Thank you for your important and thoughtful note. Please be assured that by writing “diet” on the website, we mean no disrespect. It is used to emphasize the fact that with eating problems, food is not the only issue. Instead, the underlying problem is how conflictual situations are handled.

Anorexia is a rare disease. If, as it is often said, the focus on fashion leads to anorexia, there would be millions of anorectics; instead the prevalence is just 0.5%. In my experience as a clinician for many decades, the relationship between food and weight follows like this:

Within a person’s social context, when he or she is angry or upset, he or she may say “There is something wrong with my life. I’m upset. Perhaps if I were thinner, my problems will be resolved.” In some cases, the desire to control ones weight becomes compulsive and the eating disorder can assume a life of its own.

There is increasing evidence that the social context is related to weight and food. For example, the work of Professor Nicholas Christakis of Harvard shows that our immediate social context can affect weight. Professor Christakis analyzed data collected over beginning in 1948 from the famous Framingham Study with over 5000 people and found that the people who are around those who are overweight can greatly influence them. This includes people who are immediately interface them, even if they don’t know the friend of a friend (Bond, 2009).

We are currently introducing a program in which one component is social networking as an aid in controlling one’s food issues. In this program, people identify a Twitter buddy who they can contact whenever they are stressed and who will then support them through their stress. This counters isolation, a factor that exacerbates eating disorders.

Reference
Bond, M (2009), Three Degrees of Contagion, New Scientist, 2689, 24-27.

Donna