“Diet is a hijab for a European woman”

Many women know about eating disorders firsthand. Someone cannot fall asleep without a night snack, someone is familiar with bouts of compulsive overeating – when you go to the refrigerator for an apple, and then find yourself hugging a plate of dumplings. What is the reason for such disorders in healthy, in principle, people?

Julia Lapina: One of the first reasons for this overeating is dietary behavior. 60-70% of people who come to some kind of diet programs and training suffer from compulsive overeating. The fact is that any prohibitions and restrictions on food signal our body about the danger.

The neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for reason and rational thought, can easily shut down if the body thinks its life is in danger. It doesn’t know that you want to fit into a new dress or follow some idea. The body says: “If you don’t know how to use the neocortex, I will turn it off, and you go and eat.” And this signal is felt as a loss of control.

There will be no bouts of overeating if there are no stages of starvation. This was clearly demonstrated by the famous Minnesota “hungry” experiment of 1944, which was conducted by Dr. Ansel Keys in Minneapolis (Minnesota). It was attended by 36 young male volunteers with normal weight, who were put on a diet of 1500 kcal.

Very soon, these healthy men became lethargic and irritable, talking only about food. Some began to read cookbooks, some shared dreams of how they would open their own restaurant. After the end of the experiment, when food became available to them without restrictions, the participants began to eat non-stop – they consumed from 5000 to 10 calories per day!

As a result, they all surpassed their weight, which was available before the start of the experiment. And one man, who before that was not interested in cooking at all, then published a cookbook.

Obsessive thoughts about food haunted some participants for years. And the 1500 calorie diet isn’t that strict these days.

This is just one example of the body’s resistance to diets and imposed restrictions. The main task of the body is to survive, so it will always take its toll.

Where does anxiety about your body come from? Why has this become a problem for women?

It’s all about social stereotypes. For a woman, appearance is often associated with both self-awareness and position in society. Diet – hijab for a European woman. This is an area in which she voluntarily limits herself.

This manifests itself in small things that we don’t even notice, in anxiety about the figure and our own appearance. Women are used to the fact that every morning they stand on the scales like a scaffold, look for their reflection in every mirror, hate their body and believe that the problem is in them.

Many do not even doubt it. They are afraid to go to an interview or to the pool, because they think that they do not look like that. I wrote a book to say out loud to all women: being overweight, overeating is not your fault and not your problem. It is very important to rid the diet of stigmatization.

Do you agree that the normal weight of a person depends on 33% genetics, 33% nutrition and another 33% lifestyle?

Genetics, environment, lifestyle – all this is important, no one argues. But a separate question – how do we diagnose excess weight? No one says that the weight of a person who cannot get up from a chair is normal. But there is a huge distance between serious deviations and insignificant ones.

The BMI criterion is a very conditional thing. In medicine, even the definition of “metabolically healthy obesity” has appeared. And the age norms are also very conditional. Let’s say a teenage girl is gaining weight in puberty or a woman is expecting a baby. The body at this moment is changing, and this is normal, and the woman herself can consider these changes as a pathology.

Someone will say: a person is gaining weight because he leads an unhealthy lifestyle, lies on the couch from morning to evening. But it’s not about lifestyle: in this case, it’s mentally unhealthy behavior. Healthy is to want something and do something. What is behind laziness, what are the processes? Here’s what you need to figure out first.

Many nutritionists recommend: exclude irritants – sweets, pastries – from the visibility zone, and it will be easier for you to cope with the temptation. Do you share this opinion?

There are areas of life where inhibitions work great. A couple of years ago, cars in Moscow were parked wherever they had to, and it was impossible to get through. Introduced a number of bans – and the problem was solved.

It would seem that there is nothing complicated here: let’s exclude all harmful products, leave the refrigerator empty, and everything will be fine. Alas, our psyche is much more complex.

Products in which we limit ourselves acquire super value for us, become a reward. We will begin to absorb them in multiple volumes – like small children who are forbidden sweets, suddenly reach for sweets.

In theory, eliminating stimuli might work. But in reality, everything depends on how long and strictly a person limited himself, how he endured these prohibitions and restrictions. Each case must be dealt with separately. Often the psychotherapist has to guide the client step by step in relinquishing these prohibitions. And this is a piece of jewelry.

Church fasting and diet: the meaning is different, but the form is the same – food restrictions. Can fasting, like dieting, lead to eating disorders?

In the case of fasting, food is one of the means of training the process of inhibition, gaining control over impulses and desires. A post has a beginning and an end. The man knows why he does it. He understands that fasting can always be interrupted if it becomes unbearable to observe it. Therefore, fasting does not violate his relationship with the body.

A person with a severe eating disorder does not have the feeling that the diets will ever end. He thinks that he will be in this cage forever, and he is in great fear. And this context makes the brain work differently.