>>Dear Ballerina,
>>You wrote "I know totally what you are going through". It is >>customary on this forum for people to act like the issues of >>anorexics are akin to the issues of the morbidly obese. They >>are not and I can't live with the fiction.

That's only your opinion. Many would disagree with you.

>>You do not know what it feels like to weigh 300 pounds...

From both the title and the text of your post , I gathered that you were commenting on the tendancy for the mind's eye and reality to become two totally different things. You weren't lamenting on being morbidly obese. *You* even brought up the similarity to what happened to your daughter. Ballerina's comment of "I understand..." was aimed the mind's eye thing. She never claimed to know what it was like to be 300 lbs, yadda yadda yadda. If you think that only morbidly obese people could possibly relate, maybe you should have posted to the triple digits club.

Practically every ED forum I've ever been at ends up with this argument and I'm tired of it. Someone tries to find some commonality, and they get blasted with the same old, "you don't understand." "You don't get it."

[end soapbox]

Now to answer your question, yes, there *is* evidence that distorted body image works in both directions, but I can't find the reference. I remember reading it somewhere. I'm thinking Carolyn Costin's "ED Sourcebook", but don't quote me.