The spring of my senior year in high school was one of the most exciting and happiest times in my life. I was hanging out with friends every day, had just met a new girl, and was big into self-improvement. Part of this self-improvement involved eating a super clean diet, going to the gym daily, and tracking calories on my fitness pal. My friends and I decided that it would be a good idea to be ripped for senior trip, so we all decided to all go on a cut.

Did we need to lose weight? Definitely not. We were all in very good shape from sports, but the way we saw it, getting a little leaner couldn’t hurt.

First Sign of a Problem

By the time senior trip came around a few months later most of us had given up on dieting, but a few of us, I included, had stuck it out and we were pretty damn lean. I remember a friend telling me one day about how he randomly started having super intense cravings for peanuts, and I remember me laughing because I’d been having the exact same experience. We probably should have recognized that this was a sign that this was not the best idea, especially at only 18, but according to the internet, these cravings were a good thing and meant we were finally getting closer to our goal.

First Binge of My Life

Once we got to Panama, my friends began eating regular, but I decided to stretch out the dieting a little longer because I was going on a second beach trip right after. Unfortunately, the intense hunger that accompanies a very low body fat was more than I could handle while drinking and towards the end of the week I broke and binged for the first time in my life. It was at this moment I had a choice:

  1. Start eating normal again even though I will gain a few pounds.
  2. Go back to restricting to make up for my first binge.

I chose the second option, and while I didn’t know it at the time, that was the decision that started my eating disorder.

Society considers perseverance a virtue and that’s exactly what I was thinking when I chose option 2. In almost every aspect of life being determined is a good thing, but not when you are fighting with your animal brain.

Still Determined

Oddly enough, I was still super happy and motivated the rest of that summer because, despite that fact that I was on a constant cycle of binging and dieting, I was certain that there must be some diet out there that would allow me to stay ripped and have my sanity at the same time… I just had to find it.

Trapped For Five Years

It wasn’t until a few months later, after I tried everything, that I realized that I couldn’t stop; I was stuck in a binge & purge cycle and felt completely helpless. I took me five years to finally stop my disordered eating and recover my metabolism. Five whole years of my life and sadly, many people are trapped much longer. I just don’t want anybody to waste as much time as me searching for answers when the solution was right there all along.

Takeaway

I mention this story because there is a common myth that eating disorders always begin during a depressing and stressful time in one’s life and have some deep emotional cause. The truth is that many eating disorders begin with the goal of improving health, looking better, or accomplishing some physical feat. My friends and I didn’t get super lean due to deep emotional issues, but rather because we thought it would be a cool thing to do. It is often the actual eating disorder that causes depression and anxiety, not the other way around. 

Emotional Eating?

In a way, the cravings that many experience with an eating disorder are “emotional”, but only in the sense that they come from your animal brain. These cravings may seem like they are some emotional disorder, but that is exactly what your brain should be doing given the perceived threat of starvation.

Animal Brain Vs Human Brain

The eating disorder cycle basically becomes a fight between your rational brain that wants to stay thin and your animal brain that wants you to stay alive. When you are not in caloric restriction, your rational brain can easily overpower the signal from your animal brain, but after weeks of dieting, the signal from your animal brain is so strong that there isn’t much chance that you can control it. In fact, those who end up with an eating disorder are often those that were able to fight off the animal brain the longest. The problem is that by the time that your animal brain finally does take control, the signal is almost uncontrollable.

Imagine This Like a Dam

You can think of this as a damn. If a dam were to break while holding back only a small amount of water, then the force of the water wouldn’t be so bad and would quickly subside. On the other hand, if the dam was holding back a large amount of water while it broke, then the force of the water would be extremely powerful. In this analogy, the damn is your rational brain or willpower and the water is the animal brain or your survival instinct. This might not be a perfect analogy, but it should illustrate the point.

Why It’s Important to Look at Both the Psychological and Emotional Aspects

Looking into emotional problems related to your eating disorders is great, but it is also important to consider the physiological cause of your eating disorder as well. One problem that can delay or prevent recovery is the fact that many therapist and psychologist are often looking at the disorder from solely an emotional perspective. You might go into your first therapy session with the correct assumption that your disorder is most likely your brains reaction to dieting, only to leave thinking that it was caused by a traumatic childhood that you never knew you had. You may start to believe that if you could only figure your troubled past out then you will no longer have an eating disorder. This is problematic because if emotions are not the actual cause of your disorder eating, then you could spend years trying to fix something that isn’t even the main problem. If you have really been through a traumatic event, then it is probably a good idea to deal with those emotions, but make sure that your recovery physically while you’re at it. I would even go as far as to say:

Recovering physically can lead to mental recovery, but just recovery mentally will not lead to physical recovery.

No amount of self-love or positive thinking will fix your food cravings, low libido, and other symptoms if you are still restricting calories. Many find that these symptoms disappear once they reach their setpoint by eating to satiety. Wouldn’t these emotional cravings remain no matter the body weight if they were caused by emotional trauma?

Signs that you’re Eating disorder has a Physiological cause.

  • Your disordered eating started at a time when you were relatively happy, rather than some dark period in your life.
  • You have hunger signals that align with what your body should be signaling given the situation:
    • Intense hunger when below your setpoint (e.g. during severe caloric restriction.)
    • Normal hunger when you are at your setpoint and loss of hunger when you are above your setpoint (e.g. After recovering or while bulking as many guys do.)
  • You don’t feel very depressed while in a binge-purge cycle because you are too focused on food, but between these cycles, you become depressed when you see the aftermath of your disorder. (This is your human brain taking back control and seeing the results of the animal brain. For instance, lost friendships, experiences etc.) While this might appear to be disordered emotions, this is actually a logical reaction to the situation; it makes complete sense to be sad about lost friendships and missed experiences. These emotions will eventually subside and you will begin to make up for lost time.

Signs that you’re Eating disorder has an emotional cause.

  • Your eating disorder began during a stressful or sad time in your life.
  • It began without you ever decided to go a diet. (e.g. binge eating despite never dieting before)
  • It feels like the emotions come first and the disordered eating follows.
  • Your hunger signals don’t align with what makes sense for your body to be signaling.
    • You have zero appetite despite being below your setpoint (after a period severe caloric restriction) 
    • Extreme hunger when you are above your setpoint.

In these last two hunger scenarios, your satiety cues are reversed and therefore could indicate that there is an emotional cause to your disordered eating.

Takeaway

While emotions might not always be the initial cause of disordered eating, it’s definitely true that they can lead to a vicious cycle in which the depression and anxiety caused by the eating disorder in-turn make you more likely to continue your disordered eating. I am not trying to dissuade you from getting therapy and working through your emotions, I just want you to be aware that working on your emotional problems alone is often not enough.