Why People with Eating Disorders are Experts on Nutrition

A common misconception about people with eating disorders is that they don't understand basic nutrition.  This confusion leads not only to misunderstandings but to mistreatment and even condescension to people with these illnesses. 

The crux of an eating disorder is the inability to eat food through the day and to allow one's body to digest food regularly. Feeding oneself is an automatic activity for everyone else, as basic as taking a shower or going to sleep, but that mechanism is broken for someone with an eating disorder. 

When people who eat without difficulty try to understand what has gone awry in an eating disorder, it's very difficult to wrap their mind around the basic concept of the illness. Accordingly, they assume that the problem lies in concerns they themselves struggle with, such as the health benefit of food choices or portion sizes of meals.

It's more apparent to people in general that education about nutrition might solve the problem rather than realize the issue is something much more profound. 

The reality is that people who struggle with eating disorders actually know more than almost everyone else about nutrition. In fact, nutritionists who specialize in treating people with eating disorders know that education is not their primary role in treatment. Their goal is to help someone in recovery relearn how to eat meals and snacks throughout the day while avoiding the pitfalls of eating disorder behavior patterns. 

People with eating disorders, desperate to find a path out of their illness, often obsessively research nutrition. Many of them end up studying nutrition and become excellent clinicians because of their depth of knowledge. Their hope is that a vast amount of knowledge might counteract the eating disorder enough to help speed up recovery. 

Sadly, this information may be useful but does not contribute much to recovery from an eating disorder. 

The rules and behaviors of an eating disorder don't follow logic or reason. It will never be reasonable to starve oneself through the day, eat an enormous amount of food at once, regularly purge one's food or overdose on laxatives to lose weight. The driving force for these behaviors is the illogical but powerful thought pattern of the illness.

Combatting the thoughts of an eating disorder with reason and education will never work. 

I have written many times that compassion, kindness and understanding are the centerpieces of treatment for an eating disorder and for the support one needs from family and friends. This is a far cry from nutrition education, and for good reason. 

People with eating disorders suffer from a punitive, strong internal thought process that makes them feel horrible about themselves. The origin of these thoughts is different for each individual, but once the person is trapped in a cycle of starvation and illness, the thoughts intensify and dominate their lives. 

It's much more logical to combat a punishing thought process with kindness and compassion rather than with nutrition facts. After one understands the facts of these illnesses, the best way to help becomes much more clear.

Recovery is not a matter education about nutrition. It's a combination of learning new ways to manage food in one's life in an environment of kindness and compassion.