Episode 12: When eating disordered behaviours begin to negatively impact your relationships with friends and family.

In this week’s episode, Jessica is discussing the question: “When eating disordered behaviours negatively impact your relationships with friends and family” with Deidre. This can be a very difficult topic to navigate as you begin your journey of food freedom, but Jessica will walk you through ways to have this conversation with your loved ones. 

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Teaser

Eating disorder thoughts or what not and that's a whole other step cuz once you figure out your pros and cons you're like okay I'm going to give them up

Intro

welcome to the Art and Science of eating I'm Jessica Begg, registered dietitian and clinical counsellor I worked for fifteen years in programs for the treatment of eating disorders I now help those that struggle with emotional eating and their relationship with their body this podcast is where I answer questions to help people along this bumpy journey to creating peace with both food and their body. 

Podcast

Thanks Deidre for coming onto my podcast I really appreciate you asking your question so yeah go ahead. So my question is what do you do when you feel like your disordered eating habits are starting to negatively impact your relationship with friends and family? So for me, how I find how this comes into my life I will actively avoid eating around other people and that is due to I guess a shame to a certain amount of food I might eat or not wanting to eat at all, or friends or family eating food that I don’t want to eat. Yeah, yeah, so your question is what do you do when you find that these disordered eating thoughts and behaviours are impacting your relationship? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The first thing that we talk about is figuring out the pros and cons right? Because, to make any difference you have to think about how much do these social interactions mean to you in contrast to maintaining some of the behaviours you have. And that’s a hard one because it’s really difficult to give up and might forget what we’re losing too. So I guess the question I have for you is what of those things are important to you and how do they align in terms of your values? So in more tangible ways, getting people to do pros and cons list like what are the pros and cons here and the pros and cons of giving those things up. That’s the first bit. The second bit that you might be asking is how do you do that? Because, it is hard to do some of the things. Like, how do you ultimately be comfortable with eating around people or ultimately be comfortable with giving up some of these eating disordered thoughts and that’s a whole other step cuz once you’ve figured out your pros and cons you’re like okay im going to give them up! Then what? Right? Ok so, can you tell me again what your examples were? Ok so, this isn’t something I really do anymore but in the past, like when my disordered eating is much worse, I would come home from school and still living at my parent’s place, and I’ll stop at the grocery store on the way home and I wouldn’t want my parents to know how much I’m eating so I would sit in the car after coming home from school, not going into the house and eat food in the car so people wouldn’t know how much food I’m eating. What do you understand what are the drivers to that? Like, what do you understand what was going on for you at that time? Well I think it was, uhh, I think there was a lot of shame. Well for A: I don’t want people to know; I didn’t want anyone to know about my disordered eating patterns and also If my parents knew how much food I was eating they would say something like I could get fatter, something like that, which in reality would not have happened but in my head it was how it was going to play out. Yeah, yeah. You were worried about people saying you shouldn’t be eating this food but you really wanted it. Yeah, yeah. What do you think was the driver to the eating at that time? To eating a lot of food when I came back? Yeah. Well for me, something that I did is I wouldn’t want to eat during the day like back when I had more of a problem I wouldn’t want to eat during the day. If i was working, or was at school during the time, because if I did eat during the day, I would need to purge it and it would take up so much time and energy it would negatively impact my schooling and work so I wouldn’t eat it all during the day and I would come home and be a bad miss and eat a ton then purge it but then at least then it was incorporated into my work or school day. Yeah that’s what happened there. I imagined it would be very scary to have that happen to feel out of control but even the risk of maybe somebody seeing you do that when you were working really hard to not eat and somehow protect that time of eating that food like when am I going to eat I’m not eating it all. How do you move past that? Yeah yeah. I think you pinpointed it right there of ya’know being really hungry and not eating enough during the day and we could walk that backwards to how do we get you comfortable in your body to A: feel okay with eating it and caring for your body to feed it really serves important things, to feed it throughout the day. Yeah, cuz what i think what you’re telling me is that it was really stressful to eat during the day cuz you were worried of being negatively impacted and I think that speaks to ya’know being able to feed yourself and be okay with that and then so you don’t have to feel like you need to eat a lot at that other time. In theory right? I think that’s the first step, but I think in a general way of answering your question I think it’s about the pros and cons at sometime where we get really frustrated with what’s going on and saying okay I want more to my life. I want to connect with my friends. I want that freedom. I want to eat out, meet new people, and enjoy myself rather than what are the calories in this food? Or can I eat this? Should I eat this? It’s really distracting to do that. So yeah, you have to get to that turning point where you want to be with your friends and truly be present. Yeah, and that’s something I would want to do. If friends were going out for dinner I would want to join. Like if a boyfriend wanted to go out for dinner haha I would think of alternative dates because that was … I wouldn’t want to go and if I did go I would go and eat like a salad with nothing on it and just not eat it, which also looks weird to other people. So you sort of shine a spotlight on yourself and now you’re eating differently from other people so yeah. This is tough, but yeah. No I really appreciate that; I appreciate you. Thanks Deirdre. Thank you!

Disclaimer

This podcast is for education and information purposes only. Please consult your own healthcare team for what is right for you and your care.