“You have a breakdown and start eating everything.” A personal story about struggling with food addiction

Three-time world champion and eight-time Russian champion in ballroom dancing Marina Katashinskaya, who performs in a pair with her brother Artemy Katashinsky, shared her story of struggling with an eating disorder.

Three-time world champion and eight-time Russian champion in ballroom dancing

Ideal shapes, proper nutrition, healthy lifestyle – seemingly important and well-intentioned goals – lead people to a situation where they push themselves into rigid limits and cannot get out of the vicious circle of restrictions. This was the problem I faced two years ago.

How did I encounter RPP?

The thoughts that I needed even more perfect shape, the right food, even more sports and activity drove me to RPP. The right attitudes and habits had the opposite side: obsessive, excessive workload, crazy calorie deficit. The body wasn’t ready for that kind of stress.

Why did I choose to share this?

I’m sure that in my story many will recognize themselves and realize that this is not something to be ashamed of and think that it will go away on its own. Everyone who has experienced RPP experiences the urge to purge after eating a lot, and it is bound to happen when you restrict yourself and break down at some point.

RPP sufferers use laxatives or resort to vomiting – this is called bulimia. If you’re struggling with this, it doesn’t mean you’re gutless and can’t cope with not having control over food portion sizes and contents. You should clearly understand that it is a mental disorder and coping with it can be managed under the supervision of professionals and people working in the field related to RPP.

How did it happen for me?

At some point I increased the amount of training, I started working out twice or even three times more. It was cardio, strength training, stretching. While spending more calories, I reduced the calorie intake of food.

At the same time, I was very strict about making sure that I had only the right foods in my basket, and I had to get rid of the wrong ones, as I thought at the time.

How did my body react?

It sensed the danger and activated its “survival” function. Finding itself in a stressful situation, when there are not the right amount of calories, the body turns on mechanisms that are not related to the will of the person. It breaks down and starts eating everything.

It is a vicious circle: control – overeating – guilt and hard working off food – training for a pie eaten, laxatives to clean up “wrong food” or gagging.

Getting out of RPP is not easy – some take two or three years, some take decades, and some live with it their whole lives. The first step to recovery is to recognize the fact that it’s a problem. I realized I needed help when all my thoughts were just about getting up and making myself a proper breakfast.

During my morning meal, all I could think about was how many calories were in the food and how I would need to work them off, even if it was a boiled egg and cucumber or a chicken breast – my craziness level reached total proportions. I started to notice that I wasn’t attending events where I could snap: birthdays, corporate events, holidays.

Food overrode my social life, became a trigger, everything that was important faded into the background.

In the first place was a strict control of nutrition to achieve my invented ideal forms, for which I will be loved and appreciated more.

There was no doubt about it – this topic is absolutely unhealthy, I can’t live in constant fear of whether or not I’ll gain a pound or two, whether or not my shape will change. I want to live my life, not be in constant hell, controlling what I eat, in what quantity and quality.

At first I had a session with a psychologist and a nutritionist, I went to dozens of doctors and took tests. I was sure that I had some kind of hormonal failure, although in moments of overeating I consumed more than five to seven thousand calories at a time. Can you imagine the strain on the body and the guilt for an RPP sufferer?

In addition, comments from the outside world like, “Get a grip” or “Can’t you give up that piece of bun?” were very damaging. These words to an RPP-ish person shut them down even more. I am convinced that such people need the help of a psychologist.

Having gone all the way, having consulted with many specialists who didn’t even understand what I was talking about, I decided that I had to figure it all out myself.

The result of my study of the problem, dozens of hours of consultations with nutritionists and psychologists became important information, worked out attitudes that worked for me in a stressful moment and made themselves known, developing into RPP, and I found tools that helped me cope with this problem.

It is very unfortunate that many people spend decades to get out of this state, I am sure that my story will help to say goodbye to RPP effectively and in a short time. I realized for myself that I need to work through the problem in three stages.

1. To study information about this disease: where it comes from, how it can unfold, from what attitudes and beliefs.
2. To understand how to work with it.
3. See specialists, work through the condition, change negative attitudes to positive ones. To create the basis of how to treat nutrition correctly, to destroy myths about nutrition, which are imposed by modern society and lead to the problem of RPP.

This is what I did – I regulated my nutrition, got rid of the fear of food, established the regime of three meals a day with snacks. At the same time I realized that even if it turns out to be a jump in weight, there is no need to be afraid of it.

If you abuse your body for a very long time, it will definitely take its toll. But with time everything will level out, the main thing is to keep psychological stability and not to give in to the signs of RPP again and again.

Any diet has an end, and the right attitude to food and the right attitudes that we have in our head are with us forever, for life.

Now my diet looks something like this:

• breakfast: English classic;
• lunch: seafood risotto;
• snack: croissant with vegetables and chicken or smoothies/tea with milk/Japanese teas;
• dinner: salad with eggplant, cheese and tomatoes, crab rolls.

Ārsta viedoklis

Candidate of Medical Sciences, doctor of integrative, preventive and conventional medicine, nutritionist

Treatment of RPP should be complex. It requires coordinated work of a gastroenterologist, nutritionist, psychologist, psychotherapist, support of relatives and a person’s desire to return to a normal diet.

In 1944, the Minnesota Hunger Experiment was conducted, during which scientists observed 36 healthy strong men. At first, all subjects underwent a training program and gained the necessary body weight for their height.

Then the experiment itself began (three months of semi-starvation and three months of recovery). The average daily caloric content of the diet was 1570 kcal. The goal of the scientists was to make the men lose up to 24% of their weight.

The result of starvation in the form of eating disorders appeared already in the second-third week of the experiment: men became more irritable, lost interest in everything except cookbooks and restaurant menus, many jealously began to treat their food, protecting their plates, abusing spices.

What is most interesting, in the middle of the experiment, the subjects began to consider themselves absolutely normal, but the former shape was defined as “excessive body weight”.

After the end of the experiment, it took at least eight months to restore all biological indicators, but many psychological habits, earned during the study, remained with men and in everyday life. By the way, most of them acquired rounded shapes and obesity.

When you can’t do without a doctor’s help?

• The amount eaten less than the norm (reducing the caloric content of food, avoiding certain foods, the desire to constantly monitor the amount of food, their weight).

• The amount eaten is more than the norm, and attacks of overeating come on suddenly.

• There is a “struggle of motives”: the patient wants to stop eating, but cannot. Or vice versa – he wants to eat, but restricts himself. After the act of overeating, he is tormented by guilt and remorse.

Curation of such conditions is conducted jointly by a therapist or gastroenterologist and a psychotherapist. Mild anti-anxiety drugs and cognitive-behavioral techniques are used, aimed at normalizing and stabilizing eating patterns, as well as restoring the work of microflora and secretion of enzymes of the pancreatic and intestinal tract.