Dear Diary Blog

I reached for the phone. I was ready to accept the guidance of my minister and psychiatrist so I could become a person with normal behavioural habits. ‘I will go to the mental health hospital this Sunday,’ I vowed. ‘If I don’t go I will defer my recovery. I want...

Family Based Treatment is the best, evidence-based approach for most children and adolescents to get their life back on track when they develop an eating disorder – particularly anorexia nervosa. But what about those of us whose eating disorders developed before Family Based Treatment (FBT) became an option? Or those...

Nobody likes being told, “You’re a loser.” The word “loser” immediately conjures up feelings of inadequacy, failure, and shame. The only place I can think of where “a loser” is considered noble and revered is in diet culture and the weight loss industry, where “loss” is even in the name....

It’s funny when we realise that we have feet in two worlds that barely speak to each other. I have one foot in the world of eating disorder (ED) research and treatment and the other in the world of literary studies. The literary people tend to assume that books must...

BMI or Body Mass Index is a term used frequently when discussing the health and weight management of humans. It appears in medical charts, insurance statistics and weight loss programs. People are judged by it constantly, sight unseen. In her book, “You just need to lose weight” and 19 Other...

Exercise is good, but excessive or compulsive exercise can be dangerous. At age 13, Kristen embraced the outdoors and enjoyed cross-country running at school. She was not overweight, had never been a big eater, ate little junk food and was not concerned about her body image, but she did want...

Gain is not a four-letter word—at least not in the bad way fostered in diet culture. Diet culture taught me to fear and hate that word for decades. As I strived to achieve and maintain a smaller version of my body, I became a smaller version of myself partly because...

Almost a year has passed since Summer was diagnosed with her eating disorder (ED). I glimpse signs of recovery more often, but sometimes, we get thrown back into the darkness. The darkness doesn’t last as long now, though, before hope reappears. I know hope is always there despite being hard...

My name is Tiacoh Hyacinthe-Arnaud Yao Kpri Junior II. I know, it’s long … very long, actually. But it’s necessary for the rest of my story. I was born into a family with two children, and I was the eldest. Then, miraculously, my mother gave birth to twins at age...

Calorie is a word laden with a myriad of connotations imposed by diet culture, a word that can be so insidious that I’ve hesitated to write about it. From the impressionable age of 11, I became aware of my body in a new, mysterious way. In tandem with entering that...