Normal Eating Is Counter‐Cultural: Embodied Experiences of Eating Disorder Recovery

LaMarre, Andrea; Rice, Carla

doi:10.1002/casp.2240

Cited by 47 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…In a time when fatness is stigmatised and associated with ill health and deviance [35–37], LaMarre and Rice suggest that ‘adding body size to the recovery equation highlights difficulties with following prescriptions for recovery in a society that positions weight gain as wholly negative’ ([38] p138). Participants in Malson et al’s study pointed to the ‘culturally constituted tension between, on the one hand, treatment goals of reducing weight concerns and, on the other, culturally normative idealisations of slenderness and the near-ubiquity outside of the eating disorder ward of body image concerns’ ([39] p29).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing shared understandings of recovery and care: a qualitative study of women with eating disorders who resist therapeutic care

et al. 2016

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BackgroundThis paper explores the differing perspectives of recovery and care of people with disordered eating. We consider the views of those who have not sought help for their disordered eating, or who have been given a diagnosis but have not engaged with health care services. Our aim is to demonstrate the importance of the cultural context of care and how this might shape people’s perspectives of recovery and openness to receiving professional care.MethodThis study utilised a mixed methods approach of ethnographic fieldwork and psychological evaluation with 28 women from Adelaide, South Australia. Semi-structured interviews, observations, field notes and the Eating Disorder Examination were the primary forms of data collection. Data was analysed using thematic analysis.Results & DiscussionParticipants in our study described how their disordered eating afforded them safety and were consistent with cultural values concerning healthy eating and gendered bodies. Disordered eating was viewed as a form of self-care, in which people protect and ‘take care’ of themselves. These subjectively experienced understandings of care underlie eating disorder behaviours and provide an obstacle in seeking any form of treatment that might lead to recovery.ConclusionA shared understanding between patients and health professionals about the function of the eating disorder may avoid conflict and provide a pathway to treatment. These results suggest the construction of care by patients should not be taken for granted in therapeutic guidelines. A discussion considering how disordered eating practices are embedded in a matrix of care, health, eating and body practices may enhance the therapeutic relationship.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing shared understandings of recovery and care: a qualitative study of women with eating disorders who resist therapeutic care

et al. 2016

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“…Within the subcategory of societal and medical ideals, several participants shared images of clean eating, noting that when they could not achieve that ideal, they felt poorly about themselves and the recovery process. Participants in LaMarre and Rice's () study expressed similar frustrations, with recovery prescriptions situated within a sociocultural context dichotomizing food, health, and bodies into good/bad, or healthy/unhealthy, and running counter to the realities of recovery. The relativity of the term healthy became evident in the current study, as participants noted both the benefits and drawbacks of comparing their eating patterns to healthy peers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Social comparisons in eating disorder recovery: Using PhotoVoice to capture the sociocultural influences on women's recovery

Saunders

Eaton

2018

Intl J Eating Disorders

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Objective This qualitative study draws on a photo‐elicitation method (“PhotoVoice”) and semistructured interviews to examine the role of social comparison during the eating disorder (ED) recovery process. Method Thirty U.S. women in self‐defined recovery, ages 18–35, used photography to capture personally meaningful social and cultural influences on their recovery, including factors supporting, and hindering their recovery process. Participants then shared these photographs with the research team, and described them in detail. Results Photographs and interviews were examined for social comparisons using thematic analysis, and two broad categories emerged: recovery‐promoting and recovery‐hindering comparisons. Across the 30 interviews, participants reported 143 recovery hindering comparisons and 100 recovery promoting comparisons. The vast majority of comparisons involved friends and media personalities, and took place in vivo or on social media platforms. The presence of “upward” and “downward” food and body comparisons that both support and hinder recovery suggests that social comparisons during the recovery process are more nuanced than previously known. Discussion The classically ascribed uses of comparison in social comparison theory do not appear to hold for women in ED recovery. Comparisons should be encouraged in treatment and interventions if and only if the comparisons are meant to support the recovery process.

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“…By considering socially prescribed perfectionism as a group norm, we can structure questions to extract the difference between personal and social perfectionism, and how they come to affect the paths individuals take through their disorder. Although there has been research on the relationship between social identities and eating behaviours (Guendelman et al, 2011;LaMarre & Rice, 2016;Rich, 2006), as well as the link between perfectionism and disordered eating (Petersson, Johnsson, & Perseius, 2017), the relationships between perfectionism, social identity, and disordered eating remain unexplored. Given that the SIA can aid in our understanding of how social identity relates to behaviour, the shortage of research investigating perfectionism within EDs from an SIA is surprising, and perhaps reflects a general lack of integration between social psychological and psychopathology research.…”

Section: The Current Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Social Clinical Perspective on Perfectionism in Disordered Eating Behaviour

Bouguettaya¹

2019

Preprint

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All over Australia, disordered eating rates are increasing. Decades of research have indicated that perfectionism is a key risk factor for disordered eating behaviour. While there remains some debate about the specific facets of perfectionism, there is general agreement that perfectionism can be delineated based on the perceived source: self-oriented perfectionism (i.e., “I must be perfect”) and socially prescribed perfectionism (i.e., “They require me to be perfect”). Conceptually, this overlaps with social psychology. Specifically, this mirrors traditional social identity approaches of how individuals integrate personal identity content with social identity content. However, to date no research has used a social psychological approach to understand how perfectionism comes about, how it may lead to disordered eating behaviour, and thereby imply how social psychology could aid in therapeutic approaches to reduce perfectionism. In this thesis, I argue that self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism are analogous to personal identity content and social identity content. Across five papers, I present evidence for this social identity approach to perfectionism in disordered eating. Firstly, I present the Consolidated Perfectionism Model to explain how self-oriented perfectionism and socially prescribed perfectionism can be considered from a social identity perspective, integrating cross cultural, clinical, and sociocultural perspectives on perfectionism in disordered eating. Secondly, I present qualitative evidence suggesting that self-oriented perfectionism is absorbed through intrapersonal factors, and socially prescribed perfectionism is in fact a self-control norm transmitted through “fat talk.” Third, through two correlational studies, we find that perfectionism pressure does appear to relate to thin ideal beliefs, but in another study, low self-control was related to disordered eating above body dissatisfaction. Fourthly, I present data that suggests socially prescribed perfectionism relates to disordered eating through negative urgency (a facet of self-control), indicating that disordered eating behaviour is driven by a negative reaction to socially prescribed perfectionism norms present within the immediate social environment. Fifth and finally, I present evidence that we can reduce socially prescribed perfectionism by manipulating the context of health messages to counter perfectionism. We conclude by discussing how this new perspective can add to therapies designed to reduce perfectionism. This thesis adds to social psychological theory by further presenting evidence that the social identity approach has utility in changing toxic group-based beliefs. However, it also has implications for clinical psychology, by presenting evidence that the use of explicit social psychological frameworks may add to traditional clinicalapproaches. Overall, this thesis presents strong evidence for the use of social psychology approaches to clinical disorders, especially in disordered eating.

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Normal Eating Is Counter‐Cultural: Embodied Experiences of Eating Disorder Recovery

Cited by 47 publications

References 22 publications

Developing shared understandings of recovery and care: a qualitative study of women with eating disorders who resist therapeutic care

Developing shared understandings of recovery and care: a qualitative study of women with eating disorders who resist therapeutic care

Social comparisons in eating disorder recovery: Using PhotoVoice to capture the sociocultural influences on women's recovery

A Social Clinical Perspective on Perfectionism in Disordered Eating Behaviour

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