What is the danger of eating disorders? What non-obvious actions can lead to the RPP? And what to do to go into remission?
Normal Eating Behaviour: A Look in 2021
In psychology today, there are no clear criteria of the norm. It is challenging to differentiate symptomatic deviation from clinical manifestations. Only certain PPPs are studied: anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating, and there is much more. In the scientific literature are accepted as synonyms of the concept between which there is a difference.
Therefore, it is worth talking about adaptive eating behavior and non-adaptive behavior. The bottom line is that the same manifestations, such as calorie counting and weighing, will be normal for one person and de-appropriate.
There is no everyday norm for everyone. There is a food behavior that interferes with you and one that helps you.
Non-adaptive Eating Behavior
Below you will find phrases that reflect non-adaptive eating behavior. Read them and think about how you could guess it.
- “No, I won’t have dinner. I haven’t eaten today, but I’m not hungry at all.”
- “My breakfast should be no more than 300 kcal.”
- “Oh, no, no, I’ve eaten already. Where is? Well… I ate.”
- “I don’t eat fruit.”
- Wash dishes, write a diet plan for a month, calculate calories, rearrange dishes in a different order, write a list of products.
Take a look at the first phrase: the person did not eat at all. This is contrary to the physiological needs of the body. Let’s move on to the second phrase: it does not consider what happens to the person (one day, we want to eat a little more, and in the other, we quench hunger faster). Third sentence: you may feel that a person is hiding something or is afraid to share a meal with others. The phrase about fruit is also a beacon: the product is demonized, although there is nothing wrong with it. The example of utensils speaks of a specific obligatory sequence, ritualization, hyper control.
Violations or disorders?
The disorder does not appear overnight. There is adaptive eating behavior. Then there are episodic moments of non-adaptive, then disorders occur systematically, and only after that can we talk about RPP.
A person’s predisposition to RPP is more than 50% dependent on genetics.
Types of eating disorders
- Emotional eating behavior – when a person “seizes stress” (sadness or anger).
- External eating behavior – increased reaction not to internal but to external stimuli to eat. A man wants to eat when he sees food. When he is offered a snack, he can not refuse. It’s hard for him to stop when he eats.
- Restrictive eating behavior – constant restrictions or rules about nutrition. Count calories or not eat after six.
Predisposing factors
If we talk about disorders, they can contribute to various factors: biological, emotional, cognitive.
1. Biological
Reaction to food can be related to the brain: self-regulation, motivation, planning. For example, in the morning, a person goes to the office, sees a bakery on the other side of the street. He changes the route, buys a couple of eclairs, and eats them.
2. Emotional
These are the emotional characteristics of a person, the way he reacts to certain situations.
3. Cognitive
The way a person thinks. Some people focus heavily on the details. For example, if the focus on food is only on it, work, friends, hobbies, everything is unnecessary. And it isn’t easy to get out of this state.
What is the dangerous RPP?
Eating disorders are included in ICD-11 and DSM-V – classifiers of mental disorders. What are they dangerous? Because of CPR, there are changes in the brain. We can talk about the spiral of the disease: eating behavior → changes in the brain → the consolidation of eating behavior.
Here’s an example: a girl has been trying to lose weight for several years. She keeps a diet of 800 kcal a couple of times a week breaks down on chocolate, olives with bread, sausage, cookies. Her brain is chronically under-nutrient. And breakdowns are high-calorie, sweet, and fatty food. The brain is damaged and reduced in size because of this diet. Because of this, every year, it will be more challenging to form new neural connections and change behavior.
You can also read: Plate with healthy habits: 3 healthy recipes
How to bring eating behavior back to normal
There is no perfect recipe for everyone. But here’s what’s important: the choice and responsibility to make decisions about your future lie with the individual. At the same time, he does not have to deal alone. Help is available as soon as it is ready.
What to do?
- If a person is ready to take help, find a psychotherapist with a specialization of RPP. Sometimes it takes a few specialists.
- A competent specialist will start work with the restoration of power.
- Independently study reliable sources of information (for example, take tests, look into the guide about the alignment of power NICE)
