to put those in a pedestal. But there is nothing about bowel damage that can be spun into a goal. even by the people who are really deep into the ED mindset
if anyone is struggling with body image: your body is simply a vessel. what matters most is health and how you physically feel. whenever that voice in your head tries to tell you that it isn’t good enough, remind yourself that it’s simply a vessel. something that gets you one place to another, a physical form to express yourself. it’s difficult to let go of all the things society teaches you and the pressure of being attractive, but the one thing that is really helping me right now is to just not give a fuck. my body is my body. it’s gonna do what it’s going to do and look how it’s going to look. all i can do is try my best to take care of it. (also these videos and angela’s perspective on this subject is so helpful ❤️)
About a year ago I was on the edge of an eating disorder because of all the romanticization online and videos like these, the videos about the horrific things that happen is what stopped me. I’m really grateful for this video and others like these that stopped me before I started.
I felt like having a glass of grapefruit while watching this. I am very happy you got through this and now you are safe and taking care. There are many natural things (like linen seeds) you can add to your meals or even snacks that can help you feel better. As a woman I also recommend soy ( contains a high concentration of isoflavones, a type of plant estrogen (phytoestrogen) that is similar in function to human estrogen but with much weaker effects.)
Thank you for making this video. The combination of lockdown and entering my 30s has triggered my body dysphoria and I feel myself slipping into old habits. I needed to hear this.
I really enjoy your videos about diet culture and EDs in the early 2000s. I understand those topics can be taxing since they likely hit close to home, so I just wanna say I think you're a tough cookie and i love to hear what you have to say.
Thank you Angela for sharing your story. I want everyone to open up if you can and share your stores in hopes that these stories will reach people who are struggling with mental disorders. ED's are mental and if we don't help one another, another person of any age could give into these unrealistic and very unhealthy beauty standards. Remember, your body and your life is someone else's DREAM existence. As someone recovered from orthorexia who still struggles with body dysmorphia, I can 100 percent say you do not want any ED. Even if you were lucky like I was and suffered no long term physical effects, psychologically my self worth was drug through the dirt. I have great days where I see how gorgeous I am, how strong i am, how fucking amazing a person I truly am, then there are days where I break every mirror in my apartment, won't be nude in front of the love of my life, and am sobbing hitting myself in shame and guilt because I want nothing more than to not be who I am. I ultimately was "trained" into this mental disorder by bullying and society's bullshit beauty standards. When it came to the food portion, which I'm proud to say I'm fully recovered from: I guilted myself to the point of suicidal thoughts for wanting a slice of gluten free chocolate cake. As an athlete that needs healthy food and a higher than average number of calories in a day, that's a lot of time I spent obsessing over macros and if I 'deserved' a piece of chocolate and if it would undo all my hard work. Now a few years later I can safely say I do deserve those things and I love my body and what it does for me on a daily basis and will do everything I can to give it that love it deserves. This weekend I'm getting Macromamas gluten free chocolate ganache cake and even though the sugar will inflame me, I fucking deserve a treat! lol XD Do not fuck with your body that way. it does NOT deserve to be abused. It keeps you alive to do all those things you want to do in life and even if you reach your physical goals your mind will be a wreck for years, if not your entire life! Honor and respect your body because you cannot get your health back when you abuse yourself to the point where something cannot be repaired. Your health and self-worth and self-love are PRICELESS. Much love to anyone reading this.
i had a ED during the 2010s i recovered fully at 19-20 in 2017, ive been dealing with the prices of being so malnourished for so many years, and also i had to get so much dental work for the damage that came with it. Its not bad to be completly honest with the things you did, its good having these cold and open hearted conversations. We cannot avoid how some poeple can take that information or what they do with it. For me someone who was sick 10 years later i related a lot to what you talked about and felt more in peace
for reference i started my anorexia at 13, i have hormonal issues, i have amenorrea (chronic anovulation) i have to use a special tooth paste just for the calcium damage on my teeth, i had like 10 cavities, i have stomach issues, i still cant eat a lot of things because my stomach is way too sensitive and i end up getting sick. Dont take this illness lightly i could have died and was in fact close to at my teens because i even had heart problems. im only in my early 20s and this is still behind me
In the 2k, teen me had adopted the "not like other girls,/girl things are dumb" mentality. Childish internalized misogamy, sure, but as far as young girl identities goes, it protected me form most of the effects of the thinness craze, thank-fucking-God. Well, that, and seeing Catherine Z-Jones in El Zorro. Heroin Chick never had a chance compared to her.
Thank you for the follow-up, Angela... you truly have a way with words even when being as detailed as this 🖤 I almost gave myself an ulcer because of my ED and I paid the price for years to come. Even now, my stomach and the rest of my digestive system is extremely sensitive. The normal and relatively fast passing food poisoning for someone sends me to the hospital. I have terrible acid reflux and get really bad gastritis every now and then even with a proper diet. PLEASE, I implore you... don't destroy your body like I and many others did. It isn't worth it.
Holy shit it’s eerie how much I needed this at this specific time more than ever.. i was actually like ravenously eating a bunch of fries I ordered after getting so hungry when I put the video on. I started living alone a week and a half ago, and one of the reasons I wanted to live alone was so I could continue my ED but amp it up if anything and no could see it or stop me. Since there’s no one cooking, no one ordering food, nobody really going out to eat.. because it’s just me.. I’ve gotten carried away with basically depriving myself of food. I’ve barely eaten, I have literally no food at home and had to cancel so many plans because I’m so physically weak.. plans I really wanted like seeing friends, going on dates, playing music with my band mates etc. I haven’t been able to get in the shower in several days, including today, cause I still haven’t been able to energy wise and mental wise. I’ve been drinking pretty heavily which isn’t helping anything (all my friends are enablers sadly and only perpetuate it all). I don’t drink daily but once I start I have trouble stopping. The worst part in current life is my “rock” so to speak who kept me sane and feeling loved, who really did love me unconditionally, is basically no longer in my life as of today, abruptly and without any explanation. We were so close and there was no one else who truly accepted me or I could be myself around. We weren’t an exclusive traditional couple but there was like overflowing love.. he wanted an actual relationship with me but I basically practice non monogamy as a life choice. Anyways.. I thought him being around me might influence me to do better.. he was the only person I was remotely comfortable with seeing me naked after a bad relationship ended with a guy with a major ED. I was thinking the last few days about trying new methods like laxatives or purging or something like that but your video and the detail of how how awful that actually feels and the long term effects made me think. I already have ibs and my stomach issues have only worsened. Also you mentioning shows like the simple life and rock of love being problematic was so fucking validating. I was binge watching all of that, especially rock of love, all the seasons and the first thing I noticed was like the scary level of underweight all these women were.. it was actually really triggering to see and I think that’s why I kept watching it, to trigger myself. Eventually I actually stopped watching though because I couldn’t stand it anymore. And I really thought something was wrong with me and I was crazy for feeling the way I did. I’m really glad I’m not crazy for that. I’m so glad it’s not just me. One of those women from the show has a TH-cam podcast and I was really pissed off because she was basically encouraging dieting with toxic diet culture rhetoric (including “cheat days”) and projecting her own body dysmorphia thoughts onto everyone else, in a very dangerous way, given how many followers/fans she has and the podcast has nothing to do with dieting, fitness or EDs. She’s very thin but saying she’s “heavier” these days and was trying to cover up by wearing more clothes.. I actually stopped watching cause I can’t deal with her anymore.
I appreciate you talking so honestly and candidly about your ED. It makes me feel less crazy... it really is a mental illness, but it makes you feel so alone with all of it, like you're only one doing these crazy things.
When I was a kid, I used to think that no matter what you liked like then, once you become closer to an adult woman, you would magically look like the actresses on TV because that's what the media told me women looked like. I used to not be concerned with my body that much when I was younger because I was so sure it would change when I got older. But as soon as the girls my age starting going through puberty and developed in ways I wasn't, I started to get really concerned about my body and how it wasn't "right." Thankfully, I never developed an ED because of it, but I spent most of my life hiding my body under clothing to conceal my insecurities from the neck down. I'm glad we're seeing other body types in the media now, but we still have so much work to do with representation and teaching young kids what is and isn't healthy, and teaching teens that it's more than ok to not look like a Victoria's Secret model.
I'm only 23 but I grew up with the residuals of the era and it absolutely poisoned me. I've struggled with the effects of laxative abuse and disordered eating for as long as I can remember until 2019, when I finally actually recovered. It was like the veil lifted off of my entire life and I was able to actually see clearly, but unfortunately 6 years of abuse will continue to wreak havoc on me for decades. I also have IBS and gastritis. I'm unable to use the restroom without them now and it has taken me 2 years to wean down to 5x the normal dose. Everything (and I mean every. Single. Thing.) you described was so familiar! We have to warn these teenagers what can happen when you play around with this stuff!!! I will never again take my body for granted.
I'm 26 and have been dealing with anorexia and compulsive exercise addiction for over a decade. People tend to glamorise eating disorders, I even glamorise my own suffering in my head sometimes. But then I remember the fact that the most consistantly disgusting public bathrooms I have ever been to are the ones at the eating disorder clinic I go to. There's always at least one blocked toilet from lax or from purging, or people just don't bother to flush (why??). Another non-optimal part of eating disorders (well, mine specifically)- is that if you have big breasts and anorexia, in your mid 20s your skin stops bouncing back like it used to. I used to be a natural F cup, then my most recent anorexia relapse came along and instead of just making my breasts smaller, it just sucked out all the fat leaving deflated lumpy bags hanging from my chest. I would literally roll them up like socks to try put them in my bra. That totally destroyed any body image I had left. My compulsive walking gave me massive blisters that would be several inches across, going across the bottom and up the sides of my feet. My toenail half fell off and I'd still have to exercise with my feet like that, or with sprained ankles. My yoga mat has blood stains. They don't show this side of eating disorders in the media because people don't want to watch that on tv- but that just means people see anorexia or other EDs in the media in a more positive light and it's definitely a lot easier to glamorise than seeing the REAL reality...
Firstly I want to thank you for sharing your story. That sounds excruciating. You are so right, the media doesn't want to see the reality of these things. They want to glamorize and romanticize. Like when you see some dramatic hospital scene where the person is unconscious in the bed...Where's the pee bag? When you're unconscious, they throw a catheter in there to collect your urine and that collection bag is out for all to see. When it comes to eating disorders, they never portray it in a scary way or even off putting way. They just show pretty things and say, 'BTW - don't'. How's that gonna deter people?!
ive noticed a disturbing surge of casualness about EDs.. especially with teenagers.. i watched a few short films about EDs, and the comments were horrifying. i understand sometimes we joke to cope, but it almost seemed like there was this sort of.. acceptance. as if recovery was impossible and people were watching these cautionary tales as inspiration :/. almost every single close friend i had when i was younger had an ED of some kind, its unfortunately common among women and girls. i think its so unhealthy to exist in these spaces of people struggling with similar shit if none of you are trying to better yourself. it just breeds this dynamic where everyone is dragging each other deeper into a diluted dark mental state. i rlly dont know how to even approach these sort of communities. i do think this more realistic information could definitely help give people struggling a more honest perspective on what they’re doing to themselves. thank u for this second video !! i hope its a wake up call to someone.. but i know mental health isnt simple and u cant just suddenly flip a switch. i still hope it helps someone tho
A lot of people were and I didn't quite understand why. As I said I don't really understand the culture behind these things and that there is this sort of dark underbelly of eating disorders to where there are actual groups and competition involved. I've only recently realized that after 20 years my period of being a health freak was actually a genuine eating disorder. That certain views and practices that I hold with regards to diet and exercise are actually tendencies carried over from that disorder. I never got to the point of competition with other people it was more about being in control of my own body and obsessing over that control. I genuinely didn't care what anybody was doing around me so long as they didn't mess with my eating or exercise schedule. I hope this video filled in the gaps that I should have in the original. I definitely don't want anybody competing, it ain't worth it. That pain is nightmare inducing.
I was 8-18 in 2000-2010. The dialogue about weight affects me to this day. I've been overweight since I was 5 and to this day I don't want to eat. Your video made me realize how bad things really were in the 2000s.
this is a great follow-up to the other video. eating disorders are glamourized in many ways, so talking about the disgusting sides of it as well as the long-term effects lifts off the veil and exposes it for what it is. I struggled with disordered eating (not quite an eating disorder I think, but I definitely had a messed up relationship with food) in the mid-00's and I wonder if that has anything with my freshly diagnosed IBS. I've probably had it for a long time but it only recently became bad enough for me to seek a diagnosis.
i started on my ED at the age of 12 and it was an on and off 5 year journey and there are times now when i want to slip back (years after beginning to fight it ... yes, still fighting those demons it spawned within me.) it destroyed my body from the inside out and i wish i could back in time to me as a kid and say FOOD IS YOUR FRIEND! not the approval of others, not the feeling of fitting into that outfit the way society approves of that you can’t even enjoy yourself, not the compliments which come your way that will never be enough. what you’re seeking can be and will be found but not on this path, not this way, because you’ll only find it in acceptance, NOT deprivation. and like she said and so many others: terrible acid reflux, ibs, these are things i’m dealing with now. i’m 24. i should be at the best health of my life but i’m not and it’s crushing to know that it doesn’t get better from here. it is so sad to me, the voices that we have lost to such a terrible mental illness that has such a hold years after recovery if recovery even becomes a part of your story. i hope ed’s become more widely recognized and called out by parents, friends, and healthcare providers instead of people prescribing a burger and then not even following up on whether or not you ate. it’s our responsibility to become survivors but to expect someone so ill to get there alone is unreasonable, especially with how malnutrition f**ks up your brain. thanks for the informative video on such a rampant but still largely unacknowledged problem
In hindsight, I probably should have been diagnosed anorexic as a teen. I consistently hovered at a weight where doctors said things like "if you lose more weight, we'll need to have a conversation about it," or when I was pregnant in my 20s and asked my doctor if I should be concerned that I'd gained 30lbs in 3 months "you were super thin to start, so I'm not worried about it." I hovered at the borderline of underweight by BMI and thought I was fat. Your comment towards the end about focusing on strength is really relatable. I'm now in my 30s, and due to recent stress, I lost a bunch of weight. I'm still 10lbs above where I used to be, but I feel miserable from all the physical issues I'm dealing with. It still feels weird to be able to say my current goal is to gain weight, but I can say it sincerely, so I call that a win.
The fasion industry was despicable how it promoted itself using extreme figures and then trimming the photos . Too much emphasis on getting the perfect body . I can not imagine how bad the situations people put them self through . One must remember the human body is not a perfect thing and we all have defects so be kind to yourself . Other people see you as a better looking person than you think you are . Mental health really screws with ones brain recognise when you are being extreme and seek help as you are not alone . Everyone has problems I know this all too well . I apreciate your open and frank videos Angela , All the best
I want to thank you for not sugar coating anything and although numbers can be really triggering to a lot of people struggling with eating disorders, (as it is for me), I don't blame you for using them. People who don't know a lot about eating disorders ususally don't think twice about using numbers and that's okay! They are triggering to people with ED's because they are disorders, mental illnesses, and our minds are a screwed up when it comes to those kinds of topics. I believe that it is up to the viewer to heed the trigger warnings and proceed with caution and if you think there is the slightest chance of you getting triggered by watching the video, then I would just be extra careful and not watch it. Eating disorders are brutal, ugly mental illnesses and we can't keep glamorizing them. So, again I really want to thank you for being truthful and open about yours Angela!! And I also want to mention to you Angela, that people who are deep in their eating disorders are going to deliberately look for videos and content that will trigger them. Eating disorders are very competive diseases and unfortunately there will always be someone who will use this kind of content to trigger themselves and to engage in their eating disorder behavior. It's kind and thoughtful of you to use the trigger warnings and that's about all you can do if you are going to put this kind of content up. I think your very brave for sharing your story and thank you for trying to warn people about the Y2K era and its comeback, even though the clothing and those things are most likely not the cause of eating disorders directly they are very triggering adn very unhealthy.
I struggled from severe restrictive anorexia and then bulimia issues for 11 years. My oesophagus teared down and I had internal bleedings due to bulimia(Mallory Weiss syndrome). Now, I haven't purged in a year and doctors said another purge would be fatal. Nothing glamorous. Stay safe xoxo
Thank you for realizing how considerate it is to leave out specific details (such as numbers) when it comes to talking about EDs publicly. Eating disorders are a hellish disorder, im in recovery but even when I was watching your last video and hearing the specific details come up, there was one side of my brain saying “you could do that.” It really can be triggering. Eating disorders tend to be very competitive sadly. The thoughts are 100% not under our control but the constant comparing just comes with the illness :/ Thank you for this video. More people need to talk about the unpleasant reality of EDs so they can stop being romanticized and unrealistic body types sought after !
You're very welcome. I had no idea people would hear my story and want to copy. It was only through posting these videos that I learned of the competitive nature of ED. I'm glad to hear you're in recovery. Hopefully the very gory details will deter people from ever wanting to try it. They look at the glamor and glory of it but the reality is, they hurt and have varying levels of grossness.
Isn’t it telling that the designers and fashion editors know damn well that many women will not appreciate this? They’re out of touch with the average woman.
I think I can relate to some degree, as I’ve had chronic IBS/SIBO for the last ten years or so. I wasn’t getting out much, even well before the pandemic. I am currently experiencing a flare-up, and was reminded of this video. Thanks.
I was a baby during y2k, but I understand where you're coming from. I was on the verge of developing one cause in high school I was so into my looks. This was over 4-5 years ago. Ever since childhood I had always been the big girl who was a bit shy and insecure. Growing up I was always unhappy with myself. I was comparing myself to my cousins cause they were always pulling guys, I was mad at myself cause of them. They were more successful at things I wasn't. Guys (not all) also fed into it cause I was crushing on a lot of them (you'll see how this has to deal with high school later on). Sophomore year I took art class. I had a massive crush on this guy who sat in front of me. He was the reason for the teardrops on my guitar. To protect his identity, I'll call him Drew. Unlike Taylor's Drew, we didn't talk until later on in the school years. I liked him a lot. He started to talk about other girls to his friends. He started to talk about how hot they were, about their ass, about their tits. It took me back to when I was little. I started to exercise a lot, I almost bought a skinny tea (the words of certain products advertised can lure you in), I did eat healthier. I did all of this for him. Then, I started to step on the scale. When I saw my weight had gone up.. I was angry at the scale. So angry I cried. One night I just straight up threw my scale away cause "it lied to me". I was so tempted to buy products to "aid my weight loss", all cause I didn't know about fluctuations/water weight/etc. Drew wasn't being inherently rude (he wasn't even rude at all), I just wanted to change myself for him cause I was so tired of being the "ugly fat girl". Guys need to know why weight (for me) is a triggering issue when it comes to dating. I don't want to fall into harmful habits again. They don't need to change their standards but they need to understand that weight isn't all that comes with a person. I crushed hard on lots of guys throughout my life and got rejected cause of my weight/looks. I have a differing side that comes out and blames/stereotypes all men for things a minority of them do as a horrid way to cope with those memories. I try not to look at myself as the "ugly girl" but those memories come out so often. I try to exercise for me. I try to eat better for me. I know not to fall for those snake oils coated in pink bows with puppy dog wrapping. All the weight loss products on the shelves are just empty promises in pretty packaging. I still have that side come out time and time again. Dating is hard for young girls who grew up in the y2k era and still have body image issues cause of it. Lots of the media targeted towards young girls was all about fashion and boys. You were taught to be fashionable and deathly skinny for guys to like you (from what I can recall). We, as women, still need to learn that our bodies are ours. We are not sims. We shall not fall for what the media says. Also, thanks for acknowledging that it wasn't just girls going through ED's at the time. They target us ladies at a young age and that's why this ed talk is hurled towards young girls more than young boys. Hollywood has sexy people, but those sexy people can be unhealthy. We need to acknowledge that. We need to teach young boys/men and girls/women that sexy women on magazines are just sexy women on magazines, that's not a healthy way to live.
I'm more than one year into recovery after 7 years of eating disorders, and today with this video I've learned that the bad back acne outbreak I have now is related to this. I've had almost everything you've described, and never realized this one was "part of the package" too. Eating disorders are scary as hell.
The hormonal side to ED is something that people rarely discuss. Those fluctuations are responsible for so many different things. I've known women to stop getting their periods, fortunately mine remained regular which I equate to the fact that I didn't really stay in the thick of things for very long. There are ways that you can certainly minimize the breakouts on your back despite being hormonal in nature. Have you been to a dermatologist or have any treatment in place?
@@angelabenedict I've tried some homemade remedies suggested by my mother, thinking it would be something temporary and stress related, but it's been long enough and I should seriously consider seeing a dermatologist and getting proper treatment. Thank you for your answer
Just for future reference in ED recovery and therapy and everything we usually like to keep number talk out of it completely. People with EDs are mentally ill and the vast majority of people who’ll romanticise your illness are already incredibly sick and the numbers give them a goal. We’re perfectionists we have to be the best and if you’re eating less/purging more/lower bmi etc we feel the compulsion to beat that to be better to be more sick because then we’re worthy of help. The negative symptoms you’ve listed here will deter people who aren’t ill but the people who are already sick do not care about the negative side effects the ED is a coping mechanism as I’m sure you know. It starts off a fixation on body image but it’s really a method of control it’s not just about being skinny. When I was in the height of my eating disorder I still didn’t feel sick enough despite having a very low bmi because there’s always someone sicker and number talk can deter people who are in the best phase of their eating disorder to fully recover from getting help. Like most illnesses EDs if caught early can be fully recovered from with no physical or mental side effects and number talk makes people feel like they’re not sick enough to get help yet which is why it can be very very damaging. I doubt you ever meant for anhthing like that to happen and I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to attack you just please be careful with numbers in the future because I’d hate for someone who could avoid all the pain both of us have went through felt they weren’t worthy of help.
This is something I learned very quickly after I posted the initial video. I had no idea that numbers were triggering. I left the things mentioned in this video out because ironically the gross/painful bit's are the things I thought would trigger people but I was focusing on the wrong people. I was focused on not triggering people in recovery because I thought remembering their past pain was traumatic and may induce panic attacks. Like you, what you said about not feeling sick really resonates because I never felt 'sick' either. Once you're seeing results it's easy to tune that shit right out. It's a testament to the ethos of the period that we shrugged off excruciating pain and basically being disgusting poopy butts 24/7 because we needed to fit into the clothes that were being produced and emulate the beauty standards. It was so normal at the time that it took me 20 years to realize that what I was doing was wrong and very dangerous.
@@leonas1201 Of course! Thank you for explaining things to me and really breaking it down. It was irresponsible of me. I never made it to the point of realization and recovery to understand the mechanisms behind it so I'm very naive in this area. I remember that control all too well and the way you put it is so spot on. It starts off with a fixation on body image but it changes to control. So so so spot on! The moment I saw that scale move - the knowledge that I did that, I was fixated with the control I had over my body and NEEDED to do more. Thank you for the kind words. I'm still freaked out at the tendencies that I still have and am trying to get it etched into my noggin that it's not borne of being health conscious but unhealthy fixation.
@@angelabenedict it’s a hard realisation especially when you’ve had a history with restrictive eating because the whole time your sick you convince yourself your healthy but you now know what happened was not healthy and any tendencies you still have are also bad for you and accepting that is a huge step towards freeing yourself from these thoughts. Once you know there’s a problem you can fix it.
Thank you so much for sharing this!🖤 Things that you said are really important. I’d love to see a video about going to healthy lifestyle after the eating disorder, that would be very helpful for people who going through it right now
The main reason why people who have experience with online eating disorder communities (which you don't, so the the chaices you made are really understandable) and are very solidly on the path to recovery, if not completely in recovery, choose not to show pictures or share numbers (or at least keep it minimal) is because all of those things can be really triggering, and eating disorders are very competitive. People with eating disorders will often (consciously or unconsciously) know their triggers andwillhunt ofr them and try to find them, and a really good placeto find them happens to be in videos where people talk about having an eating disorder and don't know the community well enough to know that they should probably avoid those things. Trigger warnings will work for people who are trying to recover and know that the triggers will set them off, but won't for the people who don't want to get better. To be honest, I used to look up videos of people talking about their eating disorders all the time, and while I never had a full blown eating disorder I was certainly on my way there when I did those things. If this is somthing you're interested in learning more about then one TH-camr who actually works with people who have eating disorders is What Mia Did Next, and another TH-camr who talks about eating disorders among their other content (which includes some sweet sweet goth content and storytimes) is Of Herbs and Altars. I will say that for Of Herbs and Altars, please keep in mind that their pronouns are they/them. I normally wouldn't bring this up because what pronouns someone has or uses has no affect on how good or bad their content is, but because they don't really talk about their gender or pronouns in their eating disorder videos I fell into the sad hole of cisnormative assumptions (I've really been working on avoiding it, but years of society beating it into my head means that despite my efforts sometimes I trip and fall straight into putting my foot in my mouth.) and used the wrong pronouns until I learned what the right ones were by consuming more of their content. As a they/them human myself I know that using the wrong pronouns before you know better and then switching to the correct ones once you know is a common and unfortunate fact of life that can't always be avoided, but if I can help one person not accidentally make that very mistake I will, because accidental misgendering is at best very unfortunate and at worst completely awful.
for about a month know ive been on a ed content binge which has led me to feel extremely nostalgic about my own ed, and triggering me to want to go back to that. but watching this has finally started pulling me out of it, laxatives + calorie restriction + gym was my go to and i needed something to bring me back and make me remember MY 26 YEAR OLD BODY CANNOT DO WHAT MY 16 YEAR OLD BODY USED TO BE ABLE TO DO. im at an age where people start to die from eds and its not a place i want to go.
So I did want to share a little bit about how your video kind of gave me an "ah ah!" moment when I first saw it. So like you, I recently realized I was eating disordered. I just simply didn't eat and excersized (I was only allowed to stop, when my heart stopped). Yup. Allowed. So ultimately, my family unknowingly pushed me into en ED. I was shelters and didn't know normal culture well, so when they kept saying, oh, if you lost just a little more you'd be perfect, I thought it was because they cared and wanted the best for me, but that goal of just a little more didn't ever come. They did care, but what I didn't know not them, was the culture that was influencing them. I didn't know it was popculture. Clothes were clothes and I didn't watch tv. So what window to the world did I have besides school(wasn't exactly the most social child). Anyway. Your video helped me realize why this had happened. It eased some of the bitterness I had held onto toward my family after realizing what had happened. I can't blame them. Not entirely anyway. So I do have to thank you for that. I am recovered from said eating disorder, though I still struggle with a lot of the disphoria and other issues that come with that. But overall, I'm healthy. I got lucky. Even though this lasted for over a decade, I didn't get lasting effects. Thank you for sharing your story and for bringing to light some things in mine.
I missed this type of fashion cuz I was too young. But when I was a teen emo was the big thing which popped off right after this. Do you guys think it's possible that emo became a thing because they had grown up seeing the early 2000s fashion as young kids and that made them depressed and wanted to self harm / starve themselves? Could it be connected? This fashion was about low cut jeans and emo was about skinny jeans and also a bit low cut so it's not impossible that this fashion later created emo as a psychological response...
Like I remember when I idolized emo kids as the epitome of beuty and I was so jealous that I wasn't as skinny as them and I did starve myself. Seeing ribs and hip bones sticking out I thought it was beutiful in a twisted way or seeing a really skinny body frame in general. When I look at emo photos now I think it looks gross but there's still a part in the darkest corner of my brain that lights up when I see malnourished people so I think I still have a bit of sickness in me.
Hey I know this is a really old video (edit: thought the upload time was 6 years ago, not 6 days ago) but thank you for putting this out there and being so realistic and truthful in sharing your horrible experience. I used to abuse laxatives myself and I'm so so glad it was never as bad as it was for you. I didn't even know it could be that bad and I was reading articles on eating disorders almost compulsively (around 2018). Again, thank you for putting this out there, I couldn't imagine being this brave. I never thought I would be so keen on staying "clean" from laxatives and (trying by best to) not starve anymore. I hope you're still doing okay ♥
That's ok! This is a follow up to my original story but it was super necessary. People don't realize that you can absolutely become depending on laxatives. Abuse them for long enough and you can't go without them or some kind of intervention. You go from one extreme to the next, 24/7 diarrhea to constipation. It gets to the point where we actually get jealous of people who are 'regular'. I'm glad to hear that you've been strong through this and are staying strong. Thank you for the well wishes.
I grew up during the late 90s and early 2000s and I still struggle with the intrusive thoughts and body dysmorphia that I developed during that time, I still have vivid memories of myself as young as 7 doing body checks and putting restrictions on what I ate today Im almost 30 and I still catch myself in those bad habits.
Im one of the people who watched your last video to trigger myself/ "take notes" It's really hard to talk about EDs because of this :( sorry you went through all you did and I'm glad to see you are doing better Edit: also I was a kid/preteen during y2k and that definitely kick started my ED. Man I hope gen z is being raised in a better way and that if y2k fashion comes back it won't affect them like it did us
I used laxatives, too, when I was young. I didn't need anyone to tell me it's wrong. I could tell it was wrong due to the symptoms you described. As for "cramp free" it is only cramp free if you take it according to the directions. If you take a ton of them? Yea. I almost went to the ER once. Another thing I wanted to bring up was how we've done a complete flip. It used to be that fat people were shamed and thins were admired. Now it's just the opposite. "Fat and Fabulous," is one example. Neither is healthy, but I'll take thin over fat any day. I'm not into this thing where I try to get sicker so as to compete with others and end up all furry and in the hospital hooked up to an IV. But I'll always be afraid of getting fat. I still obsess on my weight and I'm almost 60. It will NEVER go away.
I know many people who are sick will ignore warning of health complications, but just throwing this out there: a lot of people know that bulimia messes up your teeth really bad, but a lot of people dont know that anorexia/restrictive eds can do the same thing. Malnutrition kills your teeth fast, just like throwing up all the time.
I remember watching an 'after school special' type movie about bulimia with Calista Flockheart in the 90s. I remember the dental issues caused by the stomach acids.
The 2000's were the start of my life long drug addiction issues, I was under 7 stone when I went to rehab in 2006. Heroin chic...theres nothing chic about heroin or the look you get. My guts are also messsd up, but I've found a technique that helps me and can help you. You merely start gently pressing the abdomen in a clockwise rotation, manually mimicking the natural action of peristalsis, it has definitely helped alot. All of the opiates have slowed my gut function over the years and this abdominal massage technique can guarantee relief the next day or so. Please, anybody reading, listen to the horrific experiences we have been through and don't go there. Its not worth it. Great video.🖤
I know how it feels to have pain due to pooping. It was due to my intolerance. I was in university at the time, my stomach hurt a lot. I didn't know why at the time, but my poop was green. I panicked, because that wasn't right. It turns out that a green poop is an indication of intolerance, and the body's desire to remove the intolerant compound. Therefore, the food will go quickly through the system too. It was so painful. It turned out that I was lactose intolerant, and I had eaten tons of yogurt at the time, which caused such pain.
That's a terrifying pain. When you have things like headaches or muscle aches we know to reach for something like ibuprofen but when it's the stomach doing that stabby stabby routine, there's nothing you can do other than to let it finish it's routine. I'm glad to hear that you were diagnosed and have adapted accordingly.
@@angelabenedict Indeed! Stomach issues are scary due to the reasoning you give, barely any medications. I also had some issues regarding the doctor appointment, so it took me months to get it checked. I decided to eat food that was gluten and lactose free for a whole semester, which helped until I was able to get myself checked. The few days before the appointment was really painful. The doctor said that it was important to have the intolerant in the body before the check. The whole experience made me so empathic towards people with both conditions. I'm glad that it was only lactose, because lactose pills exist, but at the same time, they make me bloated.
Thank you. This is a far better video about eating disorders than the last one. I am completely aware you enver intended to trigger anyone in the last one, its just that anorexics/bulimics often are completely fixated on numbers, so it is an insanely triggering thing to hear how much someone eats or weighs. I know a lot of people with EDs are completely aware of these side effects and will ignore them, but hopefully youve scared some people away from these disorders.
i wish mothers would be more mindful of how they talked about eating around their children. my mother was overweight her entire life and suffered from binge eating/bulimia/anorexia during different points of her life. she recognizes how painful that was and went through great lengths to prevent me from ever having an eating disorder. making sure we always ate healthy food, never mentioned weight or anything like that around me as a young child and when i was old enough to make my own eating choices she would tell me how to make the right ones. so many parents are just negligent and selfish when it comes to their kids’ mental health
Mothers have more of an impact than they could ever imagine. When we're kids were like little sponges absorbing everything. It's all about nature vs nurture. The same parents who demand their kids finish everything on their plate at dinner and then criticize the slightest bit of weight gain - It's damaging and confusing.
I was watching The Devil Wears Prada the other night, and throughout the whole movie they kept calling Anne Hathaway fat. Also the Emily Blunt character was basically anorexic and they just joked about it. It was upsetting honestly. Thank you for talking about this
A lot of that movie didn't age well.
I think that's meant to show how radical the fashion industry was and is. Anne Hathaway was the voice of reason until she got sucked in, but at the end she goes back to her ways. I don't think that movie was glorifying eating disorders or suggesting that the fashion industry is healthy in any way. People lie and cheat and step over each other. Nothing about that movie suggested that you should follow it. If anything, it is saying to quit while you can to get away from the horror.
Everytime i watch that movie i get so happy to see Emily Blunt's character eat in the hospital scene.
I remember thinking when I watched it ‘good, they are making fun of this bullshit,’ but then the main character reveals she was down a dress size. Ugh. The point was ‘beat them at their own game.’ No. Nooo! It should have been ‘fuck their game.’
It has always been damaging to hear my Mom laugh and joke about the line Emily has about eating a cheese cube when she feels like passing out.. It didn't make my ED worse, but it felt so wrong to hear someone joke about something like that.
I had an eating disorder for 11 years and I’m now paying the price. Please take care of yourselves guys.
Why does such disorder happen??🤔
@@alanmorris4896 There are several kinds of eating disorders, with a great many causes. Genetic disposition is known to be a contributing factor, but a person's environment can be enough to encourage disordered eating and body image troubles.
@@alanmorris4896
there are many possible causes
-genetic predisposition
-societal pressure
-trauma
-other mental health issues
it’s an addiction. a way of seeking control in your life. also some people use it to numb emotions because when you are so focused on tracking food and/or purging it is difficult to focus on anything else
@@alanmorris4896 stress, abuse, toxicity of peers, social media ect
Could you please tell me what happened to you? My life-long friend occasionally goes on no-food days and shes really struggling with recovery. Maybe that would help her.
The Olsen twins were another example as they got older in the early 2000’s.
One of them actually struggled with anorexia, I believe, but she's okay now.
Mary Kate olsen was my ultimate trigger.
True, I remember a period where they were really thin
@@VampiraVonGhoulscout they were both in denial of it
@@goodra999 I think only one of them were really talked about though.
I have been fully recovered for 5 years and was sick with an ED for 5. I still have:
-lanugo
-dark hair all over my body except hands, toes and ears, which I have to shave every week
-gastrointestinal issues
-bone issues
-heart issues
Don’t do this please
The hormonal effects are ones rarely discussed yet can be so prominent in ED. I wonder if these things were highlighted, if it would deter others that might otherwise have not have been. I'm glad to hear that you're fully recovered, I'm very sorry for the pain that you went through.
Bone and heart issues???? So that’s what’s wrong with me. My body feels like it can’t handle as much as it should
@@angelabenedict I definitely think that if some of these things were highlighted it would be a lot less likely to be romanticized
Heed Angela's warning. ED in my 20s has cause long term effects well into my 40s, particularly acid reflux and IBS. Spend well over $1k for electrolysis to deal with the unwanted body/facial hair that started growing because malnutrition and stress destroyed my hormonal balance. Please take care of yourselves
Also TEETH. It was so h o r r i f y i n g when mine just started deteriorating!!! out of nowhere (or so I thought, until I took a close look on my diet!), one cavity after the other and after the other. I would literally book dentist appointments several times a month on different teeth. It was awful, and they're still pretty brittle to this day
Please PLEASE be careful with that stuff, if you don't care about your health, at least care about your money... dentist work certainly ain't cheap!!
@Shimmy Shai it's a mental illness. they can't help it
it's seriously crazy how quickly it can catch up with you. even if you don't engage in restrictive / purging behaviors, it can seriously mess you up. be safe everybody and research harm reduction methods if you aren't ready to recover!
I don't have an ED but I have acid reflux because I love to sleep after eating lmaooo. It's not my fault I was brought up to siesta after lunch.
16 teeth, career ended from stress fractures, full stroke while still young, painful cystic breast tissue, adenomyosis
.
I'm a guy and I fell victim to a lifelong eating disorder starting in middle school around 2003 and even to this day I still struggle with severe body image issues because this shit hits all of us - regardless of gender - and can really affect our self esteem and is not to be taken lightly. Thanks for sharing.
I’m 24 now, but I didn’t realize at 20-21 that my body was changing in a normal way and it did concern me at first and almost pushed me to make dangerous choices. Nobody told me as a female human being that I’d experience anything drastic in-between puberty and menopause. I thought puberty then adolescence were really the last noticeable changes I’d see in my form until 40-50. Nobody told me that women CAN develop in their late teens and early 20s, and that many DO. I was barely an A-cup through high school and college with no discernible hip shape. I joked often that I was built like a pencil, like my dad, and became accustomed to that shape. Then, around 20-21 with no less exercise or diet change, I went up a full cup size and my hips and thighs clung to fat in a way they never had before, filling out my silhouette. I was confused, concerned, and resentful. Nobody mentioned to me EVER in a health class that I could potentially develop beyond puberty. Nothing about my body noticeably changed from 12-19, so I thought I was done. I’ve since realized my BMI is still alright (if those can even be trusted anymore) and this was a normal progression. I think educating young girls and young women about the natural course of female development is a good place to start. When you’re newly free of your parents at the ripe age of 18, you suddenly call the shots on what you eat or don’t eat - and if you don’t know to expect some fluctuations in weight during your early 20s, you might mistake that as something awful and make dangerous choices. Education. EVERYTHING starts and stops with education. Education early as prevention, so it doesn’t need to become intervention later. Just thought I’d share my experience, because I’m realizing now how common this is amongst women my age.
I can imagine that that was a very scary thing to happen. To have your body change so dramatically out of nowhere. When were little kids not only are we prepared for it but we eagerly anticipate it. After we reach adulthood, we assume that our bodies done doing the important stuff and now it's our job to keep it healthy. To go through puberty like that has got to be traumatizing. I'm really sorry that you had to go through that. I remember researching when women stop growing because I refuse to accept the fact that I would stay 5'2 tall. I was 21 at the time and elated to discover that I had another two years to potentially grow. It never happened mind you, but I really had to dig to find this information.
I am so glad you shared this, I went through the same thing! Nobody tells us that our bodies can change in our 20's but they can! I didn't know that either.
Thank you for sharing this! I'm in my early 20s and have always been stick thin but now thats changing in a way that I wasn't prepared for. Its really noticeable in my thighs and I'm just coming to terms that its natural and that nothing is wrong with me
This happened to me too. At 21 my whole body developed out of nowhere and i felt quite embarrassed having to have back pain and chest pain at 21 because my boobs just decided to grow, and buying clothes that would conceal my new figure because i felt too exposed. My thin body didn't catched as much atenttion as my new bod and now i'm still trying to feel confortable showing my new body (that i like but i don't like the stares), but, for now hoodies and mens clothes are my besties.
This really happens to most women and say it all the time. If you look at a teen girl versus a woman in her mid-20s the body shape is completely different but you’re right nobody talks about it and I also had that crisis
it's so sad that people take that horrible stuff as inspo, but unfortunately it's simply a mental ilness that makes one view the world differently. no wonder you didn't know but you're a sensible person and i knew you would set things straight about this. luv ya
I honestly didn't believe it when I first saw people bringing it up in the comments. I genuinely thought it was the usual group of melodramatics but it's too risky when it comes to the health of others to let that kind of thing slide without at least looking into it. I should have included this icky stuff and the painful side in my original video however hindsight is 20/20!
I remember being a young teenager during the Y2K era, and being devastated that I was 'too fat' to wear any of the popular trendy clothes that were being sold in most stores at the time. But I was not fat- my rib cage was too large to squeeze into even the 'XL' sizes. No one was around to tell me that skipping meals, taking pills, and doing whatever it takes to lose weight was bad for me.
Angela, I can't imagine it was easy to share in such detail your ED struggles, but this is such an important message to put out there and could possibly save some people. Thank you for making this video 💙
When you're so entrenched in the moment, logic kinda goes out the window. Even though it's legitimately your bone structure it becomes this frantic need to 'shrink'. Back then it was a total free for all when it came to weight loss. That body image was such a standard that anything above skeletal was seen as unhealthy/unattractive and there was this intense pressure that you needed to size down and do it fast so eating disorders were normalized. They'd see you restricting your eating and call you disciplined, you'd fill your plate with only salad and lean meats and they'd praise your will power. When my family/friends heard about my laxative use they said referred to it as determined and expeditious. They were taken aback by my ingenuity. It was a crazy time.
I’m 40. I have bulimia since 1990. I remember the early 2000 in the baby internet as a very dark place for us with ED...
Seriously, the forums and websites were quite the experience
It really was
Angela it sucks there was no one to tell you what you were doing was unhealthy. Im so glad you're still here with us today to be able to share you're story. I dont have an ED but I've had digestive issues since birth and sometimes have to take laxatives to encourage my body to go (cause if i don't pay attention I'll go three weeks without pooping) and yes the cramps are horrible!! I would be rocking back and forth on the toilet failing to alleviate the pain and there were many times i've ended up with booty burn so bad i had to sit on ice packs so PLEASE you guys do not abusive laxatives, cause as someone who has to take them for medical reasons it sucks even then
How do you look 25 when you’re 41???? I just turned 27 and I’m terrified of aging
me too! i'm 36. she looks 10 years younger than me. well she is an aesthetician! plus so much of it is genetics. mine are not that good.
Honestly, same. Since I watch angelas videos I take so much more care of my skin!
I think she made a video about her skin care once. And she also mentioned that when she was younger, she "acted like a vampire" so she always avoided the sun.
just want to reiterate what i said about genetics here. i have been living like a vampire since age 15 and using sunscreen any time i went outside. i take very good care of my skin, am hydrated healthy and sober.
Haha I'm 16 and I don't get why people are worried about aging, it's a natural and beautiful process despite what makeup industries promote
GG i hope you keep that attitude! i felt like saying something because in the same way that y2k fashion can harm people's body image i think so can social media of today with its filters and influencers who can afford cosmetic surgery and fillers and things like that. (i'm NOT saying this is angela though.) i think the message of unrealistic beauty standards holds true in both realms. i wish we didn't care about ageing :(.
It’s crazy all those celebs from the 90’s also had eating disorders themselves
As it became publically acceptable it only got worse in the 00's.
@@angelabenedict exactly:/
im so sorry for you… for us who went through this. I had my own problems too. Im type 1 diabetic and skipped insulin to thin down. I was praised for getting thin so quick but I was vomiting and was nauseated due to ketoacidosis. my body was so sick and had gone hospitalized several times for it… now that im older, I have diabetes complications with my eyes and kidney problems needing a kidney transplant. i mean… this is life now and i have accepted and taken better responsibility for my health now but dang… I wish we were better guided when we were younger
diabulimia is a real thing and I still don't understand why it isn't taught in schools just like other ED's as it's the most dangerous by nature and there have been countless documentaries and studies on it. I wish you all the best in life and health and hope you can get your kidney transplant soon 💜
@@Laura-vs6fs thank you
This is a very important follow up and you have my respect for being so frank. My ED lasted from about the early 90s to the mid 2000s, now I am in my 50s... the effects are impacting. Not going to go into too much detail but my digestive system is toast. No one tells you how isolating that is, having to really watch what you eat because of the pain and discomfort. Thank you Angela for being real, I admire you even more now.
Thank you :) The physical impact this disorder remains even well after recovery. It seems that the digestive system is the first to take the hit. When you're in that mode where you just want to lose weight, you want instant results so the idea of engaging in damaging behaviors can be alluring to some. If there's one thing that people can relate to it's pain. Hopefully hearing that side will make them think twice.
You and I are not far in age..I'm 36 and I remember those days...I feel you 100%. Clothes back then did really make a person look way bigger than they were. Kate Moss really was considered the standard then. I fell into abusing laxatives and diuretics and it's hard to get off them cause they give you "instant" results on the scale. I also have serious gastro issues resulting from it. It breaks my heart to see so many young ones glorifying thinspo..
Well... This is how eating disorder works. You subconsciously search for "thinspiration" in content that should be quite the opposite, thinking you'll get some tips of how to be "perfect". How to achieve particular type of body. It pushes you deeper into sickness, but it feels so good at the same time. Cautionary tale becomes motivation and unfortunately , Angela, you can't do anything about it. You're not responsible for twisted thoughts of somebody. It's impossible to prevent such thing
Exactly.
I never had an ED but videos like this asure me that the things i thought were terrible in disorders like this, are actually much worse.
Thank you for sharing your story ❤️
The 00's really left a stain into our generation isn't it?
☹️ I wish peace to those who had and are suffering from ED's watching this video.
I'm 39, and suffered greatly in those days. Thank you sharing 🖤 Suddenly I don't feel so alone when it comes to my dark, grim, past.
You should check the comment section of my previous video on the matter. If the video triggers you, skip watching it however you'll find hundreds of people in the comments who have gone through the very same thing. Their stories are painful but hopeful because it shows that we're not alone.
i was sick as a boy and had vomitting common for decades by age 15 i was 49 kg and pale and thin and very weak also it took years of taking heathy eating and gym until i am 110 kg and can lift like a gym bro
It's sad that you have to worry about these things. Thank you for the follow up
In 2002, I was five going on six. I had no concept of eating disorders or body image, and our fashion taste was whatever was the most colorful and most whimsical.
In 2006, I was nine going on ten, and I was unhappy with my weight and wished that I had lost more of my baby fat, and elementary girls would call each other fat as an insult, even if they were healthy and thin.
Not even children were able to escape this :(
Yeah! I was born in 1997, and I remember my classmates exhibiting some eating disorder type behaviors in the mid 2000s. Many girls at that time were restricting the foods they believed were "fattening" (pretty much anything that wasn't salad or crispbread) and were calling themselves fat, even though none of them were.
Yeah, I remember Disney--freaking Disney--had to even step in and tell teen and pre-teen girls not to try harmful diets and have healthier body image. Do you know how bad something has to be for Disney to have a moral high ground? Yikes.
Same. I started trying to restrict my eating as a kid because girls would call me fat as an insult in about 5th grade. That shit sticks with you.
I'm 25 now and was a little kid during the Y2K era and I remember seeing all of those girls and women and thinking that those body types were normal! Everyone praised them and loved them for their sickly thin bodies and these are the people that I looked up to at the time as a kid! I used to use Y2K as thinspiration and I used to see them all over pro-ana sights. I have been struggling with Anorexia for the past 11 years and have been in recovery for the past 7 and am now not only struggling with my chronic anorexia (although I am happy to say that I am healthier and at a healthy weight now!), I am also struggling with health issues caused by my eating disorder. My ED took so much from me and made me miss out on so much as a teenager and as a person in my early 20's. Please, if you are struggling, no matter where you are at in your ED or recovery or even if your not sure if you have an eating disorder, ASK FOR HELP!! There are consequences to doing these kind of things to your body!
Same here Amanda. As a gen-z girl growing up in the 2000s and the early 2010s I was bombarded with super skinny size zero bodies.
I became curvy after puberty, so I developed eating disorders.
First, I stopped eating fatty foods like butter and ghee.
Then, I stopped eating carbs.
And my eating disorders became so extreme, that I ended up eating NOTHING!!! I was literally starving.
Still I could NEVER become skinny, due to which I nearly killed myself by overdosing with paracetamol.
Finally, in 2019 I decided to embrace my curves. No matter what.
After using the body type calculator, I found out that I have an hourglass figure.
I started wearing skinny jeans to show off my curves.
I have fully recovered recently.
Now, speaking of Y2K and the so-called "skinny revival", I am angry. I do NOT want to go back to the self-loathing stage anymore.
I could not care less.
Y2K fashion sucks.
Skinny obsession can go screw itself.
Weight loss industry can choke on a cactus🌵🌵🌵
I still have a E.D and still have the voice in my head. I still have body dysmorphia. I started sticking my finger down my throat at 12 and years later started laxatives, and added the finger as well too. I am vegan and don't fear potatoes anymore.
I went from Anorexic to bingeing. My hair use to be thin and falling out, I don't miss sitting on bone or feeling cold all the time. I go to the gym now and I am learning self love and self care.
keep going I'm proud of you❤
@@martlakokaia Thank you so much, I can't wait to quiet that voice in my head and have self love.
thank you for sharing, and good luck to you!
I haven't watched the other video yet. However, i have been meaning to thank you for a VERY powerful message you had left on an old Dorian video. It was very personal on your part so i won't go into details. But it was heart-felt, and you really opened yourself up. Thank-you for that.
@@Angel-jt2pl Dorian's videos are amazing!
So much this! I can remember texting my boyfriend at 3 AM, sobbing because I thought I was going to die and was too scared to admit to my parents what I was doing, promising myself that I would never take laxatives again because I was in such terrible pain and nothing was coming out! His reply every time, knowing what I was doing and encouraging it was simply, you're fine, you're just over-reacting. Let it pass and you'll be fine in the morning. And no matter how often I tried to stop the laxatives, how many hours I spent at the gym, I would always go back after a week or two because that little tummy bump, the natural healthy tummy bump, would come back and I couldn't have that showing over the top of my waistband because then my boyfriend would start to badger me over the fact that he thought it looked like I was pregnant. That went on for nearly 5 years. Now I'm in my 30's and dealing with IBS, sometimes I can't go for weeks and have to drink a natural tea my Dr recommended to help keep me from developing a blockage and sometimes I end up on the toilet constantly because my system is so screwed up it can't regulate itself naturally anymore. Eating disorders are no fun, you're so busy watching your weight you forget to enjoy life and then you spend the rest of your life dealing with the consequences of your actions.
There was a movie a long time ago that my mom had me watch and it was about an anorectic girl who was hospitalized for her low weight, and in the hospital was a girl who was in the hospital for her ow weight, but she was bulimarectic (my story), and while the movie was meant to raise awareness and help, it fueled my obsession to become and more skeletal,
At its most basic, disordered eating is a mental illness of perception, but it has no end, it is not based in logic or reason, and can often take years to recover from, if not a lifetime for some.
In severe cases though it is much more deeply faceted than just wanting to be thin, and long term treatment is necessary.
Scare tactics rarely work, but it is good to illustrate the horrible aspects and consequences even after being in recovery for years, so that the disordered behavior is not glamorized.
I would argue though that it was not the fashion of the time that was causing this in people, it was definitely perpetuaing unhealthy ideas. The story i has been going on for a while. My major struggles were ending around the time you are speaking about.
I remember being in collage and some of the friends that I had at school, knew about my disordered history (that had moments of remission, due to hospital treatments and behavior modification) and they would ask me to teach them how to purge. I refused, but that just shows how strong the obsession to be thin runs, and how far a lot of people will go to create an image of themselves, but it is not only about the image it is also about food obsession to a large degree. The disease is complicated and nuanced, and some will still persist despite your efforts to illustrate the dark and dreadful side.
The fact that your boyfriend at the time saw nothing wrong with what was happening with you shows how sick he was too. Often the people around us are just as distorted in how they see reality.
can
If people watching this video or reading this comment please be yourself don't worry about what others think of you & if you need help I beg you to ask for it.🖤
I am glad you are talking about this serious issue!!!
I am very sorry that there are people who are using your information as thinspiration. This was a traumatic time for you and you're trying to share that story to help other people learn from your experiences. Personally I appreciate your willingness to share your story and this information, and I am sad that there are people who are abusing it.
I think for the most part many of us who lived through Y2K have horror stories in this vain. I know I was just kid, like 11 or 12 years old, and I have quite a few myself. At the time it was so normal it was practically inescapable.
I grew up with an ED by proxy I guess. My mother had a very sever ED that no one really acknowledged because she was over 400 lbs. when she started. I know now they have changed the criteria and now she would be a prime candidate for the diagnosis, but at the time no one considered her ED. She was just losing a lot of weight and everyone praised her for it, and for the most part ignored how we, her children, were being affected. (brief clarification: my mother believed that kids needed to eat less then adults, so if she didn't need to eat much then neither did her children)
Personally while I don't follow your channel for this specific topic I do actively seek it out on other craters pages as a means of trying to understand the mentality of people affected by it. I don't think your story and mental state at the time is anything the same as what my mothers was, but closer to the state of the people who saw what has happening and ignored it or didn't intervene. I do hold a lot of contempt for myself and everyone who was around at the time for excuse it. Though stories like yours and many others, it helps me understand that people who were seeing my situation, witch was so obviously not okay, probably couldn't do anything about it because they were also not okay. Your story and the vast majority of others available have helped in at least being able to forgive the people around at the time, and to finally put some of it behind me.
So thank you for giving me this!
I'm so glad you listened and researched. ❤️
a lot of people in the comments are sharing their health impacts and horror stories so i just want to share that life after ED recovery can also be amazing. i used to think that people would love, respect, value, and admire me more if i was thinner. in reality, all the time i used to spend obsessing over food and body image is now time that i can spend being present and connecting with others, and i have so much more love, respect, and validation in my life now than i ever did back when i was chasing a body standard. recovery is so worth it, i have wonderful friends and a wonderful partner who bring me so much joy. i have energy now to travel, go on adventures, see nature, and pursue my goals because i’m not undereating and my brain isn’t taken up by obsessive thoughts about food. i distinctly remember sitting in my kitchen one day and thinking “i don’t think there will ever be a moment in my life where i can look at a piece of food and not immediately start adding up and calculating calories in my head.” i was wrong. no matter how far gone you think you are, you don’t have to be there forever. the voice and the calculator will fade away over time if you keep working towards your recovery.
Thank you for sharing your story Angela. There was a lot of pressure at that time, and I felt it to. This issue affected so many people, and I'm glad you're speaking out about it.
Thank you for making a follow up video. It’s a good example of someone with a platform listening to the concerns of their audience & finding a way to be responsible and address it
My pleasure! It was a disturbing thing to hear so I had to see it for myself to make sure that this was indeed the case. Thank goodness for TH-cam analytics. It was right there, plain as day!
thank you for sharing your story. it’s more than relieving to hear someone else talk about what i’m going through. i threw away all my laxatives right before writing this comment.
Good. You don't want them. It aint worth it and they don't even make you lose weight.
Ty for this vid, Angela. Like tons of other commenters and yourself I dealt with ED for a long time. I think it was really great and responsible for you to look more into what people were saying about the triggers (learning about the analytics was pretty fascinating). I’m in my mid 30s, and back when I was dealing with the ED and went to treatment 15-20 years ago there wasn’t really such a thing as the culture around being triggered in the way that word is used now. They knew about thinspiration and we did still use the word “trigger” in therapy as a means to show what made us want to engage in negative behaviors, but it wasn’t memed like now, and it sucks that it’s become that way. Ty for sharing your experience and thoughts, and for going into the truth of how shitty things can be (quite literally). It is so insane the shit that was practically encouraged to fit into the clothing of that era. I am very glad the views around body image have changed - not that there aren’t still issues, but at least more people are speaking out, celebrities included.
You're very welcome, I'm happy like that. The fact that people might be using my story to harm themselves was far too much of a risk so unlike other videos where people would pop off in the comments, I felt that I had a responsibility to validate the claims and act accordingly. I come from a period where trigger wasn't a word in our vernacular either. I hope that the pain and general ickiness which is the reality of these things will help deter people and sway them into a healthier alternative to weight loss.
I dunno if it's just me, but back in the day, almost everyone I knew had some sort of an eating disorder. Everyone was trying to be super skinny. It was almost like a trend to have an eating disorder. I saw many of my friends stop school to deal with their eating disorder. I didn't fall for the peer pressure in high school, but I felt terrible about my size because I just didn't look skinny enough.
Started university and I caved and lost so much weight that I lost my period. I got scared so I quickly tried to gain a bit of weight, but just that one year of being very underweight has caused heart palpitations for me now. I loss all my strength and muscle mass and now I'm working every day to get my muscles stronger so I don't shake when I bend down.
I said it in the last video, but I'll say it again. It's alright to enjoy Y2K fashion, but please don't glamourize that time and think that your body is ugly just because you can't wear those types of clothes. The majority of us who went through that time had a hard time wearing those clothes too and now that I'm an adult, I realize Y2K fashion has some of the most unflattering shapes and cuts. Don't get me started on how toxic everything was, like how they treated celebrities. That's a different topic for another day.
It's not just you. More often than not, the people I knew around that time were engaging in some sort of damaging behavior due to their weight or at the very least on some diet fad.
To lose your period like that, your body had been through trauma. I'm so sorry. I hope, I sincerely sincerely hope that if the trend goes more mainstream, they don't use the same body types as the spokespeople.
I can listen to you talk all day!!! Love you Angela!! ❤️
I had restrictive anorexia where I still ate every meal a day (and snacks!)...it only lasted months but caused permanent damage to my nervous system. I have horrible IBS, my stomach doesn't empty correctly, etc. It's with you forever. Sucks!
It's truly terrifying how just a short amount of time can affect the rest of your life.
I applaud you Angela, for being brave in talking about your ED and for taking on board the criticism of your last video. I understand that as someone who only recently realised you had an ED, you would not know about the toxic competition with numbers, images, "tips" etc that so many people with ED look for.
Instead of just dismissing it, you did the right thing in asking yourself if it was true and doing your research. I will say that as someone who had an ED and probably still does, we seek out anything and everything related to this topic. When I post online about my ED I do not mention the lower weights or specific ways my body looked then as I know someone will try to compete with it. I'm so careful with what I say and tell people, like you have, the gory/terrifying reality. Even so, on IG I still got likes and follows from pro Ana accounts. I don't like seeing Ana pics and have reported a certain TH-camrs account on IG (along with thousands of others) because pics/vids pop up of her everywhere and she is actively encouraging others to kill themselves like she is. Social media platforms protect her because she makes them money. EDs are on the rise, partly because no one looks real anymore with facetune etc and with this person flaunting her bones in deliberately chosen tiny outfits and poses. You will always trigger someone with ED content but you have handled this really well and I just want to say that I'm sorry you have been through this. You are absolutely stunning and it just shows EDs can happen to anyone. I wish you well Angela.
Thank you for sharing the details that no one else will. Some girls on this path may be too young to understand the value of their own future health and fertility, but may pay attention to the much more immediate and counter-productive effects you mentioned.
You're welcome. It's hard not to get sucked into a glamor of being thin. Many even romanticize eating disorders. No use trying to lose weight to impress your crush when you Hershey shart yourself right in front of them.
I love that you're putting yourself out there and talking about the aspects of EDs that can't be glamorized. Because emaciation and malnourishment, everyone finds the way to put those in a pedestal. But there is nothing about bowel damage that can be spun into a goal. even by the people who are really deep into the ED mindset
if anyone is struggling with body image: your body is simply a vessel. what matters most is health and how you physically feel. whenever that voice in your head tries to tell you that it isn’t good enough, remind yourself that it’s simply a vessel. something that gets you one place to another, a physical form to express yourself. it’s difficult to let go of all the things society teaches you and the pressure of being attractive, but the one thing that is really helping me right now is to just not give a fuck. my body is my body. it’s gonna do what it’s going to do and look how it’s going to look. all i can do is try my best to take care of it. (also these videos and angela’s perspective on this subject is so helpful ❤️)
Well said! Thank you for the kind words, I'm happy you enjoyed the video. You're right, best we can do is to be healthy.
About a year ago I was on the edge of an eating disorder because of all the romanticization online and videos like these, the videos about the horrific things that happen is what stopped me. I’m really grateful for this video and others like these that stopped me before I started.
I felt like having a glass of grapefruit while watching this. I am very happy you got through this and now you are safe and taking care. There are many natural things (like linen seeds) you can add to your meals or even snacks that can help you feel better. As a woman I also recommend soy ( contains a high concentration of isoflavones, a type of plant estrogen (phytoestrogen) that is similar in function to human estrogen but with much weaker effects.)
Thank you for making this video. The combination of lockdown and entering my 30s has triggered my body dysphoria and I feel myself slipping into old habits. I needed to hear this.
Oh my god you just gave me the answer to so many weird bodily things that have been happening.
Thank goodness you made this video because in the last video I could hear the pens clicking in the back
I really enjoy your videos about diet culture and EDs in the early 2000s. I understand those topics can be taxing since they likely hit close to home, so I just wanna say I think you're a tough cookie and i love to hear what you have to say.
This must have been so difficult to speak about. But thank you so much for speaking about this. Please take care of yourselves 💚
I'm sorry you went through this.. but I'm glad you are bringing attention to something so important.
Hope you're doing well 🖤🖤
Thank you Angela for sharing your story. I want everyone to open up if you can and share your stores in hopes that these stories will reach people who are struggling with mental disorders. ED's are mental and if we don't help one another, another person of any age could give into these unrealistic and very unhealthy beauty standards.
Remember, your body and your life is someone else's DREAM existence.
As someone recovered from orthorexia who still struggles with body dysmorphia, I can 100 percent say you do not want any ED. Even if you were lucky like I was and suffered no long term physical effects, psychologically my self worth was drug through the dirt. I have great days where I see how gorgeous I am, how strong i am, how fucking amazing a person I truly am, then there are days where I break every mirror in my apartment, won't be nude in front of the love of my life, and am sobbing hitting myself in shame and guilt because I want nothing more than to not be who I am. I ultimately was "trained" into this mental disorder by bullying and society's bullshit beauty standards.
When it came to the food portion, which I'm proud to say I'm fully recovered from: I guilted myself to the point of suicidal thoughts for wanting a slice of gluten free chocolate cake. As an athlete that needs healthy food and a higher than average number of calories in a day, that's a lot of time I spent obsessing over macros and if I 'deserved' a piece of chocolate and if it would undo all my hard work. Now a few years later I can safely say I do deserve those things and I love my body and what it does for me on a daily basis and will do everything I can to give it that love it deserves. This weekend I'm getting Macromamas gluten free chocolate ganache cake and even though the sugar will inflame me, I fucking deserve a treat! lol XD Do not fuck with your body that way. it does NOT deserve to be abused. It keeps you alive to do all those things you want to do in life and even if you reach your physical goals your mind will be a wreck for years, if not your entire life! Honor and respect your body because you cannot get your health back when you abuse yourself to the point where something cannot be repaired. Your health and self-worth and self-love are PRICELESS.
Much love to anyone reading this.
i had a ED during the 2010s i recovered fully at 19-20 in 2017, ive been dealing with the prices of being so malnourished for so many years, and also i had to get so much dental work for the damage that came with it. Its not bad to be completly honest with the things you did, its good having these cold and open hearted conversations. We cannot avoid how some poeple can take that information or what they do with it.
For me someone who was sick 10 years later i related a lot to what you talked about and felt more in peace
for reference i started my anorexia at 13, i have hormonal issues, i have amenorrea (chronic anovulation) i have to use a special tooth paste just for the calcium damage on my teeth, i had like 10 cavities, i have stomach issues, i still cant eat a lot of things because my stomach is way too sensitive and i end up getting sick. Dont take this illness lightly i could have died and was in fact close to at my teens because i even had heart problems. im only in my early 20s and this is still behind me
In the 2k, teen me had adopted the "not like other girls,/girl things are dumb" mentality. Childish internalized misogamy, sure, but as far as young girl identities goes, it protected me form most of the effects of the thinness craze, thank-fucking-God. Well, that, and seeing Catherine Z-Jones in El Zorro. Heroin Chick never had a chance compared to her.
Thank you for the follow-up, Angela... you truly have a way with words even when being as detailed as this 🖤
I almost gave myself an ulcer because of my ED and I paid the price for years to come. Even now, my stomach and the rest of my digestive system is extremely sensitive.
The normal and relatively fast passing food poisoning for someone sends me to the hospital. I have terrible acid reflux and get really bad gastritis every now and then even with a proper diet. PLEASE, I implore you... don't destroy your body like I and many others did. It isn't worth it.
Holy shit it’s eerie how much I needed this at this specific time more than ever.. i was actually like ravenously eating a bunch of fries I ordered after getting so hungry when I put the video on. I started living alone a week and a half ago, and one of the reasons I wanted to live alone was so I could continue my ED but amp it up if anything and no could see it or stop me. Since there’s no one cooking, no one ordering food, nobody really going out to eat.. because it’s just me.. I’ve gotten carried away with basically depriving myself of food. I’ve barely eaten, I have literally no food at home and had to cancel so many plans because I’m so physically weak.. plans I really wanted like seeing friends, going on dates, playing music with my band mates etc. I haven’t been able to get in the shower in several days, including today, cause I still haven’t been able to energy wise and mental wise. I’ve been drinking pretty heavily which isn’t helping anything (all my friends are enablers sadly and only perpetuate it all). I don’t drink daily but once I start I have trouble stopping. The worst part in current life is my “rock” so to speak who kept me sane and feeling loved, who really did love me unconditionally, is basically no longer in my life as of today, abruptly and without any explanation. We were so close and there was no one else who truly accepted me or I could be myself around. We weren’t an exclusive traditional couple but there was like overflowing love.. he wanted an actual relationship with me but I basically practice non monogamy as a life choice. Anyways.. I thought him being around me might influence me to do better.. he was the only person I was remotely comfortable with seeing me naked after a bad relationship ended with a guy with a major ED. I was thinking the last few days about trying new methods like laxatives or purging or something like that but your video and the detail of how how awful that actually feels and the long term effects made me think. I already have ibs and my stomach issues have only worsened. Also you mentioning shows like the simple life and rock of love being problematic was so fucking validating. I was binge watching all of that, especially rock of love, all the seasons and the first thing I noticed was like the scary level of underweight all these women were.. it was actually really triggering to see and I think that’s why I kept watching it, to trigger myself. Eventually I actually stopped watching though because I couldn’t stand it anymore. And I really thought something was wrong with me and I was crazy for feeling the way I did. I’m really glad I’m not crazy for that. I’m so glad it’s not just me. One of those women from the show has a TH-cam podcast and I was really pissed off because she was basically encouraging dieting with toxic diet culture rhetoric (including “cheat days”) and projecting her own body dysmorphia thoughts onto everyone else, in a very dangerous way, given how many followers/fans she has and the podcast has nothing to do with dieting, fitness or EDs. She’s very thin but saying she’s “heavier” these days and was trying to cover up by wearing more clothes.. I actually stopped watching cause I can’t deal with her anymore.
I appreciate you talking so honestly and candidly about your ED. It makes me feel less crazy... it really is a mental illness, but it makes you feel so alone with all of it, like you're only one doing these crazy things.
Thank you for speaking up again, your speaking out helps people like me.
When I was a kid, I used to think that no matter what you liked like then, once you become closer to an adult woman, you would magically look like the actresses on TV because that's what the media told me women looked like. I used to not be concerned with my body that much when I was younger because I was so sure it would change when I got older. But as soon as the girls my age starting going through puberty and developed in ways I wasn't, I started to get really concerned about my body and how it wasn't "right." Thankfully, I never developed an ED because of it, but I spent most of my life hiding my body under clothing to conceal my insecurities from the neck down. I'm glad we're seeing other body types in the media now, but we still have so much work to do with representation and teaching young kids what is and isn't healthy, and teaching teens that it's more than ok to not look like a Victoria's Secret model.
love you angela! thank you for spreading awareness
I'm only 23 but I grew up with the residuals of the era and it absolutely poisoned me. I've struggled with the effects of laxative abuse and disordered eating for as long as I can remember until 2019, when I finally actually recovered. It was like the veil lifted off of my entire life and I was able to actually see clearly, but unfortunately 6 years of abuse will continue to wreak havoc on me for decades. I also have IBS and gastritis. I'm unable to use the restroom without them now and it has taken me 2 years to wean down to 5x the normal dose. Everything (and I mean every. Single. Thing.) you described was so familiar! We have to warn these teenagers what can happen when you play around with this stuff!!! I will never again take my body for granted.
I'm 26 and have been dealing with anorexia and compulsive exercise addiction for over a decade. People tend to glamorise eating disorders, I even glamorise my own suffering in my head sometimes. But then I remember the fact that the most consistantly disgusting public bathrooms I have ever been to are the ones at the eating disorder clinic I go to. There's always at least one blocked toilet from lax or from purging, or people just don't bother to flush (why??). Another non-optimal part of eating disorders (well, mine specifically)- is that if you have big breasts and anorexia, in your mid 20s your skin stops bouncing back like it used to. I used to be a natural F cup, then my most recent anorexia relapse came along and instead of just making my breasts smaller, it just sucked out all the fat leaving deflated lumpy bags hanging from my chest. I would literally roll them up like socks to try put them in my bra. That totally destroyed any body image I had left. My compulsive walking gave me massive blisters that would be several inches across, going across the bottom and up the sides of my feet. My toenail half fell off and I'd still have to exercise with my feet like that, or with sprained ankles. My yoga mat has blood stains. They don't show this side of eating disorders in the media because people don't want to watch that on tv- but that just means people see anorexia or other EDs in the media in a more positive light and it's definitely a lot easier to glamorise than seeing the REAL reality...
Firstly I want to thank you for sharing your story. That sounds excruciating. You are so right, the media doesn't want to see the reality of these things. They want to glamorize and romanticize. Like when you see some dramatic hospital scene where the person is unconscious in the bed...Where's the pee bag? When you're unconscious, they throw a catheter in there to collect your urine and that collection bag is out for all to see. When it comes to eating disorders, they never portray it in a scary way or even off putting way. They just show pretty things and say, 'BTW - don't'. How's that gonna deter people?!
ive noticed a disturbing surge of casualness about EDs.. especially with teenagers.. i watched a few short films about EDs, and the comments were horrifying. i understand sometimes we joke to cope, but it almost seemed like there was this sort of.. acceptance. as if recovery was impossible and people were watching these cautionary tales as inspiration :/. almost every single close friend i had when i was younger had an ED of some kind, its unfortunately common among women and girls.
i think its so unhealthy to exist in these spaces of people struggling with similar shit if none of you are trying to better yourself. it just breeds this dynamic where everyone is dragging each other deeper into a diluted dark mental state.
i rlly dont know how to even approach these sort of communities. i do think this more realistic information could definitely help give people struggling a more honest perspective on what they’re doing to themselves. thank u for this second video !! i hope its a wake up call to someone.. but i know mental health isnt simple and u cant just suddenly flip a switch. i still hope it helps someone tho
I was surprised to hear numbers but grateful to hear the details of this situation!
A lot of people were and I didn't quite understand why. As I said I don't really understand the culture behind these things and that there is this sort of dark underbelly of eating disorders to where there are actual groups and competition involved. I've only recently realized that after 20 years my period of being a health freak was actually a genuine eating disorder. That certain views and practices that I hold with regards to diet and exercise are actually tendencies carried over from that disorder. I never got to the point of competition with other people it was more about being in control of my own body and obsessing over that control. I genuinely didn't care what anybody was doing around me so long as they didn't mess with my eating or exercise schedule. I hope this video filled in the gaps that I should have in the original. I definitely don't want anybody competing, it ain't worth it. That pain is nightmare inducing.
I was 8-18 in 2000-2010. The dialogue about weight affects me to this day. I've been overweight since I was 5 and to this day I don't want to eat. Your video made me realize how bad things really were in the 2000s.
Stay strong Angela!
this is a great follow-up to the other video. eating disorders are glamourized in many ways, so talking about the disgusting sides of it as well as the long-term effects lifts off the veil and exposes it for what it is. I struggled with disordered eating (not quite an eating disorder I think, but I definitely had a messed up relationship with food) in the mid-00's and I wonder if that has anything with my freshly diagnosed IBS. I've probably had it for a long time but it only recently became bad enough for me to seek a diagnosis.
I just wanna say....your intro...was GENUINELY PERFECT
i started on my ED at the age of 12 and it was an on and off 5 year journey and there are times now when i want to slip back (years after beginning to fight it ... yes, still fighting those demons it spawned within me.) it destroyed my body from the inside out and i wish i could back in time to me as a kid and say FOOD IS YOUR FRIEND! not the approval of others, not the feeling of fitting into that outfit the way society approves of that you can’t even enjoy yourself, not the compliments which come your way that will never be enough. what you’re seeking can be and will be found but not on this path, not this way, because you’ll only find it in acceptance, NOT deprivation. and like she said and so many others: terrible acid reflux, ibs, these are things i’m dealing with now. i’m 24. i should be at the best health of my life but i’m not and it’s crushing to know that it doesn’t get better from here.
it is so sad to me, the voices that we have lost to such a terrible mental illness that has such a hold years after recovery if recovery even becomes a part of your story. i hope ed’s become more widely recognized and called out by parents, friends, and healthcare providers instead of people prescribing a burger and then not even following up on whether or not you ate. it’s our responsibility to become survivors but to expect someone so ill to get there alone is unreasonable, especially with how malnutrition f**ks up your brain. thanks for the informative video on such a rampant but still largely unacknowledged problem
In hindsight, I probably should have been diagnosed anorexic as a teen. I consistently hovered at a weight where doctors said things like "if you lose more weight, we'll need to have a conversation about it," or when I was pregnant in my 20s and asked my doctor if I should be concerned that I'd gained 30lbs in 3 months "you were super thin to start, so I'm not worried about it."
I hovered at the borderline of underweight by BMI and thought I was fat.
Your comment towards the end about focusing on strength is really relatable. I'm now in my 30s, and due to recent stress, I lost a bunch of weight. I'm still 10lbs above where I used to be, but I feel miserable from all the physical issues I'm dealing with. It still feels weird to be able to say my current goal is to gain weight, but I can say it sincerely, so I call that a win.
Glad you made this follow up with the gory details. Maybe people won't be so fast to use it as a how to guide knowing the consequences.
I hope so. If they should be using anything as a guide, it's this. The pain and lasting effects are not worth it.
I too was affected by this Y2K thing. I did not even realise it until much later.
The fasion industry was despicable how it promoted itself using extreme figures and then trimming the photos . Too much emphasis on getting the perfect body . I can not imagine how bad the situations people
put them self through . One must remember the human body is not a perfect thing and we all have defects so be kind to yourself . Other people see you as a better looking person than you think you are .
Mental health really screws with ones brain recognise when you are being extreme and seek help as you are not alone . Everyone has problems I know this all too well .
I apreciate your open and frank videos Angela , All the best
I want to thank you for not sugar coating anything and although numbers can be really triggering to a lot of people struggling with eating disorders, (as it is for me), I don't blame you for using them. People who don't know a lot about eating disorders ususally don't think twice about using numbers and that's okay! They are triggering to people with ED's because they are disorders, mental illnesses, and our minds are a screwed up when it comes to those kinds of topics. I believe that it is up to the viewer to heed the trigger warnings and proceed with caution and if you think there is the slightest chance of you getting triggered by watching the video, then I would just be extra careful and not watch it. Eating disorders are brutal, ugly mental illnesses and we can't keep glamorizing them. So, again I really want to thank you for being truthful and open about yours Angela!!
And I also want to mention to you Angela, that people who are deep in their eating disorders are going to deliberately look for videos and content that will trigger them. Eating disorders are very competive diseases and unfortunately there will always be someone who will use this kind of content to trigger themselves and to engage in their eating disorder behavior. It's kind and thoughtful of you to use the trigger warnings and that's about all you can do if you are going to put this kind of content up. I think your very brave for sharing your story and thank you for trying to warn people about the Y2K era and its comeback, even though the clothing and those things are most likely not the cause of eating disorders directly they are very triggering adn very unhealthy.
I struggled from severe restrictive anorexia and then bulimia issues for 11 years. My oesophagus teared down and I had internal bleedings due to bulimia(Mallory Weiss syndrome). Now, I haven't purged in a year and doctors said another purge would be fatal. Nothing glamorous. Stay safe xoxo
I have anorexic tendencies and seeing how dangerous this is helps me love myself a few percent more:)🖤🖤
This video was absolutely a good update! And definitely, a good video to help stop E.D.'s by showing how gruesome it really is.
Thank you for realizing how considerate it is to leave out specific details (such as numbers) when it comes to talking about EDs publicly. Eating disorders are a hellish disorder, im in recovery but even when I was watching your last video and hearing the specific details come up, there was one side of my brain saying “you could do that.” It really can be triggering. Eating disorders tend to be very competitive sadly. The thoughts are 100% not under our control but the constant comparing just comes with the illness :/
Thank you for this video. More people need to talk about the unpleasant reality of EDs so they can stop being romanticized and unrealistic body types sought after !
You're very welcome. I had no idea people would hear my story and want to copy. It was only through posting these videos that I learned of the competitive nature of ED. I'm glad to hear you're in recovery. Hopefully the very gory details will deter people from ever wanting to try it. They look at the glamor and glory of it but the reality is, they hurt and have varying levels of grossness.
Isn’t it telling that the designers and fashion editors know damn well that many women will not appreciate this? They’re out of touch with the average woman.
I think I can relate to some degree, as I’ve had chronic IBS/SIBO for the last ten years or so. I wasn’t getting out much, even well before the pandemic. I am currently experiencing a flare-up, and was reminded of this video. Thanks.
I was a baby during y2k, but I understand where you're coming from. I was on the verge of developing one cause in high school I was so into my looks. This was over 4-5 years ago. Ever since childhood I had always been the big girl who was a bit shy and insecure. Growing up I was always unhappy with myself. I was comparing myself to my cousins cause they were always pulling guys, I was mad at myself cause of them. They were more successful at things I wasn't. Guys (not all) also fed into it cause I was crushing on a lot of them (you'll see how this has to deal with high school later on).
Sophomore year I took art class. I had a massive crush on this guy who sat in front of me. He was the reason for the teardrops on my guitar. To protect his identity, I'll call him Drew. Unlike Taylor's Drew, we didn't talk until later on in the school years. I liked him a lot. He started to talk about other girls to his friends. He started to talk about how hot they were, about their ass, about their tits. It took me back to when I was little. I started to exercise a lot, I almost bought a skinny tea (the words of certain products advertised can lure you in), I did eat healthier. I did all of this for him. Then, I started to step on the scale. When I saw my weight had gone up.. I was angry at the scale. So angry I cried. One night I just straight up threw my scale away cause "it lied to me". I was so tempted to buy products to "aid my weight loss", all cause I didn't know about fluctuations/water weight/etc.
Drew wasn't being inherently rude (he wasn't even rude at all), I just wanted to change myself for him cause I was so tired of being the "ugly fat girl". Guys need to know why weight (for me) is a triggering issue when it comes to dating. I don't want to fall into harmful habits again. They don't need to change their standards but they need to understand that weight isn't all that comes with a person. I crushed hard on lots of guys throughout my life and got rejected cause of my weight/looks. I have a differing side that comes out and blames/stereotypes all men for things a minority of them do as a horrid way to cope with those memories. I try not to look at myself as the "ugly girl" but those memories come out so often. I try to exercise for me. I try to eat better for me. I know not to fall for those snake oils coated in pink bows with puppy dog wrapping. All the weight loss products on the shelves are just empty promises in pretty packaging.
I still have that side come out time and time again. Dating is hard for young girls who grew up in the y2k era and still have body image issues cause of it. Lots of the media targeted towards young girls was all about fashion and boys. You were taught to be fashionable and deathly skinny for guys to like you (from what I can recall). We, as women, still need to learn that our bodies are ours. We are not sims. We shall not fall for what the media says. Also, thanks for acknowledging that it wasn't just girls going through ED's at the time. They target us ladies at a young age and that's why this ed talk is hurled towards young girls more than young boys. Hollywood has sexy people, but those sexy people can be unhealthy. We need to acknowledge that. We need to teach young boys/men and girls/women that sexy women on magazines are just sexy women on magazines, that's not a healthy way to live.
I'm more than one year into recovery after 7 years of eating disorders, and today with this video I've learned that the bad back acne outbreak I have now is related to this. I've had almost everything you've described, and never realized this one was "part of the package" too. Eating disorders are scary as hell.
The hormonal side to ED is something that people rarely discuss. Those fluctuations are responsible for so many different things. I've known women to stop getting their periods, fortunately mine remained regular which I equate to the fact that I didn't really stay in the thick of things for very long. There are ways that you can certainly minimize the breakouts on your back despite being hormonal in nature. Have you been to a dermatologist or have any treatment in place?
@@angelabenedict I've tried some homemade remedies suggested by my mother, thinking it would be something temporary and stress related, but it's been long enough and I should seriously consider seeing a dermatologist and getting proper treatment. Thank you for your answer
Just for future reference in ED recovery and therapy and everything we usually like to keep number talk out of it completely.
People with EDs are mentally ill and the vast majority of people who’ll romanticise your illness are already incredibly sick and the numbers give them a goal. We’re perfectionists we have to be the best and if you’re eating less/purging more/lower bmi etc we feel the compulsion to beat that to be better to be more sick because then we’re worthy of help.
The negative symptoms you’ve listed here will deter people who aren’t ill but the people who are already sick do not care about the negative side effects the ED is a coping mechanism as I’m sure you know. It starts off a fixation on body image but it’s really a method of control it’s not just about being skinny.
When I was in the height of my eating disorder I still didn’t feel sick enough despite having a very low bmi because there’s always someone sicker and number talk can deter people who are in the best phase of their eating disorder to fully recover from getting help.
Like most illnesses EDs if caught early can be fully recovered from with no physical or mental side effects and number talk makes people feel like they’re not sick enough to get help yet which is why it can be very very damaging.
I doubt you ever meant for anhthing like that to happen and I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to attack you just please be careful with numbers in the future because I’d hate for someone who could avoid all the pain both of us have went through felt they weren’t worthy of help.
This is something I learned very quickly after I posted the initial video. I had no idea that numbers were triggering. I left the things mentioned in this video out because ironically the gross/painful bit's are the things I thought would trigger people but I was focusing on the wrong people. I was focused on not triggering people in recovery because I thought remembering their past pain was traumatic and may induce panic attacks.
Like you, what you said about not feeling sick really resonates because I never felt 'sick' either. Once you're seeing results it's easy to tune that shit right out. It's a testament to the ethos of the period that we shrugged off excruciating pain and basically being disgusting poopy butts 24/7 because we needed to fit into the clothes that were being produced and emulate the beauty standards. It was so normal at the time that it took me 20 years to realize that what I was doing was wrong and very dangerous.
Angela Benedict thank you for being so understanding I'm glad your doing better now
@@leonas1201 Of course! Thank you for explaining things to me and really breaking it down. It was irresponsible of me. I never made it to the point of realization and recovery to understand the mechanisms behind it so I'm very naive in this area. I remember that control all too well and the way you put it is so spot on. It starts off with a fixation on body image but it changes to control. So so so spot on! The moment I saw that scale move - the knowledge that I did that, I was fixated with the control I had over my body and NEEDED to do more. Thank you for the kind words. I'm still freaked out at the tendencies that I still have and am trying to get it etched into my noggin that it's not borne of being health conscious but unhealthy fixation.
@@angelabenedict it’s a hard realisation especially when you’ve had a history with restrictive eating because the whole time your sick you convince yourself your healthy but you now know what happened was not healthy and any tendencies you still have are also bad for you and accepting that is a huge step towards freeing yourself from these thoughts. Once you know there’s a problem you can fix it.
Thank you so much for sharing this!🖤 Things that you said are really important. I’d love to see a video about going to healthy lifestyle after the eating disorder, that would be very helpful for people who going through it right now
The main reason why people who have experience with online eating disorder communities (which you don't, so the the chaices you made are really understandable) and are very solidly on the path to recovery, if not completely in recovery, choose not to show pictures or share numbers (or at least keep it minimal) is because all of those things can be really triggering, and eating disorders are very competitive. People with eating disorders will often (consciously or unconsciously) know their triggers andwillhunt ofr them and try to find them, and a really good placeto find them happens to be in videos where people talk about having an eating disorder and don't know the community well enough to know that they should probably avoid those things. Trigger warnings will work for people who are trying to recover and know that the triggers will set them off, but won't for the people who don't want to get better. To be honest, I used to look up videos of people talking about their eating disorders all the time, and while I never had a full blown eating disorder I was certainly on my way there when I did those things.
If this is somthing you're interested in learning more about then one TH-camr who actually works with people who have eating disorders is What Mia Did Next, and another TH-camr who talks about eating disorders among their other content (which includes some sweet sweet goth content and storytimes) is Of Herbs and Altars. I will say that for Of Herbs and Altars, please keep in mind that their pronouns are they/them. I normally wouldn't bring this up because what pronouns someone has or uses has no affect on how good or bad their content is, but because they don't really talk about their gender or pronouns in their eating disorder videos I fell into the sad hole of cisnormative assumptions (I've really been working on avoiding it, but years of society beating it into my head means that despite my efforts sometimes I trip and fall straight into putting my foot in my mouth.) and used the wrong pronouns until I learned what the right ones were by consuming more of their content. As a they/them human myself I know that using the wrong pronouns before you know better and then switching to the correct ones once you know is a common and unfortunate fact of life that can't always be avoided, but if I can help one person not accidentally make that very mistake I will, because accidental misgendering is at best very unfortunate and at worst completely awful.
for about a month know ive been on a ed content binge which has led me to feel extremely nostalgic about my own ed, and triggering me to want to go back to that. but watching this has finally started pulling me out of it, laxatives + calorie restriction + gym was my go to and i needed something to bring me back and make me remember MY 26 YEAR OLD BODY CANNOT DO WHAT MY 16 YEAR OLD BODY USED TO BE ABLE TO DO. im at an age where people start to die from eds and its not a place i want to go.
So I did want to share a little bit about how your video kind of gave me an "ah ah!" moment when I first saw it. So like you, I recently realized I was eating disordered. I just simply didn't eat and excersized (I was only allowed to stop, when my heart stopped). Yup. Allowed. So ultimately, my family unknowingly pushed me into en ED. I was shelters and didn't know normal culture well, so when they kept saying, oh, if you lost just a little more you'd be perfect, I thought it was because they cared and wanted the best for me, but that goal of just a little more didn't ever come. They did care, but what I didn't know not them, was the culture that was influencing them. I didn't know it was popculture. Clothes were clothes and I didn't watch tv. So what window to the world did I have besides school(wasn't exactly the most social child). Anyway. Your video helped me realize why this had happened. It eased some of the bitterness I had held onto toward my family after realizing what had happened. I can't blame them. Not entirely anyway. So I do have to thank you for that. I am recovered from said eating disorder, though I still struggle with a lot of the disphoria and other issues that come with that. But overall, I'm healthy. I got lucky. Even though this lasted for over a decade, I didn't get lasting effects.
Thank you for sharing your story and for bringing to light some things in mine.
I missed this type of fashion cuz I was too young. But when I was a teen emo was the big thing which popped off right after this. Do you guys think it's possible that emo became a thing because they had grown up seeing the early 2000s fashion as young kids and that made them depressed and wanted to self harm / starve themselves? Could it be connected? This fashion was about low cut jeans and emo was about skinny jeans and also a bit low cut so it's not impossible that this fashion later created emo as a psychological response...
Like I remember when I idolized emo kids as the epitome of beuty and I was so jealous that I wasn't as skinny as them and I did starve myself. Seeing ribs and hip bones sticking out I thought it was beutiful in a twisted way or seeing a really skinny body frame in general. When I look at emo photos now I think it looks gross but there's still a part in the darkest corner of my brain that lights up when I see malnourished people so I think I still have a bit of sickness in me.
Hey I know this is a really old video (edit: thought the upload time was 6 years ago, not 6 days ago) but thank you for putting this out there and being so realistic and truthful in sharing your horrible experience. I used to abuse laxatives myself and I'm so so glad it was never as bad as it was for you. I didn't even know it could be that bad and I was reading articles on eating disorders almost compulsively (around 2018). Again, thank you for putting this out there, I couldn't imagine being this brave. I never thought I would be so keen on staying "clean" from laxatives and (trying by best to) not starve anymore. I hope you're still doing okay ♥
That's ok! This is a follow up to my original story but it was super necessary. People don't realize that you can absolutely become depending on laxatives. Abuse them for long enough and you can't go without them or some kind of intervention. You go from one extreme to the next, 24/7 diarrhea to constipation. It gets to the point where we actually get jealous of people who are 'regular'. I'm glad to hear that you've been strong through this and are staying strong. Thank you for the well wishes.
I grew up during the late 90s and early 2000s and I still struggle with the intrusive thoughts and body dysmorphia that I developed during that time, I still have vivid memories of myself as young as 7 doing body checks and putting restrictions on what I ate today Im almost 30 and I still catch myself in those bad habits.
Im one of the people who watched your last video to trigger myself/ "take notes"
It's really hard to talk about EDs because of this :( sorry you went through all you did and I'm glad to see you are doing better
Edit: also I was a kid/preteen during y2k and that definitely kick started my ED. Man I hope gen z is being raised in a better way and that if y2k fashion comes back it won't affect them like it did us
I used laxatives, too, when I was young. I didn't need anyone to tell me it's wrong. I could tell it was wrong due to the symptoms you described. As for "cramp free" it is only cramp free if you take it according to the directions. If you take a ton of them? Yea. I almost went to the ER once. Another thing I wanted to bring up was how we've done a complete flip. It used to be that fat people were shamed and thins were admired. Now it's just the opposite. "Fat and Fabulous," is one example. Neither is healthy, but I'll take thin over fat any day. I'm not into this thing where I try to get sicker so as to compete with others and end up all furry and in the hospital hooked up to an IV. But I'll always be afraid of getting fat. I still obsess on my weight and I'm almost 60. It will NEVER go away.
I know many people who are sick will ignore warning of health complications, but just throwing this out there: a lot of people know that bulimia messes up your teeth really bad, but a lot of people dont know that anorexia/restrictive eds can do the same thing. Malnutrition kills your teeth fast, just like throwing up all the time.
I remember watching an 'after school special' type movie about bulimia with Calista Flockheart in the 90s. I remember the dental issues caused by the stomach acids.
The 2000's were the start of my life long drug addiction issues, I was under 7 stone when I went to rehab in 2006. Heroin chic...theres nothing chic about heroin or the look you get. My guts are also messsd up, but I've found a technique that helps me and can help you. You merely start gently pressing the abdomen in a clockwise rotation, manually mimicking the natural action of peristalsis, it has definitely helped alot. All of the opiates have slowed my gut function over the years and this abdominal massage technique can guarantee relief the next day or so. Please, anybody reading, listen to the horrific experiences we have been through and don't go there. Its not worth it. Great video.🖤
thank you. this video brought me a step closer to realizing how much i‘m harming my body. i really hope i‘m getting out of this hell soon
I know how it feels to have pain due to pooping. It was due to my intolerance. I was in university at the time, my stomach hurt a lot. I didn't know why at the time, but my poop was green. I panicked, because that wasn't right. It turns out that a green poop is an indication of intolerance, and the body's desire to remove the intolerant compound. Therefore, the food will go quickly through the system too. It was so painful. It turned out that I was lactose intolerant, and I had eaten tons of yogurt at the time, which caused such pain.
That's a terrifying pain. When you have things like headaches or muscle aches we know to reach for something like ibuprofen but when it's the stomach doing that stabby stabby routine, there's nothing you can do other than to let it finish it's routine. I'm glad to hear that you were diagnosed and have adapted accordingly.
@@angelabenedict Indeed! Stomach issues are scary due to the reasoning you give, barely any medications. I also had some issues regarding the doctor appointment, so it took me months to get it checked. I decided to eat food that was gluten and lactose free for a whole semester, which helped until I was able to get myself checked. The few days before the appointment was really painful. The doctor said that it was important to have the intolerant in the body before the check. The whole experience made me so empathic towards people with both conditions. I'm glad that it was only lactose, because lactose pills exist, but at the same time, they make me bloated.
Thank you. This is a far better video about eating disorders than the last one. I am completely aware you enver intended to trigger anyone in the last one, its just that anorexics/bulimics often are completely fixated on numbers, so it is an insanely triggering thing to hear how much someone eats or weighs.
I know a lot of people with EDs are completely aware of these side effects and will ignore them, but hopefully youve scared some people away from these disorders.
i wish mothers would be more mindful of how they talked about eating around their children. my mother was overweight her entire life and suffered from binge eating/bulimia/anorexia during different points of her life. she recognizes how painful that was and went through great lengths to prevent me from ever having an eating disorder. making sure we always ate healthy food, never mentioned weight or anything like that around me as a young child and when i was old enough to make my own eating choices she would tell me how to make the right ones. so many parents are just negligent and selfish when it comes to their kids’ mental health
Mothers have more of an impact than they could ever imagine. When we're kids were like little sponges absorbing everything. It's all about nature vs nurture. The same parents who demand their kids finish everything on their plate at dinner and then criticize the slightest bit of weight gain - It's damaging and confusing.
Hungry? Drink water, still hungry? Repeat!
If you mess with your body, your body is going to mess with you.