By, Sarah Emerman Eating disorders are an illness of dialectics, and it is not uncommon that clients both want to recover and stay in their illness at the same time. Therefore, when clients come into treatment there is often a great deal of resistance that accompanies motivation to recover. One of the many things we appreciate about the Maudsley Method is the separation of the eating disorder from the client to help clients and their families externalize the loud voice of “ED”. This distinction helps enable clients and their families to fight against the illness, rather than the client them self. For more information please take a look at this article on the F.E.A.S.T. website on Resistance to Treatment . Should you have any questions or comments regarding this post please email blog@eatingdisorderscleveland.org.
Archive for August, 2011
Do you want to feel in control of your appetite? If so, then you must eat a protein and fiber rich breakfast. That is the conclusion of a recent study conducted by Heather Leidy, an assistant professor of nutrition at the University of Missouri. This study is a recent one, and it backs up the findings of other studies. Eating protein foods like eggs, low fat dairy, lean meat, low fat yogurt and fiber filled foods like vegetables, whole wheat bread, whole grain cereal and fruits, keeps hunger at bay. This is great news, especially if you are trying to lose weight. Hunger is the number one enemy of any dieter. If you feel hungry it is impossible to stick to your diet. This in turn make you get disappointing results from your dieting efforts. But what is the best time to eat protein and fiber rich foods? Breakfast. By starting your day right. By eating a breakfast full of proteins and fibers, you can avoid being ravenous by lunchtime. In fact by eating a high protein breakfast you can reduce your overall appetite quite dramatically. I know this because I have experimented with the results of eating a high protein with lots of fibers breakfast. It just melts the hunger away, and makes it possible to eat a whole lot less during the day. But you have to eat a serious breakfast. Snacking for breakfast on a piece of fruit and some low fat dairy won’t cut it. You have to eat a full breakfast, maybe two eggs with some sausage and some whole grain bread. Just an idea. This will get you started and keep you going for the better part of the day. This way, when lunchtime comes, you won’t feel depleted and ravenous. You will be able to make wise decisions when it comes to the food you will chose to eat. You won’t leap at the first fast food joint you see. You will shop around and eat something appropriate for your diet and weight loss goals. Fiber Health: The importance of dietary fibers for your health Protein and Weight Loss: protect your body with proteins Pure Protein Bars Are a Great Protein Supplement
There seems to be an epidemic. Low calorie foods are popping left and right. It seems that every respectable food manufacturer is launching line after line of low calorie foods. Heck even fast food chains are joining in the race for the ultimate low calorie food. But are low cal foods healthy? Can they help you lose weight ? In theory it all sounds great. Just reduce the number of calories you eat and you will be able to lose weight. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t matter how many calories you eat, it is very important what is the source of the calories. There are plenty of low calorie desserts. We like to eat them thinking that they will help us lose weight. In fact, the marketers bank on this. But the sad truth is that dessert is dessert. And if it is sweet and with low calories it means it is full of chemicals and sugar substitutes . Your liver is the one responsible with breaking down your body fat. You can consider your liver a fat incinerator. At the same time your liver is also the waste management plant of your body. When you eat chemical filled food, your liver does its best to remove from your body all the harmful chemicals. Now, I have a question for you: If your liver is busy eliminating the toxins from your body, do you think it has time to burn fat also? Of course not! It can’t do both jobs well at the same time. What is even worse is the fact that if you eat lots of toxic chemicals – like those found in most low calorie foods – your liver will be overrun by them. In a desperate attempt to control the situation your liver will resort to its last weapon: packing the toxic chemicals in fat. And to do this it needs to make more fat. That is right. If you eat too many chemicals (sugar substitutes, food colorants, preservatives and all the other nasty stuff) you practically force your body to produce fat. It doesn’t matter if it is low calorie food. It doesn’t matter if you want to lose weight. Your liver will do the best he can to keep your healthy, even if it means making you fatter. As you can see the low calorie foods produces en mass nowadays aren’t really helping you lose weight. They aren’t even good for maintaining your weight. And there is another disadvantage to low caloric foods. They are small and light weight. Hardly satisfying. That is why most people tend to overindulge and eat more than they should have. What is the point of eating 500 calories small meals if you eat 3 of them one after the other. It is fairly easy to go back for seconds when eating low calorie food. “After all it is low call and it won’t make me fat” most think. And that is exactly the kind of thinking sneaky food marketers are trying to promote. My advice to you is to stay away from the prepackaged or premade so called low calorie foods. They have the nasty tendency of making you fat. If you want to eat real low calorie food, eat more vegetables. They are the ultimate low calorie food. Vegetables are super healthy, packed with vitamins and minerals, and because of the fibers they contain they also make you feel full for a longer time. What more can you ask for. Eat more veggies and less packaged food. For more information also check out: When On a Low Calorie Diet Be Careful Of Vitamins and Minerals The Best Low Calories Foods List Eat Healthy Foods at Home and While Out in Town
By, Dr. Mark Warren One of the questions that frequently arises in eating disorder treatment is why a disconnect often exists between knowledge that eating disorder behaviors are dangerous for one’s health and the ability to stop these behaviors. An individual with an eating disorder will probably know that people around them are worried about what they weigh, that purging is dangerous, that exercising compulsively is not a good idea, and that eating disorders result in serious and potentially lethal medical complications, but for so many people knowing these things does not result in behavioral change. In some ways this is what makes eating disorders so difficult to treat and to recover from. We are used to the idea that if we are aware of something and accept it as being true that we will change our behaviors, or attempt to change our behaviors, so that we can be healthier and have a higher quality of life. With eating disorders this is often not the case. Although our understanding of biology is still at the early stage, the essential characteristics of eating disorders appears to be that the awareness that occurs is not of the true impact of the eating disorder on one’s body or life. By this we mean that awareness happens on some sort of cognitive or surface level but does not happen in a way that connects the various parts of the brain necessary to translate the surface awareness into behavioral change. As a result, just knowing you have an eating disorder doesn’t actually give a person information about how to get better. This part of the brain has not been fully formed or is not working adequately. This is why it is so ineffective to tell someone with an eating disorder “just eat”. Given this information, the goal of treatment is to help develop true awareness that can be translated into an actual acceptance of the reality of the disorder, which can then lead to behavioral change, which will resolve the underlying disorder. Therefore, treatment should focus on two different areas: 1. The first area is re-feeding and stopping behaviors. This not only preserves physical safety, but also allows the brain to be in a state where learning, change, and brain development are most likely to occur. 2. The second focus of treatment is on what Marsha Linehan terms radical acceptance, which is a step beyond awareness into truly accepting that the eating disorder is present, destroying ones life and goals, and needs to be resolved. None of this is easy. Because internal connections are not present, it is almost impossible to recover on one’s own. External structure to help someone get into awareness and acceptance must be created. This is why just saying “you should eat”, doesn’t work, but why supporting someone into awareness and acceptance can be successful. Should you have any questions or comments regarding this post please email blog@eatingdisorderscleveland.org. Contributions by Sarah Emerman
