Do you recognize this syndrome?

I am not referring to Intermittent Fasting which is becoming more popular with diets like 5-2 or IF. These are controlled and not designed to binge one minute and starve the next, but use a more balanced way of eating.

Human beings love to party. We love food, we love using food to socialize and celebrate special occasions. On these occasions, people naturally overdo it. We can rub our bellies and say we really can’t eat any more, and probably won’t eat anything for the rest of the day without thinking about it. We write it off and completely forget about it, looking back and saying what a wonderful meal that was.

However, there are many among us who will end up hating themselves and will even continue to eat until they get sick. If they can’t be sick, they will get sick themselves. They hate themselves and then they try and starve to make up for it. In a way they are punishing themselves.

These are the people who are caught in the trap of dieting and eating disorders. We call it bulimia when it’s severe. However, many people who constantly starve themselves with restrictive diets and slimming are on the verge of this disease.

First of all, they must learn not to hate themselves and realize that it is not their fault. They have fallen into a trap. Would you blame an animal if you found it caught in a trap it didn’t set? But a trap has been set with the modern world of dieting and the need to not only be skinny, but skinny. People, particularly women, try to emulate celebrities who are skinny and then feel like a failure if they can’t.

Marc David of the Institute for Eating Psychology, in a recent webinar I watched on Emotional Eating, pointed out that people who binge and starve are in a never-ending cycle. This cycle, in turn, causes enormous stress on the mind and body, making it difficult for the body to metabolize and absorb nutrients. He cites three steps for why we end up bingeing after starving ourselves:

• We fight the urge to eat
• We are too controlling
• We are too restrictive

Let’s see what has happened in the last thirty years.

In the 1980s, Paulette Maisner wrote a book called Feasting and Fasting. She was a wonderful lady: I ​​met her and learned a lot from her in the world of Nutrition. This book was about bulimia and obsessive eating. Although bulimia was fairly familiar, it wasn’t as well known back then, but it came out in the 1990s and, in a way, we have Diana, Princess of Wales to thank.

Back when Paulette was in the 80s, we still had the problem of having to watch our weight, just like today, but the pressure was to be a size 10 or 12 and not 6 or 8, like it is today. . Even taking into account the changes in clothing sizes since then, it’s still a big difference. The men just didn’t care. They were only occasionally reminded about their “beer bellies”.

However, many things have changed in the last thirty years and, as an older person, I have been there to witness it. First, in the early 1980s, we were suddenly told, after years of watching our carbohydrate intake, that we now needed to base our intake on starchy foods and limit our fat intake. The Food Industry took advantage of this and invented numerous foods labeled “low fat”.

What everyone, including the experts, didn’t realize was that starchy foods were the same foods that people tended to overeat. In fact, bulimics and obsessive eaters would binge on them. Have you ever tried to binge on meat?

The result is a paradox.

Now, in the 21st century, we have thousands of books and experts telling us how we can lose weight. Most contradict themselves and suggest various means such as low fat, point counting, calorie counting, protein shakes, low carb, etc.

But at the end of it all we have a paradox. More and more we are told that being overweight or obese is dangerous. Yet we have these eating disorders of binge and hunger and bulimia. Despite all the wonderful diets out there, society is increasingly concerned about an obesity epidemic. Why is this I wonder?

Because the advice we’ve been given just isn’t working, a growing number of people are looking into this problem, including authors Zoe Harcombe and John Biffra.

Are you just as confused?

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

I suggest that your journey out of the diet trap could begin with a little research and reading yourself. Don’t just buy a diet book because you think it seems effective, research the reasons why a particular diet would or wouldn’t work.

Find out for yourself why you find it so difficult to maintain a way of eating that you know is right for you as an individual, to stay healthy and slim, without resorting to drastic methods.