Thank you for pointing this out. I know some women who are really thin who have this issue and they get treated really poorly.

~Ragen

I’d like to point out someone on the other end of the spectrum to you –

http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/model-natural-20-inch-waist-182500417.html

This model insists she’s tried everything to *gain* weight and hasn’t been able to. I look at her pictures, and if I didn’t read the accompanying text, I would assume this was a woman who starved herself for the thin model ideal. Turns out just the opposite – she grew up in Romania, where weight (which means you’re from a rich family) and was taunted as a child for being too skinny. She says she’s “finally comfortable in [her] own skin.”

I pimped your blog while commenting on the article in my facebook.

Ro

Avoiding her completely works too.

I think that everybody who doesn’t spend their life on a beach with someone bringing them pina coladas finds ways to deal with stress that may not be perfectly healthy. I also think that if you eat for comfort in a way that doesn’t make you feel sick or involve eating things that harm you (like ice cream if you’re lactose intolerant), it’s not a bad thing. If you’re doing all the “competent-eating” stuff of giving yourself regular, balanced meals and snacks and paying attenetion to how foods make you feel, it will all balance out in the long run. Maybe you eat a big bowl of ice cream after a bad day, then aren’t as hungry for breakfast the next day, or want less sweets and dairy and more protein and veggies. But it evens out better if you let it than if you try to force yourself to eat well.

I also think it’s worth reminding yourself that the decisions you make in any given moment are you doing the best you can with what you have. If you don’t like the decision, or if the decision makes you feel icky, then you can try to do things differently next time, but you shouldn’t beat yourself up for it.

As a personal example, when I was trying, unsuccessfully, to find a doctor who would treat my thyroid issues, I developed a lovely caffeine dependency. I’ve now weaned myself down to one cup of coffee a day, but it was pretty rough. But when I’m tempted to give myself grief for that, I remember that it was the best tool I had to get through my life at the time. Being addicted to caffeine beats the heck out of being dead because you fell asleep at the wheel, or being fired because you fell asleep at work. I also had no way to know, at the time, that I’d become that dependent on caffeine. Certainly I’ve known plenty of people who caffeine doesn’t seem to effect. They can and have gone off their Mountain Dew and Dr. Pepper without any ill effect.

I think you have to look at the coping decisions you make in the context of where you were when you made them, rather than trying to hold yourself to some hypothetical perfect standard.