Who’s Considered Thin Enough for Eating Disorder Treatment?
Anorexia has serious implications at any weight, but heavier patients face a pervasive, harmful stigma
Shira Rose and I are eating avocado toast at a Bluestone Lane in midtown Manhattan. Or rather, I’m eating avocado toast and Rose is looking for her phone. “I need to take a picture,” she says. Rose is a well-known body positive style blogger and influencer, but this photo isn’t for the ’gram; at least, not entirely. After she eats everything but a few crusts, Rose needs to text a photo of her empty plate to her dietitian — to prove she’s eating.
Now 30, Rose has struggled with anorexia nervosa since she was 10 years old. Earlier this year, she spent four months trying to stabilize her condition at a California eating disorder center. By the end of that stay, everyone on her treatment team was optimistic that she would be able to continue to make progress back at home in New York with the support of a partial hospitalization program, where patients live at home, but receive several hours of therapy and supervised mealtimes daily.
But it’s now a month after her return to New York and things aren’t going so well. When Rose woke up this morning, she passed out as soon as she stood up. “The same thing happened yesterday morning,”…
