Cristina Galafate
Updated Tuesday, April 9, 2024-03:19
Salena Sainz Echevarría, pharmacist and dietician-nutritionist: "If you fast and eliminate a breakfast of industrial pastries, the improvement is not due to fasting"
Marcos Bodoque, nutrition specialist: "People cannot lose weight because they do not maintain healthy habits in the long term"
She is not a nutritionist, but Ana Morales (Granada, January 25, 1973) justifies why a
psychologist
ends up having a consultation dedicated exclusively to the infernal loop of
diets and binge eating
. "We are emotionally illiterate, when food is completely related to them," explains the author of
How Good I Am! She throws diets in the trash and lives with emotional health
(Ed. The Book Sphere). She clarifies that the book "is not an ode to kilos, but rather a song to the freedom of
feeling beautiful just for being human
. "
That is why it includes exercises to change our harmful internal speech.
"One of the first things I ask my patients is to create a life line with photographs. When they see themselves at 30 years old, they recognize that they were great and yet they thought they were fat. You realize that you are never happy with your body , although I'm sure that at 70 you would give everything to look like you did at 50." This is not about food, she clarifies, but it is where we focus on being what we can control, instead of working on the traumas we carry inside. "
No matter how much we lose weight, we will find defects, because the problem is inside
."
SELF-ESTEEM OVERBOARD
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One of the stages that most influence the insecurities we feel is childhood and adolescence. "
Bullying
or
bullying destroys
a person's self-esteem in adulthood. In therapy we work on exploring all those wounds that mark us for life. And there is no story in which the child who called you chubby or the teacher does not appear. that he was picking on you for something. Comments that may not have the intention of causing harm, but create a dent in the person," says the psychologist, who gives her own example. "I am chubby because I grew up with the busty complex at school, developing very early. For 30 years of my life I have walked shrunken because of that disgust that made me look bad," she remembers.
And if everything we say and do in parenting has an impact on development, let alone the
infinite comparison
that opens in the window of social networks. "Eating disorders (EDs) are multifactorial, and some are predisposing, such as a certain type of personality. An example is two people in a traffic accident, one who never gets back in the car again and another who the next day has overcome it," says Morales. That's why he doesn't blame Instagram or TikTok. Now, "if you start
scrolling
with low self-esteem, it's like throwing yourself off the seventh floor," she says.
Before you compared yourself with a single friend or neighbor, now with thousands of stories that
you don't know if they are real
and that have many filters, criticize. "Imagine 15-year-old kids who still don't have a well-constructed personality, how can it not affect them!"
EMOTIONAL HUNGER
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"We start eating to cover a poorly managed emotion," says the psychologist. I have had a fight with my boss because of the overload of work and I have not been able to tell him that I can't handle so much and I have eaten an entire box of "manolitos" on the way out or I have been poorly organized before an exam and it is going to turn out badly, So I eat a bucket of ice cream, he exemplifies. "It is true that at first it makes us feel better, since an
instant dopamine
is released . An activation of the same circuit of an addiction and you feel like when you take drugs."
The problem comes later, when you are aware of the binge and you feel even worse. "You start talking badly to yourself, a self-chatter in which you call yourself: 'Fat woman, oh what to see, shut your mouth.'" And you feel worse again and you eat again.
A vicious circle
.
How to stop that wheel? With self-compassion and a first emotional emergency kit, the specialist proposes. "Ceasing to be our worst enemy. We are disconnected from the sensations of hunger and satiety. We have to eat more consciously instead of without control,
differentiating physiological hunger
and spending time on the plate, savoring and chewing each bite. We eat very quickly , and it takes the brain about 20 minutes to perceive satiety," he proposes.
Instead of enjoying the menu, we gobble like turkeys. "To regulate intake you have to train, it is a ritual where you can let go of the cutlery, use your non-dominant hand to chop the food, count bites... and other tricks that help against anxiety, calm hunger and make us eat less, because it gives us time for that
gut-brain connection that satisfies us
."
WELL-BEING IS INTERNAL
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When food is not functional, we should also think about
what leads us to eat and what alternatives we have
. "For some it may be sports, for others painting, organizing drawers... Tools that allow us to channel those feelings that lead us to compulsively eat the piece of cake. You have to think that since we were babies we have calmed down our crying by plugging our chest or the bottle, we have it totally associated. So wait about 10 seconds and reconsider whether you only have food given what is happening to you, he recommends. "Perhaps the most difficult thing is to realize that relationship between sadness or boredom and food."
It is not the number on the scale, but
a state of internal well-being
, he insists. "We have to understand what emotion we have, why we are feeling it and recognize it."
Furthermore, we live in a society where we are bombarded with ideals of beauty. "It seems that if you are not thin and have a size 36,
you will never be happy
, but I have met patients who have had bariatric surgery and after losing 60 kilos they are still unhappy. Their image is distorted and they begin to focus on wrinkles or gray hair, for example. They do it because it hurts to face their own internal storm."
The industry takes money from us at all ages and at all stages, he believes. "Girls from 20 to 30 have Taylor Swift, from 40 to 50 we have Penelope Cruz, at 70 or 80 Jane Fonda... There is always a great woman as a model who has had aesthetic interventions because she makes a living from it and He has a lot of money. And if I don't look like him, I'm a failure. If I compare myself to that, I sink. We have to stop at some point this spiral of self-destruction and experience a revolution with ourselves to
stop being unhappy all our lives.
"concludes the author.
How good I am! Throw diets in the trash and live with emotional health
is published by The Book Sphere and you can buy it here