The Weight of Perfection
“Oh I just don’t eat a lot I’m trying not to get fat that can’t be bad right?” Wrong. If you eat too little it’ll get harder to live, it won’t be as easy as it is when you eat a healthy amount. “Oh, but I’m just trying to lose weight so it’s okay.” No, it’s not. You can get addicted to losing weight in an unhealthy way. “Oh but it’ll be okay cause I will know when to stop.” That’s what a lot of people say before they get addicted to something. Every hour at least one person dies from one, will you know when to stop. No!!! Over 30 million Americans have an eating disorder, they didn’t know when to stop, did they? At first they were just trying to lose weight or they didn’t like the food offered to them, or they just didn’t have an appetite, or some other reason, but they were planning on fixing that, they didn’t, or they waited too long to start fixing that. In a dancer a healthy diet is crucial, you need to eat enough or you will start passing out and looking frail and people will think that you could break at any point, you’ll get weaker, and you won’t be as strong of a dancer. 10% of adolescents girls have an eating disorder, and girls in the athletic department are way more likely to have one.
Dancers, my friends, I know people keep encouraging you to be thin, and they stick a mirror in front of you to let you know that people are watching, you are the center of attention, but being the center of attention you have to know that the people are being attentive to you. They are watching you, seeing you get way too thin. They are starting to notice that you’re delicate and not eating and getting significantly skinnier. They point it out, but that doesn’t always mean it’s a good thing. Don’t feel pressured into hardly eating, just because people like skinny girls, or you see yourself and you think you’re bigger than you should be, you don’t know, some mirrors make you look bigger.
Eating disorders can lead to amenorrhea, irreversible bone loss, digestive problems, decreased self-esteem, anxiety, and depression. Women’s bodies come in all shapes and sizes, there is no right size, and no certain you need to look, thin is not always good. Remember that.
A lot of times you will find that men are being sexual towards women or girls and they always go for the skinny girls, and another cause of eating disorders is that girls want men’s attention and they try to get skinny, because they think that nobody could ever love a girl who isn’t super skinny. The woman’s body hasn’t been changed through thousands of years, if they were supposed to be so close to the bone they would be. Girls tend to stay away from foods that could so much as tempt them to gain weight like sweets, refined carbohydrates, or anything with fat or calories.
Young girls are learning that their body is an instrument with the sole purpose of being this and attractive for the consumption of men, but that’s just not true and girls need to understand that. It has gotten to the point that girls just want male approval of their body, they’ve made it so thin means popularity, beauty, and happiness. I’m sorry to tell you, but they’re wrong.
So many people sexually objectify young girls that they stop viewing themselves as people they view themselves as objects that need to be evaluated, not people that need to be fed. Girls get objectified by shame, anxiety, peak motivational states, and awareness of the internal body states. Young women or girls as they’re going through puberty is when they’re the most objectified because their bodies are changing and so they become an even bigger part of the male gaze and they become an icon of sexuality for the male consumption.
Family also has a huge influence on how girls look and how much they eat, especially when they’re teasing about weight; families tease about weight. Having a strong relationship with both parents can lessen the likelihood of having an EDB (Eating Disorder Behavior). Family is a lot of the reasons people are either really confident or really insecure about their bodies.
Peers also heavily influence the amount of food a person or how small or big they try to be. They tend to, a lot of times, talk about weight and that can strongly influence people to eat a certain amount which can lead to an EDB.
Fueling to Dance
Dieting does not mean barely eating, you don’t need to barely eat, but you need to eat healthy. As a dancer you need to be healthy and you need to eat the right things depending on how much you’re dancing that day. Before you dance you should have a meal full of carbohydrates, because it helps you with eliminating any digestive discomfort. Foods with high protein help with muscle repair. Vegetables with high protein help with tissue recovery, and colorful fruits and vegetables give you the vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, which all support the healing process. All that along with fatty acids, foods with fatty acids can help prevent inflammation. If you look at the nutrition facts on the back of the packaging you can see if the food has all the things you will need.
Understanding Disordered Eating
There are different kinds of eating disorders; the two most popular and common in dancers are anorexia-nervosa and bulimia-nervosa, or for short anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia is when you start counting calories and planning your caloric intake for the future, it’s when you start counting all the calories in a way that you’re trying to be thin and lose weight. It’s when you do restrictive eating that ends in rapid detrimental weight loss. Bulimia is when you binge eat and follow that with purging or loosing all the food before you digest it fully, typically by vomiting, abusing laxatives, or fasting. With all kinds of eating disorders you eat less in, you eventually reach a point where you have no menstrual cycle, a low heart rate and other stomach issues. You need to understand the difference between an eating disorder, and a diet.
The mirror can be both your best friend and your worst enemy. It starts out with telling you about your style, lines, and technique. It ends off with telling you that you’re not good enough and that you need to loose weight. Parents are a huge part of the reason dancers start eating disorders in the first place, pushing them to be the best of the best. A lot of times parents put way too much pressure on their daughters to be perfect and they try too hard to be. They try too hard to look thin, and they try to hard to dance while being too thin. In a lot of cases eating disorders have to do with perfectionism, especially with dancers.
Warning Signs
Some warning signs of eating disorders are physical things like being super tired, or even fainting, psychological things like perfectionism, and behavioral things like skipping meals or wearing super baggy clothing.
How to Get Help
You have to want help to get help, you have to ask, YOU have to try. In order to get help, you need to go online and find one of many sources and things that can get you help with your eating disorder, if you have one or are concerned that you have one. You have to want help though. “We accept the love we think we deserve.” - Stephen Chbosky You deserve at least enough love to live, eat, and so much more, you just need to know that’s the love you deserve.