People send me the loveliest things. Here is one Kat sent me today if you follow this link to You Tube. Please keep sending me your lovely things. We want inspiration, more than accounts of suffering which can inspire people to do the same… or am I wrong?
Tanith Carey, author of Where Has My Little Girl Gone (and other books) see our Books pages, writes with a little help from me (Deanne) about the new rib-breaking trend to make your waist pint sized. Read her article here which was published in the Daily Mail today.
Dear Eloise Parry,
I am sorry that you aren’t alive any more. I have seen your picture smiling from the newspapers and you look as if you don’t have a care in the world. But something must have been really on your mind to take so much time and trouble to buy some rogue tablets that you hoped would make you thin. I imagine that you had terrible body image problems. You must have been really at war with yourself to take 8 tablets. You must have had an eating disorder.
I wish you could tell me what was going through your mind when you bought these things. I wonder who told you about them. What was the agony you were feeling when you went searching for this poison? Did you think you had stumbled on a good idea?
I wonder what was going through your mind as you swallowed them one by one. Did you know that you were about to lose your life, your dreams. All for being a little bit thinner.
Did you think that you would be able to take these monstrous things for the rest of your life? Did you think that getting thin would keep you thin? Everyone who goes on a diet; everyone who swallows pills – thinks that being thin will keep you thin forever. It doesn’t happen.
Did you want to be another eating disorder victim? It won’t bring you any medals. Life will still go on but not for you. If only I could rewind time and say to you, please don’t buy into the madness of trying to feel better by destroying your body. Rest in peace.
Both ascetics and anorectics strive for perfection . . . Striving towards the ascetic image is a source of satisfaction, and a source of liberation from imprisonment of the body (or from its definition by others) and its bondage to an unacceptable world. In both cases, asceticism is not experienced as self-destructive, but as self-liberating.
Many with anorexia use their religious beliefs to justify extreme fasting, using some of the same rationalisations as the religious ascetic Both have similar goals, such as:
Now these aims are very spiritual and appear worthy. There have been many reports of fasting saints especially before medieval times. These saints were venerated. Ascetic aims can also mask emotional illness in both the religious ascetic and the anorexic. So let’s just say that there are connections between all people who fast to bring them closer to a nirvana of one sort or another. It is not just about getting a thigh gap or wearing size zero. They develop a relationship with fasting which becomes more important than the relationship with anything or anyone else.
Virtually every recovering anorectic has had a close relationship with fasting. If a therapist lacks a thorough understanding of fasting from spiritual, psychological, and medical perspectives, he or she could unintentionally allow the anorectic to keep their relationship with fasting a secret. Imagine the therapy session in this way; the anorexic patient is describing a personal experience about fasting, but it becomes clear to the patient that the therapist has only a peripheral understanding of fasting. The anorectic is now the expert on what is a critical feature of their psychiatric disorder and the therapist loses credibility when discussing the topic.
We therapists need to understand of the importance of exploring fasting behaviour in anorexic patients. And treatment needs to include a discussion of what fasting means to each patient. It is not just about fear of food, it is sometimes the quest for an unattainable emotion or an exalted state of mind. There is a saying among mental health professionals, “You’re only as sick as your secrets”. This implies that holding onto secrets—as opposed to revealing them in a safe setting such as during psychotherapy—could potentially impede the recovery of the eating disordered patient.
So as part of this, therapists even without religious feelings themselves should examine the religious and spiritual beliefs of someone with anorexia. Time spent to helping a sufferer to achieve elation in more helpful ways is known to make a difference.
I’ve been having a lively conversation with people on Facebook who insist that the nation is addicted to sugar. And I’ve been on Radio 5 Live this week talking about emotional eating, batting against people who think that overeating is an addiction and treating it via Overeaters Anonymous is the solution. It seems that many eating disorder experts have different opinions from that way of thinking about overeating.
I have been trying on radio to explain emotional eating in sound-bites of 5 minutes, an impossible task. Most of us overeat these days without realising it, for reasons that have nothing to do with hunger. It is so very easy to use food as a usual pastime or social event, when it is all around us, accessible and legal. We all eat to change our emotional state, sometimes to have fun, sometimes to self soothe or block emotions that we just don’t want to feel.
Dieting always leads to much higher levels of eating for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with hunger because dieting disconnects us from our normal hunger and satiety sensations. Then eating comes to feel like an addiction, you need your fix to get on with your day. You start a packet of biscuits and can’t stop at one. You feel out of control of SOME of your favourite foods. You develop an intense and toxic relationship with food because you don’t have a good relationship with yourself or other people.
But suppose it is just a really stuck habit that can be adjusted with the right kind of help. I really believe I can provide that help. To call it an addiction..no no, I can’t go with that for everyone I treat.
An inspirational film from Totally Tanya which I am going to show to all the lovely young women I’ve recently seen who are struggling with starvation.
During the last year I have read 4 manuscripts by anorexia sufferers who have written about the fine detail year on year of all their suffering. They have asked for my advice about publication.I have also read 3 published books by people who have actually found publishers for their books, to join the list of what some of you might call misery memoirs. These books usually are written after a degree of recovery but they are very tough to read as the behaviour which is a feature of the illness is revealed in all its stark detail.
I have to be honest with you, me and my staff as well, who know a lot about eating disorders were dismayed (that’s the best way I can put it) by so much reading of the accounts of the things people do to themselves and others with this compulsion to get and stay very thin. We are all suffering from Post Traumatic Anorexia Disorder. It is very hard reading, and a great deal of suffering all round.
As we move into Eating Disorder Awareness Week what really do we want to be aware of, tell me please? What kind of understanding do we seek? My question is, to what extent is this grisly detail useful for sufferers? For the public? For therapists?
In her book Almost Anorexic which is a nice book, the Author Jenni Schaefer cautions people from reading accounts of anorexic and bulimic suffering. She says, and I agree, that it will only increase worry, obsession and activate the competitive instincts of anorexics.
“OMG she got to 35 kilos, it means I’m definitely not thin enough yet!”
“OMG she ran a marathon on nothing but jelly beans, I’m certainly eating way too much!”
“OMG she began to purge, that’s a good idea, I might try that too.”
“OMG I’m not purging, that means I’m greedier than her.”
What is it that drives people with eating disorders to need to set down in writing all this pain. Is it just another form of “look at me” or is it part of the way that they can make sense of what has happened to them and recover. I don’t really know as yet.
But…. I have decided that these accounts do more harm than good to patients and are only useful to therapists who need to read all this to get a proper sense of the demons they are facing. This illness is very, very tough. It is an illness which is invited in and which doesn’t want to leave.
So as the manuscripts pile up on my desk, I will read them all but heaven knows I need some strength and I probably have seen enough for the moment. I don’t know if reading these memoirs or even broadcasting skeletal images on TV is going to help. What I really welcome are the accounts of recovery, like the work of Jenni Schaefer and also Emma Woolf; leaving out the pain of what went on before in all its grisly glory.
Starvation and self harm are not a pretty picture and knowing too much about it can kill.
Guest blog provided by Aradhana Pandey
The term “generation gap” is not solely restricted to cultural and moral differences between you and your kids. Parents and children are increasingly separated by contrasting lifestyles and food habits as well. The older generation grew up with limited, but healthier choices of food and spent our days sweating it out with outdoor sports, going on treks and riding bikes in the neighbourhood. Younger people, on the other hand are spoilt for choice with unlimited options of fast food chains cropping up at every nook and corner of every street. Even though your kids may be actively involved in sports and other physical activities, their preferences of calorie laden junk foods over nutritious foods could put them at a risk of obesity and overweight. In the USA post the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act passed after Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity, many schools in the United States have upped their nutritional standards and started to offer more servings of fruits and less salt, sugar, saturated fat and processed foods during lunchtime. Sure, that might be helping a great deal, but who’s keeping a strict tab on the foods your kids indulge in outside of school? Are you?
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 17% of children and adolescents between the age group of 2-19 years are obese. Yes, that’s surely an alarming statistic given the growing standards of education and awareness about healthy living and lifestyle related health problems. Children who are obese are not only prone to health problems like diabetes, cardiovascular conditions and high blood pressure, but also experience social anxiety, low self-esteem and depression. The increased indulgence in fast foods causes children’s poor academic performance, according to a recent study by Ohio State University.
During a child’s early, formative years, a lot of eating habits and food preferences take shape. How often has your little child insisted that you buy him the “treats” he sees in the advertisements that he watches on TV, and how often have you actually given in to his demands? Research shows that the time spent watching TV is directly proportional to the rate of childhood obesity. The article further suggests that advertisements that target children are exploitative in nature. They urge impressionable kids to pester parents and influence their purchase decisions.
It is important that parents inculcate good eating habits in children starting from an early age. The best and the most effective way to do this is by involving your children in the doing things like helping with food preparation and choosing wholesome family meals. Take your child to the supermarket and ask him to pick out the vegetables and fruits he likes. Teach her about the benefits of health eating but not in a way which risks creating anxiety, of course. The more involved your child is in the entire process, the more receptive he will be to adopting healthy eating habits.
While you ensure your child enjoys a healthful diet, be also mindful of her physical activity and sleep, as these factors are also closely linked to obesity. Harvard School of Public Health encourages children to get at least 60 daily minutes of physical movement and about 12 to 14 hours of sleep between 1-3 years of age; 11 to 13 hours between 3–5 years of age; 10 to 11 hours between 5–12 years of age and 8.5 – 9.25 hours of sleep for adolescents. This means not having a TV in the bedroom which we know is linked to stress.
I’m a little behind some of you with looking at the latest BBC Programme about finding a personalised diet programme with all the World Famous Obesity Experts. Sorry Professor Tanya by the way, with respect you are an erudite clinical psychologist but a world famous obesity expert? However….
I still want to know why they have put constant cravers (who may be Leptin Insensitive) on the Intermittent Fasting Diet. Leptin is a protein which tells our brain to stop looking for food when our fat cells are expanding. By the way. So constant cravers are looking at food all the time, in shops, with other people eating and so on. This is like the behaviour of drug addicts. Perhaps there is something wrong with the reward centres of the brain as well. We call this Reward Deficiency Syndrome. If this is the problem, then intermittent fasting might make their preoccupations worse.
I have plenty of research which shows that intermittent fasting in some people can ADD to their desire for food, increase their thinking about food, make them search out food and eating cues in their environments. So what’s the explanation for this choice of diet?
The programme shows that there are certain basics which need to be handled in obesity treatment no matter what is wrong with your genes and your hormones. This is like eating slowly and mindfully, not in front of the TV which increases appetite by the way…. not boot-camping people in exercise programmes which they don’t enjoy, building flexibility and teaching people how to solve day to day problems and deal with irritations without needing to eat; managing cravings, dealing with lapses & so on & so on.
And some of the participants are getting “CBT” although CBT on its own doesn’t have a good success rate for long term success. For one thing CBT lacks a spiritual dimension which inspires people to change and CBT doesn’t address the need to teach people how to increase their willpower. Yes, yes, yes it can be done.
You might like to see my own ideas on how to work with constant cravers on my blog Deanne talks to save me having to write it all again here. Meanwhile enjoy the programme, talk about it by all means, but the idea that there is a DIET alone that helps an overweight person to lose weight and keep it off is BIG FAT LIE.
Hello all you people who want to lose weight, this is such an important subject that a lot of nonsense is talked about
I am going to have a lot to say about the Tanya Byron, Susan Jebb and other expert takes on weight loss. I will I promise try to make it positive and helpful.
We are now in the dieting months and I’m already sick and tired of all the diet plans I’m seeing. There is the Ice Diet being promoted by Peta Bee in the Times – sorry Peta, bad science. And even a diet called EAT! Which is just another variant on the low carb diets. These diets are one size fits all and take no account of personal genes and nutrient responses. They are designed to fail in the long run, as all fervent followers will discover.
SO…Have we finally found the Holy Grail of weight loss? Is tailoring DIETS to your obesity-type the best way to help you lose weight? We have been searching for tailored programmes for years. An army of world famous weight loss experts cannot surely be wrong. Can they?
Well let’s see.
A few years ago, the BBC ran a diet trials experiment at the University of Surrey which compared different types of diets for success. There was a clear winner (Conley) but the take- home message in the long run is that different types of diet suit different people. People who don’t like calorie counting do well with Atkins or Dukan, while some people do really well with a group approach. But in the long run it’s pretty much all the same. Failure, that is, for most 18 months down the line.
The BBC have an all-singing-dancing world expert scientific approach that is new. Do people really divide themselves into three obesity types?
The first “cant-stoppers” who are low on gut hormones.
The second “constant cravers” who probably lack a good leptin response (science here) to tell their brains they aren’t hungry.
The third, “comfort eaters” who meet the day to day stress in life by using food as a feel-good drug.
Perhaps. They have all lost weight, HURRAY – but that proves very little; they have also been very unhappy here and there. it was poor research design, and the proof of the obesity pudding must surely be in how well they are able to keep it off. Oh well, it makes good TV but probably very little else.
Professor Susan Jebb is an expert-expert on obesity but has said that losing weight is not a matter of will, but of habits. People have to change their habits for life. I know that, and part of the therapy I do is to help change habits from very deep inside. This is useful for everyone and flexibility training was missing from the treatment given to these subjects.
But I cannot agree with that. There is a whole new science of willpower – known as self-regulation theory – which is available to obesity specialists and which is helping people to use their willpower to change their lives. This can help comfort-eaters, constant-cravers and cant-stoppers too. Why was this ignored? So what’s going to happen to these happy weight losers? Will they have to stay on their diets for life, an impossible task surely, unless they learn how to exercise their WILL.
I like it when people feel they have done something valuable and positive. Who could fail to be moved when men weep real tears for having help and support. But is this real science when it ignores real psychological strategies that work, like flexibility training and self-regulation training. More than half of the fatties got “CBT” on top of their diets, maybe it was the CBT not the diet that helped them.
And I want to know why the experts have decided the Intermittent Fasting Regime is right approach for constant cravers. MY RESEARCH TELLS ME THAT FASTING WILL MAKE THEIR PREOCCUPATIONS WORSE? Who said this was the right way for them to eat?
So for me the jury is out. Some bits of this interesting programme hold out hope for people who cannot lose weight. It’s good for someone to know that they may be lacking in a gut hormone that helps them to feel full. Its good to suggest that an emotional eater is not just weak-willed and greedy. It may be useful to know that a constant craver might not be feeling leptin in their brain.
This programme is misnamed. It is called finding the right diet for you. It should be named the right mix of strategies for you. Possibly but I am going to write more about this shortly
World experts should know better than to suggest that what they have done is a solution. It is just one of a number of things that must be properly explored in properly designed clinical trials before we can truly discover a personalized solution for obesity. And we experts know better than to think that any single diet can provide a quick fix even when the experts say “genes”.
