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"Eating Disorders" So if eating food Your ever-dutiful LiveReal Editors, boldly digging through the mountains of information to get to the bottom of it all . . . What do you think? So talk about it: (Note: This forum is not designed to replace professional services. The LiveReal Editor's are not acting as doctors or medical professionals. We recommended for individuals to view the information below, as with all other information, with both an open mind and a clear skepticism, accepting this only if it makes common sense). A Popular Problem Eight million individuals struggle with eating disorders in America. For a good basic overview
of "eating disorders," "An eating disorder may begin
as innocently At the site mentioned above, Dr. Drew describes "The Onset of an Eating Disorder," "Who is Likely to Get an Eating Disorder," and "Types of Eating Disorders" (and finally, the hard part - what to do about it) - "How To Get Help" - where it is recommended to go get help from "professionals in the medical and mental health fields." If help from a professional is needed, by all means, go - LiveReal does not claim to take the place of real, trustworthy professionals. At the same time, sometimes ordinary conventional approaches simply do not work. So if you want to look into matters a little deeper . . .
What's Really Happening? Eating food - it seems like nothing should be so simple, so natural; when you're hungry, eat. When you're not hungry, don't eat . . . right? It's as simple as that . . . right? Of course not - all too often it's just not that simple at all. Take, for example, anorexia - self-induced starvation. Or bulemia, where someone gets into the habit of eating huge amounts of food, and then throwing up or taking a laxative to "undo" the binge . . . What is really going on? (compensation (kom' pen sat shun shan) n. The act of filling a spiritual emptiness with the nearest physical equivalent.) Food as Pressure What causes eating disorders? Some folks blame "eating disorders" on ever-younger girls feeling compelled to compete with unattainably high standards of female beauty, growing up in a society preoccupied with unnatural thinness as a sign of female beauty. Others say that perhaps this message is simply the result of successful marketing, or corporations who earn money through convincing consumers to buy their food, while others successfully sell the idea that thinness equals attractiveness, love, and success . . . (which can help fuel the type of experience described in How I Spent My Life Dieting.) Still others emphasize one's family situation, a less-than-ideal emotional environment paired with a less-than-ideal approach to food, diet, eating, and exercise. Siblings can often develop problems with food together, leading one to conclude that the "eating problem" itself is actually just one piece of a much larger puzzle . . . It's Not Just "Food" Eating food is not an isolated event, and often it is clothed in all kinds of symbolic and emotional meaning. When eating becomes a problem, we tend to focus narrowly on the food aspect alone. But in fact, food is connected to everything else that's going on in our lives. All the worries, frustrations, pressures, everything happening with friends, family, those you love (and those you really don't love) - comes into play when we're eating. And these things can have a big effect on our eating habits. In other words, food (or the lack of it) can be seen as not simply a way to feed the body, but as a ticket to beauty, wealth, popularity, love, purity, control, and spirituality. Actually, problems with food are sometimes not "the" real problem at all. Instead, they are actually a solution to another proble - they are a symptom of another underlying issue, such as depression, anxiety (especially surrounding food and excercise), a general lack of love, fear (especially of gaining weight or feeling heavy), emptiness or meaninglessness (and using food as a way to keep that away), problems with relationships, confidence (or "self-esteem"), or others. "For 25 years, Food as Symbolic What is food, anyway? This might seem like a strange question, but not when you become aware of how people view and understand food in so many different ways. For some, it is a simple way to avoid hunger. For others, it is fuel, simply a way to give energy to their body. For others, it is a source of pleasure and enjoyment. And for others, food seems to be a kind of impurity, a corrupting influence, a kind of "poison" which has harmful effects on a person. Often, a key aspect of overcoming an eating disorder lies in an individual rethinking what they define food to be - often seeing that it is not necessarily something that is corrupting or harmful, but rather, as something that simply is what it is. - which sounds simplistic, but is actually part of a much larger issue of understanding different aspects of reality, which often comes from practicing one's ability to see things accurately, which means often uncovering . . . The Hidden Thinking Behind Eating What is most important about food is how it is viewed by the person eating it, how it is interpreted, in a way, what food means. Most psychologists point to certain habits of thinking and feeling that need to be changed. These habits are often formed by assumptions which are untested and often downright false, but when unnoticed and unchallenged by making these conscious, become habits which serve as the foundation for eating styles. For example: "(feeling) I feel really unhappy/uncomfortable." This is a version of "if my body will change, then I will change, too." Or, "The way I can feel better about myself and my life is
through changing my body" Take, for example, the example of the phrase "If you get thin enough, then you will be loved." This kind of suggestion, when it is believed, can naturally make a person feel repulsed by food - because in this perspective, and individual can view and understands food to be the enemy - as something that causes them to feel unhappy or unloved. So, some good questions to ask: What does it mean for you to eat? These questions can uncover the meaning behind our eating. Eating can be a symbolic act, and understanding this can free us of the need to dramatize it. For example: a meaning attached to food could be "if I eat, then that means I'm giving in" - and I'm going to be (in the future) fat and unhappy, like my family/friends. Or "if I don't eat, that means I'm strong, I'm disciplined," I can't be controlled, I don't give in, I am in control of my life . . . The trick is, all of these are interpretations. Food has absolutely no actual "meaning" in this way outside of the meaning we give it. You can be strong, disciplined, in control of your life - with or without food; and you can have a bright future, healthy, lean, and strong - and the role that food plays can be completely irrelevent. What this means is stripping the meaning away from food that we unconsciously attach to it. So if we're eating to rebel against our parents or lifestyle, or to prove that we're good or strong, or to get back at someone else, or to feel comfortable or loved - you don't need to do it through food. All of those feelings and dreams are possible and can happen for real - and food can have absolutely nothing to do with it. Food as a Drug / Emotional Management Tool Depending on how you eat, or more importantly, why you eat - eating can either make you more conscious, or less conscious. In other words, we can use food just like a drug.or (unknowingly or unconsciously) coming to view food as "IT," which eventually creates inner conflict and turns into a love-hate relationship with food. (So, one suggestion we have is to check out The Addiction Arena, except instead of reading the word "drug" or "alcohol," substitute the word "food.") An interesting effect food can have is how it can make you feel - or not feel. We all want to feel pleasure, and not feel pain - and often, eating helps us do just that . . . for a while. We all experience painful feelings - feeling intensely overwhelmed, upset, angry, confused, anxious, depressed, empty, lonely, stressed out . . . and eating food can dull unpleasant feelings. When you're feeling full, you often can't feel other things, like anxiety or emptiness, at least not as much. It's almost natural, then, that we can use food as a way to feel good - to use food as a kind of emotional management tool. In this situation, eating food becomes a way to handle emotions - when you're feeling upset, overwhelmed or anxious, eating is one thing that you can do that consistently makes you feel better. At least, it works for a while. "The gorging and purging
of bulimia Food as "Heaven" Thought Experiment. If you could design the whole universe yourself, how would you make it? One answer, for some individuals, would be this: mountains and mountains of candies, cakes, pies, chocolates, ice creams, cookies - and to be able to just eat and eat and eat, as much as they wanted . . . and never gain an ounce of weight doing it. This, at least for some people, would be one version of "heaven." But of course, here on earth, things just don't work like that. You eat, and you gain weight; you stay away from food sometimes, but you crave it; you eat sometimes anyway, but worry about it and feel guilty about it . . . at least in this case, we're definitely not in heaven yet. The Quest for Perfection Eating disorders can sometimes revolve around a kind of search for perfection. Some people - more often than not, females - are wanting to be perfect. There's definitely nothing wrong with the search for perfection, that is definitely a good thing. And the discipline, efforts, the sacrifices that are made in this quest for perfection - those are acts that few people are capable of. In other words, this is one version of the search for "IT" - a quest for perfection, and this version takes the form of trying to perfect one's physical body. A person believes that if they could just get their body to the perfect weight, then they would be perfect, they would be loved by others - that would be "IT." The problem is an incomplete strategy: perfection can't be reached, and love can't be found by starving one's body. Many, many people have starved themselves, have weighed very little, have eaten no food . . . but they haven't reached perfection or found love that way. Further, a person can focus on perfecting their body, but all the while completely ignore their emotions, their feelings, their thoughts and souls. They focus only on improving one small part of themselves - the body - and never do any kind of work or exercises to improve other, even more important parts of themselves, such as their minds and hearts, their souls, or their relationships. Food as a Search for "IT" Yet another angle on the matter is to say that the vast majority of us are, in a way, searching for "salvation" - or in other words, searching for happiness, peace, acceptance, love, God, "IT", or whatever we want to call it. In other words, food can become the means for the search for happiness (or the means to "IT"); happiness is on the other side of either eating or not eating. (The feeling can be that once you get thin enough, some time in the future, you will have "IT", you will be happy.) And individuals with eating disorders are searching for salvation through the physical body. Individuals of every age have tried to find "salvation" in this way. The error lies in being completely identified with the body. One can change one's body into dozens of different shapes and sizes, but the mind, or the heart, does not change. Further, if one is able to search for salvation (or search for "IT") in the right places, then even if a person's body becomes very large, they can still be happy, peaceful, loved and loving. Take, for example, Buddha. Often he is depicted as a big man. Yet, for millions around the world, he is the very definition of happiness. The Root of the Problem: A Spiritual Struggle A perspective rarely encountered is eating disorders as a spiritual condition. In other words, eating disorders can be viewed as the fundamental human problem wearing different clothes: the spirit-verses-matter debate. This is something rarely mentioned: dieting as the epic, timeless struggle of spirit verses matter: I (spirit) and trying (struggling) to overcome (resist) the temptations of my appetite/body (matter) so that I can find love/happiness (salvation/nirvana). The evidence for this approach lies in reading between the lines in what those with eating disorders say about themselves and their experiences. They aren't trying to starve themselves; they are trying in their own ways - probably the only ways they know how - to become pure, angelic, loved, free - "spiritual". In other words, unencumbered by matter - fat, dirt, heaviness, burdens and a lack of freedom. In other words, those individuals with eating disorders are acting on felt spiritual drives, that get warped, misconstrued, and diverted into unhealthy outlets. (You can read more about the spirit-verses-matter dilemma - and it's resolution - here . . .) - and from another angle, the matter is spiritual in another way. The problem is that the desire to eat is experienced as a problem. And why is the desire the eat experienced as a problem? Because the root of the desire to eat is actually to fill an emptiness - an "emptiness" that is not mere hunger. It is a spiritual emptiness, a lack felt in the soul. Food acts as a compensation, trying to satisfy a spiritual hunger with the nearest physical equivalent. "All that we do can be seen as symptomatic of
this disease of craving Oneness. Falling in Love With All the Wrong Things Eating disorders can be viewed as a strategy of "looking for love in all the wrong places." In other words, those with eating disorders, in a way, fall in love with an imagined ideal image of themselves - often an image that is humanly impossible to acheive - and then torture themselves trying to achieve it. They are a form of modern-day ascetics, finding a certain type of clean and hard pleasure in disciplining the body. In another way, from a religious perspective, one could view this as not following the First Commandment - that one should "Love God" before all other things. In this case, an individual can love food, or the absence of it, or an imagined ideal image of themselves as impossibly thin - more than "God." Of course, this condition is not "unforgivable," it is simply a form of missing the mark, or trying to solve the problem of life in a way that doesn't work.
"The Solution"? We do believe that eating problems can be solved. Food can become an effortless, natural, positive and enhancing part of one's life. While we aren't selling any kind of "quick fix," and some solutions require time, work, and effort in a certain inner struggle - a kind of inner "battle" that can be fought, and won. So, how? A few suggestions:
And how can this happen? Many approach this work through support groups and therapy ( Does Therapy Work?). We also suggest the LiveReal Psychology Arena Champion Product. (a description of this can also be found here). And, in addition to the ones mentioned above, the other Products in the Psychology Arena as well. And in addition to these - since life is stressful, it can also be worthwhile to learn how to deal with stress; And since relationships are often the source of a great deal of this stress, it might help to understand more about relationships (also through the Relationship Arena Products) - and since a lot of this involves just general suffering, it might help to understand more about why we suffer. - and of course, we always have to wonder - why are we here? Because we just might be here in order to overcome challenges like these . . . What do you think? Talk about it.
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