The Eating Disorder Most of Us Have - Health - Nutrition

For many 20-something women today it's an all-too-familiar feeling. 'I hated myself,' says Shirley, a 27-year-old salon manager, cringing as she recalls the previous weekend. 'I'd had friends around for drinks, and stuck to spritzers and crudites and the sushi, no problem. But clearing up, I couldn't help myself.'

She polished off a large spring roll and tipped the last of the broken cheese curls from the bowl straight into her mouth. Then she caught her reflection in a mirror. 'I had these puffed-out cheeks and an orange-ringed mouth. I felt so guilty.'

Silly, maybe, or funny. But guilty? What is it about many modern women that they feel they can't indulge in a little fried or artificially flavored fare occasionally without flagellating themselves? Or, in Shirley's case, going on a five-kilometre jog the next morning. 'It was that or a liquid day,' she says.

Guilt comes from the belief that you have violated a moral standard. It produces a lingering and disturbing feeling driven by our conscience, which Freud saw as the result of a struggle between the ego and the superego imprinted by our parents' admonitions. And although guilt is thought to have evolved to increase our chances of survival by discouraging harmful behavior, when it's misplaced or exaggerated by cultural expectations it can become harmful itself, filling us with anxiety and depression. Guilt disables us from putting into practice some of the choices we need to make for our physical and mental health.

We live in an age where social norms of acceptable women's body size and shape emphasize the slender and sculpted. And while this can be healthy when it grows out of balanced eating and moderate regular exercise - and so is arguably evolutionarily advantageous - it can slip overboard when pursued to the unhealthy extremes dictated by today's zero-sized, celebrity-driven fashion fads.

For a woman with an average height of 1,70m, the maximum healthy weight would be 72kg. Yet most women would not be content with that weight - they strive to have a thinner physique, which is difficult or impossible to obtain through being relaxed around food.

Feeding Guilt

There's no doubt that being overweight is a legitimate concern, given the serious health problems it feeds (high blood pressure, heart disease, type-2 diabetes and certain cancers). And it's reached scary proportions. But what should be a healthy awareness of this seems to have turned into a collective skewed view that automatically weighs every food in terms of its potential to make us fat, and sets us up for guilt. It's become almost normal for women to feel guilty about food.

The fact that it's mostly women who are affected is due largely to the media and western culture. Research has shown that non-western women who are content with their physique adopt the attitudes around food and thinness of the western culture after four years of immigration to western countries. Other studies have shown that children as young as five have absorbed socio-cultural values regarding thinness. Mothers and older sisters also have a role. When you see them feeling guilty about certain foods you learn from them. And they can promote guilt directly with constant well-meaning remarks such as, 'Why don't you have some fruit instead of that piece of cake?' They should simply have lots of fruit and other healthy options on hand in the home to encourage a taste for them.

When you feel guilty about consuming food for fear of gaining weight, you often engage in compensatory behaviors such as over-exercising, vomiting, fasting or using laxatives. These behaviors can be the start of eating disorders and have serious health implications. They can also put a huge strain on relationships.

Most men don't seem to have the same pressures or vulnerabilities. But nearly all women have issues around food, and many wrestle with guilt associated with eating what they label 'bad' or 'unhealthy' foods - foods they think will make them fat.

This guilt stems from women's tendency to suppress emotions such as anger because they are raised to see these as 'not nice'. Something or someone annoys or upsets them, and rather than be assertive or confrontational, they smile. But they have a bad day, so they choose what they see as a bad food, like chocolate. Then they feel guilty about being out of control. They wrongly blame the food instead of their inability to express emotion healthily. Women's emotional eating stems from their traditional role centered on food in the family. They're valued for being responsible for nurturing children, partners and others, and their self-perception is caught up in that, and in putting the needs of others first.

The seeds of food guilt are usually planted young, when mothers teach or subtly signal that some foods are good and others bad, or use certain foods to reward or punish. The guilt tends to surface in your teens, or when a self-punitive syndrome sets in. Self-punishment is a common way for women to deal with emotional problems, turning in on themselves instead of expressing them outwardly, as men more readily do.A guilty relationship with food and eating is often tied in with sexual abuse. Both are about putting something into yourself, and eating can be symbolic of violation of your body. Nearly everyone who has been sexually abused has some form of disordered eating. Anorexics feel guilty eating anything at all. It's linked to the idea that they need to be pure. Some of the earliest cases of the disorder were among nuns, who associated not eating with being closer to God. It was a cleansing process. For bulimics there is 'huge guilt' associated with bingeing, so they purg e, and there is still more guilt around that.

For many women, food guilt surfaces when they face a transition or a loss such as a death, a break-up, a job loss or relocation. We turn to food because it's symbolic of our first nurturing relationship in life, reminding us of the goodness provided by a mother or significant caregiver, which helps to calm us in times of need or stress. Emotional eating may also have physical causes linked to hormonal and neurotransmitter imbalances that bring insatiable cravings.

But one of the biggest recent causes of food guilt is dieting. By trying to refrain from certain foods you feel guilty when you can't stick to a rigid plan. Most diets set you up for failure, and therefore guilt, by forbidding certain foods and prescribing others that may be less palatable or nutritionally deficient.

Finding Solutions

The solution to food guilt is to find a balanced approach to food and eating. You need to understand that there are no bad foods, simply poor eating habits. A balanced diet should have plenty of variety, and include all food groups - fruit and vegetables; grains and cereals; legumes and nuts; milk and dairy; meat, fish and eggs; and fats and oils. A balanced approach is being able to eat the occasional takeaway and a square or two of chocolate, and enjoy a meal out without feeling guilty.

Cutting out a food group can bring nutritional deficiencies and boredom, and actually undermine weight-loss programs. If you eliminate all fats, for example, you deprive your system of essential fatty acids such as omega-3 and -6, which are vital for the body and the functioning of the brain. You will also feel less full and satisfied, and be prone to 'cheat'. And if you eat too little of anything you can put your body into 'starvation' mode, encouraging it to hold on to fat. Even if you are looking to lose excess weight, you need at least 65g of fats or oils daily, preferably from olive oil or oily fish.

Limiting yourself to a few foods, even healthy ones such as brown rice and vegetables, can lead to deficiencies in the long term. Rice and vegetables aren't good sources of protein, iron, zinc, calcium, vitamin B12 or omega-3, and you risk developing anaemia and brittle bones and lowering your immunity.

It's simple, really. Forget guilt - learn to listen to your body. Eat only when you're hungry, and ask yourself what you really want to eat. Rate it while you're eating it, and stop when you're no longer enjoying it or feeling hungry. You will generally make good choices over a day - so if you eat the piece of chocolate cake you fancy and wait five minutes (for the signals of satiety to reach the brain), you're unlikely to want another slice, and more likely to reach for an apple instead.

Eat slowly and with attention. Relish it. Set a table to eat at - don't lounge in front of the TV. And put down your knife and fork between mouthfuls, or have a sip of water. But most importantly, if you're not hungry and want to eat, ask yourself why. Is it a social trigger? (It's lunch time, time to eat.) A habit? (When I watch soapies I have wine and chips.) Or is it emotional eating? (I'm eating because I feel anxious/ frightened/sad/angry/depressed.) Uncomfortable feelings such as these often lie behind what seems to be guilt.

If you recognize that you're an emotional eater, see a dietitian: or psychologist experienced in eating issues. Similarly, if you're not eating certain foods or are over-exercising to feel in control, and you feel guilty if you miss a fitness session occasionally, get professional help - you could be developing an eating disorder. With food and exercise, as with so much else in life, it's a matter of everything in moderation.

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