Written transcript of video on Ramadan and Eating Disorders assalamualaikum everyone my name is maliha and i'm a licensed therapist who loves sharing information about mental health ramadan is around the corner and while it comes with its own set of blessing and challenge this time can be especially difficult for muslims who are struggling with eating disorder today i invited najiha khan who's a therapist that specializes in working with eating disorders so that she can shed some light on this topic thank you so much for joining us najiha thank you for having me of course i'm so excited to talk about this topic because i feel like it's going to be very beneficial for a lot of people one of the first things i kind of wanted to start off with was talking a little bit about the prevalence of eating disorders in the muslim community yeah you know it's unfortunate that there's just not a lot of research at all on muslims and i mean mental health in general in muslim communities but um eating disorders especially there's not a lot of numbers in the us on what that looks like however there's no reason to believe that it isn't just as prevalent if not more prevalent as compared to the general population so with the general population you know the numbers vary depending on the type of eating disorder it could be anywhere from one to ten percent of people that are living with an eating disorder there is research that suggests that minorities tend to have higher rates of eating disorders and especially racial and ethnic minorities and so you know we can safely assume that a lot of muslims might be experiencing eating disorders at higher rates the numbers do show that minorities tend to be under diagnosed with eating disorders so clinicians therapists people just aren't as likely to notice these behaviors in people who are minorities and so the numbers again might be high in muslim communities but it might just be getting missed there was actually a study done in the uae that showed that teen girls had higher levels actually twice twice the number of cases of anorexia than teen girls in britain what are some of the common misconceptions that muslims have about eating disorders the biggest misconception might be that it doesn't even exist in our communities people tend to think that you know if you have a good relationship with god then you're going to be able to feed yourself and to to just not have these struggles and obviously that's not true right those things are not correlated and another big misconception is that eating disorders only happen to women or that they only happen to teenagers and that's also not true we have people who have a lifetime of eating disorders that they're dealing with we have men who have eating disorders and that's way more common than we might think another one is that i think because a lot of muslims come from more collectivistic cultures here in the us they might think that we wouldn't have eating disorders because we live in these family groups that would protect us from that and that people would be able to pick up on it if you have an eating disorder and that's also not true because eating disorders can very easily be hidden they can very easily fly under the radar a lot of people they don't lose an immense amount of weight as you might think they might just be around their regular weight so you wouldn't be able to see that on somebody and also just diet culture that somebody who is restricting their food intake who is over exercising that those things are celebrated so you know and that's really unfortunate they associate eating disorders with being very thin or looking a certain way and so it can go under the radar when we don't know what to kind of look out for right right and there's several different ways to have an eating disorder you know there's people who might be experiencing anorexia there's people who might be experiencing bulimia and folks with bulimia again their weight may not fluctuate that much if they may not be any drastic changes they might look the same as you've always seen them even though there's a lot of changes going on internally in their body um due to the purging binging cycles that they're in and then there's folks with binge eating disorder who might be experiencing weight gain or no weight gain um you know everyone's bodies are so different and then there's also our fed which is avoidant restricted food intake disorder yep and with that you know it's not even about body image folks with arfid are not refraining from eating because they want to lose weight but it's something out of their control and so sometimes those two things might get conflated that oh if you're not eating then you must not be happy with your body which is not always true either also i think helpful to look at what um influences your loved one is a part of so like athlete culture sport culture eating disorders are highly prevalent there um just because it's the environment that they're in right already over exercising being told what they should or shouldn't eat how much they should weigh and so i think that's also a misconception that if someone is over exercising and they're an athlete then it's okay but that's not necessarily true i've noticed this happening in the uh they see brown community that conversations surrounding weight especially for women is something that's discussed quite a lot right and conversations those can be very detrimental for someone who is recovering from an eating disorder or experiencing that but it's really unfortunate that although those conversations are so prevalent the conversations surrounding recovery and healthy eating habits and all of that that's something that's that's not talked about at all you really hit the nail on the head i think that in our cultures like people almost feel like they have a right to your body and they can just make these comments about you and how you're looking these days and oh you look like you haven't been eating much like that's such a common thing for us without realizing that that's not helping that individual it might actually be really harming them what are some of the challenges that muslims face in ramadan when they're struggling with eating disorders a lot of cultural practices during ramadan can really trigger the same eating disorder behaviors that people are trying to heal from so a good example of that is when you know like you're expected to not eat anything all day and then come sunset you most of us have a whole feast in front of us that we're expected to eat and for folks who are trying to heal from binging behaviors or from restricting purging cycles that can really you know light up that part of themselves that they're trying to heal from because it just puts their brain back in that spot that they're trying to grow from part of healing from disordered eating is to get back in touch with the natural cues your body gives you for hunger and fullness and in ramadan you're you know you're expected to kind of ignore those cues and just not eat and not listen to your body not listen to your stomach when it grumbles and so that can also kind of set somebody back and throw their healing off course that offset and somebody's schedule can throw off their healing as well and i think you know one big one that we don't talk about enough is just the guilt that people feel for not engaging in this religious obligation that's just a very unique thing that people with eating disorders deal with in ramadan that everyone around them is fasting and they can't participate in it not because they don't necessarily want to but because of an illness that they can't even always verbalize to the people around them when we're trying to help people to eat again after a period of restricting themselves we want them to get back on a schedule that they can regularly eat and monitor their eating and it's again really hard to do that in ramadan when you don't really have an eating schedule most people will just not eat when the sun's out and then eat when the sun's down and there's no real schedule to that and that can make it really tricky so how does someone decide if fasting in ramadan is the right thing for them when they're in recovery talk to your recovery team so if you know people with eating disorders will probably have a therapist a dietitian a doctor they'll have all kinds of people on their team so you know pick one of them whoever you you feel like you can have this conversation with and talk to them about this when you're in the midst of your own eating disorder you might miss certain things you might not know the full context of what's going on around you so it can just be helpful to get a second opinion a professional opinion on what can be healthy for you some questions that they might ask you to help you figure it out is um are you at your goal weight yet if you're not yet at your goal weight then they may not want you to fast yet they may want to get a feel for what your coping skills are like so if you're planning on fasting during ramadan you might get triggered by the people around you you might get activated and so it's going to be really important to be able to cope with those negative emotions that will come up and so um just making sure that your coping skills are set before ramadan starts will be important if you've been through an eating disorder it will be difficult to separate that part of yourself that that used to fast for other reasons from fasting for god and so if there's a part of you that's feeling like you're not going to be able to separate those things then it might be a good idea to take a step back how can friends and family help their loved ones when they're going through so i think malia you mentioned it really well earlier when you said like just how we comment on other people's weight and bodies so really to refrain from doing that it could really trigger someone even if you think you're helping um but you know even a comment that you think is harmless like oh it looks like it looks like you've put on a little bit of weight or you know you look good you lost weight all those things can be really harmful for people and one thing people also don't think about a much more insidious way that this happens is commenting on your own weight and your own body so saying things like i i need to get back in shape i don't want to eat eat this cookie or something because it's unhealthy so refraining from commenting on yourself is also really important you know you may think that it's just if i'm just talking about myself like how can that person be impacted by it but it is getting internalized for them so so not asking invasive questions so like i noticed i noticed you were not fasting today or um you know how come you're eating that much or asking these questions can be really hurtful and just puts that person in a painful place that they're trying to heal from so don't force conversations onto people but be there for them when they are ready to talk about it my final question for you was what are some resources that people can utilize and i'll go ahead and i'll link that information in the description box for the video so that people can keep coming back to it if they need to the national eating disorder association crisis text line is is really a great resource to use um i think you can just text neda 2741741 so the alliance for eating disorders um there's eating recovery center erc that does great work and they have locations in texas um and then for people who want to educate themselves there's also something called edie catalog you can find a lot of different books online that are really great for just body image disordered eating the social justice impacts of eating disorder and yeah there's a lot of great resources on there as well that's awesome i think that could be so helpful for a lot of family members too because i feel like in our community especially information about mental illness or eating disorders it's just not talked about so people don't even know where to start and if they can have somewhere to go to where they can learn about hey how do i help my loved one you know cope with what they're going through it could be something that's very helpful i wanted to say thank you so much for for doing this video with me i think it's going to be so helpful for a lot of people who are who are struggling with an eating disorder or loved ones who don't even know kind of where to start with this whole process so i'm really happy that you were able to make time and enjoy today yes thank you this is really lovely thanks for having me if you found this information to be helpful make sure to share this video like it and subscribe to my channel so that you can learn more information about mental health don't forget to share this video on your social media platforms so that more people can learn and benefit ramadan mubarak and i'll see you in the next one