Eating Disorders - fieldi

18 Recovery Through Nutritional Counseling
mirrors how one feels and cares about oneself. Taking risks with
food paves the way for taking parallel risks in our lives.
But in today’s society many have a goal to be thin. We certainly
are given enough messages telling us that “thin is in” and “if you are
thin you will be happy, marry the right upper-class man, get a better
job, and be able to fit into the clothes the models advertise on television
and in magazines.” Being thin today means being thinner
than ever. Twenty-five years ago Miss America would be roughly 5
feet, 10 inches, and weigh about 140 pounds. Today our models at
that height have lost 25 pounds and weigh a mere 115 pounds—if
not less. Although we would all like to be slender we must realize
that less than 2 percent of the population is naturally “model thin”;
the rest of us have to like ourselves because of who we are—not
because of how thin we are.
To gain control over our weight, we need to be able to listen to
the body’s signals of hunger and satiety (being full). It is important
to realize that not all of us eat only when we are physically hungry;
few of us stop when the body tells us it has had enough. For someone
suffering from anorexia, bulimia, or a binge-eating disorder,
hunger can either be denied, tuned out, or will often be experienced
as a bad feeling—a feeling of being out of control. Some of
the anorexics with whom I have worked are incapable of tuning in
to the hunger and instead learn to live with it, getting used to
being hungry all the time. Because they may feel out of control
regarding certain issues in their lives (for example, parents’ separation,
loss of a boyfriend, and so forth), starvation often becomes
part of their control. It feels safe for them because they will remain
thin and will thus be accepted. But because her body never
received the food it tried to get by sending hunger signals that she
denied, the anorexic will have to live with a constant food obsession.
I have been told by many that, as long as they keep denying
their hunger by restriction, food obsession is their enemy, following
them day and night. Some bulimics, on the other hand, will eat
continuously to avoid this scary sensation and then are likely to
purge when they feel too full. This makes sense since their ultimate
fear is to gain weight. Reaching satiety may mean to them
that they have had too much, especially since their goal usually is
to lose weight.