Becoming the witch

Credit I have read the sentence "calories in calories out" many times online. Usually what is meant by this is that weight loss can be reduced down to how much you eat minus how much you burn in basic metabolic rate (BMR) plus exercise plus non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT or non-exercise movement). To translate it into simple terms, people often mean to convey with this that weight loss is simple. Oftentimes, I see this phrase under posts trying to fat-shame someone, for example someone who struggles losing weight or an anorexic person who is also overweight. This is usually accompanied with other 'helpful' phrases like "you can't break the laws of thermodynamics", implying that the author of a text is being dishonest about the calories they consume.  Yet, I also see an equal amount of posts from people complaining about that they "gain and lose the same 5 pounds over and over again". How is this possible? Is everyone just being disho...

The dead you don't bury come back to haunt you. Is that a real saying or did I just make it up? In any case, it is something I know too well.  When I was teenager I got sick with anorexia. I was largely in denial about my disease. Not in the sense that I didn't know I was sick, but that I wore my sickness like a badge of honour.  But when I started to lose my hair, I finally reached out for help. I didn't  really  want to get better, but I intended to see if the doctor could give me something that would allow me to keep my hair and continue restricting.  This would have been the moment for any health care professional to intervene. Young, underweight woman with fatigue and hair loss. I don't know how it could have been any more obvious.  Instead no one intervened. The doctor said because I've had a bowl of fruit that morning, I couldn't have an eating disorder. He did a blood test which came back fine and sent me home. And at home no one was really concerne...

I never noticed how much people comment on my diet until I relapsed into my eating disorder. Beforehand, I proudly fueled my body with food to be strong and didn't shy away from snacks that sent others into anxiety spirals. In fact, I didn't even catch on why anyone would be nervous about, let's say, eating a chocolate cake. Now, other people's fears and worries about food seem to be everywhere. And there are nowhere more present than in my family.  Especially the minds of my mum and her husband seem to be ruled by bizarre food beliefs, ranging from "cinnamon crunch muesli leads to binge eating" and "diet coke gives you osteoporosis" to fantasizing about their favorite cake but never buying it because it has too many calories.  These comments became a major problem for me when I relapsed into my eating disorder. And as many will know, it can be difficult to re-train your family not to talk like this when fearful beliefs about food are deeply entrench...