 Hi and welcome back. Today's video is about eating disorders and I'm specifically looking at the fact that there's no right or wrong way to suffer from an eating disorder and there's also no right or wrong way to recover from an eating disorder. Eating disorders are very very complicated illnesses. They are mental health disorders which are a culmination of a mix of biological, psychological and sort of psychosocial environmental factors lots and lots of stuff going into the melting pot basically to create these very very dangerous disorders and so no one's experience is truly typical. We need to be a bit more broad minded in our thinking about what an eating disorder might look like. I think first of all it's important to remember that eating disorders they don't discriminate. They don't care if you're tall or short or fat or thin or able or disabled or of an ethnic minority or of a particular religion or from a certain place in the world. Eating disorders can affect literally anyone and sure there are groups who are at higher risk either because of biological or environmental factors and there are some groups who are at less risk but actually eating disorders have been found to be pervasive so it's never an impossibility. So they don't discriminate very very up for their diversity are the eating disorders, evil evil eating disorders and so things that might be different about people who are suffering from an eating disorder. So the number one thing is their weight. So somebody could be suffering from a serious eating disorder and be very very emaciated. Someone could be suffering from a serious eating disorder and be very overweight. They might be gaining weight. They might be losing weight. They might look really really healthy. So they could be any weight. Eating disorders and weight are tied together and it's one of the things that we might be looking for. We might be looking for weight fluctuation, weight gain, weight loss but you could be any weight and suffering from an eating disorder. You cannot look at someone until they have an eating disorder. You cannot look at someone who is obese and think right they must have some form of eating disorder. Equally you cannot look at someone who's very underweight and make an assumption about an eating disorder. There are other things that can cause those things but equally as I say someone could look really really healthy and be suffering horribly with an eating disorder. Increasingly we find that people get very very controlled by their food and their eating things like cleaning eating and very very tied to fitness and they might look like an absolute paragon of health but actually they are completely controlled by their thoughts and their feelings and their actions and behaviours around food and exercise every day. So any weight. The next thing that can really very massively is about body image. So we tend to have this assumption that people who are suffering with an eating disorder will want to be thinner, will consider themselves fat and that that's the only form that these disorders can take regardless of what weight someone is at and that again is just not true. So it's really really common for people who have an eating disorder of whatever type and whatever weight they're at to loathe the way that they look to have a distorted view of the way that they look and we certainly do have lots and lots of cases where you will find someone who is very underweight who will still consider themselves for example to be too fat but when it comes to body image it's not just about wanting to be thinner it's not just about wanting to be beautiful. Some people their eating disorder will specifically be in order to try and make themselves less desirable. So people who've suffered abuse for example may look less desirable to their abuser or potential future abusers by becoming very thin or very fat this can go with self-harm sometimes too. Other people just want to disappear and so that that that strive for thinness is about wanting to take up as little space as possible just not wanting to be here anymore and it's nothing to do with you know wanting to be the kind of thin ideal or anything like that it's just literally about wanting to take up as little space in the world as possible and for those kinds of people often this can be like a very very slow sort of form of suicide really just gradually gradually disappearing not being able to manage with being here. For some people it's not about getting thinner at all for some people it gets tied into wanting to be very toned and muscular and very fit and it can go it can go that way so typically this is something that we tend to see in our boys more but it can happen again any gender and someone who is driven very very driven by the needs to eat incredibly healthily or healthily and to build muscle all the time and this is their driving force and they can't manage without it and it's kind of controlling them rather than they're controlling it that's a problem too. So body image can be very very different across the different eating disorders and different people's experiences and at different points for some you know for one person our kind of motivations and our thinking and things like that can change. The body in the background is slightly distracting me it's snowing today and he's a little thrown by the snow he keeps barking at it it's quite funny. Okay next is about feelings towards food so this can vary hugely and again it can vary for the individual over time or it can vary between individuals so someone who has an eating disorder there are many types and shapes of eating disorder some people who have an eating disorder will turn to food for comfort they will eat food in order to kind of reach a temporary oblivion like you might reach for drugs or alcohol for some people it's food other people will purposefully deny themselves food as a kind of form of self-punishment or as a form of control some people will deny themselves food but really really crave it really want to eat feel great feelings of hunger and desire and love the control of not giving into those feelings. There's lots and lots of different ways that that people might approach it and again there's not one size fits all here and so you won't necessarily see one really big typical thing for someone who is very emaciated and eating very little if anything it's not unusual for them to do things like pour over cookbooks or do very extravagant cooking for other people and maybe even really want to join in with that but not absolutely like reneging in the control of not doing it and on the other hand you might get people who are very very overweight who say they get no enjoyment from food at all but they feel absolutely compelled to eat and aren't in control of their behavior on food so lots of different feelings towards food. Another thing that varies massively is the motivation so what do we get out of our behaviors around food so for some people it's about control for some people it's about kind of meeting an unmet kind of emotional need so it might bring comfort of some kind for some it's about self-punishment so again lots and lots of different reasons and the only way that we really learn is to talk to the particular person who we are concerned about. Another thing that will vary massively between different people with different eating disorders and different experiences and maybe at different times is how they look so we talked about weight before but this is also true of how healthy you might look so you could look very healthy with an eating disorder or you could look very unhealthy and that might be to do with the pallor of your skin your hair thinning or additional hair growing might be brittle nails there's all sorts of different things that can come with an eating disorder that might make you look otherwise unhealthy but again as I say for some people and maybe in the earlier stages actually you might look really healthy in the beginning so a not atypical path for some sufferers is to start off relatively overweight and to take really positive steps to try and take control of their eating their exercise and to pass through a period of actually being really healthy and getting great encouragement from everyone around you going well done this is really brilliant to see you looking healthy and well and then sometimes actually though that then carries on and it then passes down into unhealthy and so that's not a typical path but the person with the disorder might have been just as unwell and just as tormented and distressed and emotionally turbulent at the point at which they look really healthy as they were passing down this trajectory basically you might look healthy on the outside and still have a very very I guess unhealthy mind and that's true in recovery to so one of the really difficult things about recovery from an eating disorder is that one of the first things we tend to address is weight we try and stabilize weight whether that's bringing it down or bringing it up and we try to get to a healthy weight and then you'll find that somebody looks so much better than you've seen them looking for ages and you think great we're there and actually we're not there we're just right at the beginning of a really long journey that's gonna likely involve lots of ups and downs and so how healthy we look can vary massively and then finally alongside that I guess is how well we seem now some people are amazing at hiding how distressed they are as a result of their eating disorder and that might be physical distress as a result of their eating behaviors it might be emotional distress that kind of underlies that or maybe somewhat tied in with those behaviors some people are really good at hiding that perhaps they've been doing it for weeks months years and it comes a second nature maybe they're really really motivated to hide what's going on other people not so good at hiding that or don't try to hide it and so you might come across someone who seems very very distressed seems very unwell is evidently poorly with their eating disorder and you might come across someone else who doesn't even acknowledge that there's a problem who seems to be able to manage just fine and their grades aren't slipping or their work performance isn't slipping and they seem okay those two people might equally be suffering from an eating disorder and it's just presenting in very very different ways so yeah eating disorders they take many shapes and sizes they do not discriminate there is no right way and no wrong way to suffer from an eating disorder there is no right way or wrong way to recover from an eating disorder what the eating disorders kind of all have in common is that they are very serious mental health issues that it is very difficult to recover from without professional input and support and they also have in common that they tend to have quite a long lifespan and that that recovery period is something that needs to be supported over quite a period of time even well after things appear okay and that's so important so if you know someone who is in the process of recovering from an eating disorder even if they seem very well and healthy and happy that doesn't mean to say that they don't still need ongoing support and you absolutely need to remain vigilant of the possibility of relapse and thinking about how we would manage difficult times as and when they arose okay that felt quite long I hope it was kind of helpful and I hope it just opened hearts and minds a little bit to the idea that eating disorders they vary massively they vary massively the most helpful most important thing you can do if you are worried about someone you think they might have an eating disorder is to reach out to them to stop to listen to show them that you care and then to take the next step to help them access appropriate support now depending on their age and the stage of their illness then that might mean supporting them to go visit their GP it might be supporting them to talk to someone at school but essentially taking those next steps a really good place to find out what support is available to you locally and to learn a bit more about the different eating disorders is the beat charities and they have a great helpline they have lots of forums lots and lots of information and don't despair eating disorders are very serious but it absolutely is possible to live with an eating disorder and to ultimately go on to recover from it okay thank you so much if you found this helpful please leave a comment below please like it if you liked it and also take a moment to hit subscribe and you'll find out when I release new videos okay goodbye for now