Normal Eating…. What’s That?
I was recently asked to come in and give a presentation on eating disorders at a local high school. I was excited about the opportunityto speak on such a pertinent topic to a group of young people, those heavily targeted with messages about image and body shape. I started my presentation with the basics: what is normal eating? Simply put, normal eating is:
- Being able to eat when you are hungry and continue eating until you are satisfied.
- Being able to choose foods you like and eating them until you’ve had enough- not just stopping because you think you should.
- Being able to use some moderate constraint on your food, but not being so restrictive that you miss out on pleasurable foods.
- Giving yourself three meals a day, or it can be choosing to munch along.
- Leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful.
- It includes overeating at times and feeling uncomfortable. It is also under eating at times and wishing you had more.
- Trusting your body to make up for its mistakes in eating.
- It takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps it’s place as only one important area of your life.
In short, normal eating is flexible. It varies in response to your schedule, your emotions, your hunger, and your proximity to food.
Looking around the room, I could have sworn I had somehow morphed into an alien talking about extraterrestrial TV dinners. They looked at me as if I was crazy. It was clear they didn’t buy it. My explanation of normal eating was quickly followed by a barrage of questions and myths:
“But isn’t fried fish bad?” “I heard that they put diet powder on Weight Watchers food.” ”Isn’t it bad to eat after 5 pm?” “My dad says that if I just drink water during the day and then pig out at night, I’ll lose weight.” “My sister uses diet pills and she lost a ton of weight.” “But I thought cakes and ice cream made you fat.” “Isn’t it true that if you starve yourself you actually get fatter?” “I heard that just eating protein gets you better abs.”
Wow. It was obvious that normal eating was as foreign a concept as extraterrestrial TV dinners. The feedback I received from the students was a direct reflection of the messages they see and hear every day from the media. I realized that what they hear is all they know. The disordered behaviors is what they know to be true and they have no idea that it could be, or ever has been, any other way. They have no other construct from which to form their relationship with food and with their bodies. Especially when they see the same beliefs and behaviors in their family members, friends, coaches, and teachers. They have no idea that it could be any other way, because the disordered is their normal. And how are these students to know any other way of relating to food and their bodies unless somebody tells them?
I tried introducing the concept that there are no good or bad foods. I explained that all foods can fit into a balanced diet. I explained that restriction and control creates a feeling of deprivation and only leads to overeating or binging. I introduced the idea that our bodies can tell us exactly what we need and that honoring our body signals also leaves room for enjoyable foods. I was shocked that this seemed to be the first time they were hearing this.
I left the campus saddened by the depth of our culture’s sickness and more deeply aware of the difficulties of growing up emursed in this pandemic. The disordered has become the normal. No wonder therapists and treatment centers are flooded with eating disordered clients professing that there is nothing wrong with them. As far as they know, they’ve just perfected the cultural ideals. When working with my clients, I find that I not only have to reduce the level of disorder, but I have to teach them how to live the rest of their lives in a counter-cultural way. Recovery for them will not be simply returning to a state of normal. That just returns them to the normal insanity from which they developed their eating disorder. They will have to take it a step further. Recovery for them will be constantly choosing to live counter-culturally by choosing to make different choices than those professed by our society.
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