Answer Addiction

Tag: eating disorders

  • How Diet Culture Harms Women in Recovery

    How Diet Culture Harms Women in Recovery

    Overlooking the physical impact that substance use disorder has had on our bodies will exacerbate disordered eating and poor mental health. As many as 72% of women with alcohol use disorder also have an eating disorder.

    Diet culture is insidious. We spend our lives obsessed with our bodies — always wishing for a smaller shape, scrutinizing the size of the portions on our plates, and unscrupulously comparing ourselves to thinner people. It’s damaging because it leads us to equate our worth with our appearance. For people in recovery, that is especially harmful. We experience physiological changes quickly — including weight gain — once we find recovery, and we can often leap to the assumption that we have a food addiction and reach for harmful, quick-fix solutions.

    But what if that weight gain is actually the inevitable evolution of our bodies in early recovery?

    When we stop taking drugs and drinking and instead prioritize basic human needs that we previously neglected, like eating, we often gain weight. Unfortunately, before allowing our bodies and appetite to achieve homeostasis, we seek to avoid feelings of discomfort which makes us vulnerable to the pervasive messaging from diet culture.

    What Is Diet Culture?

    Diet culture affects people of all body sizes, but it is particularly harmful for people who have larger bodies. It also perpetuates eating disorders because being seen as fat is believed to be one of the worst things that can happen to a person. And in many ways, it is: we’re treated differently, we’re stigmatized, and we’re valued less.

    The National Eating Disorders Association states: “Diet culture creates the belief that it’s okay to risk the life of a fat person in order to make them a thin person.”

    In order to overcome diet culture, however, we must first create awareness of what it looks like. NEDA identified the key tenets of diet culture as:

    • Encouraging rules about what, when, and how much to eat. This can manifest as restrictive diets — perhaps marketed as juice cleanses or liquid diets — and the trend to label food “good” and “bad.” We can also see it demonstrated in fasting diets and not eating within certain time frames.
    • Suggesting that people are more or less good/moral/worthy based on their body size. As a culture, we reward people for thinness. Compliments are almost always based on how someone looks, and we’re particularly congratulatory if the person we’re complimenting looks like they’ve lost weight. Conversely, we stigmatize, oppress, stereotype, shame, and harass fat people because they don’t meet our perception of how we think they should look. Fatness is the butt of many jokes, it is the source of much ridicule, and it is the reason we make assumptions about people in larger bodies. We assume that fat people are lazy, that they sit in front of the TV favoring binge-eating over exercising, and that they are probably depressed.
    • Creating thin privilege. Weight becomes a barrier to jobs, benefits, support, comfort, and accommodation. Expecting that public transportation, amusement park rides, medical facility waiting rooms, and exam rooms will accommodate you is thin privilege.
    • Using exercise as punishment. Instead of exercise being joyful, movement is seen as a means of punishing ourselves for eating too much, or a way to “earn” a “cheat meal.”
    • Viewing fat people as higher risk medically. Clinicians often recommend restrictive surgeries or prescribe medications to fat people, even though there are serious (sometimes fatal) and lifelong risks associated with these treatments. These invasive and drastic measures are often favored by doctors over evidence-based interventions, completely overlooking the patient’s quality of life and the associated risks.

    The Risks of Diet Culture for People in Recovery

    We often overlook our physical needs in early recovery, instead focusing on getting and staying sober. But programs focused solely on spiritual well-being aren’t enough. Overlooking the physical impact that substance use disorder has had on our bodies will only exacerbate disordered eating and poor mental health. Prioritizing proper nutrition, however, has been shown to significantly improve rates of recovery.

    Substance use disorder can cause considerable damage to our bodies that can take years to even out. It can disrupt metabolic and hormonal processes leading to poor calorie consumption and nutrient deficiencies. These deficiencies can be serious as they impact our mental health, vital organs, and immunity — that’s why we often feel depressed, agitated, and out of sorts in early recovery. What we eat during this crucial time has the potential to impact our mental well-being and how our bodies heal. Part of that healing often includes weight gain, whether we like it or not.

    Once we remove drugs and alcohol, we experience biochemical changes that can lead to an increased appetite and a desire to boost our low mood. Our brains are now wired to seek that pleasure externally, so we look to highly palatable foods: candy, fried foods, fast food, cake, cookies, and sugary caffeinated drinks.

    People in recovery often lack sufficient nutritional education about the right foods to eat. We also move less in early recovery, sitting in meetings, spending a lot of time in coffee shops, or sleeping. The combination of increased consumption of highly palatable foods, disrupted bodily processes, poor food choices, and a lack of exercise inevitably lead to weight gain.

    However, despite the fact that many of us were underweight when we came into recovery, we still treat any weight gain as a negative. That’s because of diet culture. We are quick to label our sudden increase in appetite and desire for highly palatable food as a problem. Some jump to the conclusion that they are addicted to sugar or food.

    Many women in recovery have a disordered relationship with food. As many as 72 percent of women with alcohol use disorder also have an eating disorder. This makes it even more crucial that we allow the process of recovery to take place and eat a balanced diet free from restrictions.

    Carbohydrates are needed to produce the neurochemical serotonin to balance our mood, help us sleep, curb food cravings, and sustain energy. Protein is crucial to healing and mental health: a lack of dopamine can trigger a return to substance use to improve mood. Fat is essential for mental health and also plays a role in stabilizing mood and reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression.

    It can be hard to accept weight gain. It leads us to look at our bodies and our relationship with food more critically. But this hyper-focus on our appearance leads to further harming our already damaged self-esteem.

    “Women in recovery have already been through a tremendous amount of shame,” says intuitive eating coach and RN Tiffany Thoen.

    “Feeling that we are not good enough or that there is something wrong with us is familiar and contributes to the desire to change ourselves to be ‘better,’” she says. “Diet culture preys on these feelings of low self-worth for profit. For women in recovery, this adds to self-loathing by becoming one more way we aren’t good enough.”

    Rather than acknowledge that our bodies need food in order to heal and what we are experiencing is a normal part of recovery, we try to reverse that weight gain by going on restrictive diets, which only undermines the healing process. It can also have disastrous consequences: it can inhibit the healing process and our ability to function, trigger co-occurring conditions like eating disorders, and risk a return to using substances.

    How Do We Combat Diet Culture?

    In order to focus on our healing, we must allow for the process of recovery and not get sucked into diet culture. Thoen recommends that we empower ourselves to reject diet culture by taking these steps:

    • Cultivate awareness around negative self-talk
    • Notice where you might see messages promoting diet culture: on TV, in magazines, or on social media
    • Consider who is benefiting from your believing these messages
    • Set boundaries with friends and family around diet talk and commenting on bodies
    • If you use social media, follow people of all shapes and sizes doing a variety of things, such as the hashtag #womeneatingfood
    • Cultivate respect, acceptance, and gratitude for your body as it is today, because our bodies are doing their best to support us
    • Do the inner work around value, worth, and self-forgiveness
    • Get support from the many available resources, books, podcasts, online groups, coaches, etc. so you don’t have to do it alone

    Don’t lose hope. As Thoen says, “Diet culture is insidious and can keep up in a cycle of self-loathing. Healing your relationship with food and body is possible.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Weight Watchers Criticized For Kids “Diet” App

    Weight Watchers Criticized For Kids “Diet” App

    Critics claim that the app’s focus on categorizing food could lead to disordered eating in children.

    A new app is getting flack for promoting dieting in children and teenagers.

    Kurbo, released by WW (formerly Weight Watchers) on Aug. 13, was designed to help young people aged 8-17 lose weight in a “healthy” way, but it’s garnered outrage among those who say it promotes disordered eating.

    Good Food, Bad Food

    The app utilizes a “traffic light system” to help kids discern which foods are “good” and “bad.”

    “Green light foods, including all fruits and veggies, are great to eat anytime. Yellows like lean proteins and pasta are also good. You’ll just watch your portions,” according to Kurbo’s official website. And “red foods, like candy and soda? You don’t have to give them up. Just stop and think how to budget them in.”

    WW says the method is supported by science, but according to a petition seeking the removal of Kurbo, “Categorizing foods like this can lead to food guilt or anxiety.” The change.org petition had nearly 108,000 signatures as of Wednesday morning.

    The traffic light system is the same one used by Stanford’s Pediatric Weight Control Program, according to the app’s developer, Joanna Strober. She created Kurbo to help her son manage his weight, per a pediatrician’s advice, she told USA Today. A mobile app was preferable to her son, who did not like attending the program in person. The family also had trouble affording the cost of the program.

    Gary Foster, WW’s chief science officer, told USA Today that Kurbo is not only evidence-based, it is preferable to the barrage of unhealthy weight loss strategies and “unrealistically thin ideals” that are promoted on social media.

    “It’s a simple way to teach kids a healthy pattern of eating,” said Foster. “Everything that’s in the app is science based. It’s not about dieting. It’s not about calorie counting. It’s not about restrictions. This is not a diet that says get rid of red foods, only eat green foods.”

    Negative Reviews

    There are plenty of negative reviews of Kurbo on Google Play and Apple’s App Store claiming the app is “preying” on parents’ fears of disordered eating and diabetes. However, one App Store reviewer left a solid five star review, slamming the app’s critics.

    “Everyone seems angry about this app, and it’s making me enraged,” reviewer KikiKite, who is in recovery from anorexia, said in late August. “America has a weight problem, and here is a well-known and trusted establishment creating an app to help promote HEALTH.”

    While a representative for the American Academy of Pediatrics, Sarah Armstrong, acknowledged that the method used in Kurbo is supported by research and is effective when combined with counseling and other modes of treatment, she said the app itself is new and its effectiveness is to be determined.

    Armstrong also said there is some truth to the claim that focusing on diet and nutrition can lead to disordered eating. “There is some evidence that talking about weight particularly even by family members in kids of any weight, shape, or size, not necessarily just in kids with obesity, can make kids really start over-focusing on it and can lead to restrictive eating… that is associated with more unhealthy outcomes.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • How Eating Disorders Present In Teen Boys

    How Eating Disorders Present In Teen Boys

    Doctors and parents may miss the signs of disordered eating in younger men because ED assessment tools are geared towards women. 

    Eating disorders are typically thought of as a struggle faced by girls and women.  

    However, according to Reuters, teen boys are also susceptible—eating disorders may just present differently for them, as the goal is often to build muscle rather than lose weight.  

    Dr. Jason Nagata of the University of California San Francisco and his colleagues explore the topic in a recent commentary in the Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, and stated that often the most well-known eating disorder symptoms like restricting calories and purging are signs of the disorder in females, not males. 

    “Many assessment tools that are currently standard practice to diagnose eating disorders are geared toward females and are based on weight loss behaviors with the goal to become thin,” Nagata said via email.

    Because of this, he says, doctors and parents may miss the signs of disordered eating in younger males. These signs often include eating too much protein, cutting carbs and fats, and going back and forth between too many calories and too few. Steroids or supplements and excessive exercise may also come into play, Nagata states. 

    “Exercise is an under-recognized component of eating disorders,” Nagata said, according to Reuters. “Teenagers who excessively exercise can have energy deficits and become malnourished if they do not increase their food intake to match their energy needs.”

    Nagata and his colleagues add that teen boys have also been known to take part in “biohacking,” which has to do with attempting to build muscle via methods like elimination diets, steroid use, supplements and intermittent fasting. 

    Dr. Trine Tetlie Eik-Nes, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, was not involved with Nagata’s team but states that disordered eating in males can be hard to diagnose since there is little research about them. 

    “We are basically not asking the right questions for boys,” Eik-Nes said. “Consequently, boys do not get access to treatment and they do not themselves see their problems as an eating disorder. Moreover, boys may be less familiar with talking about negative feelings, body image ideals and eating disorders.”

    According to Nagata, there are some telltale signs to watch for in males. 

    “Disordered eating may develop when a boy becomes preoccupied with his appearance, body size, weight, food, or exercise in a way that worsens his quality of life,” Nagata said. “He may withdraw from his usual activities or friends because of concerns with body size and appearance.”

    Dr. Antonios Dakanalis, a researcher at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy, was not involved in Nagata’s commentary but adds that it can be harder for boys to reach out and ask for help. 

    “Males can face a double stigma—about having a disorder characterized as feminine or gay, and seeking psychological help,” Dakanalis said via email.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Study: Tinder Users More Likely To Have Eating Disorders

    Study: Tinder Users More Likely To Have Eating Disorders

    Though men were more likely across the board to engage in any single unhealthy weight control behaviors, women were more likely to have practiced all of them.

    People who use dating apps like Tinder are 2.7 to 16.2 times more likely to have an eating disorder or engage in unhealthy weight control behaviors (UWCBs) such as fasting, vomiting, or abusing laxatives, according to a recent Harvard study.

    Researchers surveyed over 1,700 U.S. adults ages 18 to 65 in the fourth quarter of 2017 and discovered a strong correlation between the behavior of swiping for dates and going to extremes to look good.

    The study examined eating disorders and related behavior over all dating apps, but specifically mentioned Tinder, Grindr, and Coffee Meets Bagel. The survey found that about 33% of men and 17% of women who responded use dating apps, and of those, unhealthy and disordered weight management practices were significantly elevated.

    About 45% of female dating app users and 54% of male dating app users reported fasting for weight control. Respectively, those numbers were 22.4% and 36.4% for vomiting, 24% and 41.1% for laxative use, 26.8% and 40.2% for diet pill use, 15.8% and 36.4% for anabolic steroid use, and 20.2% and 49.8% for muscle-building supplement use.

    Though men were more likely across the board to engage in any single UWCB, women were more likely to have practiced all of them.

    “Women who use dating apps had 2.3 to 26.9 times the odds of engaging in all six UWCBs compared to women who were non-users,” the authors wrote. “The same trend of elevated odds was found among men. Men who use dating apps had 3.2 to 14.6 times the odds of engaging in all six UWCBs compared to men who were non-users.”

    People of color were also found to be more likely to practice and all of the examined UWCBs.

    Study author Dr. Alvin Tran of the Yale School of Medicine told CNBC that the nature of dating apps could be creating an environment in which appearance is heavily emphasized, as well as “avenues for racism and avenues for body shaming.” Dr. Tran and his fellow researchers point to an analytical paper in Sexuality & Culture titled “Dude, Where’s Your Face?” 

    “Results indicated that men tended to privilege masculinity, to visually present themselves semi-clothed, and to mention fitness or bodies in the text of their profile,” the paper’s abstract reads. 

    Dr. Tran’s study notes that it’s unclear whether using dating apps leads to UWCBs or whether those who already engage in these behaviors are more likely to use dating apps. They also acknowledge that their survey sample was entirely U.S.-based and over-represented women, and recommend that “future studies aim to assess the association between dating app use and UWCBs temporally and use a more representative sample.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • You Are What You Eat: How Chemicals in Food Affect Your Mood

    You Are What You Eat: How Chemicals in Food Affect Your Mood

    Low-nutrient foods, plentiful in the American diet, are made of ingredients which can cause the same effects in the brain as mind-altering substances.

    Lifestyle diseases include diabetes, obesity, stroke, heart disease, smoking, and substance use disorder. According to the CDC, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S.

    Trying to Quit Everything in Sobriety

    When I finally quit rum and cocaine, I wanted to change everything about my lifestyle immediately. With close to no impulse control and without alcohol and drugs to distance me from my feelings, I was a revved up raw nerve of angst. My original plan was to quit smoking, lose ten pounds, and quit picking the wrong guys. Thankfully, when I was newly sober I made a new friend, let’s call her “Anne.”

    “I’m getting fat,” I told Anne two weeks after we met. “I need to go on a strict diet. I can’t let myself put on even more weight now that I’m quitting cigarettes.”

    Anne said, “Crash diets rarely work and smoking is one of the toughest habits to break. The way to get healthy is to tackle one problem at a time. For now, maybe putting down drinking and drugging is enough.”

    Anne gave me that excellent advice decades ago. We’re still friends and it’s been educational watching her change over the years. Unlike me, she preferred living at a thoughtful and slower pace. Many of her great habits like meditation, mindfulness, and exercise rubbed off on me.

    After two years clean, I met a woman who’d had throat cancer. She had a huge scar across her neck and talked like a frog. I ran home that night, threw out my brand-new carton of Newports and quit cigs cold turkey. I began going to the gym. Two years after that big change, I went to Weight Watchers and lost 12 pounds and I’ve kept it off. But I was still in love with sugar and picked up compulsively chewing Bazooka Joe. Anne didn’t like sweets, which I could never understand. She said they made her feel like she’d had too many cups of coffee. She also drank decaf.

    Addicted to Sugar

    I’d been a sugar addict since childhood; I used to sell my lunches to kids on line in the cafeteria and sneak to the corner store for Milky Ways and Snickers. Due to the high cost of dentists, I finally switched to sugar-free gums like Extra and Trident but when an old filling was pulled loose, I was done with gum.

    Everyone knows that sugar isn’t good for you, right? I’d read Sugar Blues as a teen while dating a health nut. And I knew that diet soda wasn’t full of vitamins and nutrients, but I didn’t want to dig too deeply into its ingredients. Anne mentioned it a few times so I’d glanced at articles about aspartame here and there but the truth is, I avoided learning about it because I didn’t want to know. I love soda. I’ve tried to give it up many times without success. Based on Anne’s suggestion, I switched to water but couldn’t keep it going after a few short spurts. The longest I ever went was two weeks — water was boring. I always gleefully ran back to Diet Coke and Diet Cherry Pepsi.

    In 2017, Donald Trump announced “We’re going to be cutting regulations at a level that nobody’s ever seen before.” Since then, I’ve wondered who is approving what and if anyone is checking anything anymore. For all we know, big companies are paying big amounts of money to keep us eating crap. That’s when it first hit me that I should become a more informed consumer; I knew it was stupid to keep ignoring what I was ingesting. But by that time, I was in the habit of making changes slowly and not in the informed way Anne did. I was putting off quitting anything else but it was starting to gnaw at me.

    The Diet Soda Trap

    At a recent work conference, I met a handful of health and wellness experts. While chatting I asked, “How bad is it that I’ve been addicted to diet soda for-like-ever?” Talking stopped, heads whirled toward me, jaws fell slack and I felt like an idiot.

    “It’s full of toxic chemicals,” one said, finally breaking the silence.

    “Aspartame is the worst,” said another.

    A third woman chimed in with sarcasm. “It’s great if you love mood swings and gaining weight.”

    That evening I googled articles about aspartame and additional sugar substitutes. The more I read, the more it reminded me of the immutable hold that cocaine had had on me. When I was in rehab I’d learned that my addiction had nothing to do with me being a “bad” person or having weak, wimpy willpower and everything to do with brain pathways and ingrained habits. By the time I left treatment, I had a newfound understanding that no matter how many times I’d tried to quit snorting sparkly white powder, my brain was as trained as any of Pavlov’s dogs. Through the repetition over many years, my brain had developed deep grooves and these ingrained patterns became triggers for my Pavlovian compulsion to sniff out and snort up rewards.

    So here I am with all this knowledge that any self-destructive habit I want to break is going to take work. It means changing my lifestyle until I build new brain pathways or at least block off the old ones.

    Soon after reading more about aspartame, I received a timely email from Jaya Jaya Myra (née Myra Rodriguez), with a link to her new TEDx talk. I remembered Myra’s strong background in neuroscience, which gave her opinion more weight in my mind. I knew she looked for solutions to her problems by studying her own brain, and that she sometimes found life-changing answers. Myra became a nutritionist, healer, Tedx-talker, and bestselling author of the book Vibrational Healing: Attain Balance & Wholeness. Understand Your Energetic Type, which I’d already read.

    I was impressed by the new talk, so I asked her to meet me for lunch.

    The Connection Between Trauma and Illness

    “I cured myself of debilitating fibromyalgia,” she said as we sat in a diner. “Doctors couldn’t help me. The pain was debilitating and I lost everything—my job, my marriage, the bank foreclosed on my home, I couldn’t take care of myself or my three kids. When I was at my lowest point, I knew I had to figure out how I went from being totally healthy to completely debilitated.”

    She described a long road to self-discovery that included meeting a Native American healer and Eastern medicine practitioners. “In Western medicine,” she said, “they focus on treating the symptoms, but fibromyalgia is a mysterious illness with no known causes or cures. Doctor after doctor treated me like I was an emotional female and it was all in my head.”

    The only way to get better was to pinpoint the source of the problem. She went into therapy, worked hard, and found out she had repressed traumatic childhood memories. Her mother was an alcoholic who couldn’t take care of herself or of her daughter. Myra was neglected and traumatized and had developed self-destructive habits that made things worse.

    I told her about my recent research. “Diet stuff can cause many more problems because of chemical sweeteners,” she said. “Aspartame is used in diet soda, sugar-free gum, yogurts, and so much more. It’s one of the worst sugar substitutes because it tricks your brain into thinking, ‘Ooh, sweet taste. I’m going to get a reward. But diet sodas don’t do that, they inhibit good hormones and neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin. So you’re not satiated and it makes you crave more. It actually increases your appetite and wreaks havoc with your moods—depression, anxiety.”

    Next I reached out to Emily Boller, author of Starved to Obesity, a self-help book about her journey out of food addiction. “Modern-day foods are completely abnormal,” she said. “They promote disease. I never chose depression. I didn’t want an addiction to food.”

    Like Myra, Boller believes that eating disorders are symptoms of underlying conditions “like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.” And, like Myra, Boller had experienced her own trauma. “My son Daniel died by suicide in 2012, in part it was due to his addiction to artificial and processed foods. He had type 1 Diabetes.”

    If Daniel’s blood sugar got too high, the avalanche of brain-damaging spikes would create a medical delirium called metabolic encephalopathy, with symptoms like psychosis. He was only 21 when he died. Losing her son sent her into shock, then a “suffocating depression.” She’d struggled with food since childhood—first with binge eating and weight gain which brought on cruel teasing in school. In her teens, she swung the other way, dangerously into anorexia. As an adult she became obese.

    Craving Low-Nutrient Foods

    “You know that you’re addicted to a certain food if you try to give it up but the cravings are so strong you cave,” said Boller. “Our bodies weren’t meant to eat artificially sweetened shakes, diet soda, sugar-free Jell-O, pudding or protein bars.”

    Boller raves about her doctor, Joel Fuhrman, MD, a six-time bestselling author and president of the Nutritional Research Foundation who specializes in preventing and reversing diseases through nutrition. Boller credits Dr. Fuhrman for teaching her a whole new lifestyle. What she shared was in keeping with what Jaya Jaya Myra had said about aspartame, chemicals and nutrition.

    Dr. Fuhrman taught Boller about addictive substances. “They activate the reward system and cause the brain to demand more and more.” Boller learned that willpower is no match for addictive drives and that low-nutrient foods — high in calories, intensely sweet, salty, or fatty — make up the majority of the standard American diet. “The ingredients cause the same effects in the brain that mind-altering substances do.”

    Here’s one way to think of addiction: Imagine walking in a field of grass. When you walk to one spot, you make a connection that gives your brain a good feeling, just like when an opioid floods your brain with a rush of dopamine. Now, imagine going back to that spot so you can have that pleasurable experience again. With each repetition you have matted down the grass in the field into a pathway. It would be odd to walk any other way than along the pathway that directly leads to the brain’s reward. When your brain doesn’t get the expected reward, it keeps craving it and looking for it.

    “That’s why whenever you want to change a habit,” said Myra, “you need to replace it with something positive until you build a new pathway.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • What Is Drunkorexia?

    What Is Drunkorexia?

    Experts discuss the relatively new disorder and the way it affects the body and mind.

    Eating disorders and substance use disorders are overlapping more often, according to registered dietitian and author Cara Rosenbloom. 

    What Rosenbloom is referring to is “drunkorexia”—when an individual, often female, does not eat all day or eats very little leading up to an evening of consuming alcohol. They may also exercise aggressively or purge before drinking alcohol. 

    “Drunkorexia addresses the need to be the life of the party while staying extremely thin, pointing to a flawed mindset about body image and alcoholism among college students, mostly women,” Rosenbloom writes in the Washington Post. 

    Drinking in this manner is dangerous, particularly because the lack of food in the stomach means a faster absorption of alcohol. According to Tavis Glassman, professor of health education and public health at the University of Toledo in Ohio, this can lead to more issues. 

    “With nothing in her system, alcohol hits quickly, and that brings up the same issues as with any high-risk drinking: getting home safely, sexual assault, unintentional injury, fights, blackouts, hangovers that affect class attendance and grades, and possibly ending up in emergency because the alcohol hits so hard,” he tells Rosenbloom.

    Drunkorexia may also lead to nutrient deficiencies such as calcium, B-vitamins, magnesium, fiber and protein, registered dietitian Ginger Hultin says. 

    “Alcohol can negatively affect the liver or gastrointestinal system, it can interfere with sleep, lower the immune system and is linked to several types of cancers,” Hultin tells Rosenbloom.

    Because drunkorexia is a fairly new disorder, our knowledge of the disorder is limited, while the existing research varies widely. 

    Glassman, along with others in the field, is hoping to have drunkorexia added as a legitimate diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. They hope that doing so could establish some guidelines for professionals to identify the disorder, Rosenbloom writes.

    The addition to the DSM would also increase likelihood of insurance coverage for those who may need treatment.  

    Glassman and colleagues are working to combat the issue at the University of Toledo by bringing more awareness to healthy body image and decreasing body shaming.

    “We try to emphasize that the human body comes in different shapes and sizes, and remind students that when they look at the media, with computer enhancement and airbrushing, even the model may not really look like a model,” Glassman tells Rosenbloom. “We remind students to value people based on things besides their appearance.”

    Hultin adds, “If students see friends engaging in this type of behavior, they can intervene and encourage different choices or offer support or resources to address a potential problematic relationship with alcohol and/or food.” 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Disney Alum Alyson Stoner Opens Up About Anxiety, Anorexia

    Disney Alum Alyson Stoner Opens Up About Anxiety, Anorexia

    The “Step Up” star got candid about her battle with anorexia and the rehab stay that saved her life in a recent interview.

    Alyson Stoner first broke through as a child star when she was nine years old as a dancer in Missy Elliott’s “Work It” video. She then transitioned to starring in films like Cheaper By the Dozen, Step Up, and the Disney Channel movie Camp Rock.

    Yet as Stoner, now 25, revealed to People, she suffered from anxiety and anorexia as a result of the grueling pressures of stardom. As early as age six, Stoner had health issues from stress. Her anxiety gave her heart palpitations, and she also suffered from hair loss and seizures. Eventually, Stoner developed binge-eating disorder, anorexia and exercise bulimia.

    “Some people are complimentary of me when it comes to maybe not acting out in ways that they see other child stars behaving. I was acting out, but I chose vices that were societally acceptable and praiseworthy,” Stoner told People.

    Stoner’s weight loss left some casting directors concerned about her wellbeing.  

    “They would just tell me that I need help and [need] to go home and take care of my health because my eyes were sunken in and I was tired and lifeless,” Stoner told People. “The scary part is I wasn’t even the smallest person on set.”

    Stoner was hospitalized in 2011 then went to rehab to deal with her disordered eating when she was several months away from turning 18. “I had actually wanted to get help for some time, and my schedule didn’t allow for it. I had already needed hospitalization, but I had to complete projects.”

    Once her acting work was done, Stoner got help.

    “I still have my hospital gown, binder and letters from other patients tucked in a drawer as a reminder of one of the best choices I’ve made for my health,” Stoner revealed.

    “How much of my health am I willing to sacrifice for my job?” she wondered after her rehab stay.

    In the music video for her new song “Stripped Bare,” Stoner shaves her head. Stoner called the decision “an act of mental health and confidence, not self-destruction.” Symbolically, Stoner added that with every lock of hair that fell from her head, so did “many beliefs and opinions and insecurities… and I’m leaving them there. I’m shedding one era and rising as a new being in real time.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Binge Eating Now Most Common Eating Disorder In US

    Binge Eating Now Most Common Eating Disorder In US

    Binge eating disorder is more common than schizophrenia, HIV and breast cancer.

    Binge eating is now the most common of all eating disorders, despite the fact that it has only been recognized as a specified eating disorder since 2013. 

    According to Cooking Light, there are three times more cases of binge eating disorder (BED) than there are of anorexia and bulimia combined. The Binge Eating Disorder Association notes that binge eating disorder is more common than schizophrenia, HIV and breast cancer. 

    Binge eating, according to the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA), is “a severe, life-threatening, and treatable eating disorder.” 

    Some of the signs of BED include eating large amounts of food at least once weekly for three months or longer, a feeling of lack of control when eating, feelings of guilt or shame afterward, and using unhealthy methods such as purging afterward. 

    “Binge eating disorders differ from bulimia, as binge eaters don’t always use exercise, laxatives, or other forms of purging to try to ‘erase the binge,’” Cooking Light reports. “Instead of falling into binge-purge cycles, those with a BED will most likely isolate themselves,  or even try to go to sleep, instead of attempting to fix the problem with harmful interventions.”

    NEDA says a binge-eating episode includes three or more of these behaviors within two hours: eating faster than normal, eating to discomfort, eating large amounts of food even if not hungry, feeling out of control and lacking ability to stop, eating alone due to embarrassment and feeling shame or guilt afterward. 

    Binge eating can happen any time of day. In some cases, it can be the result of restricting calories throughout the day, not addressing emotional and mental health problems, or can be done out of boredom. 

    Chevese Turner, chief policy and strategy officer for NEDA, told Cooking Light that subjective binges are also something to be aware of. A subjective binge is when a person eats a normal amount of food but still battles feelings of being out of control or guilty. 

    While about 70% of those with BED are overweight or obese, anyone can struggle with the eating disorder. Past research has shown that women who diet are about 12 times more likely to battle BED. Men who diet are also more likely to have it.

    Additionally, those with mental health issues or substance use disorders may be at higher risk of developing BED.

    Turner also tells Cooking Light that those with “a perfectionist or overachiever mentality” may be more likely to struggle with BED. 

    There are a number of consequences of BED, including weight cycling, the body becoming insulin-resistant, and gastrointestinal problems. There is also a high risk of emotional trauma. 

    One way to determine if you or a loved one is struggling with BED is by using NEDA’s screening tool. NEDA can also be reached at 1-800-931-2237.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Actress Lily Collins Details Bulimia Battle In New Memoir

    Actress Lily Collins Details Bulimia Battle In New Memoir

    Collins reveals in her new autobiography how divorce played in a role in her eating disorder.

    British actress Lily Collins has published a new memoir in which she addresses a long and debilitating struggle with an eating disorder during her teenaged years.

    Collins, who is the daughter of rock veteran Phil Collins and the star of such films as Mirror Mirror, wrote in Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me that her desire to control her weight began with an addiction to exercise and laxatives and progressed to bingeing and purging.

    Collins also addressed her father’s alcoholism, which took hold as she was battling her eating disorder. Support from their family members helped both Lily and her father gain perspective on their respective diseases and as a result, grow closer. “It doesn’t define how I live my life daily any more,” she said.

    By Collins’ account, her childhood was marked by upheaval: Her father split from her mother, Jill Tavelman, in a costly divorce when she was five, and married his third wife, Orianne Cevey. Collins said that she “couldn’t handle the pain and confusion surrounding [her] dad’s divorce” and longed for his presence and approval. His absence left Collins feeling that she “wasn’t enough,” and she plunged into a punishing regime of extreme exercise and diet moderation through chewing gum and drinking coffee.

    By her mid-teens, Collins had turned to diet pills and laxatives to keep her weight down, and she began bingeing and purging on junk food. “I’d be in tears on the floor, jamming my hand down my throat and trying desperately to gag,” she wrote. Her menstrual cycle stopped for a period of two years, leaving her feeling like “a young woman in a little kid’s body.”

    As Collins continued to battle her disease into her early 20s, she saw that her father had spiraled into alcoholism, a condition he also fought for years. “Once I was aware, it was all I could see,” she wrote. “I was convinced that one day, I would wake up to a phone call from halfway across the world, saying that it had finally gone too far.”

    During this period, Lily also found herself in a revolving door of relationships with men consumed by their own dependency issues. The toxicity of these interactions reached its lowest point when a boyfriend pressured her to isolate herself from her friends and family and even threatened her with verbal and physical violence. That incident provided Collins with the impetus to make crucial changes to not only improve her health but also her relationship with her father, who also took control of his life and dependencies.

    With her newfound health and happiness also came stardom as an actress in such films as The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and an upcoming BBC television adaptation of Les Miserables; Collins also tackled the issue of eating disorders head-on in the 2017 Netflix film To the Bone, in which she played a young woman struggling with anorexia. 

    Collins is keenly aware of her past struggles but also acknowledges how far she’s come since that time. “It’s never going to be erased because it’s a part of who you are,” she said. “But it doesn’t define how I live my life daily any more.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • The Other White Powder: My Addiction to Sugar

    The Other White Powder: My Addiction to Sugar

    In that first meeting I went to for my sugar addiction, I heard others admit to doing the same things I did. Sneaking. Lying. Throwing food in the bin to halt a binge only to come back later and fish it out to eat.

    It was right in front of my face but I couldn’t see it for what it was for years: Addiction is a wayward beast. Christ knows you can’t see much when you’re laid flat on your back, pinned down by invisible yet ferocious forces.

    The narrative was just so unfamiliar that I doubted it was real. Where were the used syringes, grubby spoons, and Ewan McGregor swimming in a lav to Brian Eno music? Where were the gin and tequila bottles strewn next to stained ashtrays?

    A glance into my dependence only revealed brightly colored plastic wrappers and packaging, crumbs strewn on the car floor, stomach pains, abominable flatulence, and soft velvety chocolate stains on the couch and seat of my pants. Far from Trainspotting or Leaving Las Vegas, this was more like Leaving Seven Eleven.

    It was almost laughable, only it wasn’t, it was excruciating. I ate the way an alcoholic drinks and an addict uses. The notion that food could derail a person the way hard drugs or booze can sounds extreme. And whilst the destruction is not as ostensibly violent and as speedily lethal, my spirit was decaying.

    When you’re enslaved by compulsion and obsession, no matter what the substance or behavior — you suffer. Your inner freedom withers away and you are caught in a most painful cycle.

    I could not stop binge eating. And for some reason I never equated my lawless benders on sweet things as a bona fide addiction. Denial is blinding but it wasn’t only mine. I was seeking the help of health professionals — psychologists and health counselors — who were also missing the reality of the problem. They would say “But it’s not that bad, right?” and minimize my behavior in an attempt to make me feel better. But it was  that  bad, and their diminishing comments made me feel worse.

    They were kind and well intentioned and approached the issue by trying to help me find moderation in my relationship with food, namely sugar: my white powdery blow. I’d find that balance for periods — sometimes days, weeks or even months — but I’d inevitably topple into blowout. And I’m not talking a couple of pieces of cake or a tub of ice cream.

    There is a cultural denial around the legitimacy of sugar and food addiction and treatment for disordered eating is usually centered around balance. And that is the ideal solution. But what if that doesn’t work? What if the notion of moderation is the very thing that keeps some of us monumentally stuck?

    My continual failure to eat “normally” left me bereft and berating myself for my inability to halt this self-abuse. I couldn’t implement what I was being advised to do. What in hell was wrong with me? I’ve never had a DUI for drunk driving, but I have shamefully dinged my car (and others) more than once as I scoffed food blindly from the passenger seat.

    I’d swear off bingeing; writing and typing up resolutions only to rip them up or delete them when I’d inevitably slide into another spree.

    Then one day the penny dropped when a health counselor I’d been working with for four years said, “I’ve got it…You’re addicted to sugar!” Well yeah…anyone could see that, but what was her point?

    She told me I needed to treat it like a legitimate addiction, find a support group, and face the fact I couldn’t eat processed sugar in moderation, which meant not eating it. At all.

    At all. The suggestion seemed not only cruel, but blatantly impossible. I didn’t know a single person who didn’t eat sugar. What a farcical idea. And yet I knew she spoke the truth so I went out and binged.

    I googled and found a 12-step group for overeaters. Begrudgingly and only because she kept hassling me, I went as I was desperate and had begun to experience the onset of chronic pain and digestive problems: the inescapable physical consequences of treating my body like a garbage bin.

    In that first meeting I listened to others talk about doing the same shameful things with food that I did. Sneaking. Lying. Throwing food in the bin to halt a binge only to come back later and fish it out to eat. Feeling as if your insides were going to erupt with fullness and being unable to stop stuffing your face.

    Shame released its chokehold on me as I saw I wasn’t alone. And I was okay. I wasn’t a bad person even if I continued to binge. I was doing something that was bad for me, but I wasn’t bad. Self-loathing gave way to…well, it must’ve been grace, and I felt an ache for the girl in me who’d strained for so long under the weight of something much bigger than her.

    For the first time in over 15 years, and at the age of 34 with three young children, I had the wherewithal to choose. Prior to that I hadn’t perceived the freedom of choice. I’d been ruled by compulsion. All I knew was I didn’t want to live out that painful cycle anymore.

    So I surrendered to reality. And I kept going to meetings, connecting with others who had been or were struggling like me. Doubt would creep in at times as to whether this was the right path, but I kept going along that bumpy path, and somehow, one day at a time, I let go of my sweet poison.

    And the inhumane fate of a life without sugar? It was revealed to be the very opposite and I began over time to experience a newfound freedom with food and in life.

    Having long struggled with bouts of suicidal depression and anxiety, the improvement in my mental health was indisputable. Not only to me, but to those around me including my husband and mum. I knew my sugar habit was unravelling my life, but I had no concept as to how much my life could blossom when I became unstuck.

    I’m not an advocate for demonizing sugar, or booze, or whatever substances or activities people indulge in for pleasure. The reality is many people can and do enjoy these things and I reckon that’s great.

    But for me, I crossed a tipping point somewhere along the line where a chocolate brownie was no longer a single chocolate brownie that could be eaten and left at that; it opened up an insatiable craving for more, and with that came far more pain than joy.

    I had given up all hope that I could ever find peace from this affliction. And ironically it was throwing in the towel in desperation that allowed me to succumb to the truth and seek the help I needed to change. Even when you think it doesn’t exist, there is always, always hope.

    Have you faced food and/or sugar addiction? Tell us about it in the comments.

    View the original article at thefix.com