Ep 277 If It’s Not in the DSM, Is It Still an Eating Disorder? (Yes.) With Alana Van Der Sluys

My disposition during the day, I was, I don't know if I can, can I curse on here is a, okay, I was less of a bitch, just, you know, when you're restricting and you're not eating enough, you just feel like you're walking through quicksand every day and you feel like you're massive brain fog and you're irritable all the time. Welcome to Behind the Bite, where we delve deep into the real-life struggles and triumphs surrounding food, body, and weight. On Dr. Christina Castanini, a psychologist and certified eating disorder specialist bringing you a unique blend of personal experience as they recovered individual with over 25 years of professional expertise. In each episode, we'll share the courageous journeys of individuals who have faced these challenges firsthand alongside insights from dedicated professionals in the field. Whether you're seeking healing, inspiration, or simply a deeper understanding, this podcast is here to empower you on your own path to a better life. Join us as we explore stories of resilience, discuss the latest insights and strive to foster a community of support and growth. Together, we can break down barriers, challenge stigma, and pave the way towards healing and living authentically. Hello everyone and welcome to today's show. So I have a guest I've had on here before, but she is written a book and I want to get her on here to talk about something very specific, something about eating disorder suffering that really doesn't get talked about enough. It's the kind where there's no diagnosis, not on the surface, but people are really struggling. And as a clinician, I can say that so often people really are struggling, and they don't think that they're quote unquote sick enough so they don't come in for help. And so I'm really honored and glad that our guest is coming on today to talk about this because I think it's something that maybe some of you listening, you know, you're wondering, do I need help? Am I struggling? And I think maybe after listening today, some of those questions can be answered hopefully for you. And maybe you're obsessing about food or you're restricting all week or you're binging on the weekends or you're terrified of weight gain and anxious about going to branch or lunch or crying over the amount of calories you ate. But you don't even quote unquote sick enough and eating disorders again don't have a look. I've said that on the podcast before, but you can't look at somebody you know if they have an eating disorder or the state of their health. And when that happens, no one intervenes even yourself. And you might have to get compliments. You might get praised for being quote unquote disciplined or quote unquote healthy. And you might have been start to wonder maybe if you're just being dramatic because you're wondering if some, you know, you are sick. But in today's episode, I'm going to talk like I said with this guest, Alana Banderseis, she's a certified intuitive eating counselor, TEDx speaker and author of like I said, this book freedom with food and fitness. She lived with orthorexia binge eating disorder in a typical anorexia, none of which were formally diagnosed at the time. Those were not diagnoses in the DSM at the time. Thankfully binge eating disorder is now in the DSM, but orthorexia and a typical anorexia unfortunately still are not. She didn't fit the stereotype for someone who again, what I'm going to look like they had an eating disorder. She looked on the outside, but for all intents and purposes like this very night, putting quotes here a lot healthy. She was high functioning and because of that, it took much longer for her or anyone else to recognize that she was actually suffering and really sick. And so today we're going to talk about the whole things like clean eating Monday through Friday, bingeing on the weekend cycle. We're going to talk about how perfectionism and complex trauma fed her disorder and maybe even yours, the realist thing. We're going to talk about the flawed logic of the eating disorder brain, how it feels so convincing until you write it down and realize that you know what, this doesn't make any sense. And most importantly, we're going to talk about how dangerous the not sick enough narrative can be because it delays help, increases shame, and it really keeps people sick. Hey, if you ever questioned whether your struggle counts, this episode really is for you. Thank you for having me again. So really excited to hear about everything that's been going on with you since the last vote and to hear like, "Well, anyway, I will let you get going," but I'd love to hear what's been going on. And also, I'd love for you to just share your story if that's okay. I think part of the reason I did the podcast is to have people share their story. And so I think that just helps people feel less alone and also I don't think we talk about it. And I think we talk about like what eating disorders are and give a lot of information, but it's really our stories that make people alive and help people really understand what they are. So I really, really appreciate you being here. Absolutely, and I love sharing my story because as you said, hopefully somebody else hears themself in my story and they have that moment where they're like, "Oh wow, like I'm not alone or oh wow, I'm not crazy and this isn't just happening to me." And actually, a lot has come to light thanks to therapy in terms of how the eating disorder develops. So you and your listeners are going to hear a part of the story that nobody has heard yet. So I had three undiagnosed eating disorders. I was orthorexic, I had been eating disorder, and I had a typical anorexia. And again, none of this was diagnosed because I kind of dealt with it in secret. There was a whole lot of shame around the behaviors that I had. And you know, I wasn't this rail thin skin and bones, you know, growing her early 20s. I looked quote unquote healthy and quote unquote fit. So I didn't fit the typical image of somebody who is, you know, sick with an eating disorder looks like. We get compliments, you know, you look great as opposed to we look like we have an eating disorder. So nobody really knew. So nobody knew that they were complimenting me eating disorder, nobody knew that I was struggling. But it all started probably around when I was 22 because I had just, I was finishing up grad school and it was the first time in my life that I felt like I didn't know what the next step of my life looks like. And that was very scary. And I felt very out of control of my own life. And as many of us do who develop eating disorders is we cling to control over the one thing that we can control. And that is what we put in our mouths and we try to manipulate the scale. And it was just, I would say about seven years of trying to eat quote unquote clean and good, you know, losing a lot of air quotes because, you know, you know that these things are all, you know, subjective and damaging labels. But, you know, clean and good Monday through Friday, which basically meant a way under eating. And then, you know, Friday Saturday Sunday, the grad school girl that I was the girl, her early 20s, I would go out and I would have drinks and then the drinks with lower the inhibitions and then I would binge on all sorts of food that I thought was bad. And then by Sunday, I felt so much shame and guilt over, you know, losing control that it would, you know, I'll start again on Monday and that kind of became the cycle, the goal that I had was just too way as little as possible, which was completely illogical if you really said there to think about it. And, I mean, that this a lot, but now, but now with my story, I'm noticing that I also have complex PTSD from, you know, my, my mother is a, is a covert narcissist. So, you know, it was, it was death by a thousand cuts growing up of, you know, criticisms about what I looked like or just basically anything about me. So, in part, the eating disorder was a perfectionist shield that if I could just look as perfect as possible, which for me as a child of the, you know, late 90s or early 2000s was just to be as thin as possible, I could avoid criticism. So, that's, I know, I, I, I just dumped a lot out there, but that's basically my whole story in a nutshell. You know, and, you know, I think a lot of people listening probably can relate to a lot of what you're saying in terms of, you know, trying to eat the certain way or control everything with food. So, you know, you brought up three diagnoses that aren't really diagnoses. And so, maybe we could talk about those a little bit, because I think they are confusing. People hear them a lot, but they, again, aren't things that we can actually diagnose, even though I think that they're, they're real eating disorder. So, orthorexia, typical anorexia, and then what, sorry, I mean, just binge eating disorder. And that actually is now a diagnosis, but for so long, it was not so. Um, how did you know what was going on? Like, how did you get those terms, like, for yourself? Did your therapist tell you, okay, now this is what's going on with you or had you done reading or was this all now in hindsight looking back? Like, it was a lot of research on my own because I, at the time, wasn't in therapy. I was still struggling against the idea of therapy. I definitely didn't have a stigma for other people to be in therapy, but for myself, I kind of did and I felt like, you know, it was kind of this thing where, if I don't go to therapy and I don't acknowledge the problem, maybe the problem is as bad as I think it is. So, uh, but so it was a lot of research. It was a lot of trying to parse out and tease out what, what eating disorders do I probably have, because I knew it was a problem, but I didn't know what kind of problem it was. And it was when I started realizing that I couldn't keep living this way. It was when I found out about the intuitive eating community that I really started to do the research. But you're right. I mean, orthorexia and, in eighth play anorexia, to my knowledge, still they're not in the DSM-5. We can't really diagnose somebody with these things, but that doesn't mean that they're not real. So, atypical anorexia is basically anorexia for somebody who doesn't look like the typical person who has anorexia, right? One can be, um, cortical overweight and have anorexia. And then, you know, orthorexia is just an obsession with clean eating, right? You have your certain foods that you've deemed safe. And if you deviate from that list and eat anything that is what, what they would deemed unclean or unhealthy, it creates a massive amount of anxiety. So, you know, going out to brunch with friends was an anxiety-ducing, you know, event because most places, you know, it's not always the cortical healthy foods. We don't know what they're cooking with in the back and for someone with orthorexia that can create a whole lot of anxiety around socialish, like social gatherings. And so, again, like, those terms were those things that, like, when did you, like, in your own mind say, "Oh, that's what I was struggling with." Was that, like, later or was it actually, like, as you were engaging in the behaviors? Um, I think the atypical anorexia came after binge eating disorder and orthorexia, I think it was, uh, several years into it toward the end. I think that was really when I started to realize what this was because I even remember, you know, one of my girlfriends was telling me that she had binge eating disorder. I was like, "There's no way I'd ever have that." I didn't realize, I didn't realize that it can kind of look differently for different people, right? It doesn't have to be the person who sits down and eats, you know, tens of doubt, you know, it looks different for different people. Right. And I think it's interesting. The reason I was asking is, you know, sometimes people do like having a diagnosis because they, like, "Oh, that explains what I'm going through. That explains what this is. Now I have something that I can go, okay, now I can work with this and now I can overcome this because I have like this, I understand it," right? Versus, sometimes people don't want that because it feels very scary and stigmatizing and now it's like, "Oh my gosh, like, almost like avoid it. Like, I don't want to have this." Like, no, it's, you know, so it can have two different kind of effects, I think, sometimes. Um, so I don't know what it was like for you. Like, was there some relief in like, "Oh, okay, that's what this is." Like, or was it like, "Wait, what?" I think there was relief because once, I think it's both, right? It's, it's, the negative is confronting the fact that, yes, you do, in fact, have a problem, you know, a diagnosable problem. But then I think the bigger part of it for me was the sense of relief, as you said, of, "Okay, now I know what this is. Now this has a name." And now that I have the name for it and, and it exists in people, know what this is, I can find the people and the tools that I need to be taught. So, if you could tell, like, your younger self anything, like, is there anything you would say to her? Oh my gosh, I would have started her in therapy decades before she did. Especially with the CPTSD diagnosis just this year, it's just, I would tell her that none of this is her fault and that, you know, there, there are so many things that play that have created this environment where you have these problems to overcome that it's not your fault that you're here. You know, and I think I think that's, that could be said for so many of us that there are so many things that we go through in life that affect us, whether we realize it in the moment or not, and sometimes it takes decades for us to really be able to see a clear picture of how we got to where we are. Were you blaming yourself back then or everything that was going on? I think there was, I think there was a semblance of blame that it was never enough, it wasn't good enough. Why can't I conquer this? Why can't I stop feeling this way and get over this? And of course, like later on, I also found out that I'd OCD, so there's like a little bit of you know, like rumination happening there. But yeah, I think there's a lot of blame and shame of, you know, why am I not quote, unquote, normal? Like, why can't I just go out and pick off the menu what I want to eat and not have to worry about making up for it, with exercise or making up for it by eating less later or stressing about what the scale is going to say, like, why can't I just go out and eat like a, again, quote, unquote, normal to you know, mm-hmm. And did you realize you were restricting or not eating enough or did you feel like you were? I totally did. I totally, I totally knew what I was doing. I, I didn't know how much I should be eating. I thought I knew how much I should be eating and then I would undershoot that to lose weight, but I had no semblance of how much an adult woman should actually be eating. And I, I was doing it on purpose and maybe it was a little bit of, like, self-flagulation and punishing myself. See, you brought something really interesting, like, not knowing how much an adult woman needs to eat. And I think that is one of the most confusing things for people. And I'd love to hear some thoughts you have on that right now. I think that I, I think there are so many women out there that have been chronically restricting for so long that their body is just used to under eating. You know, I think the metabolism has slowed way down and they're like, oh yeah, like, this is the, this is the number that I should be eating. I had to work with a coach to help me reintroduce more and more quantities of food back into my diet to figure out, you know, about where I should be. And it was, it was way above what I had ever allowed myself to eat since I was like 14 since I learned, you know, the stupid equation that, you know, teenage girls I felt more energized. I slept better. I, I love weightlifting. I was, I was stronger all of a sudden. I, my, my disposition during the day, I was, I don't know if I can, can I curse on here is, okay, I was less of a bitch. Just, you know, when you're restricting and you're not eating enough, you just feel like you're walking through quicksand every day and you feel like you're, you have massive brain fog and you're irritable at the time. So it's just, and, you know, everyone's so afraid of weight gain. Not that there's anything wrong with weight gain, but a lot of the times, you know, we talk about weight stuff where your body's just in a land where it's supposed to land. It's not, I think a lot of us doing myself included back in the day. I was afraid if I ate more, I'd gain gain, gain, gain forever until I topped. But I just didn't do that. We can, we can withstand a lot more than we think we can. Nutritional. Well, that's part of it. diagnosis too, right? So the fear of gaining weight. And I mean, that's part of it. And that's what keeps you kind of trapped. So, um, probably people listening can really understand that it doesn't, I mean, eating just sort of the thought pattern is they don't make a lot of sense, right? I mean, if you're being honest, like the thoughts you were having, if you think back, you don't make a lot of sense, you come out of it. I don't know if you were going, what was I, what was going on back then? Well, toward the end, I was like, I was doing a lot of journaling and I was journaling my thoughts. And as I was writing the thoughts down, I'm like, oh my god, this makes no sense. Like logically, these thoughts, if I were to say them out loud to somebody, I think they would think I was crazy. It just doesn't make sense. But in your own brain, the ED brain, it convinces you that it's the truth and that it makes sense. But when you actually take those thoughts and externalize them, you realize, wow, like I did some sort of flawed logic happening here. And, you know, maybe people listening who never had an eating disorder, like, what kind of thoughts? What are you talking about? And so I mean, I don't know if you remember any of them that you just went, oh my god, what was I thinking? I, you know, I remember, this is, I don't know why this sticks out to me, but I was in grad school and I remember I was like trying a new recipe on Pinterest and I made this recipe and I realized that like I had totally overshot my calories for the day because of this rest. I remember like calling my mom and crying about it and she like didn't understand why I was crying. She's like, what's, it's fine. Like just, just eat it. You're not, you're gonna be fine. And I was like, no, but it's over that like, you just don't realize how, how irrational it really is. And I say that with love, though, because I, again, I'll be hearing my whole story. I know what it's like to have these thoughts and they feel so real to you. And that's so valid when someone is having those thoughts. So I don't want to, I don't want anyone out there to think I'm saying like, you're crazy or whatever. Like I had all of the thoughts I've done in saying things like, re-way myself because the first time I weighed myself, I had a scrunchy on my wrist. Or I've totally eaten food out of the trash because I told myself I couldn't have it and then really wanted it in bitch. You know what I'm saying? Like, anyone who's listening to this who has struggled with needing disorder is currently, we do anything some crazy shit and you're, you're not alone for that. And you're not crazy for doing it. It's part of the illness. Like, I mean, I tell all my patients, there's nothing you're gonna tell me that I'm gonna judge because to your point, in there, done that more than I can probably write down. Like it, years and years of things that I'm like, wow, like, I'm so glad I'm not doing any of those anymore. And I mean, whatever has got each of us individually to where we are now, in a needing disorder, you know, there's a reason we've got to where we are. And it's not just because we are bad or we're broken, there are external factors that have brought us to this place. And so was that part for anyone listening, who maybe hasn't gone into therapy or is thinking about it, are those the things that you uncovered when you were in therapy, the things that got you to the eating disorder or what the purpose of the eating disorder was for you? So unfortunately, I actually didn't have, I didn't seek help for my eating disorder. I recovered by myself, which I do not recommend to anybody because it took me way more time than it should have because I didn't have the tools. You know, I didn't have a therapist who had tools to give me. I used a lot of intuitive eating podcasts. I used a lot Instagram, I used, you know, the intuitive eating book by Eveline Tripoli, Eveline's Rush. And I took baby steps through several, several years to get to where I needed to be. But I would 100% recommend therapy to anybody who is struggling with this because, you know, I'm in therapy now for for other reasons. And the progress that I see through those issues is so much faster than the progress I had with my eating disorder, probably because I have, you know, that professional help that I needed to begin with. So I mean, I do think people hesitate to go into therapy for many reasons, and some people don't have access to therapy. So very curious for you, you know, doing it on your own. I mean, of course, a much harder, longer road, but the fact that you were able to get resources and really intentionally, like, get all this information, and I mean, kudos to you. That's hard. It was really hard. It was so hard. And the thing was I went through, like, phases, you know, I was like, well, I can't keep eating under, you know, examonic calories, you know, I'm just basically starving myself. So I'm going to do the beach body thing. So like, that was the next step of my recovery, where I was eating a whole lot more, but all of a sudden, it was all within the confines of these little boxes. And that happened for like a couple of years, and then I realized, well, this is still restrictive. You know, I'm still trying to manipulate my body, and then I have, I really do have to just start listening to my body, to stop weighing myself, I have to stop measuring my food, and I just need to try to listen to my hunger and fullness cues. But again, it took a couple of years, and it took kind of like some intermediary steps that were better than what I was doing, but still not full food. I'm glad you brought that up too, because I do, you know, kind of tied to people not knowing how much they need as an adult female or male. There's a lot of noise out there, and a lot of things couched in, oh, wellness, or this is, quote unquote, healthy, or this is what you need to be doing, but still very much restrictive, or very prescribed, and it's still not freedom at all, even though it seems like, well, that's gotta be better than what I'm doing, so this seems like the right path, or, and it's so very confusing out there. And I, you know, I look at all the things that are out there, and I'm just like, that is an endous order couched in something else. It's hidden, you know, if you really look at it, it's very nuanced, so it, you know, I do caution people who don't go into treatment or get professional help, but you might fall into something else that's just as restrictive or just as disordered, and it feels like it's not, but, you know, it can be. Yeah, I think about that a lot, but I don't know how many of your listeners are on keto, but like, I think about that with the keto community, it's, I can't, and this is, I feel like nutrition is so personal, but for me, person, I cannot imagine being scared of eating half a banana because of the carbs in it, like, I don't want to live my life like that, and I, I used to coach, you know, I used to be in an intuitive eating coach and take on clients, I don't do that anymore, but I, you know, I tell people whatever plan you're following, philosophy you follow when it comes to nutrition, can you sustain that for the rest of your life? Like, would you be okay doing this for the next 30, 40, 50 years? And the answer is no, it's probably not something you should be adopting right now. Well said, like, how do you want vacation? What do you do if that brand of food or that, whatever no longer exists or whatever to your point? It was really hard, like life happens. No, you know, I don't want to be, and I mentioned this in the book, I don't want to be on my deathbed and look back on my life and realize that this was the thing that consumed my every, every waking thought. I don't want this to be the thing that people remember before, or, or, you know, if tomorrow having forbidden, I get in an accident and I can't walk again and I can't work out again, like, yeah, I love working out, but will my entire identity crumble under what has happened, you know, am I just my body? And is that the only source of my worth? And, you know, when the answer is, yeah, that's the only source of my worth. That's something worth examining. So you mentioned your book, so let's talk about that. Yeah, so tell me about, like, how you came up with the concept and how the process of writing, and what's in it? Yeah, let's talk about it. You know, I've always been a writer, I always wanted to write a book and once I had recovered a couple of years had gone by and then I just started having this thought of, you know, what happened to me happened to me and I wanted to mean something outside of myself. I want, you know, I've had this kind of weird, I don't want to say totally unique, but some of my unique journey of recovering by myself essentially. And I've learned some interesting tips along the way that I haven't heard on any other podcast or any other book and maybe these tips and these tricks for, you know, you need to sort of recovery and adopting intuitive eating would be helpful to somebody else because they haven't heard these before. So the book, the book is called Freedom with Food Infiniteness, just like my business. And I like to say it's half memoir and half, you know, strategy playbook, where a lot of the book is my own story and how I got from even disorder to recovery and then it also has embedded within it, just a lot of tips and tricks, really actionable strategies that someone could adopt easily into their day-to-day to start making the transition to eating more to the book. And so, is this, are these things that you work on with, I must mean you take on plans still? I don't anymore just because my full-time job is I'm a high school English teacher and my son is five now and you know, there's a lot going on, I've started to write other books fiction, so like I have a lot of other things going on, taking on clients was becoming too much, so I don't take on clients anymore, but this is the type of stuff that I would go over with my clients. Wow, people must miss that. Well, you know, it's so great because one of my favorite clients, one of my standout clients, she actually ended up getting her own, you know, intuitive eating certification and now she's taking on clients. So I see her on Instagram and LinkedIn all of the time, driving other certifications, going to conferences, taking on her own clients was kind of nice that I got to pay it forward. Wow, so like, total transition like high school English teacher, okay. I've always been, I've always been, I've been doing it for 14 years but the intuitive eating stuff was more on the side, but you know, like you were just like life happens, there are different seasons of life, I coached for a few years, it was amazing, I still am a guest on podcasts, I still, every twice a year I speak at this luxury, spa resort in Pennsylvania as their weekend speaker and I talk about intuitive eating and I teach workshops. So I'm still in the game, just not clients on the daily, yeah. So I mean, I really appreciate you sharing your story and, you know, because like I said, I think sometimes people don't really understand the nuances of eating disorders and what it is like in the day to day, like individual behaviors, the thoughts, the struggle, like I think you need to talk about it more. So I really, really appreciate your vulnerability and also sharing that, you know, you did it on your own without therapy, that's, that's a lot. So any, like last final words for people before we end? Um, just, you know, you're not alone, I know, we hear that all of the time, but you know, you're talking about stigma and, you know, not wanting to admit that there's a problem happening, but, you know, talking to somebody is, is always so invaluable and just, yeah, yeah. Seek the help, you know, talk to somebody even if it's me on Instagram, I can, you know, validate that you're not crazy, you're not broken and, and point you in the right direction. And I will have all the information for your book in the show, and it's as well. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for doing all the thing you were doing to help people. Thank you so much for listening today. Behind the bite podcast is created by me, Dr. Christina Castanini, as part of the Los Angeles Tribune podcast network and produced by the Tweetie Tales. I love hearing from my listeners. So if you like the show, please like, rate, and subscribe to it on whatever platform you're on. And for anyone who wants to understand their relationship with food better, or who might be wondering if they have an eating disorder, I have a free nine week e-course at my website. Just go to www.behindthebitepodcast.com to get your free e-course today. Please note, this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. 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