I spent years unlearn a diet – then I was told to diet for health reasons. That’s what it taught me | Amelia Tait

WThumb I was a teenager suffering from anorexia, I thought it was a perpetuity sentence. I really believed in slogans as “each woman has a food disorder” and I could not imagine a future where calories did not make me sweat. In this spirit, you must understand that I boast when I write this following sentence: in November 2024, I received a “very high” cholesterol diagnosis.

After years of restriction, I spent my 20 years unable to understand why each meal should not be the maximum of delicious. This means that last year, I regularly melted a pack of white chocolate pimples on my morning porridge before heading for a white chocolate matcha with cream, followed by a cheese and egg sandwich in a bun, a slice of cake, chicken and fried fries, to say nothing of bread and butter before dinner and dessert. In short, I broke my recommended daily allowance of saturated fats and loved every second. The “treats”, in my opinion, are not something that must be won.

I climbed a few sizes of dress and even if it would be a lie to say that I did it “fortunately”, I really didn’t care – certainly not enough to change my eating habits or move my legs.

But what is mentally healthy is not always in good physical health – and maybe I was not as in good mental health as I thought. My recovery had become almost as performative as my disorder. While I was thinking once I was hungry, I soon felt superior to never said “no” to the ice and never order salad without a side of chips. I saw healthy eaters with suspicion. Maybe I no longer believed that each woman had a food disorder, but I certainly had the bad conviction that every woman who had worked.

It is difficult to shake this state of mind, which is, of course, entirely defensive – hence why I simply masked my diagnosis of high cholesterol with the word “boast”. The truth is that my cholesterol results have frightened me: my family has a long history of cerebral vascular accidents and heart attacks, and although I have no pension, I am – overall – in the idea of reaching old age.

I was diagnosed for the first time with a cholesterol raised in 2023 when I had a health record in the context of our future health program, and I made attempts without enthusiasm to exchange brownies for flapjacks. I only accepted that I should really change my diet and start exercising after the figures jumped “very high” a year later.

I have now spent about half a half-year-old diet diet lighter and lower and I reduced my total cholesterol to “normal” levels (even if I am only 0.1 from 0.1, so I still have a long way to go). The last six months have made me think a lot about our attitudes – and my – with regard to food and health. I feel very happy to know where I am mentally now, but quite discouraged by the way we all remain imprisoned by contradictory and reducing health messages.

To begin with, my doctor could not have careful when I received a diagnosis of cholesterol high in 2023, and I do not think he would have been also casual if I was overweight. We are told that the problem of being fatty is that it is unhealthy, but there are people who are heavier than me who have a much better cholesterol levels. I am sure that my doctor would have been more severe if I was “fatty”, which is ridiculous because the number on the scale should have less importance than the figures on my blood test results. However, I was barely asked about my diet.

I am also angry that all of this has happened because I have been taught – and women are always taught! – Focus on calories to the detriment of nutrition. A “bad” food, in many spirits, is calorific – but there are foods rich in calories that are very healthy and low -calorie foods that are shocking in saturated or low nutrients in general. Once I got back from my food disorder, I saw no reason to limit myself – after all, the world told me that the most frightening consequence of eating what you love was to gain weight, and I was very proud to be afraid of this. Of course, I have not forgotten that too much saturated fat, salt and sugar are bad for you, but our culture repeats that “the being of fat is unhealthy” rather than “being unhealthy is unhealthy”. The world likes nothing more than a slim woman who can house a hamburger with additional bacon. Can you blame me for joining this?

But I think I am most angry that society is set up so that if you want to be healthier, it is assumed that you must also lose weight. Because here is the sad truth: although total recovery is possible, anorexia continues to wait for its next opportunity. At the beginning of the year, I downloaded an application to monitor my consumption of saturated fats and of course, obviously, it also had calories. At the beginning, I wanted there to be a way to delete this feature, then – comically quickly – I became very inside. I did not eat almost a week enough, until I admit to my husband, remove the application and broke the spell (which I want to know to everyone can be surprisingly easy to do if you break your silence).

Again and again, I remember that society seems to be put in place to invite me to my disorder. I was recently on vacation and on average 30,000 steps a day because I love to explore new places on foot. But even if I did not connect my number of steps to my energy expenditure, my phone did – it sent me a joyful alert that I burned more calories than usual. Why tell me that? Don’t tell me that. Why is the default hypothesis that I should worry?

And when I had an appointment with the nurse after my “very high” diagnosis, she gave me a sheet of paper that forbidden me to eat “fantasy breads”. He apparently came in mind to approach things with more sensitivity because of my story of food disorders.

It is ironic to try to save me from a heart attack could have given me one – if I had allowed anorexia to resume my life in the pursuit of “health”, I would have become more unhealthy than ever. The rise of “lean” blows leads to the house these messages like never before: because weight loss is always considered the ultimate and most desirable objective. Apparently, nobody cares that some jabbers take it for this reason also lose their hair, feel painful gastrointestinal side effects, do not obtain enough nutrients to maintain their bodies and even reduce the effectiveness of their contraception. Not to mention the risk of vision loss. Again, the weight is considered to be the most important marker of health, even if the pursuit of weight loss can make people very unhealthy.

But, in the end, it is not only the society on which I meter my fists – I was forced to confront myself too. Post-anorexia, it was not healthy for my eating habits to always be such an important part of my identity. I hated asking the friends to exchange a pizza reservation for sushi when I got my diagnosis, and I crinized to cring while saying “no” to a slice of birthday cake during a party in an pub – I particularly hated that when I ordered lunch salad, a friend copied me with the words: “Oh, I should be good too!” There is still a defensive and conflictual part of me who thinks that eating healthy and exercising is intrinsically disorderly and not lit, and a small part of my brain that wants me to whisper: “Get a life!” In people who eat five fruits and vegetables a day.

No matter how I started this article, it is not actually a healthy attitude. Although it is painful to disclose, I now like to exercise. And although it is against my political convictions to admit this, the treats are in fact more pleasant if you do not have them on time, every hour.

I am a little sad that my diagnosis means that I still have to go through life by thinking about what I eat – but if I am honest, maybe I have never stopped thinking about it, even when I thought I was completely free. I am always stuck in a strange common ground where (unfortunately) I can feel a little happiness of happiness if my pants seem more loose and yet, simultaneously, I can fill a loyalty card of Sweet Shop in jar in two weeks. I don’t have all the answers. But if there is one thing I want to be able to change … it’s my cholesterol. And if there is a second thing, it is our attitudes with regard to food and health.

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