TW: This article contains sensitive material that may not be suitable for all audiences
Being at college while also trying to recover from a restrictive eating disorder is honestly hell. I understand, being busy sometimes calls for not having time to eat, or even forgetting to eat, but the constant conversations of people bragging about not having a meal today is extremely triggering. Walking around campus, so many people almost compete about who is more unhealthy.
“I haven’t eaten a meal and it’s 7pm!”
“Really? Same! I haven’t eaten since yesterday!”
Hearing these kinds of conversations constantly really is draining and makes it impossible to feel the desire to even try to have a healthy relationship with food.
Another thing that is difficult to deal with is hearing people complain about the dreaded “Freshman 15.” So many people on campus will randomly talk about food and weight without even knowing if that is a triggering or uncomfortable topic. I’ll be talking about class with someone, and they will randomly bring up how they need to lose weight. It always puts me in an extremely uncomfortable position and brings my unhealthy mindset back at full force. Even when you bring up that hearing these types of things make you uncomfortable, it’s just completely impossible to avoid the horrors of diet culture. With every package of food having the calories labeled in bold letters, people constantly talking about weight loss and working out, body checks all over social media, it’s so difficult to try to be friends with food in a world that convinces you it’s your enemy.
One thing that has slightly helped me overcome this, is being more authoritative in who and what I surround myself with. Obviously, I know that the world cannot cater to my triggers, but I do try to tell people what topics I do and don’t feel comfortable talking about. I also stay on social media less often, which has helped me a bit with my body image issues, and the pages I do follow are positive pages that support recovery, or just pages that post things that make me happy.
There’s many people who film “eat with me” videos that have helped a lot as well; the process of eating gets a lot less scary when there’s someone guiding you through it. This also is helpful in college and helps me be more social. Eating out with people makes it easier to deal with my feelings of food because I’m sharing an experience with others.
Moral of the story is: you never really know what someone’s experience with food is, so it’s best to just not make food look like some awful enemy. If you feel like you struggle with food, it is important to reach out or at least let people know about your boundaries.
Bragging about not eating and constantly talking about losing weight is extremely concerning and also triggering for others. I hope that one day we can move past the mindset that food is harmful, and instead learn to be neutral about it. Food is meant to keep us alive and sustain us with energy, and sometimes it’s impossible to see it as anything other than a pest.