Is Disordered Eating Stopping you Achieving Your Health Goals?
What is disordered eating?
The phrase Disordered Eating is used to describe eating behaviour that can become harmful.
Eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa, or bulimia nervosa, are diagnosed by specific criteria. This excludes a majority of people suffering from an eating disorder.
People with disordered eating spend the majority of their life ‘on’ a diet of some sort or another. This could be as part of a group such as Weight Watchers or Slimming World or restricting calories and skipping meals independently.
Exercise and food restriction are used as methods of control to make up for consuming ‘bad foods’.
Those suffering from disordered eating have strict rules and routines around food and exercise, they can feel guilt or shame when breaking these self-imposed rules or consuming so-called ‘bad foods’.
Can you relate to any of these points?
I know I can.
Manufactured Eating
As a child born in the 70’s I was raised around the food advice given at the time, fat is bad, eat low-fat foods, swap to heart-healthy vegetable oils.
We went from consuming natural whole foods such as butter which is easily recognised and dealt with by the body to highly processed spreads.
Research since, (I know that is 50 years ago now, only seems like 20 to me!) has found that saturated fats and cholesterol are not the cause of heart disease. In fact, high cholesterol is a sign that your body is trying to heal inflammation.
Inflammation leads to chronic disease (dis-ease).
As a species we are living in larger bodies than ever before, there are more and more people taking medications for illnesses that I truly believe can be managed and even eradicated through the foods we consume.
These foods will be different for everyone as we are all individuals with individual nutritional requirements.
There is so much conflicting information available to us now, one minute a food is ‘Super’ the next it is being demonised depending on which industry is pumping money into the right hands… (Did I just say that out loud??)
Social media provides us with a love-hate relationship with food.
I for one LOVE watching food videos for inspiration BUT there is also constant noise around which foods are ‘good’ and advice as to the latest diet to try to achieve the body of our dreams.
Unfortunately, due to this noise, there is a lack of understanding around proper nutrition and what our body really needs to not just survive but thrive and this can lead to disordered eating.
Harmful effects of Eating Disorders
Depriving our body of essential nutrients by excluding complete food groups or just not eating enough can lead to issues such as:
- Irritability
- Decreased sociability
- Feeling lethargic
- Physical weakness
- Malnutrition
- Bone loss
- Muscle wastage
- Difficulty concentrating
- Mood changes
- Depression/Anxiety
- Hormone imbalance
- Metabolism issues
I could go on!!
I love this quote from Diane Schwarzbein:
You have to get healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to get healthy.
This completely sums up my nutrition practice.
It is ok to want to lose weight, to feel uncomfortable in the body you are in and want to do something about it.
Depriving your body of energy and vital nutrition, however, is not the way to go about this.
Recovering from disordered eating
Habits are hard to make and just as hard to break.
To recover from disordered eating we need to unlearn what we think are healthy lifestyle habits that are actually harming us, especially in the long term.
Learning to connect to your body, feel the physical sensations around hunger and fullness and how being well nourished makes us feel are good starting points.
You can do this via Mindful Eating, turning off all distractions and focusing only on the food you are eating, using all your senses and being present.
Be mindful of your emotions.
Are you using food or exercise to control areas of your life that feel out of control? What steps can you take to address these other areas?
Use the 9 steps of Intuitive Eating as first established by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch in their book Intuitive Eating – A revolutionary anti-diet approach.
If you would like to read more about this subject you can from my previous blog Are you Ready to Start Intuitive Eating?
You can also join the waitlist for my new course Intuitive Eating for Life, <HERE> and be among the first to know when it is released.
Releasing Fear
The New Moon in Pisces for March is all about releasing Fear.
It can be scary to stop restrictive diets.
Will you ever be able to stop eating?
Will you pile on loads of weight?
To heal our bodies, find our natural set-point weight and NEVER have to deprive ourselves again we have to release fear and take a step into the unknown.
I am here to support you if this is something you would like to explore. Book a FREE virtual cuppa and a chat with me, no obligation to go any further.