Understanding Your Eating: Overcoming Disordered Eating from Anorexia to Obesity

266 Pages·2011·1.92 MB·English

by  Julia Buckroyd

Are you eating more than you should? Trapped
in a constant cycle of dieting? Perpetually
anxious about your weight, shape and size?
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“This valuable book makes sense of how food and eating
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“Highly recommended for anyone who is interested in U
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Prof John McLeod - Professor of Counselling at the A
University of Abertay Dundee T
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your control. Author Julia Buckroyd uses the term disordered eating rather
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Understanding Your Eating will help you become more aware of your

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reasons behind your challenges, so that you can find other ways of
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JULIA BUCKROYD fi rst trained and practised as an historian of
17th century Scotland at the universities of St Andrews, McMaster,
Ontario, Cambridge and Oxford. In her mid-thirties she retrained fi rst
as a counsellor at Birkbeck College, University of London, and then as
a psychotherapist with the Guild of Psychotherapists. This training was
in the fi eld of psychoanalytic counselling and psychotherapy, but she
has since read widely in other counselling traditions and would now
describe herself as an integrative or pluralist therapist. She values the huge
development of knowledge and understanding which has exploded across
the psychotherapeutic world with the development of attachment theory,
the growth of neuroscience, the advances made by body therapies, the
vastly increased sophistication of approaches to trauma and the advances
made by cognitive therapies. Her work in the fi eld of disordered eating
attempts to make use of all these infl uences.
Her fi rst job as a counsellor, 1984–1989, was as Student Counsellor
at London Contemporary Dance School (LCDS). It was there that she
fi rst became interested in disordered eating. She then worked full time in
private practice, working mostly with people with disordered eating, from
1990 until 1994.
From 1994–2008 Julia Buckroyd was employed at the University of
Hertfordshire (UH) where from 1999 she increasingly undertook research
in the fi elds of eating disorders and obesity. In 2002 she was made Professor
of Counselling. In this role she established the Obesity and Eating
Disorders Research Centre at UH. Since 2008, as Emeritus Professor of
Counselling, she has continued to develop these ideas and lectures and
conducts workshops widely throughout the UK.
Julia Buckroyd has written two programmes (with manuals) which
incorporate her understanding of disordered eating. The fi rst, Weight
Management for Seriously Obese People, has been developed for use in
the NHS for patients with a BMI of 35 or more. Further details can be
obtained from the author. The second is a programme for the general
public called Understanding Your Eating which offers courses to those
troubled by their eating behaviour. More can be read about this programme
in the resources chapter of this book and on the website http://www.
understandingyoureating.co.uk.

Understanding Your Eating
How to eat and not worry about it
Julia Buckroyd
Open University Press
Open University Press
McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill House
Shoppenhangers Road
Maidenhead
Berkshire
England
SL6 2QL
email: [email protected]
world wide web: www.openup.co.uk
and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10121-2289, USA
First published in Great Britain in 1989 by Macdonald Optima.
Revised edition published in 1994 by Optima.
Second edition revised published in 1996 by Vermilion, an imprint of Edbury
Press.
This edition published 2011
Copyright © Julia Buckroyd 1989, 1994, 1996, 2011
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes
of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency
Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be
obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of Saffron House, 6–10
Kirby Street, London, EC1N 8TS.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-0-335-24197-2
ISBN-10: 0-335-24197-2
eISBN: 978-0-335-24198-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data applied for
Typeset by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in the UK at Bell & Bain Ltd., Glasgow
Fictitious names of companies, products, people, characters and/or data that
may be used herein (in case studies or in examples) are not intended to
represent any real individual, company, product or event.
Praise for this book
“Symptoms of disordered eating are fantastically common. Which
one of us doesn’t have a worry about weight or shape, or try to
diet at some stage or another? Even if one’s symptoms don’t add
up to a formal eating disorder they can still cause a lot of misery,
worry and diffi culty maintaining a steady, healthy weight. This
valuable book offers meaning and makes sense of how food and
eating may be misused and become entangled with emotions as a
way of dealing with them. The book offers up to date, specialist
advice based on years of clinical practice, coupled with an outline
of the research in the fi eld. The subject is enlivened for the reader
by inviting them to engage in self-refl ective exercises- ‘light bulb’
moments- and identify with their own issues. Julia Buckroyd
brings all this together in a highly readable and digestible book.
I will recommend it to all of my clients and to many people outside
my clinic.”
—Dr Helena Fox - Clinical psychiatrist for Channel 4’s
Supersize Vs Superskinny and for the eating disorders
unit at Capio Nightingale Hospital
“To understand your eating you fi rst have to understand yourself.
This easily-read book helps you to step back and comfortably
discover who you are and what might infl uence your eating
habits. For an individual with problems eating, or for the health
professional who needs to understand more, this book can open the
window and shed a very bright light.”
—Dr Ian Campbell - Founder of the National Obesity
Forum and medical consultant on ITV’s
The Biggest Loser and Fat Chance
vi Praise for this book
“I really enjoyed this book. It certainly mirrors my approach to
help people understand where their eating diffi culties have come
from. I think it will be a really valuable resource for those trying
to improve their relationship with food. It offers insight in a very
straightforward and readable way. I can certainly see myself
recommending it to my clients.”
—Ursula Philpot, on-screen dietician for Channel 4’s
Supersize Vs Superskinny and senior lecturer
at Leeds Metropolitan University
“The question of how to develop a healthy relationship with
food and eating is a major challenge for many individuals. This
book is highly recommended for anyone who is interested in the
meaning of food and eating, in learning why diets do not work,
and in understanding what is required to move on from destructive
patterns of eating. Julia Buckroyd writes in an accessible, friendly
style, with many fascinating case examples from her own practice.
It is essential reading for people who struggle with their use of food,
for those who share their lives, and for practitioners who have
professional involvement with this topic.”
—Professor John McLeod, Professor of Counselling
at the University of Abertay Dundee
Contents
About the Author i
Acknowledgements xiii
Preface xv
Part I
Introduction 3
1 Disordered Eating and the Uses of Food 13
The Problem with Food 13
The Emotional Use of Food 15
Using Food to Manage our Lives 18
How We Learn to Deal with Life 23
Caregivers Who Don’t Do It Very Well 27
The Consequences of a History of Poor Attachment 31
And So … 42
2 Thinking About Food 45
Early Experiences of Food 46
Food as Part of an Early Power Struggle 49
Women and Food – the Dilemma 52
The Role of Food in the Family 53
Current Patterns of Eating 61
Part II
3 Disordered Eating as a Response to Crisis 67
Fiona’s Story 69
Time to Mourn 70
vii
viii Contents
Denise’s Story 72
Food and Relationships 73
Iris’s Story 73
Responding to Unexpected Trauma 77
Eating Your Worries Away 78
4 On Being a Woman 81
Morag’s Story 81
Thin is Beautiful? 86
Fat as a Message 88
Valerie’s Story 90
Wendy’s Story 91
Mrs Brown 92
5 The Diffi culties of Growing Up 97
Your Father’s Daughter 100
Jane’s Story 102
Jade’s Story 106
Daisy’s Story 109
6 At Least I’ll Control What I Put in My Mouth 115
Felicity’s Story 115
Elisabeth’s Story 120
The Silent Signals 123
7 Mothers and Daughters 129
Monica’s Story 130
Caroline’s Story 132
Competition between Mothers and Daughters 134
The Legacy of Anger 138
The Need to Separate 139
8 Eating Your Heart Out 143
A Signal for Change 146
Angela’s Story 148
9 Eating Disorders as a Response to Sexual Abuse 159
Remembering but not Feeling 159
Carla’s Story 160
Contents ix
Remembering and not Remembering 161
Philippa’s Story 161
Forgetting 163
Beverley’s Story 163
Sexual Relationships and Intimacy with Men 165
Trust and Control 168
Self-knowledge and Self-esteem 170
10 Me and My Body 177
Body Image 179
Self-concept 183
Wordless Messenger 189
11 Men and Disordered Eating 193
Eddie’s Story 194
Male Body Image 197
James’s Story 199
Matt’s Story 201
Steve’s Story 203
Part III
12 Resources 209
Finding Professional Help 209
Guidelines for the Non-professional Helper 211
Diagnosis of Eating Disorders 214
Treatment of Disordered Eating 214
Understanding Your Eating: Courses
for Emotional Eaters 219
Further Reading 222
Notes 227
Index 239