Eating disorder: psychological problem or just bad habbit?

Why do I post this articles in psychology section? Because you cannot change your weight for good without changing your mindset and lifestyle. You cannot lose weight if you are mentally unstable, if you deal with your emotions using food.

Nowadays ‘beautiful’ means ‘skinny’. Trying to be ‘beautiful’, millions of men and women are looking for magic diet, quick and effective. This path has start but it has no finish. Slowing your metabolism down, you need to eat less and less, go to gym more and more. You can’t stop - you will gain weight again. At some point you feel tired, and you start stuffing your face with all the ‘prohibited’ food you can find. You get yo-yo effect - the cyclical loss and gain of weight, resembling the up-down motion of a yo-yo toy. Food becomes your enemy, instead of being one of the life pleasures. As result you get unstable self-esteem, negative self-talk, anxiety and depression.

Food is the very first metaphor for love, the very first relationship that a newborn baby is going to building. During breast-feeding, child receives food, and warmth and protection, and love. That is why eating disorders always make one look at other relationships in a person's life - with a partner, friends, children, parents, but most importantly - relationships with oneself. We can say that the root of eating disorders is in broken relationship with yourself, in difficulties of loving and accepting yourself.

But the more you feel depressed, the more you need food. Food becomes a psychotherapist, a comforter, a universal solver of problems. Food becomes punishment and salvation. Gradually food takes control over person’s behavior and subordinates its existence to itself, just like heroin and alcohol do.

Ask yourself how often you are drawn to treats if you have a pause in work, if you are bored, if you are anxious, if you feel blue? Is it possible for you to drink just tea or coffee without dessert? Is delicious food associated for you with some celebration? Is it common for you to solve any emotional problems with the help of food?