Obesity is an eating disorder. It's one that's killed orders of magnitude more people than anorexia or bulimia ever have.

> People don't know what a genuinely healthy body and diet/fitness regimen look like

That's in large part because even healthy people can't agree on what that looks like. Regardless, many people don't seriously care about eating healthy because otherwise they'd simply use the internet and quickly find some diet that actually works (pretty much any of the "fad" diets are better than the Standard American Diet).

> thinness (even extreme, unhealthy thinness) is popularized and praised as a sign of beauty and willpower because so many people are trying to lose weight and so few are trying to gain.

This effect can't be totally discounted, but is it really that or is it because being fat actually kinda sucks? The average person is not attracted to obesity, and obesity can lead to trauma that then leads to things like anorexia. Ironically, obesity is also caused indirectly by poor mental health.

Contrary to this idea that thinness is somehow this societal evil, obesity is more normalized than it's ever been. That's only going to do the opposite of getting people healthy. When was the last time an unhealthy image of thinness was promoted in the mainstream? Besides the fashion industry, which most people don't take seriously or even pay attention to, I can't think of even one.

In my whole life I've known like two people with eating disorders (the not eating enough kind). Almost every single other person aside from those two eat too much, and I'd say mostly they eat way, way too much.

Now, those two people definitely had a problem, but knowing them it was one I knew couldn't begin to understand, and I can't imagine that any of the pithy things people say all they time to express concern about not "developing anorexic" if I (while carrying a slight gut myself) skip a meal would make any difference to them. You might as well being telling someone in the grip of an oxy addiction to "just say no".

Conversely almost nobody has ever told me I was eating too much. I never see it addressed in "movies with an important message" or any other pop culture PSAs. Nobody said anything during the COVID pandemic where people are literally dying of COVID from being overweight and not able to get enough oxygen with their damaged lungs to keep their whole body alive. Instead they euphemistically called it "co-morbidity" and left it at that. All this concern for eating disorders I think it's mostly just a smokescreen.

> In my whole life I've known like two people with eating disorders (the not eating enough kind).

I bet there were a lot more than two! Anorexia is extremely common. It’s also extremely easy to hide from friends and family (and to a lesser extent bulimia, at least for me).

I’ve struggled with anorexia and bulimia for about 20 years (since I was 14 or 15). I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve said anything publicly about it. Prior to me starting to talk with people other than my wife or a handful of other friends about my eating disorders, there were fewer than ten people who knew or could have possibly known that I was dealing with such things.

Anecdotally, I definitely knew more than five people who had told me about their eating disorders before I told anyone about mine, and since doing so I’ve found that a lot of other people have them.

Personally, I would like to see more discussion of this sort of thing, and would especially like if a little more attention could be paid to the occurrence of such disorders in boys/men (though it certainly doesn’t seem to affect them nearly as frequently and/or as severely). I honestly think it would have helped me get help earlier if I’d known that anorexia was something that boys dealt with too. For a long time I had myself convinced that I didn’t really have a problem, and I think that’s mostly because I’d always seen anorexia framed as something only experienced by girls/women.

Also, if you’re really set on only focusing on one of these things (which I think this is a bad idea): the health impact of being anorexic is generally much worse than being overweight.

As formerly obese person, I can't imagine anyone obese that doesn't know that they ate way too much. You'd have to have astrology nut delusion to not know that. There's no point in stating the obvious.

Every body is beach body ready etc.

Can't have anyone have their feelings hurt, lest they get the idea that getting into shape might not be a bad idea - instead of getting to live in the delusion that obesity is normal and to be embraced.

Anorexic here. I think this misses it a bit. People with ED’s know what a healthy body looks like. You’re talking about a population that is unhealthily obsessed with food and their body in one way or another. Like I can name the calories and macros for basically any food off the top of my head. I know the calories burnt by most common exercises and what muscles they work. I don’t even need MFP to count anymore. It’s a fun party trick.

What complicates things is dysmorphia. I don’t “see” myself correctly. It’s really hard to explain but it’s kinda like something in my brain is wired wrong where my internal rendering of myself gets distorted. So then when I look at a healthy body and look at myself — even when that body is heavier than mine — my brain goes “ahh the path to go from where you are to there is to lose weight.” And I’ve had it as long as I can remember. My recovery has been learning to develop strategies to deal with when dysmorphia is particularly bad. Lotta sweatshirts, removing mirrors, and doing things in the dark along with safe foods that don’t trigger my anxiety on days when I feel disgusting.

I don’t want to look underweight. I see other underweight women and know that they’re unhealthily skinny.

Thank you for your post. I've often wondered how it is to deal with a mental problem that makes you perceive yourself one way (too fat) even though your conscious mind knows you're not that. Do you feel some kind of internal struggle when for example looking at your photos or in the mirror? It looks like you know the objective assessment (you're not only not too fat but even thinner than others) but somehow other part of your brain can't accept it. Do you experience this kind of struggle between conscious and unconscious thoughts? Do you feel the unconscious ones are winning or maybe switching off the conscious ones sometimes? Does conscious part win sometimes?

It's fine if you don't feel like elaborating. I am just very curious as I've read about anorexia and "you perceive your body as overweight even though you know it isn't" phenomena sounded like something I can relate to in a way although in way less serious areas (for example I know some social behavior are desirable and seen as friendly even though my mind tells me they aren't).

I believe obesity is also type of eating disorder, just towards the opposite direction to something like anorexia. Binge-eating disorder is the term used in academic studies to understand some of the underlying psychology for a part of the obesity crisis.