«Marshmallow, kabanos sausages, a jar of matias, spaghetti with ketchup – that’s what I remember …»

– We live in great times for people with an eating disorder. All diets, detoxes, fit applications, fit gadgets, ubiquitous sugar and overwhelming loneliness – says psychiatrist Dr. Maja Herman. Hania and Julka have been struggling with anorexia and bulimia for years.

1. Apparently, an anorexic can be decoded with one immoral proposition. It is enough to offer her PLN 200 for eating a pizza. You can pay her a thousand and she won’t eat …
2. Hania has been suffering from anorexia since high school. Parents spent 16 thousand. PLN for therapeutic sessions. – I was still afraid of eating, but with each passing week I was indulging in a spoonful more. When did I panic? When the size 36 pants got too tight. I immediately stopped trusting myself …
3. Julka was a teenager when she began to binge compulsively. – After another weight loss attempt, I was simply hungry. The parents went out to the party. I got to the fridge and couldn’t stop. It’s not like you culturally spread the cutlery on the table and eat a bowl of reheated dumplings. You nibble on a hunting one with cold , then grab the nutella and eat it straight from the jar. Finally, you search the garbage to see if there is anything left. It’s stronger than you
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Confessions of anorexics

October 2007. Milan is still alive with Fashion Week memories. There is a lot of cleaning going on in the streets of the city. Controversial photos of Oliviero Toscani showing “The most famous anorexic in the world” – Isabelle Caro – hit on the garbage can. The Advertising Control Institute decided that the “No anorexia” campaign may offend moral, civic and religious feelings and does not respect human dignity. The high fashion world, valued at billions of dollars, is relieved. Caro dies three years later of pneumonia. Anorexia entered the room of a 13-year-old child, and took a 28-year-old woman. Not the last …

For the French actress and model, 15 years to overcome the “fear of the plate” turned out to be insufficient. The answer to the question whether anorexia and bulimia are chronic and incurable diseases was sought by American scientists who for over two decades followed the fate of 246 patients. After NINE years, 68,6 percent anorexics and 31,8 percent. the bulimics were still ill. THIRTEEN years later, the number of women with bulimia nervosa remained the same, and the number of patients with anorexia decreased to 37,2%. Scientists were optimistic – eating disorders do not constitute a life sentence – reads an article published in 2016 in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Let’s face it – the “thinness obsession” has eaten 69 percent. these women forever …

How many adult anorexics and bulimics live among us? Statistics bars argue that they are the social margin – a percentage of the population. Unofficially, it is said that the numbers are heavily underestimated.

– We are facing a problem as old as the world and socially accepted. I remember how, while working in the ward, we treated 30-year-old patients diagnosed with anorexia or bulimia, or we were just diagnosing them with eating disorders. The situation of these women has not changed much … First of all: some of them still do not know that they may be ill. Second: they all have nowhere to heal. What is the overall message? If you notice that your child is constantly weighing, likes to eat alone, exercises obsessively, contact a doctor … – comments psychiatrist Dr. Maja Herman.

When the diet takes over

Not all of them are chronically ill, some “make their debut late”. After colliding with a life crisis: betrayal, divorce, old age or loss of job, they begin to control life with a knife and fork. Over time, it is the diet that was supposed to cure all evil that takes control of them. The cinema asked for them several times. Most dramatically in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. One of the protagonists of the film, the widowed and lonely Sara Goldfarb, dreaming of appearing in a TV show, becomes addicted to slimming pills. What is she missing? Behind the past, the symbol of which is the red dress. Too small.

What do adult bulimics and anorexics long for? Behind the illusion. They read magazines, watch TV, and then look in the mirror and feel disgusted. Twiggi, who shocked in the 60s, is now a statistical weatherwoman. What is shocking is normality – a 41-year-old Polish woman wearing a size 40-42 on the cover. As a consolation, we get a Barbie doll inspired by Ashley Graham and Serena Williams in the “Most Beautiful” ranking of the “People” magazine. When we protest, they scare us with the specter of obesity. They forget one thing – obesity often starts with weight loss.

Apart from the socio-cultural context of eating disorders, there is also the family. There is talk of the conditional model of love, that is, I love your better version, the icy four walls, the dominant and overprotective mother.

– We never know which of the messages sent to children are harmful. Let every mother think about how many times, even jokingly, has she called a child a “dumpling” and herself a “three-door wardrobe”? – adds the psychiatrist. What is the message from a mother retouching her own pregnant photos? Hard to say…

The rest of the article is available under the video.

Immoral proposition

Apparently, an anorexic can be decoded with one immoral proposition. It is enough to offer her PLN 200 for eating a pizza. I don’t think even Jeff Bezos would say no, and she won’t eat. You can pay her a thousand and she won’t eat …

Hania ate margarita for the last time in the Venetian Square in Rome. Remembers the taste and smell. She was 17, today she is 30.

She is one of the “unconsumed victims of modeling”. “Unconsumed” only because the ruthless industry did not manage to make a profit on it before it found Sobieski. Like any anorexic, she was smart. At the doctor’s office, she told her mother that she had left the phone in the hallway. She took the elevator down to the ground floor and returned home by taxi. She weighed 38 kg …

– When did the family notice that I had a problem? I don’t know… I was always skinny, but when I was pointed to by the fingers in the street and started walking on the heated floor at home wearing three sweaters, they had to react. The pre-graduate stress argument has stopped working.

The parents found themselves trapped. They could file a petition for incapacitation and lock Hania into Sobieski. Or heal privately and pray that she will gain weight and pass her high school diploma. They chose the latter – for the sake of the child.

Two hours of psychotherapy a week for a year and a half. A total of 16 thousand PLN for the cure of anorexia. Actually, it’s a “cure”, but everyone was happy. A psychiatrist who, according to one of the guiding ethical principles in medicine: did no harm. Parents who could pay on and send the child to private studies. And Hania, who understood that she did not have to eat, it was enough to eat very little.

“It’s not like the obsession goes away after talking to the doctor. You stop going to pro-ana pages, you don’t look for new “thin inspirations”, you stop counting the grams you have eaten into calories. I was still afraid of eating, but with each passing week I was indulging in a spoonful more. When did I panic? When the size 36 pants got too tight. I immediately stopped trusting myself …

– The worst moment came a year later. When the period came back. I remember that my mother and I went to «The Hangover». I watched Mike Tyson sing Phil Collins and cried.

From anorexia to veganism

Overnight, she switched to one of the most ethical diets, whose representatives have statistically lower cholesterol levels and a lower BMI index than the rest of the population. Veganism, or actually raw food. Automatically 70 percent. on store shelves have gone beyond her reach, including potatoes, beans and peas. The family was delighted, even my mother, who had a weakness for fur, became a vegan.

When dehydrated banana rolls and cashew mozzarella began to affect her interactions with others, she switched to pesco-veganism. Today it is on the fashionable IIFYM, i.e. a nutrition model based on counting macronutrients. Only her daily macro is way below normal. He runs four times a week, exercises strength twice, eats dinner before 18pm. He drinks simple shots at parties. In the city, he only dines in restaurants he knows. Most often he orders unbleached cream soups. He chews a lot of gum. He drinks a lot of water. He likes to have an empty fridge. He is not parting with Apple Watchem.

– I don’t think I’m sick. I just take care of myself … In fact, far more people in the world die of obesity, and the percentage of those dying of anorexia is small..

In the evening she sent me a text: I have anemia and the bones of an eighty-year-old woman, half a year ago I lost my period again, I thicken my hair, I feel cold in the evenings, and throughout our meeting I had a terrible desire to eat your muffin. You can write it …

– In our slang we call it “the dead body from the closet” – explains the psychiatrist Dr. Maja Herman. – At the end of the therapy session, the patient throws out the most important information that should be the clue of the meeting. This also happens during workshops on eating disorders – after the lecture, people who have a problem and would like to be treated come up with questions. Sometimes the patient doesn’t have to say anything and we already know. Even now, sitting in a cafe and observing what and how customers are ordering, we can be suspicious. She sips espresso for a few hours, asks for a list of ingredients and asks for packaging, decides for porridge, and after two spoons she has enough … This is worrying.

Bulimic nightmare

Julka was consistent with the description. She ordered a large americano with skim milk and watched the barista the whole time. – I was poured 2% a few times. She explained. She preferred not to eat, she left the dentist.

She is an expert on diets – she tested them all: Copenhagen, Dukana, Dąbrowska, South Beach, cabbage, macrobiotic, paleo and keto. In the wardrobe it has all sizes from S to L. Restriction on the plate always gave one effect – yo-yo. He has been practicing raids on the refrigerator to this day. He is 36 years old.

– When did it start …? I think in high school. After another weight loss attempt, I was simply starving. The parents went out to the party. I got to the fridge and couldn’t stop. It’s not like you culturally spread the cutlery on the table and eat a bowl of reheated dumplings. You nibble on a hunting one with cold , then grab the nutella and eat it straight from the jar. Finally, you search the garbage to see if there is anything left. It’s stronger than you. The real nightmare begins five minutes later …

The bulimic nightmare consists of two feelings: shame and guilt. After each of the “bings”, Julka cleaned the kitchen and went to a nearby discount store. She had to buy back everything she ate before the rest of the family returned, before noticing … – I remember measuring out. I stood over the sink and wondered if the jam jar I had cleared to zero was half full or only a third full.

She is not a typical bulimic. She never vomited. I tried to stick a toothbrush down my throat, but it didn’t work out. After bouts of gluttony, I just cleanse myself. I started with one bag, now there are six brewed twice. The next day I am on the water and three light cottage cheese, and I spend 70 minutes on the treadmill.

The therapist told Julka that she should be good for herself afterwards. Eat normally, no purging, no exercise, but it still seems too hard. She says that “po” feels disgusting and cannot look at herself. He marks the days when he is a “fat pig” with a cross in the calendar. In January, there were only three.

I asked Julka to call me for one of the “bings”. The vibration of the phone woke me up at one in the morning. I was supposed not to comment, but to take a piece of paper and a pen.

– A packet of cinnamon rolls flooded with a glass of milk, seven rice wafers, vegetable chips, two Bieluchy, marshmallow, three kabanos sausages, a jar of matias, olives, some gouda and spaghetti. There was no sauce, so I poured ketchup over… I remember that much.

In the trap of compulsive overeating

Isabelle Caro’s biggest dream was to be a mother, Hania is terrified of having a big belly, Julka and her partner have been trying for a baby for a year. Unsuccessfully.

– Bulimia nervosa, translated “bullish hunger”, is just a nice name for a debilitating disease. Binge eating attacks usually come back in times of great stress or life bends. It is similar with compulsive overeating – it is estimated that 80 percent. of the world’s population is stressed, and 20 percent. stops eating under stress. This is a very big imbalance, now let’s ask ourselves one question: do we live in a world of stressful situations and constant tension? We are alive and the statistics will grow. Especially since times are favorable for eating disorders. All diets, detoxes, fit apps, fit gadgets, ubiquitous sugar and overwhelming loneliness – adds the psychiatrist.

– It is easy to give advice from the position of a chair. Write down what people with an eating disorder should do: stop, pull yourself together, it’s easy to do. Only weight management has a similar mechanism to addiction. One thinks: one more cycle of exercise will not hurt anyone. One more bar of chocolate won’t change anything. And then in this thicket, “one more” completely loses control over himself and either exercises himself unconscious or absorbs the contents of the entire refrigerator. Can you help? Of course, but not through a hateful comment under the text, but through a comment in which you recommend a good specialist and therapist for eating disorders – sums up Dr. Maja Herman.

We encourage you to listen to the latest episode of the RESET podcast. This time we devote it to the problems of the perineum – a part of the body just like any other. And although it concerns all of us, it is still a taboo subject that we are often ashamed to talk about. What do hormonal changes and natural births change? How not to harm the pelvic floor muscles and how to care for them? How do we talk about perineal problems with our daughters? About this and many other aspects of the problem in a new episode of the podcast.

This may interest you:

1. There are no “too young” children to develop anorexia
2. 9 facts about anorexia and bulimia
3. Bigorexia – what is it?