Nancy Manther

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. If you’re not enough of..

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 Myths about Fat People, Aubrey..

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 of the fear instilled in..

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 confusing and volatile time called..

Anyone who has struggled with an eating disorder (ED) is familiar with the words trigger or triggered, and I am no different. Even though I am in the space of recovery, situations that could trigger eating disorder thoughts and behaviours are everywhere. Living in this diet culture/weight-biased world, there is no way to escape the..

I’ve always considered apathy to be negative. The dictionary defines apathy as a lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern. Conducting a little research about apathy and whether it’s considered an emotion, I was interested to discover it’s actually a lack of emotion, which makes perfect sense. Apathy is the opposite of empathy. “Caring too much”..

Sometimes, I dislike my body even though I consider myself in recovery from an eating disorder. If I were to wait until I felt at peace with every part of my body before calling myself recovered, recovery would never happen. I don’t say that to be pessimistic; I say that to be realistic. Being happy..

I hate admitting this, but I’m a fearful person. The list of what I’m afraid of is long and detailed. Some fears are fairly typical and global, like the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected many people. Before the pandemic, I was not much of a germaphobe, but that’s near the top of my list these days...

A decade ago, my husband and I purchased an elliptical machine from a store that specialized in exercise equipment. The purchase price included a complementary session with a personal trainer. We took advantage of this offer, mostly to get some valuable pointers on how to use the machine and all its bells and whistles. The..

My first pregnancy was going beautifully…until it wasn’t. We were doing things in the traditional order: we married, bought our first house and, after nearly a year of trying, were expecting our first child. I was ecstatic. I had always looked forward to being a mother. After years of praying that I wasn’t pregnant before..

When I reflect on my adult life’s path, I’m reminded of a cartoon that appeared in the daily newspaper when I was a child. Every day, a sweet or humorous scene depicting life in the family was illustrated, which always made me smile. One recurring scene was of the route one child took to get..

Writing my story and sharing it with anyone feels a bit risky and involves a certain amount of bravery. I imagine others feel the same about sharing a narrative hitherto private. Life Stories Diary seems like the perfect place to take this risk. The private Self-Paced Life Stories Course within Life Stories Diary feels like..

Mirrors have been part of my life since puberty, when I started getting acne and wearing makeup. Mirrors didn’t rate before then. What a wonderful time that must have been! In my early 20s, a friend suggested I get a fun house mirror that made me look thinner (I frequently asked, “Do I look fat?”..

Almost three years have passed since I began to recover from anorexia nervosa. In July 2020, my 65th birthday was coming up and I could not remember a time without eating disorder thoughts and behaviors. Eating disorders are devious and sneaky; mine defied discovery for decades. Now I know better, and I’m sharing my hard-won..

Utopia: a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions (Merriam-Webster Dictionary) In sixth grade, my class was asked to write a paper entitled Utopia. The year was 1966-67, when the United States was embroiled in the Vietnam war, peace protests and race riots. My class was studying World War II, so..

The start of a new year traditionally comes with resolutions and promises to improve or do better in some way. Before I was deeply entrenched in an eating disorder (ED), my go-to resolution was to lose weight. This was the popular thing to do, and still is, according to the weight loss advertisements that litter..

Dear Friend, I’ve been wanting to write this letter for a long time, to explain how an eating disorder (ED) managed to weave itself through all my life stages, without me realizing it. That’s one of the most disturbing things about eating disorders — you think what you’re feeling is “normal,” that everybody feels the..

For 55 of my 67 years, I have struggled with an eating disorder, namely anorexia nervosa. I wasn’t formally diagnosed until age 65, about which I can only say, “Better late than never.” Because I didn’t shrink my body enough to cause alarm, I was able to fly under the radar for years. I wonder..

There is no wrong time to begin recovery from an eating disorder but embarking on that journey during a global pandemic was not ideal. My appointments with a physician’s assistant had to occur in person, but therapist and dietician sessions were held remotely. Thankfully these video visits didn’t hamper recovery and I felt an instant connection with..

As human beings and social creatures, relationships are an integral part of a healthy, happy life. For most of us, our first relationships are with our parents and siblings and gradually that circle expands to include friends, classmates, teachers, and so on. Some people have many relationships and others may have only a few. I’ve..

In August 2020, as the world became immersed in the COVID-19 pandemic, I began a journey to recover from an eating disorder. This was a journey I never expected to be on; I assumed that at age 64, my life was meant to be consumed with an obsession with the scale and a pathological fear..