Depression & Binge Eating

Hello everyone, welcome to the Said in Therapy Podcast. Have you ever considered going to therapy and you ended up not going? My question is why? In my humble opinion, I believe everyone can benefit from therapy. In fact, I believe everybody should go at least once in their life.

My name is Iman Tohami, and I'm a psychologist. This podcast tells you all about everyday cases with everyday people who have everyday problems and difficulties, and sometimes they carry around really deep wounds. These are their stories.

Another episode, and today's episode is going to be about depression and binge eating. So a couple of weeks ago, I started a QA and I got an email that was a bit longer, you know, the QA's that I do on Instagram.

So I got an email and it was a bit longer. And I wanted to take the time to actually record an episode about that. It was actually one of the things that prompted me to do the um eating disorder series because I think it's very important and we have to talk about this.

I don't think that we are talking about this enough, but you would be surprised to hear how many people are actually struggling with an eating disorder. So let's just start. I will read the question to you, and then I will try to um answer it the best I can.

Here we go. Hi man, I have been overeating ever since the pandemic started, and as a result, I gained so much weight. In the last few weeks, I have been eating excessively, and I wonder if this is spinch eating.

I have hardly any motivation, and food is the only thing that seems to make me feel happy. But once I'm done with food, I hate myself. Is this a thing? So, yes, it's a thing. Actually, it's a big thing.

Again, you would be surprised to hear how many people are struggling with this. You know, just to get started, I want to again establish what depression actually is. Um, if you remember, one of my first episodes, if not the very first episode, was about depression.

But I want just to explain again what depression is actually all about. You know, remember the DSM-5 that I have um talked about in the past, which is basically this big manual that helps us, you know, diagnose people and diagnose disorders.

It's like this huge, huge book that that we use. For depression, we have a few characteristics, and we have to at least have four to be characterized as a depressed person. So there is depressed mood where you actually feel very low and no motivation.

So um this is one of the first and most common signs, actually, to say to say that someone is depressed. Then you have appetite disturbances, you have sleep disturbances, you know, you either sleep too much or not at all, or very little.

Then you have psycho-motor agitation and retardation. Well, you know, you feel that you're not really in control um of your body anymore, and where you feel actually, you know, constantly agitated, and it shows in the way you move.

Um, daily fatigue or loss of energy almost daily, so that you feel tired most times, really fatigued, exhausted, mentally exhausted. Then there is this feeling, constant feeling of worthlessness and difficulty concentrating. Many people don't really know that this comes along with depression, and suicidal thoughts.

Now, let's also explain what binge eating is so we can make the connection here. Binge eating is when you eat in a short amount of time, let's say two or three hours, a larger amount of food than other people would in the same time frame and in the same circumstances.

It also comes with this huge lack of control where you feel you cannot stop eating. You have to eat and eat and eat and eat. And it seems like you have no control over yourself or your desire to eat.

So, yes, to answer the question, they are very often connected. When we are depressed, we have a hard time to connect to our bodies, which means sometimes when we are depressed, we don't feel that we are hungry, and as a result, we stop eating.

On the other hand, we can maybe so disconnected from our bodies that we constantly feel the need to eat. Now, I will say that the need or feel the need to eat is not equal to feeling hungry. This is very important.

So, you know, food is a coping mechanism. The problem is that, you know, growing up, we are often, as children, we're rewarded with food. So if we did something good, we get an ice cream, or you know, when we were naughty, we don't get dessert.

So growing up, we link emotional pain or you know, joy with food, and we are conditioned that way. For many, many people, this is the truth. So when we grow up, in order to make us feel a certain way, we eat, you know, we always celebrate when when we celebrate, it always involves food, right?

Now, this is not a bad thing if you know how to control yourself and when you know when to I'm not telling you stop enjoying food because food is actually quite amazing, but at the same time, there is a problem with food when we link it constantly to feeling okay or deprive ourselves from food, and it comes like um it comes with the feeling of punishment.

I hope I explained this a little bit to you, and I want to give you a few insights on how to learn a few skills to control this. There are skills that can help you find a way through depression and binge eating.

Just think back to the last time you binged. What was it that you were trying to run away from? What was triggering in that moment? Maybe you wanted something that you actually feel you can control, which makes a lot of sense in the state the world is in right now.

The pandemic is crazy, and you know it comes along with fear. We don't know, we cannot see the virus, we don't know what it hit, we don't know if we will get COVID or not. So at the end of the day, it sometimes translates into things we can control, and that can be as well be food.

Remember when you do this. So when you think back about the last time you binged, you have to really remember not to bash yourself or be judgmental. It really doesn't help. It is just more like being this detective that is trying to understand what's going on.

You know, sometimes we binge at night, which is actually very often the case, and that happens because we cannot sleep or we are overthinking, and then we are trying, you know, get rid of the overthinking mechanism, and then we eat just to distract ourselves.

Or sometimes we binge eat after talking to someone. You know, talking to people that trigger you can leave a very bad feeling. So, in order to deal with this feeling, we use coping mechanisms. And again, remember I told you food can be a coping mechanism.

Unfortunately, it can be one of the very destructive coping mechanisms if we no longer have any control over the things we eat or consume. Again, just try to be this detective, find out what your thoughts are trying to tell you, and also, which is also very, very important, remember thoughts are not always facts.

So when you go back and try to detect the thoughts that made you feel a certain way or made you want to run away from a certain feeling that you had, we have to put thoughts into perspective. Not everything we think is reality.

Sometimes we binge when we feel like a failure. It's actually very important to remember all of our accomplishments. I know some people will tell me I don't have any, but if you think really, really hard, you will see that's not the truth.

And then you have to check in with your body. Ask yourself every three to four hours, am I actually really hungry? And if the answer is yes, you have to understand, do I want a meal or do I want a snack?

And then act accordingly. If the answer is no, and you still feel the need of um wanting to consume food, you need to understand why you want to do that. What is the feeling that you are not trying to recognize here?

Oftentimes we are hungry, but not for food. Oftentimes we are hungry for care and attention. Also, you know, I find diet culture very, very destructive because people or companies are always trying to sell you this quick fix or you know, the supplements that you should take in order to lose weight, or um diet plans, or all these things.

And the more you invest in them and the more you fail, the worse it will feel. It's very important for us to you know reconnect to our bodies and understand what our body actually needs. This is the healthy way to build a relationship with your own body.

Losing weight, don't get me wrong, is absolutely okay. But first you need to understand what made you reach that stage. You know, enjoying food alone is not the problem. Enjoying food is absolutely great and necessary, but if you overeat, it's almost always linked to something else.

And trust me, shame spirals are the worst. If you, you know, find yourself in the spiral where you say, oh my God, look at you. You have eaten so much, you're so disgusting, you're so ugly. I don't want to give you ideas, right?

But we all know these thoughts. These thoughts are not really, really productive. If you find yourself in the spiral, it is so important to break it and understand that if you continue to judge yourself, you are not going to get better.

You know, at the end, I know I I always say that, but it is very crucial to understand that if you feel you could benefit from professional support, please go out and find it. There is always an option to find someone to help you through this.

All right, so this is uh me for today. If you have any questions, more specifically, if you like this format where I answer one question in one episode, let me know. And please send me all your questions. Maybe it's worth making an episode about.

All right. Enjoy your weekend, you guys. Hey, thank you so much for tuning in. And hopefully, you will tune in again next week. It will be another episode talking to or about clients of mine, and you can find us on social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

The handle is always @saidintherapy. Thank you so much.