Hi there, It's Kati again.
Thanks for checking back. Now, today's topic for my weekly video
is gonna be something that sounds a little weird. Maybe even creepy or
dirty. We're talking about food porn.
You're thinking, "What the heck? When did Kati's channel become nasty? What are you
talking about?" I'm talking about things that we do
I'm calling it food porn, but you could also call it eating disorder porn in general.
things that we do to feed our eating disorder.
okay? Now i don't mean things that we do
behaviorly, as in "i binge, I purge, I restrict"
"i exercise" or whatever. I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about things where we seek out external stimuli
or any kind of media that's out there to feed the eating
disorder. Okay? Probably still not very clear
An example for the "food porn" would
be watching cooking shows. They're on all the time.
There are channels that are dedicated solely to cooking. You
probably know all of them. You probably know the channels off the top of your head.
Yes, there is the Food Network, there's the cook show... whatever i don't even
know them all. But I'm sure you do. And you may spend hours a day just
watching it. Okay? How did I know that?
It happens to a lot of people who suffer from eating disorders
We'll watch hours and hours of food or cooking TV
Any kind of recipe, we can be on allrecipes.com
all day searching out recipes of things that we'll probably make but maybe never
eat. Just fantasizing about food.
That's why i use the term porn because we're actually fantasizing
in a way. Oh, wouldn't that cheesecake be amazing?
Yeah, if I could make that pot roast it'd be delicious. But
we're not really doing any of that. We're actually starving ourselves
or restricting, or who know's what we're doing at the time, right?
but we're not actually gonna do that. we're just doing that to feed our eating disorder.
If that makes sense? Also
the reason I said eating disorder porn is that there are tons of things
that we can do. not just food - maybe you're like, "i don't watch cooking shows or food network"
or any of that, i don't do that" but you might
Buy a ton of fashion magazines. There are a lot of them and they
are thick. I saw a Vogue at the airport the other day, it was like
four hundred pages thick, full of eating disorder porn.
Skinny models, fashioning the newest clothes,
living this luxurious lifestyle, right? We read it
and we just, it's like, it's so exciting. It's
just such eating disorder porn. We're just watching and reading things
that aren't even healthful at all. We're probably not even reading the articles, we're just
looking at the clothes and the people, and ah! What an
amazing life they have! No they don't. It's airbrushed and clipped
it's cut, it's made for a magazine. It's not real life at all.
You're just feeding the negativity with it. And there are tons of
other options and things, I'm sure eating disorders have found ways to make
it work. Everybody's different. Fashion magazines and cooking channels
might not be the particular thing that you do, but I
want you to start to think in that vein. Some people, I
have had a patient a long time ago, she used to sit at the park and as people
walked, and judge all of them. Well that person needs to do that kind of exercise,
she should do this, i mean, that is eating disorder porn.
But it's very different, right? It's not the magazines
or the cooking shows, but you're looking towards an external stimuli
to feed that need. Does that kinda make sense?
So just think about it. Start noticing. Cause
I know you're thinking "okay what the heck do I do? I spend nine hours a day
reading magazines. what do you expect me to do about it?"
just notice. That's the first step with anything. Like when you've
decided that maybe I might have eating problems. That's cause you were first recognizing
something's off. Is this normal that people do this?
And the answer's probably no. I can tell you the last time I watched food
network, or anything like that. Or looked up a recipe that i didn't plan on making that same
day. So, these are just things to kinda start
realizing. Okay? So i'm realizing
I'm doing all my thinking all day. Grab a journal
Grab a piece of paper - I know you're really annoyed with the journal. But this can
be really helpful, and if you don't write things down, we tend to forget. Right, we get
doing other things, we forget. So we're gonna make a list.
I, today, so do this in the evening, that can be really easy
Today, I did this. I spent 2 hours reading Vogue magazine
I spent 4 hours people watching at the park judging people
I spent - you know, just jot it down. I was on the internet
Even the thinspo, the pro ana pro mia sites, those count
as well. You can put them in there. I fell down the rabbit hole of tumblr
and ended up spending 3 hours looking at eating disorder
focused material. Okay, jut write it down. We're making a list.
Right, okay, so we have the list. now what do we do?
First thing I don't want you to do is stop doing it all.
Don't do that. We're not black and white. Remember it's so
hard to live in these harsh all or nothing. Alright we're gonna live in the grey
Okay. Grey makes me nervous. What
does she mean? I mean we're just gonna start to
lessen little by little. So pick the easy one to
slowly give up. Maybe you're not that attached to the magazines, maybe you're only
doing that every once in a while when you can't get your fix in another way,
that'll be the first one i would stop. and i don't mean stop cold turkey
i mean each week, we'll set a goal. i'm gonna lower
the amount that i spend doing x behavior
by one hour. okay? then the next
week we come through, see how you did. i don't want you to beat yourself up.
that's the most important thing. this is just working in grey, so
we're going to see how we did and we're going to adjust our goal accordingly
And then we're gonna start to journal about a little
bit, like how did it feel to lessen the amount of time? Did i crave
it? Did I have, was it almost like restricting and binging
where I take it away and then all i can think about is it and all i want
to do is that? Think about how it affects your behavior - am i more anxious?
Am i isolating so that i can sneak time because kati might
know that i'm not doing what i'm supposed to do. Notice how you feel about it.
Right, we need to pay more attention to our bodies
and the response that it gives us from the changes we make.
does that make sense? because i know we cut that off with eating disorders a lot, we don't
pay attention to the way our bodies respond. We tell out bodies that they're wrong
and that our mind is right and we have this divide. So we're trying
to kinda bridge the gap so as you lessen it
take notice. Do i feel tense? Do i have trouble sleeping?
do i get up in the middle of the night to do that thing i'm not supposed to do?
that i put on my list to lesson? just notice
write all those things down. see how it goes, and then just keep checking
we'll do it each week, we'll kinda slowly lesson things. it's kinda like that
need for perfection. we're gonna take those things off our lists, right?
spend a little less time doing them so that we
can help build the healthy information that we're putting in, right? garbaging
garbage in, garbage out, so we're trying to put in good information, healthy information
And don't forget to subscribe to my videos because each week
i put out a new one and if you want to hear about it
It'll notify you. So please subscribe. and also don't forget to comment below
you can comment "hey i do this this this to deal with my eating disorder"
"it's kinda my eating disorder porn" write that down because somebody
might be doing it and not realize that it's feeding their eating disorder and your comment might help
them. Wouldn't we love to help each other? isn't that what we're trying to cultivate, this community
of help? and don't forget to follow me on twitter. I try to tweet daily
some supportive and healthy comments. ANd also there's my website
katimorton.com where you can post your own information, journals, art
you can - even if you're not comfortable posting your own, you can comment on other
people's and just kinda join the community of support and healthy
healthy mind, healthy body, right? so let's just keep working towards that.
one thing at a time. one week, one hour at a time
we're gonna work towards a healthy mind and a healthy body.
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