In this op-ed, Adeline Hocine discusses how opening up about managing her eating disorder during Ramadan created a solidarity within her community she didn't know she had.
Trigger warning: This piece talks about eating disorders. If you are struggling with an eating disorder, please consider calling the National Eating Disorder Association Hotline at 1-800-931-2273 for support, resources, and treatment options.
Eight years ago, I wrote about how Ramadan could act as both a spiritual practice and a dangerous trigger for someone living with an eating disorder. It was an attempt to give language to an experience many of us felt we couldn’t say out loud. Back then, I worried every year that Ramadan would pull me back toward old habits, that the collective fasting around me would become a mirror for my internal struggles, a reminder of how easily I used self-denial to feel in control.
Publishing my story filled me with a persistent fear. I didn’t know how my community would receive it—whether they would see it as an act of honesty or a betrayal of something sacred. I braced myself for silence at best, backlash at worst.
Instead, my inbox filled with messages from women I had never met, each one carrying a version of the same quiet confession. What I feared would isolate me had instead created a small, trembling bridge between us. The response wasn’t just positive, it was generous. It reminded me that vulnerability has the power to soften shame into solidarity.
So much has changed since then, both within our cultural conversations and online.
“What I eat in a day” videos have existed since the 2010s, but now they feel inescapable—woven into nearly every corner of the internet. They can range from wholesome meal ideas to deeply problematic content that subtly (or not so subtly) celebrates restrictive eating. A number of experts have expressed concern about these videos, saying they can promote unhealthy standards and feed into eating-disorder thought patterns.
Ramadan-specific iterations of these videos can be especially tricky. On the surface, they might seem like harmless documentation of meals, perhaps suhoor (the pre-dawn meal) and iftar (the breaking of the fast at sunset), but for someone sensitive to structured eating narratives, they echo so much of the diet culture noise we already hear outside of Ramadan: eating “right,” eating “clean,” eating “like an influencer.” There’s a line between sharing food joyfully as part of a community and turning it into a quantification of calories, portions, or worth, and that line is blurry online and emotionally dangerous offline.
While platforms like TikTok have taken steps to curb harmful content, diet culture has proven itself to be adaptable. Trends like disguised body-checking reveal how easily content can slip through monitoring. Users creatively repurpose seemingly innocuous formats, like OOTDs, in ways that still center thinness and reinforce disordered behaviors.
Of course, amid all this, there has been progress. Conversations about mental health and eating disorders are more visible in Muslim spaces than ever before. In 2018, both in my own home and within the communities I was part of, mental health was heavily stigmatized and rarely spoken about. Now, young Muslims are openly talking about why they choose not to fast, how they manage disordered thoughts during Ramadan, and why their choice doesn’t demonstrate a lack of faith. Mental health advocacy from Muslim creators and clinicians has grown. Community dialogue about what it means to not fast for health, rather than encouraging shame or fear of judgment, is becoming normalized.
But that visibility is double-edged. The same platforms that amplify support also amplify harmful messages about bodies and self-worth. Behind glossy reels and carefully framed iftar spreads, there may be an undercurrent of anxiety: “Is this eating healthy enough?” “How will this affect my body?” These questions don’t belong in a sacred month meant for spiritual reflection, yet social media blurs the spiritual with the aesthetic. You can scroll right past someone sharing a prayer and land on someone sharing a calorie count.
So here’s where I am now: Ramadan still stirs something in me, a mix of spiritual longing, gratitude, and wariness. I know that fasting isn’t inherently dangerous, but I also know that enforcing it on someone whose relationship with food is complicated can be traumatic. I’ve learned to advocate for myself more fiercely by setting boundaries, stepping away from certain content online during Ramadan, and reclaiming how I’m observing.
Ultimately, Ramadan is a mirror held up not to food, but to intention, to how we define strength, discipline, faith, and self-care. And on social media, we now at least have a choice: to follow feeds that celebrate movement and nourishment instead of restriction and thinness; to amplify voices that talk about healing, not just dieting.
If anything, I hope this era of digital change, with all its contradictions, can teach us that food, faith, and identity don’t need to be battlegrounds. They can be spaces for compassion, conversation, and community. And that choosing health—whether it looks like fasting, modifying your practice, or stepping away—is always an act of courage.
