In mid-June I’m speaking at a conference on eating disorders hosted by FINDINGbalance, a non-profit with a unique focus on disordered eating. Theirs is the first national organization dedicated to creating awareness and understanding of EDNOS (Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified), like chronic dieting, emotional eating, and organic food obsessions generally viewed as normal in today’s society.
As I write in Hope, Help & Healing for Eating Disorders:
“It doesn’t take being diagnosed with an eating disorder to realize something is wrong with the way you eat or the way you feel about food. You may not starve yourself continually. You may never have vomited up your dinner on cue. The thought of eating five thousand calories in a single sitting may never have occurred to you. But you may still view food as either a friend or an enemy. You may not eat for nutrition, but for a host of other reasons, certain ones you barely recognize.
“Some people suffer from a diagnosed eating disorder and some suffer from a debilitating pattern of disordered eating. The disordered eating may never end up in a diagnostic and statistical manual, but that really isn’t relevant to you. What is relevant is pain. When food ceases to be nutrition and fuel for the body and warps into something else, whether eating disorder or disordered eating, you suffer.”
In my work at The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, we specialize in anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating. However, these past 25 years I’ve identified a number of other disordered eating behaviors that generally fall into one of the following eight categories:
1. Engaging in Battle. Every meal is an internal fight over what you think you should eat versus what you want to eat.
2. The Defense of Dieting. As long as you’re always on a diet, it’s okay to “cheat” and eat things you don’t think you should.
3. Balancing the Scales. You eat healthy foods you don’t really like to make up for eating unhealthy foods you love.
4. The Casual Restricter. After eating unhealthy foods you don’t believe you should, you restrict to make up for the fall.
5. Safety First. Afraid of trying anything new or proven to cause harm in the past, you stick to a list of “safe” foods that hold no surprises.
6. The Obsessive Organic. You will not eat any food for which every ingredient has not been certified organic, and you may expect everyone else to do the same, as “right” eating means “right” living.
7. The Ritual Eater. To maintain a sense of control over food, you have set times, places, methods and circumstances under which you eat.
8. Feast or Famine. You eat how and what you want most of the time, but adopt healthier eating habits to get your body in shape for special occasions.
For more information on disordered eating, visit FINDINGbalance where you also can learn more about the conference – Hungry for Hope: A Family Affair, June 15-18, 2011.