As many people have issues with food and in the UK there are a known 1.25 million sufferers so lets help beat eating disorders as it affects so may and as we are a healthy eating forum so your stories of beating an eating disorder or living with one is welcome as its through being open and honest about our relationship with food that we realise that we have shared emotions and with an eating disorder these are shared negative emotions and this can be very empowering.
Thank you for your post. I have some sort of eating disorder--not sure exactly what it is but I have no desire to eat. I have been this way pretty much all my life but since I have entered my senior years and trying to cook for myself instead of a family, I have lost quite a bit of weight. I try to eat but I would be happy if I didn't have to!!
Hello whatgoingon Thank you for being so open and honest about how you feel about food and eating I am really sorry that you feel this way as you want to look after yourself as you are worth it.
Do you have any allergies or reactions to food as this can put us off eating and I'd try and feel more positive to eating as it is our fuel and we don't want you losing more weight.
Thank you. That is a good idea. I had a piece of meat, baked potato and salad for dinner. It was easy to fix . I need to quit making casseroles that I don't like and maybe go for real simple. You have helped me think outside the box.
Don’t know if this might help, whatgoingon, but this article gives tips on increasing our appetite: healthline.com/nutrition/16...
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. . . • Do you like nut butter 🥜 on apple 🍎 or pear 🍐 slices?
. . . . Or, nut butter 🥜 with banana 🍌 on whole meal bread 🍞 ?
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. . . • If you’re not keen on cooking, do you like blender drinks (smoothies)? 🍹
. . . . If you’ve dark leafy green vegetables 🥬 🍃 & frozen berries 🍓 on hand, a tasty blender drink might help stimulate appetite? 😋
[We even add leftover cooked oatmeal 🥣 or leftover cooked sweet potato 🍠 to blender drinks. 😯 . . . It makes "a meal" that we can sip (as we like) throughout a morning or an afternoon. 👍👍 ]
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Yes, as Jerry kindly ☺️ noted: ". . . look after yourself as you are worth it".
. . . You are worth it, whatgoingon. 😊 ☺️
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Please take loving 🥰 good care of yourself, kind heart. 😌 🙏 🍀 🌺 🌞
I find this extremely odd in context. The context being this: outside of those countries which have adopted "low fat healthy eating", the prevalence of eating disorders is about ... um, zero. Where I live, it's literally unheard-of, and that's not because it's not talked about. It's because people don't obsess over their food or their weight.
My semi-professional opinion is that 90% of eating disorders are not eating disorders, but a physiological reaction to self-imposed malnutrition (dieting), combined with forceful advice from experts asserting that their nutritionally-deficient prescriptions are uber-healthy.
We get a lot of people popping up in the NHS thread who believe that they are "binge eaters", or "emotional eaters", or who have a terrible relationship with food ("why oh why can't I stick to my healthy-eating plan?"). There are three admins there and a few long-term members (including me) who try to convince them to eat proper meals, in direct opposition to the standard advice: no low-fat products or diet foods, no highly-processed junk, no calorie-counting. Eat proper food; eat until you are full.
We get quite a good success rate. About half of them accept our advice, and they almost instantly forget about having an "eating disorder", because they never actually had one in the first place. They just weren't eating properly, but trying to convince themselves - in line with expert advice - that eating too little, and eating too little fat, is "healthy", despite their horrific reaction to that eating pattern. As soon as they discard the nutritionism BS, their appetites normalize and they start losing weight.
I'm not blowing my own trumpet here (as mentioned, there are several others on HU who are committed to giving out the right advice). The point is this: eating is a very primal thing. It's controlled by "dumb" mechanistic systems deep in your brainstem, and by hormones. It is not mediated to any great extent by your higher brain functions. The idea of an acquired "eating disorder" is therefore rather implausible on the face of it. On the other hand, gaslighting people ("you're not really hungry, you just lack self-control") absolutely can and does cause psychological problems. Where that isn't the issue, the only other likely explanation is low-level brain damage and/or an endocrine problem - perhaps a congenital fault. This is a thing. But it is very, very rare.
Hi Tony, if you have never met anyone with an eating disorder you are not equipped to deny it's existence, whether it is delusional or lack of will power or obsessional thinking is irrelevant. Binge eating and over eating is a growing problem in many countries, obesity is unless it's a genetic disorder is due to over consumption of calories full stop.
If no one was obese no one would need or want an LCHF diet, so an LCHF diet is to reverse obesity so it's an extreme diet used to treat an extreme condition.
You know a lot about an LCHF diet and I respect that and your frustration shines through. I want to help people achieve their goals so I promote awareness days and events to give people the opportunity to express their experiences opinions openly as it is empowering knowing one is not alone with these issues.
I am not a medical expert we on HE have a link to the NHS and I for one think the NHS is amazing and we in the UK are very lucky even though the NHS is not perfect but no body is.
I think that your comments are very insensitive to those with a very real problem that results in obesity and an unhappy mindset and this is what we should all be doing supporting one another to live happy balanced lives.
I am happy to make controversial posts and you are happy to be contrary and this brings things out in the open and makes people think, I often smile when I get a contrary response and just think ' hey don't shoot the messenger' as I just spread awareness and you are not alone on LCHF wanting to support members all the HU forums are support forums and much friendlier than other social media and I like that a lot.
The HU forums are for us the users to discuss our health needs and literally unlock health issues to empower us the members and we have to find what works for us.
The fable of the elephant wandering into a town and 6 blind people greeting it and afterwards arguing over what an elephant is because one has felt its tusks another its underside another its trunk etc etc...to me epitomises how 'experts' focus on certain aspects rather than looking at things holistically.
Thank you for your comments even though I think you are deluding yourself on this, I respect your opinion and input.
I think you've completely misunderstood my post Jerry. In fact I think you've interpreted it as the exact opposite of my intent.
I'm not saying the experience of eating disorders - the signs and symptoms - does not exist. That would be stupid. The problem is clearly real. I'm saying that:
(a) The label "eating disorder" is (in most cases) incorrect or inaccurate. The implication of this term is that a neurosis is the proximate cause of the behaviour. This is highly unlikely, partly for the reasons I described, and partly because attempting to treat it as a neurosis doesn't work in practice.
(b) "Binge eating", "over-eating", or whatever you want to call it, is a body's normal and natural reaction to a severely deficient diet. The body is desperately attempting to correct the deficiency to avoid death.
(c) The psychological damage (guilt, self-blame, etc) that accompanies that response is caused by unqualified authority-figures (people with no academic background in psychology, medicine, or science) telling people to carry on eating a deficient diet, and/or accusing them of some personal failing when they can't stick to it.
There is no point spreading awareness of very real problems if we're not going to talk about the possible causes.
Incidentally, I'm not sure why you think the LCHF diet is extreme. Since when did eating minimally-processed whole foods, with lots of vegetables and zero processed junk, become "extreme"?
Hi Tony, I didn't mean to be over critical of you as I know that you and your friend MP make some very good points and help people with an LCHF diet a lot.
What you have too realise is I am an idealist and want to raise awareness to empower members to deal with their issues. I am admin on DI as you know when I am in the ultra low risk category for developing type 2 Diabetes and I am not Indian but this doesn't mater as I want to help reverse type 2 D and pre-diabetes and prevent obesity. So I can do admin in a very impartial and supportive manner on DI.
There is a new program starting in the UK about how many children are obese and the program is called 100Kg kids...Something has gone very wrong and if by talking about this openly on HU forums helps, then this is why 'we' do it.
So no offence was meant it was an honest appraisal of how interpreted your reply.
Feel free to criticize, Jerry, but do read what I've posted before jumping in. My post was intended to be supportive, not dismissive. The problems are real, and the powers-that-be are determined to make sure nobody discusses the cause - because the finger of blame points right back at them.
See I agree with some of your points, however, I think it's probable that eating disorders have existed for millennia, we just don't have a record of them. For example, in Roman times I remember learning that at feasts, guests would overeat, make themselves sick, then go back to eating again. In today's terms, that would be an eating disorder.
I would also disagree on the origins. You blame poor dietary guidance, but I think dietary guidance really boils down to marketing and profit margins. Marketing tells people what they should look like, wear, do and subsequently what they should eat achieve it.
The nutrient deficient foods that we binge eat are developed to be binge-able because there's profit to be made there. No dietary guidance says that eating an entire tube of pringles is part of a healthy diet, but marketing does.
Also don't forget the amount of money that can be made in the diet industry. If they can boil dietary guidance down to calories in vs. calories out, they can sell us the nutrient poor diet foods.
The companies that sell us our "diet foods" will no doubt be eyeing up your region as an un-tapped market. No weight issues? Just create them!
>> In Roman times I remember learning that at feasts, guests would overeat, make themselves sick, then go back to eating again. In today's terms, that would be an eating disorder.
Indeed. The British upper classes did something similar, too, a couple of hundred years ago. No doubt the idle rich have always done it to a certain extent. But calling it an "eating disorder" a classic example of over-diagnosis - although you're quite right, they would be labelled today in that manner.
In this case, the behaviour is intentional, and more a result of poor socialisation, or compliance with a dysfunctional culture. In contrast, people who binge-eat, or who starve themselves, have little or no control over their behaviour. People with anorexia, for example, are often fully aware that they're at risk of dying, but are powerless to do anything about it.
>> You blame poor dietary guidance, but I think dietary guidance really boils down to marketing and profit margins. Marketing tells people what they should look like, wear, do and subsequently what they should eat achieve it.
Well yes ... but you're not disagreeing You're simply pointing out (correctly) that the dietary guidelines are driven by vested interests rather than any concern for the nation's health. Zoe Harcombe did a piece a while back about the number of Big Ag representatives who sit on the committees drafting those guidelines. It's pretty shocking stuff.
>> The companies that sell us our "diet foods" will no doubt be eyeing up your region as an un-tapped market. No weight issues? Just create them!
Oh, they already have, and they've done it in the same way:
Step 1. Inveigle some representatives into the advisory committees.
Step 2. Get the guidelines rewritten so that unhealthy-but-profitable foods are misrepresented as healthy.
Step 3. Ka-ching!
Interestingly, this has created a polarization effect, where some of the countries in this region have completely capitulated, while others (typically with a more diverse food culture) reject it or fight back. No prizes for guessing who's fat, and who isn't.
Eating disorders appear to be on the rise just now, which is worrying. They seem to take on a lot of different guises: Orthorexia, anorexia, bulimia, but one thing someone highlighted to me is that we need to avoid judgement of what eating disorders look like.
I heard a sad story last week from a woman who visited her doctor years ago, because her eating disorder was affecting her too much. She said her doctor looked her up and down, and said "you don't look like someone with an eating disorder", and that was that. She felt she couldn't come forward any more. I hope awareness weeks like this will help educate people on what eating disorders really look like.
Thanks Cooper, I agree that raising awareness is in everyones best interests as the lady you met is a testament of.
Really its what we have all said in one way or another and that is we are a consumer society who have been encouraged to consume and are now paying the price.
I agree definitely that the “healthy eating” advice we were given in the 1980s onwards ( cut out fat, don’t worry about sugar etc) is responsible for a lot of people struggling to maintain a good weight, prone to overeating and prone to over-restricting calories then binging on junk food when they can’t stand the restrictions any longer. These people will definitely benefit from getting away from the low fat diet foods and find it much easier to control their weight and appetite by eating nutritious whole foods including whole fats, as Toad describes from his experiences in the Weightloss forum.
However I don’t consider that group of people to have a true eating disorder, its a bad cycle of poor nutrition caused by bad advice where people are trying to be healthy but very misinformed and can be relatively easily rectified by much better nutrition.
A true eating disorder is much more a mental health problem, and food itself is not necessarily the main issue. I don’t have any professional experience of this but I do have personal experience of college friends and work colleagues. I was also a teenage girl once upon a time and can remember the pressure to have a perfect body, at BMI 22.5 throughout my teens I was fit and a healthy weight but always thought I looked fat because I had a short sturdy build. Girls (and boys) under this sort of pressure don’t care about health, fats, carbs or whatever, only about looking thin enough. Sometimes the eating disorder can be about someone who feels like food is the only thing in their life they can control. These are only a couple of examples it’s a lot more complex than that and does require very specialist intervention. Huge binges/Purging and starving to the point of emaciation are not the result of bad dietary advice it’s a whole different issue.
What's really depressing is when you look into the history of calorie allowance and why they were set where they are.
Interesting facts: recommended calories per day have no basis in science whatsoever. They basically asked a group of women to keep a food diary for 2 weeks, added up how many calories they consumed (approx. 2400), then decided to set the GDA a little below that number to help keep our weight in check. GDA for calories varies vastly between countries as well. It's not a great sign that our "max" is already trying to restrict calories, before people even embark on a calorie restricted diet.
That explains why I can maintain weight on slightly higher calories than you’d expect given my short height and current weight. It seems very wrong that this was set up hoping to make women “keep slim”. Also cannot be one size fits all, there are women over a foot taller than me who would require a lot more food!
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You're simply pointing out (correctly) that the dietary guidelines are driven by vested interests rather than any concern for the nation's health. Zoe Harcombe did a piece a while back about the number of Big Ag representatives who sit on the committees drafting those guidelines. It's pretty shocking stuff.
How eating 30 different vegetables per week improves gut health. 🥕🍆🥑🌽
Bing eating & emotional eating 
