Eating disorders or any form of disordered eating are multidimensional problems. That means that if you are looking for that one perfect cause that will explain all your behaviors around food, you will probably be dissapointed. However, there are factors that can increase your chances of having an eating disorder and behaviors or thought patterns that are met more often in people with disordered eating.
There are social factors that seem to contribute to the appearance of eating disorders. By social factors, we mean the beauty standards and the pressure that is applied to us to fit into those standards. These standards usually ask for a thin (but not too thin) and fit (but not too fit) body. Have you ever heard of the diet culture and how it affects our body image, our self-esteem and our mental and physical health?
And speaking of diets, let’s talk about how they could contribute to an eating disorder. When you get into a diet, with the intention of fitting into the societal norms or in your effort to stay healthy you are actually starting a never ending cycle of dieting and binging. Diets change our hormones, by increasing our appetite, and suppressing our saturation. These changes in combination with the deprivation of probably our favorite foods, creates the need to eat big quantities of the “forbidden” foods next time we encounter them. As a result of this big consumption, we feel guilt and/or shame and in our need to avoid those feelings, we try once more to control our diet. It sounds paradoxical, but in order to be in control you might have to let go of the control.
Other factors related to eating disorders are traumatic events during the childhood years, such as bullying, lose of a significant person etc. The events by themselves might not be enough, but if they have not been processed adequately the emotions might have been suppressed and every time they are triggered by external or internal events the person might soothe them with food. Soothing oneself by eating is very common, but can become a problem in someone’s life if this is the only way of dealing with painful emotions. We cannot change the past, but we can change how we feel about it and how we react to triggers that remind us of the past.
The family and their attitude around food and body could also be related to the presence of an eating problem. When it comes to family and our caretakers their own attitudes around food could become an example of how we relate with food. Do you remember how often they might have been on a diet or avoided certain types of food? Can you think of ways that their relationship might have affected yours? In addition mixed messages around food and how you should it or what is accepted as an eating behavior could create a sense of confusion. Lastly, comments about your body or the body of other people directly affect our self esteem, our body image and the way we perceive ourselves.
Lastly, some personality characteristics could increase the chances of having a disturbed eating behavior. Such characteristics are the black and white way of thinking, or in other words the lack of flexibility. Every day our nutritional needs might be different and if we are not ready to accept that and adjust to those needs, then this all or nothing way of thinking can lead us to a let’s eat everything path, the one day that your body asks for something more that is outside of your meal plan. One more commonly met characteristic, is the need for having control, but as we said before, the more control we try to apply the more intense the sense of losing control will be. Do these sound familiar? Do you encounter them around food and/or other aspects of your life?
