What Can Parents Do if They Notice Eating Disorder Behaviors? Q&A with Dr. Quatromoni

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This is part of a Q&A series with leading expert in eating disorders and sports, Paula Quatromoni. For more Q&As click here.

Q: My daughter started running and quickly developed a highly restrictive diet. She tries to eat no carbs. She has lost so much weight, but it’s never enough for her. She enjoys running, but I’m afraid she is using it as a punishment and has to do “workouts” in the morning and before bed. I am very worried about her, but she doesn’t want to talk about eating as a problem, because anything that helps her lose weight is a “good thing”. What can I do?

A (Paula Quatromoni, DSc, MS, RD, LDN): You are right to be concerned. This is a place where you have to trust your intuition and continue to observe the warning signs: restrictive eating, food rules (no carbs), substantial weight loss with a continued, strong, driven mission to lose more, and what could be compulsive exercise. This young woman is dieting and exercising, yet is not fueling properly to meet her nutritional demands. This creates a condition called “relative energy deficiency in sport” (RED-S). The consequences of RED-S are far-reaching and put her physical health, her emotional well-being, and her sports performance at risk. The fact that she “doesn’t want to talk about eating” is a hallmark of the denial that anything could possibly be of concern.

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Video: How Dad Responded to My Eating Disorder

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For Mother’s Day, I shared videos from the Running in Silence YouTube channel about how my mom responded to my eating disorder. I figured it was good timing to interview my dad for this past Father’s Day. Both of my parents offer different but important perspectives of their understanding of eating disorders. I was also fortunate to have parents who were willing to support me through it despite their confusion from the onset.


Eating Disorder Recovery with my Mom: A Video Interview

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From the first few chapters of Running in Silence my mom doesn’t suspect anything is wrong as I embark on a raw food diet. She doesn’t question my intense obsession with food and running fast, mostly because I kept the worst of the obsession to myself.

And then you get to the chapter where I come out about my binge eating disorder. But we both don’t know what monster we are dealing with. We are confused and lost. She gives the typical answers to “cure” what I’m dealing with by telling me I can just eat less to lose weight again. It was a seemingly “normal” response from someone who doesn’t understand and just wants to help.

What did my mom do right? She offered to get me professional help. My mom brought me to an eating disorder support group to see a therapist and dietitian. She took on the role of eating disorder researcher, attended the parent support group meetings, and listened to me talk for hours about what I was going through. Read more

When Loved Ones Can’t Understand Your Eating Disorder

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Trigger warning: eating disorder behaviors mentioned.
Post updated 3/5/21 to reduce triggers and update the writing because I am still a perfectionist. :)

 

“How can you physically keep stuffing in more and more food?” my dad asked one night. “I mean, I get to the point where enough is enough in one meal.”

My dad and I had agreed to sit down to talk about my eating disorder the summer going into my senior year of college, and it wasn’t off to a great start. At that moment on the couch, in the darkness of one summer evening, I felt I had to explain to my dad exactly what was going on within. Then, then he would “get it.”

The conversation went a little like this:

Me: “When you hold back on food for so long–like my two-year restriction–then your body is going to try to make up for it. It’s going to go for the simplest sugars. That’s why many people crave high-calorie food at the end of the day if they don’t eat enough. Your body wants to find the most calorie-dense form of food so that it can break it down fast and use it. And with an eating disorder–with your body in that desperation mode–you often stuff yourself until you are uncomfortably full, even if it hurts.”

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A Father of Food: My Dad Dealing with the Eating Disorder

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My dad loves food–it has been his love language to prepare and serve our family food ever since I was born. He has always encouraged my sister and I to try new foods, to enjoy meals with the family, and to embrace food from different cultures.

So when I started a raw food diet, my dad didn’t know how to respond. And when my mom told him I was struggling with an eating disorder over a year later, he was at a loss.

My dad’s love language for his daughter seemed to be crumbling.

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Relationship With My Mom: Discussing Eating Disorder Triggers

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Before I told my mom about my eating disorder, any comments she made about my food or hers felt like a knife slicing through my chest. The eating disorder twisted her words to make them sound like a jab at me. The comments could be about how much I ate, what kind of food I was eating, and how full she felt.

I know that my mom was not trying to be cruel when she made comments about my food. My mom just didn’t understand the impact these comments had on someone with an eating disorder hissing through their mind. But the more I opened up to her, the more I was able to voice my concerns about these triggering comments. In turn, she learned to avoid the triggers as I worked through recovery.

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