Binge Eating Disorder: Discovery and recovery

Drs. Hess and Kirsch sit down with Ilana Zackon with a candid conversation about her own experiences with Binge Eating Disorder. She enlightens the audience to how common eating disorders are ignored or misdiagnosed and how she fought her way back to health.

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Music

Composer / Writer / Author: ROSSANO GENTILI - SIAE IPI: 161539866

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Welcome to On and Off the Spectrum Podcast. I'm Dr. Estee Hess. And I'm Dr. Anne Kirsch. And we have a very, very special guest with us this evening. It is Ilana Zakon. And Ilana's going to be talking about a very uh important concern, one that you that she personally struggled and recovered from, binge eating disorder. And one of the uh one of the striking features, I think, of your recovery, and you can say that you know, much more so, but I thought the the way that you made a film, what does it feel like to experience a image eating disorder? I thought it was captivating, it was animated, so I thought it was done beautifully and it would attract to a lot of audiences. So we're gonna find out a lot about you, but first we're gonna talk about the funny story of how we met.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Thank you for that nice introduction. Really nice video.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

So um uh Ilana is a wonderful, wonderful actress and singer, and uh Anne and I, with our husbands, had the pleasure of seeing her in a show uh that was at a local theater called Do the Right Thing. And uh we were immediately attracted to this beautiful, wonderful actress, and uh and while we were watching you on stage, we leaned towards one another and said for the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

And we we pounced on you to get ahead of us in line and talking to you.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

And and when we shared about the fact that what our purpose of our podcast is in terms of recognizing if you've gone through uh a medical diagnosis, a psychiatric uh crisis, or some kind of uh experience that has pretty perchance left a you know an all a very much an altering pathway to your life, then uh we would like to offer some support and suggestions. And so uh you said that I have a story to tell you, and so this is how we've come together. So without further ado, it's a real pleasure, uh, welcome a lot to on and off the spectrum. Um maybe you could talk a little bit about what is the difference because I think there's confusion in terms of uh generally eating disorders. There is anorexia, there is bulimia, and there is binge eating. And it's important to make the distinctions so that there isn't confusion and that people know that a lot of these elements uh both can be characterized as an eating disorder, but also that there is help.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Yeah. Um, thank you for asking that question. I think it's incredibly important for people to know the difference. Um so binge eating disorder was actually only officially recognized by like the I don't know the name of the organization, but eating disorder awareness or board or whatever, um, in 2014, which is the year after I had it, which was extremely inconvenient because when I went to try to seek help first through a psychologist and then through a nutritionist, I was pretty much gaslit. Not that I knew that term back then, but um I was told by my psychologist that I was just depressed, I was just anxious, and I was trying to tell her, like, this is how much I've been eating, like this doesn't, it's that's not that, like I know it that it's not that. And she said, Why don't you just go see a nutritionist? And the nutritionist said, Well, why don't we just make you an eating plan? And I was like, I don't think you understand, like I'm addicted to to food. And so I actually had to diagnose myself. I went and I also saw a doctor too, who also just said, Oh, you should go to the gym. I'm not even exaggerating. And so I was I wrote up, I wrote in into Google, um, and I was like 20 years old living in Manhattan by myself. Um, and I I was Googling symptoms of what I was experiencing and found some online thread, like Reddit or something, and someone had it described exactly what I had gone through and said it was binge eating disorder. And I was like, yes, that's what it is. And so um jumping ahead to after I recovered, I actually participated in a survey that was being done, I think in Ottawa in Canada, and they came over and interviewed me because they were trying to collect data on this newly recognized eating disorder, which now has been proven to be the most common out of all of them and the least known. So I just pulled up, I have on the website for my film a whole section that's like, what is beat binge eating disorder? Just so I get the information accurately for the podcast. So, according to the National Eating Disorder Information Center, binge eating or a binge eating episode is characterized by one, the consumption of an unusually large amount of food during a relatively short period of time, and two, feeling out of control over what and how much is eaten and when to stop. So some of the symptoms that they describe, which again, these are every uh every one of these I experienced was eating very quickly, even eating when you're not hungry, or eating when you're already full, eating until you're uncomfortably or painfully full, and always often eating alone due to embarrassment about the type and quantity of food and feeling self-discussed.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Oh, I'm sorry, jumping on. Is there a certain type of food that a person is drawn to, or can it be just any kind?

SPEAKER_00 6:16

I mean, so what I've what I have learned since going through recovery, um, which is a crazy story in itself, how I ended up finding this program online, um, is that there's kind of two versions of this. There's food cravings and then there's emotional eating. And when you have a craving, that's like, oh, I'm really craving this one particular thing. Let's say it's like chocolate chip cookies. And so we did this exercise in the program where we'd think back to like what was the memory that we had associated with that food? And then imagine like taking the feeling out of the cookie and putting it into the heart of the person who we had that feeling with. So let's say it was, I remember my mom always made me chocolate chip cookies when I had a bad day. And so, really, it's like you're craving a very particular sense of usually love or warmth. Whereas emotional eating is like I will eat literally anything that is in front of me. I will eat whatever it's like, some of it is disgusting, some of the things that I went through. Um, but for me, a big part of it, and I don't know how common this is, um, it was a lot of like very heavy like bread items, um, often like bread and sugar, like muffins, pizza, um cookies, stuff like that. And so because I was consuming a lot of that in very large quantities, my body stopped being able to digest them properly, which is why once I kind of got out of it, I decided to cut out um wheat from my diet because every time that I would try to have little pieces, my whole body would react as if I had just binged, even though I hadn't binged in a long time. Um, so I don't know the science behind that, and I really hope someone does some kind of study on this one day.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Um, but that's a whole carbohydrate and which then becomes sugar in your system. And so that's the beginning there.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

I'm sure it's better studied. But yeah, you also shared that you were uh by yourself and you're I know you're originally Canadian, and so I you know, that sense of that a lot of people in their 20s are you know starting off launching and may feel a period of loneliness and uh you know something warm in their tummies where they initially think that that's what's going on until that sort of takes over and becomes a beast.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Oh, totally. I had no idea what was going on. Like it started out, I remember I remember it started out with me just like overeating a bag of popcorn one day, and I was like, oh, that's weird, like why did I eat that much? And then next thing I knew it kind of just escalated. Um, and I had no idea what was happening. I didn't have language for it, I didn't know, I'd never heard of binge eating disorder. Um and I was gonna say that the biggest difference between bulimia and binge eating disorder is that there's no purging. Um, so whereas anorexia is restricting, bulimia is like often has binging in it, but then people will purge.

SPEAKER_03 9:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Binge eating is like you literally just keep eating until you can't anymore, and then you repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. Like that's a big part of what quantifies it is that it's happening quite frequently. Um, like it says it's considered a disorder when binging episodes occur at least once a week for at least three months. But for me, it was like every single day for eight months.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Oh my gosh. Well, at what at what point it sounds like you recognized it pretty early on and weren't getting the kind of help that you needed, and it lasted for eight months. So where was the point at eight months where you said this is done, or what kind of help did you finally get?

SPEAKER_00 9:51

I I mean it was really scary. I remember being in that position and feeling really confused about what to do because all these professionals I was going to were not helping. Um, and I don't know, it's a little bit embarrassing, but uh a lot of my experience was me, like, which is very much you'll understand a lot more about my movie, was going to bakeries and binging, and then also at home. But a lot of it was like I had some money that I had, you know, for my year abroad doing school, and I would just go to the ATM and take out a bunch of money and then just go spend it all on baked goods and then do it again and do it again and do it again. And then one day I accidentally overdrew. I still had money left, but I got like a few hundred dollar charge that had not paid it in time or I had taken out too much or something, and that was my wake-up call because I remember like I was like, whoa, what is happening right now? Um, and so I had to hide my credit cards in a drawer, and then I just that was around the time that I went to the nutritionist. So I actually didn't, I was seeing a psychologist like for most of this time, but it took me a long while until I actually wanted to really fix this issue. Like it this is the the hardest thing about binge eating is that it becomes a source of comfort. Like there's an exercise that we did in the program where it was like saying thank you to our bellies of like thank you for protecting me. Because for a lot of people, they're feeling so alone and so overwhelmed, and so this the food becomes a source of comfort, and the extra like padding becomes a source of comfort. Um, and so it's really hard to let that go. Um, and I had and and it was really scary. And every time that I was like, okay, today was like good, and then like one bad thing would happen, I would get stressed or sad or overwhelmed, or any emotion could just like lead to me kind of like relapsing, and I had to kind of just trick myself. And for three months, I just dis I decided to like cut out all sugar, all like unnatural sugar and all gluten, and so I kind of like cleansed my system and then I thought I was better, and for about a year I kind of was like functioning more. Um because that was another thing, it was just really difficult to be um doing regular life things, and so when I tried to start getting better, I was like, okay, I'm gonna make my bed every day, I'm gonna clean my room, I'm gonna, you know, not procrastinate. That was a lot of how it started was me just feeling overwhelmed in life and procrastinating, and so I would eat to procrastinate like any reason to binge. And then and then um about a year after I um was in like a a feeling again of like feeling overwhelmed in my life. I was back in Canada, but was having trouble like making it in my career, and I got depressed and started binging again, and that lasted also about eight months, and then I got better, but it never like fully went away for about a year. And then one night I was online at like two in the morning and I was on Facebook and I saw this ad pop up and it said, I found the cure for binge eating disorder, and I was like, Okay. So I watched a video, and it was this woman named Britney Watkins, who's originally from the States, and she had said that she'd gone through it herself and had struggled to find help, and so she took it upon herself to work with experts in the field and like figure out what to do about it. And she had the she has this online program, which at the time she was like, um, for those of you who are watching this video, it's gonna be it was like let's say $200, and within 30 days, if you're not happy with it, money back guaranteed. And I was like, I really hope this is not a scam. But it was two in the morning and I decided to click on it and it literally saved my life.

SPEAKER_03 13:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Yeah. And a lot of it was so much more psychological than I realized because I had always separated the disorder from like the the why, I guess. And I was so focused on like, how can I not eat these foods? Because then it then I won't binge. Whereas what I learned in the program, which I kind of spoke about a little bit before with taking the emotion out of the food, which is a big thing that she says, was how much of this was just like deep wounds that I just hadn't addressed. And that was the coping mechanism that kind of came out. And it's very common for a lot of people because we a lot of us grew up with a lot of ideas around food. Like if you don't finish your plate, there'll be starving children in Africa who don't have whatever. Like all these things can create all sorts of ideologies about body image and food.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

And so how many of you have heard that love language is food, right? Oh, yeah, right. So here we go, and you're gonna not eat, you're gonna be rejecting whomever is trying to love you.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

Yeah. And how many women have there been listened to? Doctors, therapists, they think they know an answer for you, which has nothing to do with actually listening to what you were saying.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

And I'm really I feel really sorry about that because it's happened to all of us. Every woman I've ever worked with has the experience of not being listened to by a doctor.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

And it's made even more difficult because they hadn't come up with a name attached when you have it. So so I I I so you you watch this video, and this is a life-altering kind of discovery. And your next steps.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, so I I signed up, it was a six-week program, and every week there was a theme, and we had all these assignments to listen to and a meditation to listen to in the morning, and her whole um I I don't know if you've heard of emotional freedom technique tapping. Um, so basically it's can you tell the audience? Yeah, yeah, I can explain it. So I feel like it's so funny when you go through these things, you end up becoming an expert in your experience. Um, so it's essentially using acupunc acupuncture points, like the Chinese meridian system, and you physically tap on the different points while you are saying a script. And so for her, she created all of these scripts that were specifically around emotional eating, like um impulses or cravings, and very specific ones like I'm craving eating chocolate at night, or I'm having a hard time sitting with my feelings and it's making me whatever, like whatever it was, every single week had a different theme, and there were things that were really shocking. Like the Me Too movement came out around the time that I was doing the program, and there was a whole week that was about like sexuality and being like, especially for women, because a lot of women did the program, and like, how do you feel safe walking around the street when like you're worried about getting attacked, and how that can cause a lot of people to emotionally eat because they're afraid of the attention that they'll get from men, and so like it was just bringing up stuff that I had just had no idea was related to any of any of this. Um, and so I did the six-week program, and it's crazy. Like, her technique is so effective that you have like this food in front of you, and she'll get you to try like a tiny piece and smell it and say, like, what is it about the food that you want? Like the pizza, it's the gooey cheese, and then this and that, and it reminds me of this. And then you tap, you push the food away. That's like a big part of her technique. You tap on on your points, and then you go through this whole script of like, um, like one of them, yeah, for for like emotional eating, it's this thing called echo tapping where you remember like how old you were. Like she says, I want you to think of the first age that comes into your mind. How old are you right now? I'm five. What's going on around you? And you kind of describe the scene, and then you become that five-year-old and you say all the things. Maybe it's like, I don't know where I am, where are my parents, I'm lonely, like without even knowing why it's coming up. And then she's like, Okay, now come back to your body, and now you as the adult go into that scene and like imagine a ball, you're putting a ball of light around your younger self, and that there's angels coming down and protecting, whatever. And then you go back to the food, and it's like, how much has your craving dropped? Within like five minutes, sometimes less, it's like you literally you just realize that it's just food, and you're like, I'm I don't actually want it, which is crazy because these are people that have like food addictions.

SPEAKER_03 17:58

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

You get very quickly to the heart of what is the trigger? What is causing you to use and the food is not the trigger, the food is the noise that we're paying attention to. Yeah, we gotta get like I always say it's like a fire, you gotta get to the embers. What's causing the fire? Yeah, and I'm so pleased that thank God I really do that you decide to do this at two in the morning, and that's what it takes at time. Our listeners are listening, so it doesn't take at two o'clock in the morning, you know. Uh but if it does, it does. If it does, it does, and I hope to hear it from here and so forth. But then you went another step further. You made this amazing animated film. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Yeah, so it's really interesting because the original seeds for this film actually came to me while I was going through my eating disorder in New York. I didn't know it would be a movie, but I remember I was walking through the streets of Manhattan and feeling like a mess and thinking if I ever somehow get through this, I should write about it. And I had this idea of writing a memoir called Confessions of a Wheat Head or something like that. And then a bunch of years later, um, I had been making a lot of theater, um, devise theater in Montreal that was social issue themed. I had created this indie theater company, and that was a a bit of an outlet for me to be able to explore some of what I had gone through and wanting to help people, and we raised money for arts, um, like arts mental health institutions and all sorts of stuff. But it was always really scary to to actually relive my story. I it was too soon. And every time that I would try to create a show that was specifically about my experience, I found it really hard to take home with me. Like in the room, I could kind of do it. And then I never wanted to like write the script when I was home. I didn't want to think about it. It was just too emotionally difficult. And so at a certain point, after a bunch of years of kind of trying to figure out how I want to tell that story, I said, you know what, maybe I'm not ready. And then a few years ago, um, I moved back to Montreal um around like I think 2021 and 2022. Um, and the dramaturg, which is like an editor for plays, who I'd been working with on the theater version, we had workshopped it, said, What's that, what's happening with that project? I've been thinking about it. And I was like, I don't know. And he had this idea of maybe writing it as a film, and that was really interesting. And so I went home and kind of wrote up some ideas, and it became very clear to me that from the beginning, a lot of my ideas were so visual. Even in the theater version, I had this note of, and then you'll see projected on a screen a rolling ball of wheat going through the town. And I had this image, because it again came to me from that time of um when you're I'm not a big video game person, but my brother used to play this Lego racing game. And whenever you would go the wrong way, it would be like make a U-turn, make a U-turn. And that's kind of how I felt in my life, where everyone was just going and doing their day-to-day, going to work, going to this, and I was going the wrong way and going into bakeries.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

And you're going, somebody's got to take you to that U-turn to get you out of the way. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

So metaphor with that. Right. And so it was actually all there. And I think it took me about a decade for it to kind of consolidate into this film, and suddenly I was like, whoa, this is so clear and so simple. I've been trying to complicate the idea. And so I kind of worked with with Jesse, and Jesse's amazing, an amazing playwright and editor, and we kind of worked with my ideas, and then I realized very quickly that it was going to be animated, and had no idea. I didn't know anything about making an animated film. And Jesse was like, Don't worry, you'll you'll you just need to find an animator. You'll you'll be fine. And everything just kind of fell into place. And then I applied for a Canada Council for the Arts grant with this idea, with some concept designs, and I got it. I'd never gotten any grants before for my other ideas. And so everything just really, you know, was was working. And then now, you know, we've been doing screenings in in different parts of the world. And it feels good to finally be able to do something with my story in a way that feels safer because being able to do it as an animation created so much healthy distance that I actually forgot it was my story for almost the entire time that we act we were working on the movie itself. Once I finished the script, it was just me with the animator. Oh, okay, let's do this, let's do that. And then only when I when I finished the entire movie, I showed it to my husband. And then suddenly watching it through his eyes, I was like, oh my god, that's my story. And then I got really emotional.

unknown 22:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Yeah, yeah. How did people react? Like you said, you've done this all over the world. Did you notice any differences from people in one place one city, one country versus Hitler versus your home state?

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Um it's hard to it's hard to say a hundred percent. I don't always get the chance to talk to people. Um at the Montreal, at the Montreal premiere. Um I did get to talk to some of the filmmakers who came, but they're international. Um but it was really interesting because I had kind of perceived my film as being whimsical, experimental, like not, because you know, there's a story, but there's no dialogue. And then I wasn't getting into the festivals that I thought it would get into. And then I got into this one in Montreal, which is this massive genre festival that's known for horror and sci-fi and weird, artsier films. And when it premiered, and I was talking to this filmmaker who I think it was from Germany, somewhere in Europe, and he said, Wow, I love the body horror. And I was like, Oh, I think I made a horror movie. And then I completely changed my strategy and started submitting to horror festivals and then getting into a bunch of them. So I went to the Atlanta Horror Festival, and so you know. Yeah, exactly. And so I had people telling me, Oh, it's so interesting that you decided to tell it through horror. And I was like, Well, I didn't realize I was telling it through horror, but well, I suddenly understood like horror is a genre that people use to talk about exactly this type of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Because it puts them at a remove, and so it's not me telling the story about me, it's a universal story, it's takes on a different theme, and oh yeah, that's about me later on when I looking at it through different things.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

I'm thinking about the various horror movies that you know it's it's that I've seen um, you know, as I'm watching the movie like this between my fingers.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

Oh, there's a lot of that for me too.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

But you know, it is about the the the feeling of not being in control. And I think that that's the essence of eating disorders as a general statement. And I think that this idea that my body, I was not in control of my body, my body was betraying me. And what a horror, you know, and to be able to have it relatable on so many various different levels that uh for someone to take it in, oh I get it as a horror movie because well, that's something I can relate to in a in a fashion that that's maybe more excuse the pun, digestible, right? For me then to look at this as a binge eating, you know, or discovery of of an eating disorder. What a gift that person gave when they when they so true, but they but they did. But that's the word end. Ilana, you have given us a gift and our viewership a gift tonight, because there are a lot of people who are struggling with whether it's being alone or scared feelings, and you know, it's very tough when there is an addiction to food. You gotta eat to live. And so even under the best circumstances, how do you do it? And you gotta do it, you know, several times a day to maintain a healthy body. And yet, this is so the the the source of nurturing is also is also part of the disease. I mean, it's a it's a it's it's really a complex issue. You have uh shared such a gift and such a kindness this evening with us and with our viewership to normalize it, to show the creative elements of how you you have been able to give it back to the world in a again, excuse the expression, in a digestible fashion, so that people can hopefully identify, and now there is a name. Now there are people who can help, and um I'm appreciative of this conversation today.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Absolutely, and I and I remember thinking in watching it, I remember thinking, I see what she's talking about, I see it. Because I, like many people, I'm very visual, and so for me, just hearing someone say it, I'll take in a certain amount. Reading it, I'll take in a certain amount. But seeing it is it doesn't have to be any words. I could see what you were talking about, I could feel the feelings instantaneously. It doesn't have to apply directly, like what Estee was saying. You don't have to have gone through this disorder in order to feel lonely, in order to feel ashamed, in order to feel like you don't belong, out of control. These these feelings, these emotions fit every single person at a different point in their life. Young teenagers, young kids. I we both work with young kids, and young kids will show you. I always say behavior has meaning. And young kids don't have a language, but they have a behavior to let you know that they're struggling. And it's a remarkable thing to see a young person struggle and to be able to translate that into oh, you know, there's a book. Let's look, or there's a movie.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

You have given people language today. That's right. So we want to thank you. So I want to share with you that this has been on and off the spectrum podcast. I'm Dr. SD Hess. And I'm Dr. Ann Kirsch. And we have had the most wonderful, wonderful evening this today with uh Ilana Zakon and uh talking about a the critical issue of binge eating disorder. If you heard something tonight that touched your hearts, please follow us. Please subscribe to the podcast. But also, if you feel you can add to the conversation and be a guest on our podcast, please do reach out. We'd love to hear from you. Until then, please stay safe and have a wonderful evening. Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye.