Dr. Miguel Toribio-Mateas

So they can actually demonize certain foods.

They can make them, they can identify them with guilt.

They can identify them with danger as opposed to identify them as something nourishing and safe.

So,

I was in an extreme situation, an extreme example of that in my family.

But there was a bit of conversation around that because I think there was a general conversation around diet at that particular time.

But then I started using laxatives in my teens.

on the basis that I thought, okay, well, my grandma used them and I just basically I nicked some of them and I started using them.

And I thought, okay, well, I can afford to eat more and then go to the toilet more.

And that became a way of purging.

And it developed into other ways of purging through my teens, late teens, 20s, 30s.

And I've only really come to realize in my, you know, probably as I came to 50s,

why I was doing all of that kind of stuff, which was partly because of early life trauma that I experienced.

You know, there was a complex situation with I had a brother who was dying of cancer while I was growing up.

He was in and out of hospital for about four years.

So my mom and dad were not around a lot of the time and food became a bit of a crutch because I needed that kind of safe space and

I needed the embrace of a parent that maybe wasn't there.

And, you know, it took like, you know, a good 40 years for me to understand that maybe that is why I was always going back for seconds and then kind of like feeling guilty because of that and restricting for weeks at a time or cutting out complete food groups.

There was sexual...

abuse as well that I endured during that time as well.