Disordered Eating Documentary
Hello everyone, we're back again with a daily podcast. Today's one though, I'm going talk about Zara's documentary on Disordered eating. First of all I think it's a really really good documentary, think it's got a lot of good information in there, covers different types, has a good insight into like the realities of these types of eating disorders and stuff like that with what happens to people's lives. I think overall it's definitely a good watch. And I got some notes from it that I want to go through so they'd be weaving in and out and explain some things, bring in some research, I'm not saying what I'm going to say is the truth or bang on whatever, you know with these problems like one of the experts says on the documentary, people with eating disorders it doesn't come on its own, comes with anxiety and depression and personality disorders and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:So it's a very complicated problem and it's not something you just brush with one type of like solution. The first question I have on the document, demonises counting calories at the start and at the end. And there's a lot of talk and actually goes on when Sarah speaks to Sam about you know whose responsibility is it to the triggers. If someone triggers you like 's responsibility is this? And do we need to teach people from a young age through school to understand that it's our responsibility in how we look at events, so opinions about events, not the event itself, and have that wired in from a young age because obviously when people get too far into an eating disorder and they feel they're in the thing then things can trigger them and they're kind of out of control basically right, so they've gone down that route clinical, they need to go and get help.
Speaker 1:But before that there's a lot of work to be done on mindset stuff like whose responsibility is this? I'm triggered by something I see in social media and can I walk around assuming I'll never be triggered by anything I see? And Sam says you don't know what's going to trigger someone, it could be some word you say, it could be the way you say it and we've got no control on this and if we think we can control people's triggers, we're going to be in a state of anxiety 20 fourseven and that's not going to help. So we need strong leadership here with people to be like look, triggered content, if you're triggered by content and there's extreme triggers, that is beyond the scope of what I'm going to talk about. But if you're triggered by stuff and it makes you feel a bit bad then that goes down, can we catch these earlier on?
Speaker 1:Can we have groups in schools and discuss things like CBT and give people these tools way earlier on? Stoicism, all this stuff that helps and all this stuff, stoicism has got so much research on it on how people is I think it's in Exeter they go there. They do a study every year or something. We need to ingrain this stuff early on so we don't let social media trigger us and put us out of control. We don't let everything dictate our days.
Speaker 1:That's the first thing I'm going to say on that part and I'm not saying this will be helpful for people who have gone further down the line because I don't think it is. I think there's anxiety everywhere. Then there's the chat about the girls in university, they were in lockdown, they saw videos of being healthy and social media fitness and they felt guilty about what they were eating. And then someone said I was counting college, never did before and I'm controlled by what I eat. Now there's no education in this program about what a calorie actually is.
Speaker 1:So calorie is a unit of measurement. A calorie isn't a thing in a food like it's a unit of measurement of energy from a food. So to demonize calories is similar to demonize in litres or millilitres or miles or kilometres like you're not going to go and fill your car up and get triggered by the fact that it's two litres or one litre for 1.8. The fact is the litre is used to measure and it costs 1.8 to put a litre in, right, and it might suck that it's 1.8, it was 1.2 the other day, but the fact is that litre cost 1.8. Now is the litre the problem here?
Speaker 1:Like are we going to blame the measurement tool here or not? And I think that's where the problem lies. We're blaming the measurement tool as opposed to our view of the measurement tool. Like if you were to if you started going around saying, liters are triggering me, I can't believe it's 1.8, I don't want see it, I can't do it, I'm not gonna I don't want know how much that costs. I don't want to know how many liters I want to put the liters, I want to put energy in my car.
Speaker 1:But I don't want to see much because that's triggering me right? When we see that way, we see that it's not really helpful to actually demonise the measurement tool. We need education on what the tool actually is. Now as humans we've really evolved because we've been able to measure stuff, we've been able to measure time, measure distances, measure energy generation, all our stuff we've been able to measure which has taken our civilisation to whatever is today, like crazy stuff. So measurement tool shouldn't be blamed, our view of the measurement tool should be looked at 100% and that should have been explained in the documentary 100 There was no talk about macronutrients either, so food is just seen as calorie counting and calorie counting is bad, so calories are not bad.
Speaker 1:And I think that message has been reinforced reinforced in the documentary and I don't think that's helpful at all because we see calories and packages of food in all supermarkets. We see calories on menus in restaurants, they will offer you calorie menu, the non calorie menu. Calories are going to be spoke about just as we speak about how many miles it takes for me to get from here to Wales, or how many liters I need to fill up my car to go from here to Wales. And we are going to speak about measurement tools, right? So calories is a really tough time because people have taken it the wrong way.
Speaker 1:One calorie isn't one calorie, right, in a sense from the food perspective. One calorie is one calorie from a unit of measurement, but one calorie from protein is different to one calorie from carb because protein is got is more thermogenic, which means there's more calories used to digest digest protein than carbs. So it's not the exact equal and people say, a calorie is not a calorie. A calorie is a calorie measurement wise, like a liter is a liter, like a mile is a mile, like a kilometre is a kilometre. You know?
Speaker 1:And I think I just want to explain that, so we shouldn't demonize calorie accounting or measurement. So then she said, went on to say that she didn't watch what she ate and she was very unhappy and it was uncontrollably thin, she started tracking and got obsessed with it and then every day was tracking. Here's what I think the problem is, MyFitnessPal is similar in a sense to how TikTok is operating where MyFitnessPal are like, hey, here's all the foods in the world to track. We don't care what you do with the app. We don't care what you do with this app, but here's the information.
Speaker 1:TikTok saying, here's all the videos and use an algorithm to give you all the videos you want to see. Whatever you do with those videos or however you comment and grab, not up to us, you do what you want. So I think no education on using these apps and what they actually do and what the purpose is, is one of the biggest problems MyFitnessPal has. People download the app, they're told to track the calories, MyFitnessPal often gives very low calorie intakes, it also enforces the eating back calories from food, oh you've burned 100 calories, now have that back and eat there, and there's just no education about it, they just haven't cared about that part of the app and they haven't really wanted to solve our problem because it's a problem that's going to take them a lot of time to fix, a lot of time to educate, lot of time to do it. And that's why with our app, the first two weeks is all about the mind, it's all about why are we even using this app in the first place?
Speaker 1:What is the purpose of the app and what superpowers does it give us as a human to use in a moderate way? And what are we going to do with this information? How do we look at this information? What are the next steps? That's the vital difference between us and MyFitnessPal.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't consider us in the same category. They're a food tracker, we have a food tracker in the app but it's not the a food tracker only you know and I think this is the big problem because they're the market leader and other apps are similar, we know we're now going to throw away a very valuable measurement tool that can help us with weight management as a human race. I'm going to throw it away and it's going to be labelled bad and demonised for many years and it's going to be conned away and anyone that does this is going to be saying you're doing as bad for you and that's going to cause more anxiety. So no one's going to have a really powerful measurement tool of how much energy they consume in every day, which is a massive part of why people gain weight in the first place. So that's the danger.
Speaker 1:She then talks about why she's lost her period and again no information on why this happens, very important to actually understand this. She's saying she works out a lot and this is what you find with the typically younger girls, they work out way too much and they do cardio, cardio, cardio and they have low energy availability which causes menstrual cycle dysfunction. There was no explanation of this and I know they can't cover everything but we can't just blame the calorie counting here. The calorie counting separate from what's her actual intake, and what's her actual energy output from working out each day. So she's on too low calories consumed, right she's having too much exercise, needs explanation.
Speaker 1:Here's a bit of information about this. Higher rates of menstrual cycle dysfunctions have traditionally been found in sports with large aesthetic components or where a low body weight and thinness is an important criteria. This includes sports such as gymnastics, ballet, figure skating and many endurance sports such as running or cycling where lower body weights improve performance. Sports requiring large amounts of training show increased rates of menstrual disorder and younger athletes at a higher risk for them for reasons discussed below. More specifically primary amenorrhea is found with less than this is the full on menstrual cycle dysfunction is found with less than one percent incidence in the general population that may occur up to seven point four percent of college athletes and rates of twenty two percent in cheerleading, diving and gymnastics.
Speaker 1:Rates of secondary anaeroa in the general population is roughly two to five percent and I think a lot of people in this documentary had this, but many occur in up to sixty percent of distance runners with the rates going up as training volume goes up and body weight decreases. Oligomenorrhea is also found in up to forty percent of distance runners and sixty percent of rhythmic gymnasts, again this may be a consequence of elevated testosterone levels in some cases. While subclinical menstrual disorders only occur in five to ten percent of sedentary women, studies find that even recreationally exercising women may show them as a rate of fifty to eighty percent. Perhaps more shocking than the rate itself is that the difference between exercising and non exercising women is only two hours per week. This indicates just how sensitive women's bodies are to stress and leads into a discussion of the cause of what we just spoke about.
Speaker 1:That's shocking. That's shocking how and the training, if you're not careful, this is why I reinforce it all the time. And the amount of times I've said to people cut your training down, cut your training down, cut training down, cut it down three times a week. I say this all the time, three times a week, three times a week, maybe four, make sure you go to maintenance if you want to be training, like reinforcing this, it's important especially for younger people if they are going to count calories and they should be tracking the macros really to understand more about foods and stuff because it's an educational process, is really understanding this energy availability thing like, alright, okay, so if I am going to train, if I overdo it, that's going to have huge problems for me potentially. So I need to be very careful here and if I'm going to increase my training, I need to make sure my calories and if I want to be safe, I want be at maintenance at least.
Speaker 1:If I'm going go into a fat loss phase, really need to reduce the workouts I do. I don't want to go into a really, really, really low energy availability state which could be very problematic for me. So that's an important aspect of this documentary, maybe can cover in another one if they go into it like what you know training, nutrition, macros, you know, menstrual cycle disorders, all this is all linked in a sense, all this stuff and eating disorders, there needs to be more education on it. Think Zara's done a great job in the documentary bringing all this to light and awareness and hopefully there's more onwards but I would love to have seen an explanation there because that's going to worry people, I've lost my period. How many other people have gone same as me but why?
Speaker 1:Like some calorie counting. Counting calories isn't it? Isn't doing it. It's calories you're actually consuming and actually the the the amount of exercise you're doing. Right?
Speaker 1:That make sense? It's not the liters is the problem, it's how many liters how much petrol. I mean, didn't get to Cardiff for under the fuel. Well, you know, the liters part of measurement is a problem. I just put didn't put enough actual fuel in and I would have been able to measure that properly if I did measure with liters.
Speaker 1:Fifteen thousand people a month falling in with eating disorders, a disordered eating. Then the other girl on I did an hour in the gym, way too much cardio and she said she was doing three times a week but then she said sometimes every day and I think you know the reality is one person even admitted to lying all the time because it's embarrassing to her, or shameful, but she was definitely doing an hour a day of cardio no doubt. Her eating, Her energy availability must have been low, terribly low which would have caused a lot of problems. Right? Even if you eat more there that's too much, too much.
Speaker 1:So you know what else could she do? She was asking well, the first thing is three times a week strength train, no cardio to start with, go to maintenance. And I know this is not in the scope of the documentary, if you want an actual plan for I think that's important. And then comparing, so her actions always came from a comparison where she was comparing on social media and comparing what her action steps, so she was only taking action from comparison and that's a very very troubling place to be, wasting time comparing. We know there's no happiness in comparison because it creates a duality, creates one side is me, one side is not me and I'm not the other side and then it's a state of terror, a state of fear and a state of anxiety that replaces that void right and it's a terrible place to be in.
Speaker 1:Action from that place can never be action that's going to be the right action for you, always going be the wrong action. You know, you're saying what sells in the documentary, well we know like marketers have known sex sells, baldy image sells, this is never gonna stop. Capitalism for as long as it's out there, the ads for perfume companies are always gonna use women and men who are like you know seducing all that stuff and it's gonna that is just widespread. Those of now the things are gonna change. So if those things are triggering for people, you need look at like, look at the why.
Speaker 1:Let's look at the root of it. So the ones that go recently diagnosed eating disorders, found a few interesting points there as well. A lot of them are saying they were by themselves. And then Zara asked when do you know when you're going into a disordered eating episode? Thinking about food and panicking and then embarrassed about it.
Speaker 1:So thinking about food, the real question here is are we ever going to stop thinking about food every day? We're going to think about food when we eat food but do we need to think about food all day or do we pick up like we we don't think about brushing our teeth all day, but when it's time to brush our teeth, we think about it, we brush our teeth well, put it down and go, job done, leave it there. Right? So we can pick things up and put them back down. Eating is a very emotional thing, it's not as easy as I'm not going to sit to you and go, it's just as easy as brushing your teeth twice a day you eat.
Speaker 1:But we need to start ensuring the meals we eat are satisfying, we need to eat slower, excluding me, all of us need to eat slower, we need to eat with moderation, need to eat with more mindfulness, need not eat watching TV, we need to let our body have a chance to digest it, need to eat meals that have got decent amount of macros, they fill us out, the protein, carbs and fat mix is important. So this doesn't make us feel in a hunger state. We then need to understand the difference between craving and hunger because when we understand craving, we know we're gonna get cravings even when we're not hungry. So when we think about food and it's a craving, we're not gonna panic because we know this is just a craving, I'm trying to escape a moment now because I'm bored or stressed or I'm craving some pleasure because I feel emotional. I'm getting embarrassed about thinking about food all the time but really food is our outlet for pleasure and our outlet away from stress so it's always going be thought about as long as we don't understand the whole route from craving to eating.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? We need to understand the root of these things to really change them. And asking does social media have an impact and if someone's saying diet cultures, common body images shoved on your throat, Tik tock's the main thing here, they all say tick tock tick tock and it's got the algorithm to bombard you with stuff. And one of them said a very important point actually, the bombardment of foods that are bad, every tick tock of a food this is bad, this is bad, it's going to hurt you, this chemical, la la la la. I think that is one of the real big problems where labelling foods good and bad is a huge problem but scaring people with like little many chemicals in here, everything's a chemical.
Speaker 1:Let's have moderation and we don't have to worry so much. When it comes to good and bad foods there needs to be educational. Like some foods are more dense than others in calories, that's really it and some have got less nutrients than others and that's really it and we need to be in a place where we decide we want to eat more nutrient dense because we know it's better for us to have more nutrients not because we think we're going to lose weight from doing it. So how do we get to that place? It takes time, it takes effort, takes understanding.
Speaker 1:I think it's a big part of this education around food, this has got to start earlier, it's got to go earlier, it can't be done later on. We know that women who have kids and they talk about dieting and losing weight in the slimming clubs and stuff like that, we know that if they have a little girl and she's five years old by the time she's eight she wants to lose weight. So we know this starts ingrained into little girls at eight, maybe even younger. So start there, where do we start and how, this is a very complicated question, I don't have answers to when we start, how do we do it from that point but we have to look at secondary school big time and university. But the thing is engagement and again there's some points come up in my notes here and you know how can you, you know if Zara stops posting things that trigger people, is that going to solve a problem?
Speaker 1:Actually not, I mean it might help the people who follow her but they also follow 100 other people. So we really need to take personal responsibility. You have the power alone to look at your triggers and be able to rewire them or view them in a different way. I think this is one of the most vital parts that popped out at me all the time is personal responsibility. Where's the leadership, personal responsibility in our lives?
Speaker 1:It's gone. It's replaced with non leadership and everything that triggers you, we console people, oh my god that's so bad, and we're what's the word, empathy is important but it's maybe gone too far where it's like if anything triggers you it's really bad what that person said. And I think back in the day maybe it was more so much, why do you remember what he said? Why do worry about what they said? Well I know that doesn't really help so much but it's your veil motor said, I can take up badly.
Speaker 1:And then you go, did you take that badly? And then everyone goes, no I didn't, you did, I did a bit. Okay, so we've got different various opinions on what's the thing that said, we all hear the same thing, but some of us take in a different way. So it's the view of the things and it's our responsibility to be able to take a moment to really respond and that skill is vital for people to learn. Think so and that's the power we have.
Speaker 1:We can't control the world, it's abundant. You're going to see advertisements, people are going to say stuff, you're gonna see comments on social media if you go on air, you're have emails, you're gonna see people in the streets, in clubs, in bars, like this you can't control all the triggers out there. You can only control your response to the triggers, that's it. That's quite nice to know because they say no work power. A few more points, bad to promote healthy diet, nope.
Speaker 1:So that's good, that's good. Sam mentioned that I think it's not bad to promote a healthy diet at all. But you don't need to sell a bit everything online, damn right. So this other one is, and some of the stories quite sad, really did get emotional. So one of them is, I can't remember her name sorry, but she's restricting, binging and purging.
Speaker 1:Nearly each time she's on her own, she's binging. So she alone, potentially lonely, wanting to escape it. In escaping that she was going for food because it's a pleasurable thing and she kept feeling sad alone, so wanted to escape the sadness which would cause more binge eating because the binge eating was giving her some momentary pleasure, but then she's gone sick after and then she was pausing she said after and going what hell, what the hell. And I reckon it must have been happening so fast in the moment that she didn't really feel in control at all and she said she had no respect for herself. So and she was always lying and escaping what really is the truth of the matter.
Speaker 1:And I think that's important. We need we need the support to be able to stand up to what the truth is and stuff and we need people to tell us what the truth is and we need to listen to objective views that we trust. And that's why I think a community is so important. Like a company, the way we bring an expert that can tell you and be straight up with you is important. And I think that's another theme of this documentary was how the community and the support or like having the right person there to help you is vital.
Speaker 1:So a few more before I finish and I this has gone on longer. One thing I was confused about with one person is they giving her a meal plan for now until she got mental health help and I just don't know how I know they've obviously given her a meal plan to eat more or eat like a healthier diet but like doesn't that just reinforce like a rigid eating view? Like where's I know they can't give I know it's time Like I know restricted and financially restricted and stuff but I'd like to have learned more about why there was a meal plan given, to people who were struggling and what evidence that got to improve situation. Eighty five percent of people with eating disorders are not underweight, mental health issues come along with them, that's big numbers, mood, anxiety, personality, guilt and shame. She was explaining that this is one of the leading experts I think saying the genes and personality, you bomb with it, you react to stuff complex, but again I don't understand why meal plan is the answer to that for now.
Speaker 1:That means spoofing is just ridiculous like why someone would go on our website together. I know it's easier said than done when you're in the low and got no respect for yourself but what a horrible website needs to be taken down. Sixty percent of eating disorders TikTok of eating disorders, people with eating disorders said TikTok reduced self esteem. And this story I'll finish in this one I can go lost time. Lauren, the one who had anorexia, oh my god, that story I felt like when a friend read that letter out to her it was just so moving and I think that's such a nice patiss documentary to show like your friends care for you and sometimes you don't want to see the truth and she was saying that negative voice in your head which is diet culture which is TikTok which is all that stuff is telling you nonsense, it's just a reaction to the memories you have from watching those videos.
Speaker 1:You know when it turned from an obsessiveness, turned the hobby into obsession, she had to do two workouts a day, steps, tracking and all that stuff so she's in denial, and I just think her friend being there for her is magic. And not everyone has that. Right? So that's the that's really the thing is, like and she was able to go to a clinic and get help, they looked like she was in a in a rather wealthy house. Don't want make too many assumptions but you know I suppose the help she went to probably wasn't free, but how many people don't have access to funds to do it or have a best friend to like write you a letter and a BFU?
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of work that needs to be done to support you and I think obviously they're trying, there's charities and stuff set up but I don't know the answer to it really. I think it's an important part of this problem, this kind of loneliness online on your own in your own head all the time. It's not good for people who are younger. So the young girl segment I think was the last bit on there. They said that influencers with their with their eating and exercise regimes wasn't like too good for them, attached to a fault or in their mind.
Speaker 1:Before and afters with the before not looking too bad. And they're saying that seeing Zara serving and measurement stuck in their heads, But they wanted to see if show her full whole whole life balance. I think that's a big part of it. Praise normal. So I totally like we want people to share their lives.
Speaker 1:You know, you're doing macros, you're training, you know, people are changing jobs, starting businesses, moving different parts of the country, going travelling, meeting new friends. There's a lot more to do. If people join turtle just for fat loss and only got off from turtle, they'd be disappointed in that. I think we're a lot more than I'm trying to be a lot more than I would never even bother to start this company if it's just going to be some way to cause problems for people, okay, we've lost weight so great. Like, I'd hate it that we'd help people lose weight and make them worse.
Speaker 1:Turtle is really about having a better life. And we start off with people who are trying to lose weight. Because there's a problem a lot of people have, there's a system out there we got that works, there's the mindset education we think is the right one. And I think it is the way forward but they bang on. We need the full picture.
Speaker 1:We need the full picture. People like, what's you know, I remember one person saying before, like, what's this philosophy? What's this, like, chat about Buddhism, what's this chat about mindset got to do with fat loss? It's like it's got everything to do with it. Everything to do with it.
Speaker 1:This whole right inside I say hool weird so now I'm just conscious about it. Hool, this whole thing, it's got everything to do with it. And they say the word holistic or whatever but it's about life, everything, it all ties in, it's just how it is. How we tie it all in is a big question, we're trying to do our best in total to do it but I'm not saying we got to bang on but we're working towards that model and I think that is the model that we need to go with. Then it was Sandy who was the top expert or something, I'll finish this I've said a few times now, she said the videos of Zara saying how structured she is and stuff like that is probably a problem, you know, successful money structured like blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:Visual causes anxiety which triggers an action. Social media doesn't cause eating disorders but it might make things worse the same. She says about balance, again, balance is coming up here, moderation. Zara explains that she had the support, the protective factors really, that she had a nice family to support her from and not be isolated. So being isolated on social media must turbocharge isolation because there's nothing worse than being actually alone in the real world, going online being alone there and then kind of only getting attention when know, arguing with someone on social media, posting mean stuff or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:And then one person said, you know, things come in waves, improvements come in waves. And it was so nice to see Lauren at the end where her face had definitely filled out a bit. Looked like she was in a much healthier place. And she said she just wants to live her life. And that's the main thing guys.
Speaker 1:We don't track with turtle. We're not tracking our calories. We're not doing we're not tracking our macros. Learn whether it's just to be trapped by this. We're doing it so we can control.
Speaker 1:If we need to lose weight for health purposes, great. If you want to get stronger, we want to see how different macros impact us energy wise, great. We're not slaves to macros, we're not slaves to calories, we are the ones in control. Right? And that's what turtles about.
Speaker 1:I don't want you or any of you to think that you've got a calorie counting is bad. I think that the end of thought, they've missed the point about at the end of the documentary saying, you know, again, calorie count, they're not going to post the calories. We're we're putting the wrong thing in jail here. You know? The measurement isn't the problem.
Speaker 1:We need to educate around the measurement. Come on. And we need to stop, demonizing things, good and bad. Things have got their uses. Things have got their uses.
Speaker 1:And we don't need to track calories forever. But if you wanna get control of your eating and seeing where you have been eaten, you would track and you track your macros and you find out. And you take action steps after that, positive ones. You never don't hate yourself, don't wanna say you're worthless, none of that stuff. This is just an educational, it's like experiment like a scientist would.
Speaker 1:We are looking at data like a scientist. We make take action steps from objective, looking at data. But that's it for today. I wanna finish before this thirty minute mark, and, speak to you all soon.
