Marián del Álamo (28 years old) is a general health psychologist and has written two books, Why do I eat if I'm not hungry? and My menstrual cycle. A comprehensive perspective: psychology and nutrition, both edited by Oberon. A specialist in eating disorders (ED), his obsession is to raise awareness about the importance of our relationship with food, a determining factor in mental health. “It is a complex issue, with so many layers underneath and misinformation,” she says.
Ask. I think our relationship with food is sometimes measured in calories. What makes us gain and lose weight or what we like and what we don't. I sense that it is very reductionist.
Answer. Food is something we do several times a day, essential for living. So imagine how traumatic it can be for a person to be terrified of eating. We tend to trivialize or simplify, but many factors influence: our nutritional education, the society in which we live, whether we have suffered sexual harassment or abuse, whether our parents have been present or not… Emotional states, such as anxiety or depression, They can also lead to a TCA.
Q. What do you think of the popular saying “We are what we eat”?
R. Hmm, I don't agree. That phrase is very good if we only see food as a physiological process, but food is a much more complex fact than putting something in your mouth. If a person has a balanced and healthy diet and falls into an orthorexia disorder, then what happens?
Q. What is orthorexia?
R. The obsession with eating everything healthy. You can follow a healthy diet and have a disorder.
Q. There are people who carry a shopping cart that looks like a still life, everything perfect.
R. There is now much more information available about what we eat, a movement promoting real food that has caused people to become aware. That's all very well, but any extreme is dangerous. If you eliminate foods because you don't consider them healthy, but you have a mental health problem and you don't address it, you are not taking care of yourself holistically.
Q. Do you have many of these cases among your patients?
R. I have more because of binge eating, but when you evaluate the cases you realize that in many of them there was first restriction, of calories or food. I have a patient who woke up one day crying because she had dreamed of a chocolate palm tree, and it is something that she had forbidden herself from ingesting.
Q. Is there a common pattern in those who come to your consultation?
R. Nine out of ten cases are women. They share low self-esteem, are very aware of what society imposes as the norm, and established beauty ideals that are brutally accentuated by social networks. And they hide trauma, a lot of trauma. With the pandemic, many TCAs that were off came back to life. Previously, in Spain, these cases were worked on only taking into account weight loss, and once recovered, they were discharged.
Q. Does today's medicine take more things into account when evaluating patients?
R. The current health system is very 'weight-centric' and fatphobic. It hurts to say it because there are many people who are overweight and metabolically healthy, and yet they are encouraged to lose weight. I have many cases of binge eating disorder who no one has asked how they are, or if they have had or have any mental health problems. Since not everyone can afford to go to a psychologist, it is advisable to value something more than what is seen in the tests or on the scale.
Q. How can we detect an eating disorder in people around us?
R. It is one of the most difficult to detect because dieting to lose weight is very normalized. I don't know a single woman who hasn't dieted at some point in her life. Their hair and skin are very damaged and they tend to be dull, with some anxiety. They are always cold and do strange things with food, they say they are not hungry or want to be alone to eat, suddenly things that they liked now feel bad to them… Many parents feel guilty because they have not seen it before, but it is who specialize in finding alibis. The important thing is that they ask for help as soon as possible.
Q. You say that in general, a topic that was silenced until recently, nutrition is also very important.
R. Women are walking hormones, completely cyclical. Depending on the phase of the cycle we are in, we want to eat one way or another. And you don't need to go to any book, just listen to your needs. If your mind and body ask you to eat more a few days before your period, do it. And without judgment. In many people with ED, menstruation disappears as a warning sign of poor health, and the body turns off which is not necessary to survive. The cycle is a very valuable sign of health.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Marián #del #Álamo #health #system #39weightcentric39 #fatphobic