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Today on the Daily Dollop, we'll be discussing the very sensitive topic of eating disorders and the importance of early intervention if you suspect one in a loved one or yourself. This episode may trigger some individuals, so please proceed with caution and take the steps necessary to keep you safe. It's dollop time! Hey, hey, my name's Kate.
I'm a registered nutritionist, and after 20 years in the field of nutrition, I'm tired of seeing people stressed about eating and confused about where to start. And so, I'm changing the conversation. You deserve to feel confident in your food choices and empowered to maximize your health. Every weekday will dollop an episode into your feed, covering everything from busting nutrition myths, practical food ideas, my thoughts on trending topics, and habits for a healthy life.
My promise to you, it will always be sustainable, realistic, restriction-free, and strictly no-woo. Only good science translated into easy, everyday advice. Let's do this. Welcome back to the Daily Dollop podcast.
We are deep into a week-long series on the dark side of dieting, the trap of dieting, and how, sometimes innocently, we start a diet with intentions to improve our health or improve our bodies, and that that quickly becomes a slippery slope into disordered eating, which is actually the primary risk factor for developing an eating disorder. So today, I wanted to share more on eating disorders, distinct from disordered eating, which we chatted about yesterday, and how you can help someone or yourself if you suspect that there's an eating disorder lurking close to the zeros or underneath there. And many people with eating disorders actually do find it hard to recognize that they have an issue, or due to shame and guilt and stigma, they might not reach out for help if they are aware that they are struggling. They may not actually see the consequences of their disordered eating or relationship with food and think that there's long-term health consequences, which there are, but they might not be aware of that.
And like I said, they may experience this high level of shame that leads them to hide their behaviors and prevent them from reaching out and finding help. So this is where family and friends can play a really vital role in helping identify an eating disorder and encouraging that person to seek help. Or if you're struggling a little bit and you're listening to this episode, encourage you to reach out for help as well. Picking it up early is really important.
Research shows that early detection and treatment of an eating disorder can improve recovery rates. And if an eating disorder is detected before the criteria for diagnosis are met, the chances of recovery are even higher. So it's catching it at that disordered phase of the spectrum rather than sort of waiting for it to become severe enough to then meet the diagnostic criteria. So what should you be looking out for and what should you do if you suspect something?
We'll be covering that in the next couple of episodes. So let's answer the question though to begin with of what is an eating disorder. It's important to understand that an eating disorder is not something that a person chooses to have. It's a serious mental health condition that can have a significant impact negatively on a person's quality of life, their relationships and their physical health.
Eating disorders also don't discriminate. They can affect anyone of any age, gender, ethnicity, cultural and linguistic background or body shape or size. And that is extremely important that you know that. There are different types of eating disorders with different criteria for diagnosis depending on the way that the eating disorder is presenting.
For example, a person may experience disordered eating behaviors such as restricting food intake, binge eating, vomiting, excessive exercise, fear of foods due to past negative experience, heightened sensitivity to sensory aspects of food that severely limits their intake, using diet pills or laxative or a combination of any of the above. Most but not all eating disorders involve a disturbance in body image that also affects food and eating. And so based on a bunch of different symptoms and the way and behaviors and the way that they're presenting is then how they're diagnosed. And there are a number of different diagnoses that can come out from an eating disorder assessment.
So a question is, you know particularly when we're saying things like disordered eating is a major risk factor for developing an eating disorder. Is then our brains because we love to think in black and whites are like, oh well did we cause this eating disorder? And no, you absolutely didn't. There is no one thing that can cause an eating disorder.
There are just things that can increase the chance of a person developing an eating disorder and some that can protect a person from developing one. And so if you head over to the National Eating Disorders Collaboration website, which I've linked in the show notes, another great resource in Australia is the Butterfly Foundation. There's a full list of different risk factors there that you can look at. But let's go through some of those right now.
So we've got risk factors. So these are things that increases the chance of a person developing an eating disorder and then you've got protective factors. So these things decrease your risk of developing an eating disorder. Earlier on in the podcast, back in my original sort of lot of podcasts actually interviewed a beautiful lady called Millie who is an eating disorder recovery coach.
And she likes to explain an eating disorder as having based on new evidence that's come to light that there's a genetic component to eating disorders. And so she essentially is like, genetics loads the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger. And so that's a really nice way of explaining these risk factors that nothing actually causes the eating disorder. But there's perhaps a perfect storm going around with genetics and environment that then increase someone's risk of developing one.
Okay, so the risk factors for developing an eating disorder are family history of eating disorders and other mental health conditions. So if mom or dad have had an eating disorder or other family members, that increases the chances of either your children or yourself having an eating disorder as well. Personality traits such as perfectionism or obsessive compulsive traits and behaviors, these also increase risk of an eating disorder. Diting and exposure to dieting behaviors in the family environment.
So seeing mom or dad dieting, seeing mom or dad fasting, seeing mom or dad demonized foods and this food is bad and this food is good and talk about how food impacts your weight. This food makes you fat. This food makes you put on weight. This kind of talk around food and constant exposure to dieting increases a child's risk of developing an eating disorder.
Next risk factor is dissatisfaction with body image. So most eating disorders but not all have this element of body dissatisfaction. And that can look in a range of different ways. Some people experience body dysmorphia.
Some people have extremely low self-esteem. They're dissatisfied with their weight or their shape and this increases risk of developing an eating disorder. The next one is an overvaluation of body image when defining personal self-worth. So essentially, we get our self-worth actually from a range of different facets of ourselves.
And if you think about a pie chart, our self-worth, if it's nice and well-rounded, will be built on a physical element like how we feel about how our body looks. How we feel about how our body functions. How we feel about how we think and how our brain works, our achievements, our social life, our family and friends. So there's this pie chart of all these parts of ourselves that contribute to our overall self-worth.
Now, if that pie chart for your self-worth is greatly weighted towards body image and how your body looks and feels, and that is not good, that means your self-worth is going to be pretty low and only sort of affected by this major element of who you are. And so if that's, if there's this overvaluation of body image and it's like the key definer of your self-worth, this increases your risk of an eating disorder. Other mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression or trauma history also increases your risk of developing an eating disorder. And then also, sadly, because it happens so much in our culture, is experiencing weight-based discrimination, bullying or teasing.
So somebody saying something to you, whether it's parents or siblings or kids at school or teachers or workmates, right, and feeling like you're a second-rate citizen because your body is not quite right compared to societal standards and you're actually experiencing bullying or discrimination because of that. That also increases your risk of an eating disorder. All right, let's go to the protective factors and end this episode on the positive side of things because there are some things we can do to protect our kids, to protect our young people, to protect our friends and our peers, because just a side note is that, yes, adolescent girls are the highest at risk group of developing an eating disorder, but the second high at risk group is post-menopausal women. And so we can protect our peers, our friends, our mothers, our grandmothers, this is really important.
So protective factors are high self-esteem and positive body image. So it doesn't need to always also be loving your body, but it is accepting it. It's appreciating it, it's being thankful for it, it's understanding what it does for you and how it helps you get through life and potentially building your self-worth on other elements of you rather than just your body and building out that self-worth pie chart. Good media literacy and ability to think critically about media images and messaging are also protective.
So teaching our daughters and our sons, because not just girls, that what they're seeing on Instagram or TikTok is not real, is doctored images, there's so much AI images out there, right? And that this is important, that this literacy and this ability to critically analyze and know that this is not real rather than internalizing it as real and then feeling like they don't measure up to these images is so important. The next protective factor is good emotional well-being, problem solving and coping skills. So, you know, it's resilience, it's being able to, yeah, solve challenges as they arise, cope with difficult situations and have the support network around them to be able to do that, because of course children are developing these skills.
It's not something they can just do on their own, they just cope with stressful situations all on their own. But some of us are now adults and that's how we were treated and we need to work on that. A few more things is that family and social environments don't over-emphasize weight and physical attractiveness, so we are celebrated for multiple parts of ourselves. Gosh, you solved that problem really well.
Gosh, you approached that, you know, challenge at school really cleverly. Look at the way that you think. I loved how you treated that other person and you included them and used compassion. Well done for using self-compassion and kindness towards yourself and you made that mistake.
Like we should celebrate all these facets of ourselves rather than just how we look. Other protective factors are regularly shared family meals and healthy relationship with food and eating. So that's it for today's episode. We're going to continue the chat on eating disorders tomorrow and just go through some of the warning signs and then what you can do to help if you are concerned.
We'll catch you there. The Daily Doll Podcast is proudly brought to you by Ayla Health. Build food confidence and learn how to choose foods that are right for you and your body. Download the app today and build habits that last.
As always, you can find out more about our chat in the show notes. You can also join the conversation over in the Ayla Health Community Group on Facebook. We'd love to see you there. If you've got a topic you'd love to hear us chat about on the Daily Dollop, please let us know.
Email us at hello at aylahealth.com.au or you can send us a message on Instagram. Until next time.