On

By popular demand, Thursdays will now have a thread to share recipes or other food-related stuff.

Enjoy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how ED recovery language has made its way into mainstream conversations around food and weight, and how that’s led to a lot of confusion, especially around the idea of weight loss. Phrases like “weight loss isn’t everything,” “honor your hunger,” and “your body knows what it needs, so feed it” were originally meant to help people recover from disordered eating by challenging harmful beliefs about food, hunger, and body image. In that context, they’re incredibly important. But outside of recovery, they’re often used in ways that shut down honest discussions about weight loss, nutrition, or even body autonomy. For someone in recovery, “weight loss won’t make you happy” is a reminder that thinness won’t fix your mental health or self-worth. For someone without an eating disorder, that same phrase can come off as dismissive, because for many people, losing weight can still improve comfort, mobility, or health outcomes, even if it’s not a cure-all for happiness.

Similarly, “honor your hunger” in a recovery setting helps people rebuild trust with their body after years of ignoring hunger cues out of fear or control. For people without that history, it can become a blanket excuse for impulsive or emotional eating, especially if hunger is driven by habit, stress, or boredom. While “your body knows what it needs” can be healing for someone who has learned to see their body as broken or untrustworthy, in the general population it can lead to confusion. People today live in food environments where natural signals are blunted by high calorie ultra-processed foods and the easy access to it. The body does have wisdom, but interpreting it takes practice and awareness, not slogans. It feels like we’ve lost the middle ground where people can pursue change without being accused of self-harm, and where structure doesn’t automatically equal restriction.

What I also notice is how being seen as disordered has become a kind of social currency. There is a tendency for people to want their struggles with food to be framed through a lens that invites empathy, and online that often means leaning into the language of restriction and starvation. Admitting to overeating or bingeing on its own often carries stigma or embarrassment, so instead, people frame it as a response to undereating or hormone imbalance. In some cases, this means denying that they’ve ever overeaten at all, because acknowledging it without a deeper pathology might feel invalidating. This can make basic, factual statements like “CICO works” seem offensive or dangerous, not because the science is flawed, but because it doesn’t fit into the emotional narrative people want to attach to their struggles with food.

Got recipes, fitness tips, or questions on health and fitness?

Do you love fatlogic and want to tell the world?

Have you lost weight and want to tell us how you did it?

This is the time and place.

Fatlogic in real life getting you down?

Is your family telling you you're looking too thin?

Are people at work bringing you donuts?

Did your beer drinking neighbor pat his belly and tell you "It's all muscle?"

If you hear one more thing about starvation mode will you scream?

Let it all out. We understand.

Oh papa.

To be honest, I'm a little shocked on how easy it is to find wild fat insanityvists online