Marián del Álamo (28 years old) is a general health psychologist and has written two books: Why do I eat when I'm not hungry? and My Menstrual Cycle. A Comprehensive Perspective: Psychology and Nutrition, both published by Oberon. As an eating disorder (ED) specialist, his passion is to raise awareness of the importance of our relationship with food, a crucial factor in mental health. “It’s a complex issue with so many layers and misinformation,” he says.
Questions. I think our relationship with food is sometimes measured in calories. What makes us gain and lose weight or what we like and don't like. I feel like it's very reductionist.
Answer. Eating is something we do several times a day and is essential for life. So imagine how traumatic it can be for a person to be afraid of food. We tend to trivialize or simplify, but many factors influence: our nutritional upbringing, the society in which we live, whether we have suffered sexual harassment or abuse, whether our parents were present or not… Emotional states, such as anxiety or depression can also lead to a TCA.
Q What do you think of the popular saying “We are what we eat”?
R. Hmm, I disagree. This sentence is very good if we consider eating only as a physiological process, but eating is a much more complex fact than putting something in your mouth. What happens if a person eats a balanced, healthy diet and develops orthorexia disorder?
Q What is orthorexia?
R. The obsession with eating everything healthy. You can eat healthy and have a disorder.
Q There are people who carry a shopping cart that looks like a still life, everything perfect.
R. There is now a lot more information about what we eat, a movement that advocates for real food and has raised people's awareness. That's all well and good, but every extreme is dangerous. If you're cutting out foods because you don't think they're healthy, but you have a mental health issue and don't care about it, you're not taking care of yourself holistically.
Q Do your patients have many of these cases?
R. I have more because of binge eating, but when you evaluate the cases, you find that in many of them there was initially a restriction of calorie intake or food intake. I have a patient who woke up crying one day because she had dreamed about a chocolate palm that she had forbidden herself from taking.
Q Is there a common pattern among those who come to your consultation?
R. Nine out of ten cases are women. They share low self-esteem, are very aware of what society imposes as the norm, and have established beauty ideals that are brutally accentuated by social networks. And they hide trauma, lots of trauma. With the pandemic, many TCAs that were down came back to life. Previously, in Spain, these cases were handled only with weight loss in mind and discharged after recovery.
Psychologist Marián del Álamo explains that orthorexia is the disorder of eating everything healthy. INMA FLORES
Q Does today's medicine take more things into account when assessing patients?
R. The current healthcare system is very “weight-centric” and anti-fat. It hurts to say this because there are many people who are overweight and metabolically healthy and yet are encouraged to lose weight. I have many cases of binge eating disorder where no one asked how they were doing or whether they had or are having mental health problems. Since not everyone can afford to see a psychologist, it is advisable to place more emphasis than what is visible on the tests or on the scale.
Q How can we recognize an eating disorder in the people around us?
R. It is one of the most difficult to recognize because diets to lose weight are very normal. I don't know a single woman who hasn't been on a diet at some point in her life. Their hair and skin are very damaged and they tend to be dull, with some anxiety. They are always cold and do strange things with food, they say they are not hungry or want to be alone to eat, suddenly things that they liked now feel bad to them… Many parents have a bad one Conscience because they have never seen it, but they are the ones who specialize in finding alibis. It is important that you ask for help as quickly as possible.
Q They say that nutrition in general, a topic that has been kept quiet until recently, is also very important.
R. Women are changing hormones, completely cyclical. Depending on what phase of the cycle we are in, we want to eat in one way or another. And you don't have to read a book, just listen to your needs. If your mind and body tell you to eat more a few days before your period, do it. And without judgment. For many people with ED, menstruation disappears as a warning sign of poor health and the body shuts down, which is not necessary for survival. The cycle is a very valuable sign of health.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_