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| Polly Mertens |
Food, and more particularly the relationship that we have with food, is at the root of an eating disorder. It therefore naturally follows that nutritional therapy
can and should form a part of bulimia treatments, since the aim of the treatment is to correct compulsive eating.
Bulimia, if not treated, could cause serious nutritional deficiencies due to the repeated binging and purging. This eating disorder can cause gastric reflux, dental erosion, ulcers, digestive problems, enlarged neck glands, oral trauma, irregular periods, infertility and a host of other health problems. One of the aims of nutritional bulimia treatments is to reverse, or at least limit, this damage.
Nutritional therapy for bulimia can help in a number of ways:
• Spacing out meals, portion control, structured meal plans and other techniques brings the diet back into balance and creates healthy eating patterns.
• Learning how much and in what proportion our body needs fats, carbs and proteins and why it is important to eat a variety of foods allows for a balanced chemical baseline upon which to begin the emotional recovery. Understanding the basics of nutrition supports a healthy emotional and physical recovery process.
• Nutritionists explain what results if the body is deficient in proteins, carbs, fats or other nutrients and how the metabolism is affected by compulsive eating and nutrition deficiencies.
• Nutritional bulimia treatments try to sort out misconceptions that bulimics may have about food, weight gain and weight loss, and distorted body image that may contribute to their addictive behaviors.
• Often social situations and stresses cause overeating. This therapy helps work through those issues to identify new coping means for stressful situations so comfort feeding doesn't continue.
• It will help identify the triggers that cause the binging and purging episodes.
• If it is found there are any vitamin deficiencies caused by bulimic eating habits, the nutritionist will prescribe any necessary supplements.
The goal of nutritional bulimia treatments is to assess and record a person's typical food intake, the historical fluctuations in weight, patterns of disordered eating, and when and how much they are exercising. Also very important is to address any effects or physical symptoms showing up in the body, nutritional deficiencies (if any) and the perspective of body image the individual has. The lessons learned in nutritional therapy will not only serve the persona immediately after starting their recovery, but will carry them through the rest of their life.
As you may know, compulsive overeating is a way to feed our emotional hunger - emotional as opposed to physical hunger. Successful bulimia treatments will reorient the very relationship bulimics have with food, and teach them how not to spend as much time thinking and obsessing about food all the time.
Polly Mertens struggled with bulimia for 20 years and now shares
with other bulimics how to recover from this painful eating disorder.
Reach out to her and read amazing stories about bulimia recovery from Help with Bulimia.
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