What is an eating disorder? This is a series of behavioral syndromes associated with eating disorders.
There are three large groups of causes that influence the formation of eating disorders:
✔family reasons (mainly these are the features of upbringing in childhood and the associated ways of responding to external circumstances). It's no secret that a lot is laid down from childhood, including eating habits.
✔ social environment (friends, classmates, media).
✔ type of nervous system, features of the gastrointestinal tract, endocrine system.
According to psychologists, the nature of eating behavior is formed up to three years. Therefore, it is very important to monitor children's nutrition, control their weight and avoid mistakes leading to an eating disorder.
But if many mistakes have already been made and under the influence of the above reasons, wrong eating habits leading to excess weight, it is worth getting to know the enemy by sight in order to know how to deal with fight him.
There are several main types of eating behavior:
- external,
- restrictive,
- emotiogenic.
✅External eating behavior is characteristic of people who are influenced by external stimuli to eat.
Such as:
- set table, food advertising, food for the company,
- overeating at the festive table, when there are many temptations, the desire to eat in reserve,
- fear of not having time to eat something tasty (this is a common problem for large families and families without income).
✅Restrictive eating behavior is characteristic of many people with an overweight and manifests itself in excessive food self-restraint.
Often this type of eating behavior is formed in people who have undergone a medical diet, rigid restrictions for weight loss, as well as against the background of low self-esteem and lack of love for yourself and your the body.
Often, with such eating behavior, dietary depression occurs, when restrictive periods are replaced by periods of overeating.
✅Emotiogenic eating behavior is typical for people exposed to chronic stress and emotional hunger.
In this case, food becomes a means of escape from boredom, anxiety, and bad mood. A person does not eat because he is hungry, but because he is bored and lonely, he is annoyed with something, has failed. And food intake in this case serves as a kind of cure for emotional discomfort.
Here you can also highlight:
- compulsive overeating due to mood swings, after negative events. Binge eating disorder is temporary. A person overeats, eats faster than usual, losing control of himself. Typically, this front lasts no more than two hours.
- refusal of food against the background of events that strongly affect human emotions.
- also there is a syndrome of night food, when in the morning there is a refusal to eat, and in the evening hunger wakes up and the person passes on. Moreover, the stronger the emotional discomfort during the day, the more pronounced the evening overeating. After such overeating, activity falls, drowsiness comes and the person falls asleep calmly.
The basic rule of thumb for dealing with an eating disorder is to make a gradual lifestyle change:
- changing food stereotypes,
- reducing the influence of food motivation,
- interruption of the connection between emotional discomfort from eating,
- a gradual decrease in the diet of high-calorie foods.
Do you think overweight people definitely have eating disorders?
Sources:
article by T.G. Voznesenskaya (Department of Nervous Diseases, M.A. Sechenov) "Eating disorders in obesity and their correction."
article "Eating Psychology: Habits" by Wellness Consulting Academy