To ensure that people with eating disorders are accommodated during the holiday season, attention needs to be paid to the surrounding events and family gatherings to limit anxiety of those struggling.
The formal definition of an eating disorder is a “serious and often fatal illness that is associated with severe disturbances in people’s eating behaviors and related thoughts and emotions,” according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).
The stress surrounding eating disorders can be related to the types or quantities of food, worrying about weight gain or loss or just simply having to handle comments related to their eating disorder.
While there are many forms of eating disorders, the most common are Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa. Anorexia is categorized by a distorted body image with the fear of being overweight. Bulimia is a condition related to binge eating, where in attempts to not gain weight, people will intentionally make themselves throw up the food before it is digested.
While misinterpreted as a “lifestyle choice,” thousands of people are living with a disease that they are unable to control.
As the holiday season grows closer and closer, the more anxiety produced surrounding days like Christmas and Thanksgiving, while cheerful for many, are also nightmares for those who struggle with food.
According to the White Pine Center For Healing, eating disorder triggers can vary from seeing or interacting with specific people, hearing inappropriate comments about food or one’s body or even feeling certain moods and emotions.
Thanksgiving, a holiday best-known for its large portions of turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, creates an environment that could potentially bring up peoples’ eating disorders during the recovery process.
In addition to food-related anxieties, pressures related to pleasing holiday hosts or guests can add feelings of stress and exhaustion.
It’s not that I am saying to stop serving food on Thanksgiving or to not invite certain family members to gatherings. I am saying that the negative comments and unfair standards related to someone’s weight or portion sizes need to be minimized.
Comments like, “Are you really going to eat all that?” and “You have lost some weight since the last time I saw you,” may seem harmless or even sound like compliments, but they are inappropriate to mention to those who are struggling.
According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), 9% of the U.S. population will have an eating disorder in their lifetime.
Many of us are taught from a young age to treat others with kindness because there are many people who are less fortunate, especially during the holidays, so why does being mindful of others during this time tend to get overlooked?
Another issue that is presented to those with eating disorders around this time is the seasonal depression that only adds to their condition.
Because eating disorders have such a lasting effect on a person’s mental health, anxiety and depression rates increase.
What starts out as a poor relationship with food turns into a much larger issue worthy of recognition.
“Every 52 minutes, one person dies as a direct consequence of an eating disorder,” according to NEDA. “Eating disorders have the second highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness behind opiate addiction.”
A simple change in how we talk to someone struggling with an eating disorder can make a huge impact.
It can alleviate stressors and anxieties that are presented during the holidays as well as make the person feel more comfortable knowing that someone is not judging them based on their weight or food portion sizes.