Boundaries: Say No Without Guilt, Have Better Relationships, Boost Your Self-Esteem, Stop People-Pleasing. Jennie Miller

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       When one biscuit isn’t enough – an end to binge eating

      Is this you? Notice what you feel in acknowledging this.

      Scientists are particularly interested in the way our brains seem to support comfort- and binge eating instead of preventing it. According to a team led by Kay Tye, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, in research published in the journal Cell in January 2015, there are specific neural pathways which transmit feelings of reward when we overeat sugar, developed perhaps to encourage consumption in times of famine when food became transiently available.

      Tye says: ‘We have not yet adapted to a world where there is an overabundance of sugar, so these circuits that drive us to stuff ourselves with sweets are now serving to create a new health problem.’ Does that mean overeating is inevitable? Not at all. The brain’s natural plasticity – its ability to re-draw its neural pathways – means we can embed new messages of reward and support through behavioural change.

      These old pathways were important to our ancestors, but in our modern times of consistently plentiful food (indeed over-supply), we need to analyse our motivations for eating too much. Ask yourself what is the trigger for the first biscuit? Perhaps you are having coffee with a friend and enjoying some biscuits; there is nothing wrong with that. What we are talking about here is the ‘closet-eater’ – the one who consumes a packet of biscuits or a family-sized bar of chocolate at a time. If this is you, are you aware of any feeling of secrecy or hoarding around food, whether you live alone or not? How else does it make you feel? Comforted, happy, full, sad, sick, guilty, or full of self-loathing? The fact that you may feel any of these emotions regardless of whether you live in company or alone is a good indicator of why this is a self-boundary that needs work.

      If you want to stop binge eating, you need to identify the triggers that inspire this behaviour. It may be certain tasks that take you to the biscuit tin, like dealing with paperwork or relationships. If you think back over the past week, look at a time when you know you have done this and consider what had happened just before. You might be at the biscuits not because you feel hungry, but because you had a row with someone close. So, what might be a different response to the row?

      It could be that rather than opening the biscuit tin, you open your heart and compose a ‘no-send’ letter expressing how you are feeling. ‘No-send’ is the important part. Once you have written that letter – ideally by hand – stand up, take some breaths, get a drink of water, and re-read it. What action could you take now? Do you need to talk to this person? Do you need to confide in someone else?

      Is it a repeating pattern of feelings that are not being expressed out loud that is sending you to the biscuit jar? Beware of swallowing difficult feelings with food. You can’t escape from those feelings. When the biscuits have gone, the problem will remain and you will now have increased the discomfort. Ask yourself how often you overeat through sheer happiness? You may have a celebratory glass of fizz or a slice of cake, but happiness rarely seems to drive the need for regular overconsumption.

      Being aware of the trigger can help establish that self-boundary (and we look at how to deal with difficult relationships and boundaries with others in a later step).

       Mixed messaging

      Some people reading the lists at the start of the food section will have agreed with statements from both lists. The dialogue across your internal debating table might look like this:

      ‘Food costs a lot of money, you need to eat what you’re given.’ (A Parental voice.)

      ‘Yes, I’ll eat everything on my plate.’ (A Child-like response.)

      You need to think about all the messages equally in order to get to an Adult place. So, you could reframe those statements this way:

      ‘The food costs a lot of money but I know what I can afford and I stick to that budget.’

      ‘I use that food to prepare a portion size that is appropriate to my needs.’

      These statements come from a healthy Adult place where your eating habits are decided by sensible here-and-now arguments, not historic feelings or orders.

       Aspirational eating

      Why does food have to be good or bad? Proponents of the new healthy eating – often displayed on an Instagram post and hash-tagged #cleaneating, #purefood and #fitfood – seem to be defending a non-processed food diet. At a time of obesity (where manufactured food is sometimes associated with high salt and sugar content) what’s unreasonable about that? Shouldn’t we all try to eat more like our ancestors did – wouldn’t that end the obesity crisis?

      Many dieticians would agree that food with fewer additives can only be better for you. However, the trend towards eating in an aspirational way seems to be more complex and we have a different goal than simply improving nutrition.

      There is even a named condition – orthorexia nervosa – to indicate an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy food. Orthorexia was defined in 1997 by Dr Steven Bratman, who intended the name to be a parallel with anorexia nervosa. He says: ‘I originally invented the word as a kind of “tease therapy” [a way of using gentle humour to highlight a concern] for my overly diet-obsessed patients. Over time, however, I came to understand that the term identifies a genuine eating disorder.’

      Although orthorexia is not an officially medically recognised term, Dr Bratman, a general practitioner based in San Francisco, believes it covers those for whom eating healthily has become ‘an extreme, obsessive, psychologically limiting and sometimes physically dangerous disorder, related to but quite distinct from anorexia’.

      ‘Often, orthorexia seems to have elements of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), as does anorexia. Some people with orthorexia may in fact additionally have anorexia, either overtly or covertly (using pure food as a socially acceptable way of reducing weight). But orthorexia is usually not very much like typical OCD or typical anorexia. It has an aspirational, idealistic, spiritual component which allows it to become deeply rooted in a person’s identity. It is most often only a psychological problem in which food concerns become so dominant that other dimensions of life suffer neglect.’

      Aspirational eating aficionados have more in common with followers of other restrictive diets – whether that limit is sugar, animal products, calories, wheat, or whatever. The pleasure seems to lie in the denial not in the physical effect – and is clearly competitive. Witness the hundreds of thousands of posts on Instagram by fans. But medical experts are warning of the long-term health risks of such restricted diets. A recent study, published in Eating and Weight Disorders in June 2017 on the connection between social media use and an obsession with eating healthily, concluded that high levels of orthorexia could be found in populations who take an active interest in their health and body and often occurs with anorexia nervosa.

      Its results suggest that the healthy eating community on Instagram in particular shares a high level of orthorexia symptoms, with greater Instagram use being linked to increased symptoms. The team led by Dr Carmen Lefevre, a research associate at University College London (UCL), said their results may also have clinical implications for eating disorder development and recovery.

      So, ask yourself – do you get more pleasure from posting a photograph of beautifully presented food than you do from eating it? Would you be as interested in eating this way if you didn’t get rewarding affirmations from strangers on social media backing your food choices?

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