Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2021

When you don’t have an official diagnosis for an issue you are struggling with, it can be hard to know whether your symptoms, if you’d even call them that, are actually real; Whether your habits or quirks actually constitute a legitimate problem. It’s one thing to have the certainty of a diagnosis, a binary yes or no answer, and it’s another thing to feel something is off but to be unsure of exactly what that might be. 

Disordered Eating, unlike Eating Disorders, is a way in which we have adapted our style of food consumption. 

 In some way we are all guilty of disordered eating. And this behaviour or way/routine/ritual or style is unique and different for us all. Disordered eating, like the concept of Body Image and Mental health are nuanced and variable and thus need to be understood in the context of a spectrum. 

This spectrum of disordered eating is flanked on one end by diagnosable Eating Disorders categorised as mental illness, and at the other extreme existing whereby a state of complete ease with food and body image exists.  In between those extremes is where most of us live. The truth is we all have a disordered way of relating to food- be it through food rules that we apply- only 1 piece of bread on my sandwich please- to the time of day that we confine our eating to by intermittent fasting. We normalise these habits that we develop and create a language around. However, they don’t exist in a vacuum. 

The intense societal messaging around what, how and when we eat, stems from the pressure that is exerted by large industries such as fashion and beauty to pharmaceutical and the diet industry. In fact, these big businesses and large consumer industries Prey on a weakness that has been fostered from a very early age and develops slowly but stealthily through the ages and stages of our lives.

We have been existing, somewhat unconsciously, by obediently following the subtle rules of the game. We have followed the path of diet culture and absorbed as Gospel, the rules- both written and unwritten. It has led many through the maze of what is considered to be “healthy/unhealthy living and eating”. 

Healthy attitudes and behaviour with eating, food and diet is the result of a complex interplay between the social, emotional, biological and physiological impact on our lives.  Mental health - and what it means is very nuanced and anything but absolute. Eating, food and how to manage appetite and consumption is complex and cannot merely be evaluated with a “calories in, calories out” approach or be diagnosed with the certainty of numbers on a scale or a BMI. It is a lifelong process of learning and unlearning.

Our beliefs of who we are -good and bad, has come down to the same way we have learned to categorise food- sugar and carbs as bad and vegetables and proteins as good.  Our Weight whether over/under or somewhere in between, contrary to popular belief, is not the effect of, but often merely a symptom of eating challenges.

The connection with how you look and how you feel is not about vanity and it is not solely about one’s appearance.  We have been taught and have learned to equate our worth with how we look. Not with who we are or what we do but in how we physically appear to others. It is not then surprising just how much our overall sense of self-esteem is impacted.

Bryony Gordon a mental health advocate has just bravely written about her challenges with BED and summarised this problem well in the telegraph: “as long as weight is seen as one of the chief signifiers of someone’s worth, we will never be able to approach food in a healthy way. BED has much deeper psychological roots than simply being ashamed of your body. Usually, it is the result of being ashamed generally.”

The charity Beat found there was a 195 per cent increase in numbers attending their online support groups and a 173 per cent jump in helpline calls, compared to February 2020. These are real numbers and the increase in them is telling. We are clearly in crisis- not much nuanced about that.

If you recognize yourself in this, please get the help you need from those who understand this complex experience. 

There is a fine line and tension between having a serious problem and needing help and having some problems but not feeling that they are serious enough to merit help. Not only do you still need the help, but you deserve it. 

No problem is too big or too small. It’s like when the good teachers used to say - there is no stupid question. Just Ask. In therapy, there is no silly question, just talk.