Food is not to blame

On March 11, the premiere of the new documentary of Elena Pogogizhskaya about food disorders will be held in the Blagosphere. It turns out that many of our fellow citizens suffer from them, and the reasons are more difficult and deeper than the desire to lose weight

The film "Thin and Fat" talks about the most common ailments - anorexia and overeating - on the example of two heroines. “Often, I generally shoot a film about someone alone, because I love human stories. But since there are many disorders of food behavior, we decided to concentrate on these polar things, completely lowering the third widespread problem - Bulimia, ”says director Elena Pogrebizhskaya.

There are no terrible pictures in the film that is customary to show about anorexia and overeating. Instead of forty -kilogram skeletons and breaking under the weight of obese bodies of beds, we see two cute girls. They say that food means food for them, and why it has become a problem, and psychotherapists comment on their stories. Gradually, it becomes clear that one does not eat all day, and the second devastates the closet after it ate everything that was in the refrigerator, not just like that. It's all about psychological injuries from childhood.

60% of obesity women suffer from clinical depression, 30% suffer from panic attacks

The director admits that she herself learned a lot in the process of creating the film. “Most of all I was struck by how strong the psychological causes of food behavior are, and how closely they are associated with children's injuries,” says Elena.

And it turns out that the scale of the problem is much larger than it is customary to think. Anorexia, for example, suffers from 1-4% of all women and 0.5% of men in Russia. And also Russian women are the most complete in Europe. At the same time, 60% of obese women suffer from clinical depression, 30% suffer from panic attacks. Many were victims of sexual violence in childhood.

It's not about food

Elena Pogrebizh photo: from personal archive

Despite the fact that many people know the words of anorexia and bulimia that these are serious mental disorders. The patients themselves are silent, knowing that at best they will hear the words: “Yes, you are already thin, where else are you” - or: “You just eat smaller and move more.” And the fact that anorexia can lead to a whole set of factors - from a genetic predisposition, characteristics of character, family relationships - to a personal catastrophe, only psychotherapists and psychiatrists know.

“Relations with parents are an important factor affecting the child, sick with anorexia. Today, epigenetic studies are actively underway, demonstrating the hereditary conditioning of anorexia. The same with overeating - studies on mice showed that the tendency to overeating is inherited. And we see, especially on the example of the United States, that a generation, fanatically struggling with excess weight and, as a result, is still fat, children who overeat are born, ”explains the psychotherapist and consultant of the film Svetlana Bronnikova.

Svetlana heads the Intueat intuitive nutrition center in Russia and operates in the clinic of eating disorders in Holland. According to her, the level of awareness of the problem in Europe is much higher than ours. At the same time, there are more and more disorders themselves, and they affect all groups of people. “Even children are sick today,” she says. - In our Dutch clinic this year, the age qualification of patients has been reduced from 12 to 10. People are increasingly realizing that the problem exists and go to specialists. Indeed, in the world of disorder of food behavior, there are even more often than depression and disturbance of an alarming spectrum. ”

It is generally accepted that such problems are only in women. But this is not so. “The Intueat center has a group on Facebook,” continues Svetlana. - We used to think that our target group is women. But two years later, the group watched the statistics and horrified. It turned out that 52% of readers are men.

Frame from the movie "Thin and Fat"

They regularly look through everything, but never write anything. It turns out a situation of double silence - - about anorexia, bulimia and compulsive overeating , nothing is said, but nothing is known about men suffering from all this. They are, as it were, ”.

There are many disorders of food behavior, and over the years they are fixed more and more. Once, in the 1950s, there was one RPP-anorexia nervous. In the 1970s, an official diagnosis was added-nervous bulimia. Starting with the American classification of DSM-5 diseases, a diagnosis of parish-like overeating has appeared. “This is very correct, because earlier people with overeating said“ close your mouth and stand on a treadmill ”. And this is a mental disorder that requires serious treatment, including antipsychotics, ”says Svetlana.

How to understand that a person has a disorder of food behavior? First of all, if food as a fact gives rise to stress

There is also a variation of paroxysmal overeating - the so -called compulsive overeating that one of the heroines of the film suffers. And there is still a pregoing - this is when a pregnant woman seeks not to gain weight and limits herself in food, as a result of which she and the child suffer. Another disorder is muscular dysmorphia, it is also Bigorexia - this is an obsessive desire to increase muscles, more often characteristic of men. You can list all types of eating disorders for a long time.

The world of Ortorks

Svetlana Bronnikova Photo: Frame from the movie "Thin and Fat"

Described back in the 1980s, but has not yet become an official diagnosis of Ortorxia, this is an obsessive desire to eat healthy, non-toxic food. People with such a disorder are afraid of GMOs, preservatives, do not eat white flour and hunt for farm food. They believe that all the meat in stores is poisoned and stuffed with growth hormones and antibiotics. They eat all lactose and gluten -free, although in fact people, for example, with lactose intolerance, are very few. “Today we live in the world of Orthorexes,” says Svetlana.

According to her, a manic enthusiasm for proper nutrition is closely connected with the same obsessive desire to play sports. “According to WHO standards, the minimum necessary for health should be given 150 minutes a week - this is 20 minutes a day. According to the clinical description of the syndrome of obsessive training, if a person plays sports for more than five hours a week - this is a symptom of disorder. But the average publication about a healthy lifestyle tells us that we should have at least three hours of cardio and three hours of strength training per week. And this goes beyond the scope of five hours. Playing sports that you like - dancing, skates, just walks with a dog - this is useful and good. And to exhaust yourself is not. One of my patients claims that if she does not undermine her after training, then she had little work. ”

But the most interesting thing is this. If clinical cases of all these disorders are rare, then almost all people on the planet have different manifestations. A classic example: a middle -aged woman believes that she has excess weight, and experiences a constant desire to lose weight. Six months sitting on a diet, and for six months eats everything in a row and lamentes about this. Then he takes up himself again and breaks down again. This does not reach clinical proportions - it is gaining or throwing off a few kilograms. But this is unhealthy behavior.

“The“ Diet-Diet ”cycle, according to which most women live, is not normal, and something needs to be done,” warns Bronnikova. - If we take a hundred people, then two women will suffer from anorexia, two - bulimia, three - paroxysmal overeating, and another man will be added to them. And the remaining 70-80% will, as we say, are non-lineical disorders of eating behavior. They will not reach that level, if you need to urgently run to the OTOR to a specialist, but this is not the norm either. ”

How to understand that a person has a disorder of food behavior? First of all, if food as a fact gives rise to stress. If a person constantly talks about food. Normally food is a way to get enough and enjoy. Deviation - when it inspires fear and causes discomfort.

If a person realized that he had problems, it is best to contact a therapist. “Of course, you can try to fight yourself, but, without owning methods, you will move blindly. You can succeed, but you can not. Today, P Sikhotherapy has accumulated sufficient experience in combating eating disorders . About 80% of the people who have discovered such a disorder recover. ”

Trying to help yourself is not easy, especially in Russia. “We are in a terrible information vacuum,” says Svetlana. - competent, affordable and correct information in Russian practically does not exist. There are either scientific research or stupid horror stories. In English, such literature is a huge number, and we do not have a single book from the series “Help yourself”. ”

Elena Pogrebizhskaya is just trying to replenish the gap. The film “Thin and Fat” is part of the cycle about the problems that a person needs to contact a psychotherapist, but he, as a rule, does not turn. The films “Panic attacks” and “Post -traumatic syndrome” have already been released. Soon Elena will begin to work on the film "Experience Loss." “Unfortunately, in our country the level of ignorance is very large. And people need information about themselves, about psychology, about things that do not lie on the surface, ”concludes Torbizhskaya.

At the end of the film, the director says that he would like to convey a simple thought to the viewer: in the case of eating disorders, “business is not about food”. After showing for the general public, the film will be posted in open access on the Internet.

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