university or research institute. The ‘experts’ quoted, however, may have some financial interest in the product they are promoting, or might even influence the editor by placing a full-page advert for the product in the magazine.
To enhance readers’ interest, the magazine will list famous people who apparently swear by the stuff. In recent years it must seem as though Geri Halliwell, Liz Hurley and Madonna are the recipients of every weight-loss and beauty aid invented!
What about adverts you see or hear on radio or television? How objective are they? When food manufacturers sponsor television programmes, how much could they, or do they, influence the content of that programme? Do we even think about it when we see the logos come up and hear ‘this programme is brought to you by’ or ‘in association with’? In one country, a well-known fast-food manufacturer even sponsors the news bulletins on one channel. Now how much critical comment are you going to get about junk food from that television station?
Newspapers and magazine editors and makers of lifestyle programmes for radio and television know that dieters love to hear the latest scientific discoveries. This audience, however, is not looking for the latest news about a cure for cancer; they just want to read that someone has invented a lettuce that tastes of chocolate. Editors and programme-makers therefore owe it to all of us to ensure that their stories about ‘diet breakthroughs’ are informed with broad research and deep scepticism—but don’t hold your breath for that.
The Triumph of Hope over Experience
You would think that people who have spent their adult years failing at diets would be relieved to discover that they don’t have to try every new one that comes out. But that’s not the case. If there is the slightest suggestion that they might be able to ‘Get Slim for Summer’, they want to give it a try.
Professor Janet Polivy, from the psychology department at the University of Toronto, conducted some very interesting research studies a few years ago. She found that simply going on a diet disrupted people’s physical sense of when and how much to eat – and this led to overeating. In experiments where dieters had to eat a high-calorie snack, thereby purposely breaking their diet, they ate much more than non-dieters in the same situation. Furthermore, they ate more than non-dieters when they believed the snack was high-calorie, even when it was in fact low-calorie.
In tests where dieters thought they were being watched after breaking their diet, they ate very little; but afterwards, when they thought they were alone, they would binge. Again and again the researchers provided evidence for what they came to call the ‘what-the-hell’ effect of overeating after breaking a diet—and what I call the ‘Oh sod it!’ syndrome.
Every time you put yourself on a strict diet you are trying to train yourself to give precedence to what the diet allows over what the body demands. That would be fine if the body demanded only what the diet allowed but this is rarely the case. The crucial problem with all restrictive dieting is that it drives a wedge between the person and her body; a struggle ensues and generally the situation deteriorates until the dieter has wrecked the natural signals, since these signals are what the diet is designed to over-ride.
So out goes eating on the basis of natural hunger cues and in come calorie calculations or peculiar nutritional combinations, in particular the current fashion of cutting out entire food groups such as wheat, dairy, tea, coffee, sugar and alcohol. This leads to emotional bingeing and being controlled by the vast swathes of foods you are trying to eliminate.
This turns you into a binger, eating on the basis of compulsion, obeying mysterious urges to eat that correspond neither to the original hunger that is entirely natural nor even to the diet that you substituted for natural eating.
‘Low-fat’ doesn’t mean ‘not fattening’ if you eat a lot of it.
The Binger
Let’s profile the binger for a moment. Not all dieters are bingers. Some people are overweight because they just eat too much of the wrong foods at mealtimes and do no exercise. Bingers are another category altogether and comprise a significant proportion of my clients.
Compulsive eating is more than an activity; it is an all-absorbing state of mind. Bingers come in all shapes and sizes and lead all kinds of emotional lives. What they share is their obsession with food and weight. This dual preoccupation with food and body shape is the hallmark of the compulsive eater.
The clients who consult me are not necessarily very fat. Although we are accustomed to equating fat with gluttony, I have found that the shape of someone’s body is not necessarily a reliable indicator of their relationship with food. Some people come to me just to learn how to stop bingeing. Although their weight fluctuates wildly over a six-month period, they don’t allow a binge to go on long enough to cause a lasting weight increase. They go back to a strict diet to bring it down again. As one of them said, ‘No-one believes me when I say I have an eating problem. I know I don’t look as though I have, but not a day goes by when I don’t obsess about food.’ Privately, I call these ‘thin fat people’.
Most bingers though, offer convincing proof of their struggle by their increased girth. They are constantly eating more food than their bodies require, reaching for food for emotional reasons rather than natural hunger, and if they do start out hungry, they continue to eat way past the point of physiological satiation. Therefore, no-one can diagnose compulsive eating based on size. Only you know if you are a binger.
Given the all-too-human capacity for denial, a binger is simply unaware of the inordinate amount of time she spends thinking about, choosing, buying, cooking and eating food. (I use the term ‘she’ because most bingers are women but that’s not to ignore those many men who have the problem.)
For our typical binger, her mealtimes, socializing, weekends and celebrations are the focus of her food obsession: what she should or shouldn’t be eating, will she manage to stick to her diet, is she having a ‘good’ day? So much mental energy is expended on a substance she is trying desperately not to eat.
It is senseless to label a binge habit simply as obesity – just as you can’t say that alcoholism is simply drunkenness or drug addiction merely the problem of being stoned. The fat is simply the symptom of the underlying eating disorder, albeit a significant one.
Most bingeing is done in the hours between the evening meal and bedtime—unless you are a mum with young children, when it starts at afternoon teatime. Food eaten during the early part of the day doesn’t seem to stimulate the need to continue eating as much as the evening meal does – probably because most people’s days are fairly structured and food eaten towards the end of the day signals a release of tension.
There is a difference between the eating habits of an ‘overeater’ and a ‘binger’. Returning from work, an overeater will nibble on peanuts or olives with her alcoholic drink while preparing the evening meal. This will probably consist of something like thick soup with a roll and butter, followed by roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, rice and a green vegetable. She will finish with apple pie and custard or ice cream. Tea and cake will follow a couple of hours later. She can’t understand why eating this way—plus a substantial breakfast and lunch—keeps her fat.
Our binger, on the other hand, who is constantly on a diet, will eat sparingly at her evening meal, preparing grilled fish with steamed broccoli and carrots and avoiding the mashed potato she serves to her partner and children. She too may serve apple pie for dessert, but only to the other members of the family. Unfortunately, one of her children may leave the crust of his pie and she absent-mindedly pops this into her mouth. This activates the need for more of
