Dietitian Reviews NIKOCADO AVOCADO | Raw Vegan to Daily Mukbangs (Honestly, This Was Hard to Watch)

hey everyone i'm abby sharpe welcome to abby's kitchen in today's video we will be taking a look at controversial mukbanger nicholas perry better known as nicacato avocado now this will not be a what i eat in a day review video as nicocado hasn't been doing this format on his channel at least not recently aside from of course his daily mukbangs so instead we're going to be taking a look at his channel in general as well as discussing nicado's transition from being a vegan youtuber to a now non-vegan milk banger we'll also be discussing themes around food addiction and the relationship between food and mental health and we will later be joined by eating disorder dietitian alessandra magisano to dive further into these topics but before we start a few quick disclaimers number one the information in this video is for entertainment and educational purposes only so you should always speak to a healthcare provider about your unique healthcare needs number two this video is not intended to diagnose or imply that nicocado is suffering from food addiction an eating disorder or any psychological distress the intention of this video is to simply discuss the themes that i've seen come up in your dms to me regarding this youtuber in an educational and compassionate format also keep in mind that i'm filming this video in advance to get ahead before baby comes so this may not accurately depict his diet at the specific moment in time that you're watching it and four don't forget to please be kind in the comments both here and on nicotto's channels and five a trigger warning that some graphics and discussions may be disturbing to some of my viewers particularly those who have battled or are battling disordered eating so please feel free to skip this video if that sounds like you and of course finally don't forget to subscribe to this channel and ring that little bell so you never miss out on a video all right so for those of you who are unfamiliar with nicocado avocados channel he is a popular but highly controversial mukbanger here on youtube he posts a mukbang video almost every single day across all three of his channels which have collectively amassed close to 3 million subscribers for those of you who are unfamiliar with the mukbang trend it originated as a korean video format where the host consumes large amounts of food for an audience now it's since been co-opted by young youtubers to become more of an eating challenge or kind of like an outrageous cheat day than a virtual communal meal i have shared my personal thoughts on the mukbang trend in this video right here that you can watch but to summarize my thoughts on this trend it can be perceived as a bit of a publicized and sensationalized food binge which i don't think is typically a healthy way to eat now despite the popularity of mukbangs and of nicocado's videos there has been growing concern online about his health status and his erratic behavior as a result of his mukbang diet i'm not going to show too many clips just to be sensitive to him but if you've watched his videos you probably do know what i'm talking about whether or not these emotional outbursts are real is really up for debate as many viewers have speculated that his videos are dramaticized for views i am absolutely not going to speculate the authenticity of nick's emotions i'm not a psychologist and i also think it's just insensitive to even suggest that his experience is not legitimate however the potential health risks of the frequency and quantity of nicocado's mukbangs are nutritionally relevant so let's begin by talking about that now first i want to do a quick refresher on how nicocado's eating style has really evolved over time let's take a quick look [Music] ranch if fruit were to make you fat then i would also be fat i would look like so this is what i look like well i'll show the boy this is what i love okay so nicotto started his youtube channel as a raw vegan doing more modest plant-based milk bangs however back in 2016 he released a series of videos explaining that he no longer wanted to be vegan largely because he really felt isolated and kind of bullied by vegans online he also claimed to have experienced some negative health effects from his raw vegan diet including things like hair loss tooth decay vitamin b12 deficiency hypoglycemia impaired memory and concentration as well as stating that it was detrimental to his mental sanity now because of this he ultimately came to the conclusion that humans are designed to eat meat now this more or less follows the same sentiments that i've seen from other vegan youtubers who have likewise come to express their decision to just no longer be vegan anymore i've actually talked about my thoughts on this no longer vegan trend at length in my video right here but similar to other former vegan youtubers nick felt conflicted about putting his health before his moral beliefs while he had shared that he still believes in vegan ideologies veganism just didn't make him physically feel good which of course prompted him to completely change his diet and lifestyle now if you are currently raging behind your screen about nick's conclusion that humans are designed to eat meat please let's not start a debate that is not what this video is about if being vegan did not feel good for nick's mental or physical health i think that is something that everyone should just respect so please let's just move on what i do want to explore however is if the decision to be no longer vegan actually improved his health or did he just swap one way of eating that was not serving his health out for an equally and potentially even more problematic one let's talk about the impact of these frequent mukbangs on one's physical health now ever since nicocado reintroduced meat and other animal products into his diet he gained notoriety for his outrageous mukbang videos they have gradually grown in quantity and frequency and are usually made up of often demonized foods like burgers pizzas french fries etc let's take just a quick look oh my gosh i'm so excited cheers to a wonderful eating show i'm so excited to try this okay so trigger warning i'm about to talk numbers but based on our calculations this meal alone provides 6700 calories 365 grams of fat and 15 700 milligrams of sodium we'll talk more about nick's energy needs and sodium intake later on in this video but i want to show this really short clip just to give you an idea of what his mukbang spreads usually look like so nick has been doing these types of daily mukbangs for the last three years and over time we are now seeing the significant impacts that the style of eating has had both on his physical health as well as on his emotional well-being now one of the physical impacts of his mukbangs has been his very public weight gain i'm not suggesting that this weight gain was good or bad or even unintentional it's actually not even clear to me what his health and weight goals are in one video i watched he talks about striving for a 300 pound weight goal and then celebrating after achieving this goal yet in other videos he expresses feeling frustrated with getting fat not knowing why and wanting to be as skinny as he was back in his raw vegan days again it's really impossible for me or you to know which of these concerns are authentic sensationalized for entertainment or just a result of one being out of touch with what feels good to their body and mind but from a health perspective his recent weight gain does place him in the obese category for bmi so is that a problem well let's talk about it first of all the bmi categories are highly flawed and the relationship between weight and health is controversial at best having said that we do have strong research linking obesity to some negative health outcomes but we also know that there is research to show that an individual can be classified as overweight or obese by bmi standards and still be metabolically healthy especially when incorporating nutritious food and activity into one's lifestyle this is why we would never recommend looking at somebody's body or just their bmi to judge their metabolic health it's a data point but it's just one of many important data points here but judging by what we see in nick's videos and the quality of his diet it's very possible that his mukbang diet may be taking a negative toll on his health whether that's the result of the weight gain the diet itself the stress anxiety or depression related to this lifestyle or a combination of any or all of these things it is impossible for any of us to pinpoint really but let's take another quick look when i was living in philadelphia over the summer i had a that i never told anybody i could sense what was going to happen and i my entire left arm felt like something was lighting it on fire so much pressure i could not i started to see spots i started sweating out of my hands and my feet and i was in the basement where it's cooler we had air conditioning and my felt like it was about and so i got some that you know you take to relief well actually when it comes to that type of stuff so in this very vulnerable moment nick shares that he experienced a heart attack at the young age of 27 and that this really scary eye-opening experience ultimately made him reconsider the nature of his mukbang videos he goes on to express his fear around the possibility of dying from this way of eating but is really conflicted because this is ultimately how he earns a living now i genuinely feel so sad and empathetic that nick is in a position where he feels the need to sacrifice his emotional and physical well-being in order to not only entertain his audience but to maintain financial stability he himself has even said that he's willing to put his life and health on the line just for some views and while nick's career choice and niche is obviously very unique i think a lot of people can relate to the sentiment of doing something that maybe they know doesn't support their health but they feel unable to stop because it's what puts food on the table even just thinking about some people during this whole pandemic who have had to put themselves in risky work scenarios to support their family i'm sure a lot of people feel that they don't always have a choice and perhaps that's how nick feels too now at the end of this video which was published back in april 2020 he declares that he will be going back to veganism for a year in order to lose weight and improve his health so is this the right choice well from a nutrition perspective there are definitely a ton of health benefits of eating plant-based which i've spoken to ad nauseam on the channel already but when it comes to heart health specifically research does show that a plant-based diet can lower the risk of heart disease and other risk factors like blood pressure and cholesterol so from my perspective as a dietitian thinking just about the physiological benefits for a minute eating more plant-based foods may help nick better support his young heart but like all diets a vegan diet can be done in a nutritionally balanced way and also one that is arguably potentially just as problematic as the mukbang regime let's take a look i want to use what i have here for good and i want to show people a healthy way to eat this is my breakfast lunch and dinner for the next week this is more exciting for me and it's more variety okay so nick plans to eat a total of 35 bananas a day to add variety and help him lose weight again i need to preface this with the fact that just days after this video went live he uploaded a series of non-vegan mukbang videos where he was eating a 21 pound lobster in one and cheesy noodles in another so we just don't actually know if any of this reflects his true intentions or is just for the show but i can only comment on what i've seen and heard and since viewers may also casually just see one or two videos here or there i do want to take the time to discuss it so for education's sake 35 bananas a day adds up to about 3 672 calories 107 grams of fiber 45 grams of protein 943 grams of carbs and 14 785 milligrams of potassium so according to our calculations the calories derived from this amount of bananas would actually exceed the estimated amount of calories so around 2700 or so that he would need to maintain his current weight never mind to lose yes his typical mukbangs do provide significantly more energy around 5000 to 10 000 calories per sitting and all of these predictive equations are just estimations not an accurate depiction of an individual's real true needs so it's possible that nick's energy needs may in fact be much less or much more than what was estimated but either way i think that we can all agree that getting almost twice one's calorie needs in one food alone is not a sustainable balanced or healthy way to eat this is not what i would call adding variety so even though i think adding fruit to his diet is a positive change for nick this would not help nick meet his overall nutrient needs just eating bananas for example would leave him deficient in a ton of nutrients like calcium fat vitamin d iodine iron and zinc just to name a few and since this raw vegan style of eating caused him to experience some negative health outcomes in the past i wouldn't want him starting off again on the wrong foot only to realize that he just can't maintain this lifestyle and then swinging the pendulum back to the other extreme again shunting back and forth between two unsatisfying diet extremes is not typically how we achieve a healthy moral free and balanced relationship with food let's see what he has to say about his new mono meal diet aka just eating one food in his day this is health this is health this is fiber this is potassium to push out all that sodium i will be adding salt to this okay so let's talk about this plan here by eating 35 bananas in a day nick is getting close to 300 percent of his daily fiber recommendation and fiber has been shown to help reduce cholesterol levels and other risk factors for heart disease like blood pressure and while someone who has been eating a general balanced diet and transitioning to a more plant-based eating way over time may be accustomed to greater fiber levels nick has predominantly been getting his calories from fat and refined carbohydrates that are low in fiber so he is like ramping up the fiber intake really super fast this rapid increase in fiber can cause digestive discomfort like gas bloating and constipation so ideally we would want to gradually increase fiber intake to allow the digestive system to adjust so that he doesn't experience unpleasant symptoms and then understandably want to throw in the towel he also talks about wanting to consume more potassium to help push out all that sodium so to recap he's getting close to 15 000 milligrams of potassium from these bananas which is more than 400 percent of his potassium needs for the day so this of course does sound like a lot of potassium however high potassium intakes are not usually considered to pose a significant health risk unless somebody has impaired kidney functions or in some elderly populations as the kidneys become less efficient at removing potassium from the blood but since he assumedly doesn't have these issues it's pretty low risk to get a lot of potassium from food alone as for its ability to push out the sodium well in layman's terms this is in fact true so one of the many reasons why a diet rich in fruits and vegetables is so heart healthy is because they're common sources of potassium and potassium does help excrete excess sodium from the body which helps to lower blood pressure potassium also helps to relax blood vessel walls which further contributes to lowering blood pressure and ideally for those who are at greater risk of heart disease it's important to try to make changes to when sodium and potassium intake together one two part trial found that just lowering salt intake or just increasing potassium intake was not as effective at fighting hypertension or heart disease as doing both together having said that we don't want to have no sodium in our diet either as salt also plays an important role in muscle contraction and fluid balance like like what nick is saying so we actually don't have an official recommended dietary ratio but i've seen numbers in the literature recommending an ideal sodium to potassium intake ratio of about one to three meaning our potassium intake should ideally be around three times our sodium intake but if all one ate was bananas you'd be looking at a ratio of 422 to one so in this case even though i'm not sure it's the most appetizing combination adding a little salt to the bananas might help offset this extreme imbalance or you know just eating a greater variety of foods which would have a multitude of other benefits as well but as a segway from salt let's talk about water weight so one of nick's most common catch phrases when referring to his weight gain is saying it's just water weight in fact he now sells his own line of merch adorned with the phrase so again we're not sure if he's just joking when he says this or if he legitimately believes that his weight is attributed to water weight but for educational purposes let's talk about water weight for a hot minute so water weight essentially refers to fluid retention in the body which causes bloating swelling and puffiness one of the most common causes of water weight gain is a high sodium diet often as a result of ultra processed foods we know that in an average nakakato avocado mukbang that nick would be getting between five thousand and fifteen thousand milligrams of sodium which is between two to six times the suggested amount research suggests that the amount of water retention one experiences from a salty meal can definitely vary and depends on how far sodium intake is from baseline or what's normal for the person but in terms of water weight most people are looking at an uptick of around two pounds on the scale carbohydrates can also contribute to water weight retention since for every one gram of carbs you consume your body needs about three to four grams of water to process and store it so in nick's typical mukbangs there's no shortage of refined carbs so depending on how many carbs one consumes that could add on a few extra pounds as well but taken together we're talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of five extra pounds not something that would necessarily even change your pant size so yes certain foods can cause fluctuations on the scale but unless there's something physiologically wrong like heart failure severe protein deficiency liver damage or kidney damage some kind of digestive issue it's likely not a hugely significant amount now in terms of reducing water retention you can consume more potassium-rich foods and no it does not have to be 35 bananas like nick is suggesting uh you can also drink more water go for some exercise reduce your intake of salt and refine carbohydrates as well as increase your magnesium intake from things like nuts whole grains and leafy greens so with that said let's now discuss the potential impacts that nicotto's mukbang diet has had on his emotional and mental health i just want to let you guys know that i am not mentally well i'm not okay and i'm gonna lose him if i don't get help i think that i don't think i'm made for youtube i don't think that youtube's for me anymore just get help from my sick sick mind that's going crazy from all this junk food so nick cotto has plenty of footage in his mukbang videos where he displays very strong emotional outbursts and erratic behavior he has also previously mentioned that he does try to capitalize on more dramatic and emotionally turbulent content as they generate the highest number of views so like i've been saying we can't say for certain whether or not these reactions are in fact real but i do want to be sensitive to whatever emotional and mental struggles nicocado may be experiencing so i'm not going to be showing too many of those delicate moments but clearly from these clips you know you can see him reaching out because he's struggling now one thing i do want to comment on is nick's suggestion that junk food has had a negative impact on his mental well-being later on in this video he talks about quitting youtube because his weight is spiraling out of control and that even though he feels hungry he's only going to eat air for the day i'm of course not a mental health professional and i'm not here to diagnose nick at all but what i'm seeing from this channel i can understand totally why his audience is concerned for his well-being as he does appear to be stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to managing both his health and his youtube career with that said what i can talk about is the research and whether or not junk food really does have a negative impact on our mental health now while we don't know what nicotto is eating off-screen his typical mukbang diet where he's not going vegan is predominantly made up of calorie-dense processed foods that are high in refined carbohydrates and unhealthy fats and also low in fiber and antioxidants not only does this have the potential to impact his physical health but research suggests one's diet may also impact one's mood one 2019 meta-analysis that looked at 45 000 participants found that increasing whole foods and decreasing processed foods can reduce feelings of anxiety and depression there's also some interesting research to show that individuals who regularly consume fast food are 51 percent more likely to develop depression the researchers in this study found that the relationship between these types of foods and mood is really dose dependent meaning that the more you consume the greater the potential risk of course there's just also the possibility that people who consume more fast food have other socioeconomic circumstances that also make them more prone to mental health issues or put another way what comes first depression or the poor diet thankfully researchers have tried to somewhat address this in some of their studies one large analysis looked only at prospective studies so they looked at the baseline diet and then calculated the risk of participants developing depression down the line the findings suggested that a higher quality diet was associated with a lower risk for the onset of depressive symptoms but that ultimately more randomized control trials would be needed to really control for all of these tiny little confounders now we also have research looking at the importance of the brain gut axes aka the role of the gut microbiome in anxiety and depression and for this i spoke again to my colleague andrea hardy now we know that consuming high amounts of ultra-processed foods can negatively impact the bacterial composition of our gut and while we don't have a consensus necessarily on which specific bacteria are associated with depression we know that there is a link and we also have research to suggest that probiotic supplementation may actually help improve anxiety and depression there is still a lot to uncover in this world but it's definitely a really interesting area of evolving research as for general emotional stability and cognitive function research suggests that increased intakes of trans fats can increase feelings of irritability aggression and negatively affect our ability to emotionally regulate other studies have found that eating a high fat nutrient poor diet for a period of as little as five days can impair attention memory and mood so based on all of this imperfect science eating more whole foods may help support one's emotional health that's not to say that having a pizza on a friday night is going to give you a mental breakdown if you generally have a healthy diet while we do actually see changes in the microbiome pretty quickly based on what it's fed that also means that it can bounce back to normal pretty fast too so as andrea says what happens to my gut microbiome in vegas doesn't stay in vegas ultimately though it's all about one's long-term dietary pattern in nick's case particularly in his mukbang phases i would be concerned that his dietary pattern may play a role in his current state of mind now you know my style i don't usually like to focus on what one needs to remove from their diet but rather it's also important to consider what we can add to improve health as well so for example research has shown that omega-3 fats can not only help prevent and treat anxiety and depression but it can also help improve some mental disorders and protect against cognitive impairment so you can find omega-3s in foods like fatty fish walnuts flax and supplements so that might be a nice option to work in there with his bananas finally let's talk about our last theme here food addiction and binge eating behavior again i just want to reiterate that i am in no way diagnosing or implying that nick has any kind of food addiction or binge eating disorder i simply want to use this as a teaching moment to provide some education and insight on these topics since they've come up to me in your questions a lot and i think that nick's content provides an interesting segue into some of these themes so for those of you who are followers of nicocado's content you may be aware that he has repeatedly vowed to quit mukbangs and change his diet only then to return a day later and despite repeatedly recognizing that this eating pattern is problematic and potentially detrimental to his health it would appear that he is unable to quit these behaviors here's the thing everyone's saying to eat better but when i eat better i feel so much worse so much worse i'd have any problems in chicago or in canada with carly but now that i've been eating really healthy like home-cooked meals proteins healthy fats all this kind of stuff i feel disastrous okay so in this clip he mentions that even when he does try to eat healthier he ends up feeling so much worse an experience that some people may characterize as withdrawal now i've talked about this in my video on food addiction which you can watch the whole thing right here but ultimately the research on food addiction is pretty controversial while there is some research to suggest that the brain does not react the same way to food withdrawal as it does cocaine withdrawal there is other research to suggest that there may still be some effect on the brain and overall mood when abstaining from certain foods one 2018 study on 231 participants found that when individuals cut down on junk food they reported feeling tired irritable and sad while also experiencing an increase in cravings in those first few days the researchers also found that the more intense the withdrawal symptom the less likely the change in eating would be successful in the long term however this study only looked at self-reported data which doesn't actually tell us anything about the brain's response to withdrawal on the other hand some animal studies have examined the brains of rats experiencing withdrawal from sugar and they found that the dopamine levels in their brains dropped and they also exhibited changes in blood pressure and heart rate so at this point it's hard to know what is going on but i am really empathetic to the fact that this is likely an uncomfortable and stressful transition especially given how extreme his diet shifts seem to be this is generally why i don't advocate for making any major changes to one's diet all in one go going from a 5 000 calorie fast food diet to a raw vegan diet subsisting on only bananas is probably not going to feel good physically or emotionally to anyone and as a result it's also likely not going to be sustained for any meaningful amount of time next i want to quickly talk about binge eating disorder versus overeating now overeating occasionally is a normal tendency for all of us sometimes a special meal tastes so good we just don't want to stop or sometimes we've denied ourselves a specific food and then when we get access to it again we have a hard time stopping binge eating disorder is defined as reoccurring episodes of eating significantly more food in a short period of time than what most people would eat in similar circumstances binge eating disorder is defined as recurring episodes of eating significantly more food in a short period of time than what most people would eat in similar circumstances alongside feelings of a lack of control it's also actually not uncommon three million men and five million women in the united states alone suffer from this disorder so to get some more clinical experience on binge eating i am joined by my old university friend alessandra magisano who is now working as a full-time eating disorder dietitian so thank you so much alexander for joining me oh my gosh my pleasure i'm so happy to be here thank you so how common is it in your practice to see people who are dealing with reoccurring binge eating episodes um to come from you know like a highly restrictive eating diet previously it is extremely common i would say that i confidently can say like almost everybody 95 of the cases that i see clinically come from highly restrictive um eating patterns and they swing to binge eating reoccurring episodes and even if it's not highly restrictive um in a very extreme way it's a restriction in some way restriction always leads to binge eating in one way or another um and so it's highly highly prevalent and what are your thoughts on the mukbang trend that we see going around on social media these days oh dear that's my thought i just i mean it's actually horrifying um it's it's disturbing it's a little bit it's a lot dangerous um i think that it's dangerous because it does um and i know you've mentioned this too it just glorifies and you're 100 right it glorifies eating disorders so what used to be a secret thing like the binge eating that i see clinically is oftentimes this secret shameful um really dark episodes where someone would experience it on their own binge eating now we're just now not only is it kind of publicized but they're inviting an audience and they're it's they're feeding off of the audience and you don't know where does eating disorders stop and end it's a part of the eating disorder i think too to get that validation and to get that that feedback from their their audience so i think it's very dangerous that this trend is is happening um it's glorifying eating disorders it's giving light um to eating disorders and making it look like it's just like a fun thing to just eat large amount of food um when it's extremely dangerous and the emotional and impact on mental health is so critical that that's the part you don't see when you just watch your you know 20 minute videos of people totally and what would your suggestion be for somebody like nick who expresses discomfort in the binge episodes and wants to stop but just finds himself feeling even worse emotionally when he does try to stop well that would make a lot of sense actually and so that's kind of what i what i see all the time is like there's this need to stop because it is is you know uncomfortable but they can't and that's when the idea of oh this is something that's completely out of my control and in some sense becomes that way because it's now a giant coping strategy so binge eating disorder essentially is a way to cope with uh very difficult and painful emotions and a lot of times sometimes trauma right whether it's like a lot of trauma or little trauma and so it becomes the mainstream way that someone feels safe and so if that's your main copy strategy you take that away i mean you can't survive so what they're actually really attached to is the fact that it's their only way of maybe feeling safe maybe numbing out the pain numbing out the anxiety coming out the depression whatever so of course they can't stop eating because if they stop eating they'd have to feel and if you have to feel that causes a whole lot of discomfort right oh absolutely and on that note um what is your professional opinion on the idea of food addiction is this something real that you see and or what may people be experiencing when they kind of experience some of these symptoms of being addicted to food addicted to sugar addicted to certain other kinds of um edible substances yeah yeah it's a really great it's a really great question um in my professional opinion food addiction and from sort of the sort of the research that we do have it isn't a real thing in the sense of other substances so we can't relate it to alcohol or drug addiction um mainly because you can't sustain we don't sustain from food in the way that you can those substances we need it to live but also because our relationship we can have a healthy relationship with food whereas depending on your relationship with alcohol or drugs there's no there's no there's no health healthy way to have it so food addiction is more about the fact that when you eat it it's a pleasurable experience and like i was saying it's a coping strategy so that becomes what's addictive is the idea that that is how you cope is how you have control and when you feel like you you um lack control in a lot of areas of your life food and the way you eat becomes a big way to control it so food addiction is largely um about that is about a coping strategy and then you become addicted to needing that way of soothing and kind of numbing out but your brain does sort of experience those those neurotransmitters and those and and that experience of when you eat certain things in a way that you're going into it to numb or to cope it does soothe it calms you down when you're eating you aren't thinking about you know the the anxiety that you have or the other things you've got going on so it does kind of like soothe you and so physiologically it does kind of feel like a bit of a like a high in a sense and so that's what people are experiencing is your body just trying to actually help you cope um and so that's what they're really experiencing but it's easy to feel like i'm addicted because it's always typically a certain type of food that's associated with it but that's only because that's the food that's associated with your soothing um but we know that you know it's not just the highly high sugar high high fat processed food because i've seen people binge on healthy food as well and they get the exact same high and the exact same feeling of addiction or orthorexia comes from that just that soothing and feeling like that's their safe place whether it's mcdonald's or peanut butter totally interesting yeah and and in your practice do you see any significant connections between somebody's eating behavior and their mood so like when you know when we regulate their eating does mood improve or vice versa what are your thoughts absolutely so it's highly highly correlated which is why um bingeing disorder requires sort of the combination of the nutrition side of things and like a dietitian and a skilled therapist because when we change anything with food i immediately see mood change and so sometimes it's at the beginning of so someone comes in and they're deep in reoccurring binge eating episodes we're going to try and stabilize them and regulate them their mood initially would probably actually feel like it would go um being worse and that's because their copy strategies taken away so they need ways to kind of deal with the emotional side of it but once you get used to regulating mood regulates because your brain starts to find other ways of coping and also trusts you it starts to trust the fact that you can give it consistent nutrition over the course of the day and there isn't going to be this large amount of food at one day and then nothing nothing nothing like nothing large amount of food so it does regulate your mood and your body has what it needs to regulate emotion and what are some of the supports that you would offer or recommend in these situations so um it would definitely be a exposure therapy almost is very important um in this kind of treatment so um meal plans are very important with binge eating recovery just as they would be with someone who is suffering with a very restrictive type of eating disorder meal plans are very very essential at the beginning because it offers that structure it offers that baseline um and then some exposure therapy so the foods that they would use in their benching episodes we'd have to find ways to integrate them in a normal way um little by little sprinkle them in and a lot of support and accountability because they're going to need they're going to need it they're going to feel like they're just out of control that's where the addiction kind of comes from they're going to feel like their vice has been taken away from them and so they're going to need a lot of support and a lot of structure and accountability is the way to keep them really safe and feeling like they can get through it and just another kind of question off what you just said because one thing that i get asked a lot um and i think that you'll be able to explain this so nicely is for for those who are struggling with an eating disorder or disordered eating who want to get to a point of intuitive eating but they don't have proper hunger and fullness cues why is that meal plan so important and and you know what does that transition look like from you know having being really really deep in their eating disorder to having some structure that you'd be working with them one-on-one as a dietitian to moving towards a more of course a more intuitive healthy relationship with food fantastic question the way that i like to describe it to my clients is just the way that if you were to break your arm and you would need a cast when you go into recovery the meal plan is the cast we need it to hold you in place while you heal so because when you have a disorder relationship with food or an eating disorder your hunger cues like you said are completely broken and the only way to fix them is actually to mechanically get them going again so that's where the meal plan comes in we mechanically start to jolt at first it feels very anti-intuition and it does you eat when you're not hungry you're always full um it feels very opposite to what the intuitive eating movement uh you know praises but it's necessary to just reset reset your system reset your metabolism reset your hunger and fullness cues and then the way that we introduce it is once essentially once the symptoms have gone away so once you um have a hold on your reoccurring benji episodes or whatever the symptom is for that individual then we can start to play around with okay so you know we have this meal plan maybe at one area of your meal plan once a week we're gonna you're gonna try and just uh think about what you want to eat and go with that so we just take one area and practice using intuition and see what happens because sometimes we try that and the intuition doesn't work their intuition says that they should eat something that their eating disorder would actually say they have to eat so we need to test whether their intuition is is real or if their eating disorder is still controlling that and that's where the eating the meal plan is important because that just holds it up that's back up and then we just kind of pepper in some intuitive eating here and there um until we can sort of trust that you trust your body and your body trusts you to be able to just say okay i don't need a meal plan i can just choose as i want but that's fantastic that's so that you've you've really explained it so beautifully because i get asked this in dms every single day saying i want to eat intuitively but i don't have hunger and fullness cues and should i just eat what i want and what i feel like you may not be ready for that yet absolutely absolutely in fact you probably aren't ready for it and it should and there shouldn't be a timeline of okay so like a month of mechanical eating and then intuitive eating there is it isn't really that kind of dry sometimes it's that quick but oftentimes um i see months months of mechanical eating before you can sort of have that intuition come back and it's usually relative to how long you've been disordered right so if you had years of disordered eating your hunger cues are going to take some time to come back and sometimes it can take even up to a year so people think oh my gosh it's not working i'm going to give up i'm going to go straight to intuition give it the time because once you have it you have it and then you can be intuitive for the rest of your life it just might mean you might need to be mechanical for months a year and is weight rest restoration a um like a key determinant of whether or not somebody's ready to kind of move on or is it mainly based on so you want to also make sure that they are in a healthy place physically as well exactly exactly so everybody's a little bit different if weight restoration is a part of their plan then that absolutely needs to be at the priority um because it's hard to manage you know there's like set point there's also this you know back and forth between like set point and disordered eating did you ruin your set point what if i don't like my set point so a lot of work has to be done to just say okay we need to just restore and again do the meal plan let's put the cast on let's try and heal you first and then let's kind of see where where things are um but yeah you have the weight restore first before you can even think about being intuitive because sometimes your intuition impacts weight restoration unfortunately oh for sure absolutely oh well i could talk to you all day and i'm sure that we will have other videos where i have really great pointed questions to to get into all those topics um but forever but for everyone who's watching at home please leave um a comment if if you want to hear some other great insights from alessandra and we'll we'll have her on again for another video um but thank you so much for your time i hope you stay in these crazy coke times i'm sure we'll be in touch again soon okay thank you thank you so much thank you again alessandra that was so so helpful um i'm gonna be leaving some links below to some places that you can reach alessandra for some one-on-one support so to round out this review i want to once again say that the intention for this video is not to diagnose or pathologize nicocado avocado but rather i just want to use this as discussion on some not uncommon food behaviors and the potential physical and emotional implications that they may have i also want to strongly remind you to please be kind in the comments both here and on nick's channel we ultimately cannot know what somebody might be going through behind the scenes but by considering the research and what we're seeing in clinical settings what we can say is our relationship with food goes far beyond our physical health as there does appear to be a strong connection between food and what we eat and our emotions and this is definitely important to consider in the age of kovid when let's be real our mental and emotional well-beings may require a little bit more nurturing and care and on that note that is all for today's video folks if you liked it please be sure to give it the thumbs up leave me a comment below if you have any questions or anyone else or any channels that you want to see me review next subscribe to the channel and i will see you next time on abby's kitchen bye [Music] you

Channel: Abbey Sharp

Views: 734,596

Keywords: abbeys kitchen, abbey sharp, nikocado avocado, mukbangs, mukbang, nikocado avocado raw vegan, nikocado avocado then vs now, nikocado avocado weight gain, nikocado avocado 3, more nikocado, nikocado avocado heart attack, nikocado avocado diet, nikocado avocado calories, nikocado avocado binge eating, nikocado avocado vegan, nikocado avocado no longer vegan, nikocado avocado food addiciton, nikocado avocado mental health

Id: 6H24X2xzdVM

Length: 47min 57sec (2877 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 24 2020