Author: ncfed

The children’s food campaign Sustain is urging the Government not to drop the sugar tax and any other strategy being used to try and control the increase in childhood obesity.

The say –   “Children’s Health Under Threat! Reports have emerged that the new Government is considering ripping up a number of its flagship childhood obesity strategy measures. Even the successful Soft Drinks Industry Levy is under threat, as well as plans to protect children from junk food marketing. We’ve joined the Obesity Health Alliance and 70 organisations in a joint letter to PM Liz Truss. asking her to consider the cost of reversing these measures for children’s health and the NHS”.   

Many of our readers don’t like the sugar tax, they say that this makes food more expensive for poor people who are the ones eating more sugar. We know that many poor families eat junk food because their children do not want to “eat broccolli”. So healthy food is more likely to be thrown away.

Why is an eating disorder organisation like ours interested in childhood obesity? Will the push for healthy eating drive people toward dieting and eating disorders?

Or will childhood obesity lead to eating disorders because overweight adolescents will try to lose weight in ways that could be dangerous?

I have heard it said that some supermarkets are not selling real cola and are pushing the diet colas that are also implicated in weight gain. This is because the “bad” bacterial in the gut feed off the chemicals in diet drinks.

NCFED takes a lot of calls from parents who are worried about their children’s eating habits, and also worried to interfere in case their child starts being funny with food.

Feeding children a lot of sugar over a period of years is like feeding them slow poison. The NHS IS on its knees managing weight related issues. Where do YOU stand on this very difficult issue?

What is it?

Monday Musings: Cognitive Remediation for Rigidity and Fixations in Eating Disorders.

Many of you readers are not sure what we do to treat eating disorders and overweight. So, these musings are to give you a peep into the secrets of treatment.

Eating disorders are problems with behaviour. Therapists seek to know what lies beneath problem behaviour like purging, starving and binge eating. Some therapists say it is all about early experiences. Other therapists think it is all caused by trauma or not having better ways to self-soothe.

People get into eating disorders by one road only. For whatever reason, they want to change their weight to feel better about themselves. So, they stop eating what they want and begin eating what they think they should.   The unintended consequence for some people is getting into serious food restriction. For other people,   dieting or cutting out food groups leads to binge eating and a small number of people  end up purging to try and manage their binges.

A tangle of different “maintaining factors”.

Very few people know what keeps people stuck inside the tangle of an eating disorder.  There are many different things and so we must UNPICK the eating disorder, one tangle at a time. One of these tangles is very stuck habits. Everything inside an eating disorder is a habit, what food you binge, how you binge or purge, how and when you exercise, how often and when you might weigh yourself.

Some people with eating disorders,  especially people with anorexia or ARFID are very rigid by nature and they are easily fixated by the small details of the food they eat and what they think it does to them.  Many show signs of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This is partly to do with how their brain works. If we ask a person with anorexia to describe a picture, they tend to focus on a great deal of detail.  A person who eats normally tends to tell us about the overview of a scene, such as “This is a picture of the countryside in autumn”.

To recover from eating distress,  a person needs to become more flexible – to allow them to make more helpful food choices, and to worry less about their eating.

Cognitive Remediation (CRT) is a therapy  that works directly with the brain. The therapist is trained to do tasks with their client like picture work, or use of symbols, so that the brain learns how do several useful things. Firstly, to stop focusing on small details like “the food I just ate for lunch” and secondly to stop obsessing about ideas and thoughts so that the sufferer develop better coping strategies.

Cognitive Remediation Therapy is not the only thing we use to help restore a client to health. This is simply addressing one of the tangles in which they are trapped. Most good eating disorder specialists, like ours,  will have done some training in CRT.  If you need help with an eating disorder, have a look at our counsellor list at https://booking.eating-disorders.org.uk/counsellors/search

Yes, if the service is specified as two -sided and clear about the distinction between eating disorder treatment and weight loss coaching.

At the National Centre for Eating Disorders we do a holistic assessment of a person to ensure that no significant eating disorder is present; if it is present we make it clear that there are to be no weight loss attempts during treatment for the eating disorder and such a person might not in the future be suitable for intentional weight loss.

It is incorrect to assume that all people wanting weight change have an eating disorder.

If we agree after assessment to support a client in their weight change intentions, we will engage in a manner consistent with good practice and we have transformed many lives. Some of our clients have had a history of binge eating / bulimic disorders and have gained weight throughout the years because they have not had timely treatment for their eating disorder. We empathise with their desire to change weight if the time is right.

In such a case we would not do anything that would reactivate their eating disorder.

Weight loss “guidance / therapy”, does not imply dieting or food rules or boot-camping nor does it have goal weights. Nor does it require endless searching into childhood adversity. Nor is it HAES although they have some but not all, very good points.  The service includes bariatric counselling. Some people, with our help, decide that they are happy as they are. The ultimate outcome is flourishing.

We market obesity treatment because of the numbers of desperate people INCLUDING therapists who seek our help. It must mean something that over the course of 40 years no one entering our service has complained about stigma.  No therapist training with us over the same period has raised a complaint about anti-fat bias.

Activists who have not done our training are pitching against us with total ignorance about what we do. It interests us that while they are intolerant of the word “obesity” they bandy the term “fat” as if it means something different. Really?

What worries us at NCFED is the number of activists who actively try to deny people from having access to good weight change help; who wish to prevent therapists from learning about strategies that might work, and who wish to withhold from the public factual information about some health risks of living in a larger body. On top of this, no activist is able to come up with a single client or psychotherapist trained by NCFED who has been “traumatised” by weight stigma.

The NCFED has no need to make a big deal about inclusivity. We have therapists of all genders, races, religions, tribes and colours. We treat people without needing labels. Inclusivity is woven into our trainings and the first thing we do is delve into the history, generational issues, declared identity and value systems, of each individual in a place of complete acceptance.

I will not give the litmus of attention to angry people. Certainly, it is right to question the old “sacred cows” and reflect on their meaning and purpose. Having reflected, we feel good about what we do and we will not kowtow to aggression. People in the community who do not have a clinically significant eating disorder, who desire intentional weight change, deserve far better help than the traditional diet and lifestyle methods that do not work. They can come to us for that help, given by people we trust.

Meanwhile, Our amazing course, Essential Obesity: Psychological Interventions, next date June 2022