(ETX Daily Up) – You do not suffer from eating disorders, such as anorexia or bulimia. However, your relationship with food is not entirely healthy and serene. You are then in an in-between, a “grey zone”, that of food anxiety, characterized by an excessive preoccupation with food and the body. A behavior that would affect almost one in two women, as explained by Dr. Fanny Jacq, psychiatrist and mental health director of Qare. Interview.
Which people are usually affected by food anxiety?
The typical profile is a young, urban, peri-urban, active and hyperconnected young woman. It affects 44% of women and rises to 60% among 16-25 year olds. I think it affects older women too, but they are used to living with it. For example, it seems normal to them to go on a diet before summer, to yo-yo the seasons.
How does social media influence food anxiety?
At the time of the emergence of the smartphone in 2006, we saw a resurgence of food issues. Before, we didn’t take pictures every day. In recent years, with the emergence of social networks, filters, the “perfect body”, to be beautiful, men must be muscular and women must be thin and tanned. All this leads to general dissatisfaction related to physical appearance.
Can food anxiety be the visible part of a deeper evil?
For me, that’s the tip of the iceberg. Often, we are in a problem around self-confidence. It’s not just the relationship to food and its relationship to the body, there are aesthetic filters.
By dint of seeing yourself through filters on social networks, this leads to dimorphism, no longer supporting yourself when you see yourself in real life. It is a problem related to oneself, to one’s body, to one’s appearance. There is a gap between fantasy and reality.
When you dig, these are women who don’t have a lot of self-confidence, who aren’t assertive, who aren’t good about themselves in general, in their minds and bodies.
Why focus on food?
It depends on the personalities, but there is a share of responsibility of the networks and the media. Just before summer, we are inundated with summer diets. Photos of muscular men, slim women in bikinis. There are fewer make-up tutorials, hairstyles, clothes. There is a cult of the body, but it dates back a hundred years.
Since 1920, we have remained on a cult of the rather thin female body. During the interwar period, women gained power because there were fewer men. So, it had to be erased, made smaller. We started with thin women’s bodies, constrained with girdles and corsets, in pain with stiletto heels. It’s been a hundred years that there are small variations and it stays like that.
How to limit the appearance of food anxiety?
You have to work on self-confidence, both physically and mentally, beyond food anxiety. You have to try to break away from this pre-summer story of the months of May, June, July and take care of your body all year round. You have to appreciate your body throughout the year, have a benevolent look at your body when you look in a mirror.
I like to say that it is a kind of vessel that takes us from the zero point of birth to the point of death. He has to be our buddy, be nice to him all year round. Take care of it, you have to put cream on it, you have to get a massage. In terms of food, you have to try to eat a balanced diet, do a little sport, just to maintain it and take care of it.
The last thing is to know if you suffer from food anxiety and in this case, consult a health professional, have a consultation or a teleconsultation.