Registered dietitian Lisa McGlothlin and Carissa Surace, a therapist with 10 years of experience, hosted “Exploring Relationships with Food and Body,” a talk space during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. The event aimed to pull focus away from food restriction and shame, and toward awareness, curiosity and compassion.
“Usually most people don’t have a great relationship with their body. Sometimes they also feel a little good when they’re engaging in any sort of behavior, because it can be relieving some of the anxiety and stress,” said Surace, “but typically the relationship with their body is not. There is a lot of shame that is underlined, a lot of shame around their bodies and themselves.”
“I would say an eating disorder is also a factor to cope with stress, trauma, other trauma or other sort of just really difficult feelings that might impact what people choose to eat,” said Surace.
There isn’t one single disordered eating habit. Some eating disorders are restrictive while others are relative to binging and purging food.
“If we don’t eat enough throughout the day, it affects our sleep and our digestion, but also can be the opposite if we eat a lot. Really, eating a lot really close to bed can impact our digestion and make it hard to sleep too,” said McGlothin.
Another factor that can lead to changing eating habits and body perception is social media.
“It is presented like it can be attainable if anybody follows this particular diet routine, like if they did this or ‘if you buy my supplement or if you do my exercise routine’ you can look like whoever,” said McGlothin.
“It can really damage people’s perception of themselves and relationship to their body,” said Surace.
Cultural aspects also interfere with eating habits and body perception. Within a culture, we are taught customs on how, how much, when and when not to eat.
“If we might realize oh my family doesn’t eat sugar ever and other families do or my friends family doesn’t have any bread in the house and my family does. So, I think it can really reshape how we start,” said McGlothin.
Surace claims that it is important to have a healthy relationship with our image and the food we consume.
“It means getting to have whatever food you want,” said Surace. “Consider nutrition, but also joy and health and connection,” said Surace.