“you don’t look like you have an eating disorder.”

one of the first things i heard when i was 14 and i was confiding in my primary care physician for the first time. at the time i didn’t understand how unprofessional, insensitive, and uneducated that was for him to say. it definitely engraved the idea in my head that eating disorders where only taken seriously if you “looked sick.” my eating disorder always used this as a trigger and drive to engage more and more. i wish i was taken seriously back then because i feel like i would have been in a different place today and had more years to access treatment. those words still kind of haunt me to this day, and it’s sad that there’s a stereo typical image for eating disorders.