Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are extreme disturbances in an individual’s behavior and feelings related to food, weight, and body image.  They are most likely to develop in young women, during adolescence in young adulthood.  But children, preteens, adult women, and men also may develop these problems.  Eating disorders have life-threatening consequences.

Anorexia Nervosa is characterized by excessive weight loss through self-starvation and sometimes through purging.  Purging includes vomiting, using laxatives, and exercising excessively.  Systems include:

•  Refusal to maintain a normal weight

• Intense fear of weight gain
• Obsessive preoccupation with weight and shape
• Loss of menstrual periods
• Distorted body image

Bulimia Nervosa is characterized by cycles of binge eating followed by purging, usually done in secret.  The individual’s weight may range from below to above average, so it may be hard to detect.

Symptoms include: 

• Repetitive cycles of bingeing and purging
• Feeling out of control of food intake
• Purging after and bingeing via self-induced vomiting, laxatives, diet pills, diuretics, excessive exercise, or starvation
• Obsessive preoccupation with weight and shape

In addition, some people may have a mixture of anorexic and bulimic symptoms without qualifying for either diagnosis.  They may engage in compulsive overeating or bingeing without purging.  Preoccupied and significantly distressed about their eating habits, they may gradually gain weight to the point of obesity.  Many people had both symptoms of anorexia and bulimia.  Men are most likely to lose weight or to purge by excessive exercise.

Eating Disorders “Eat Up”Relationships

Eating disorders are consuming.  They consume the individual and obsessive negative thinking and behaviors, and they consume the individual’s relationships with family members, loved ones, and life.  This is practically due to the effects of starvation.  When people are not adequately nourished, they think about food constantly, sometimes even dreaming about it.  They also become depressed, isolated, and tired.  They avoid relationships because they often feel others pressure them to eat.  They are physically depleted, and feel compelled to engage an eating disorder to behaviors.

Loved ones find eating disorders extremely difficult to understand and accept.  Seeing someone you love starve or damaged her or his body is stressful.  Often, parents, spouses, and others begin to become intrusive in their efforts to get the person to eat or stop purging.  Soon, the individual may see these loved ones as enemies trying to control her or him rather than help.

Eating disorders may develop if a person has no other way to speak or represent feelings.  Frequently, family dynamics, problematic communication patterns, losses, or stresses like abuse have contributed to negative feelings the person could not deal with directly.  It is never a simple matter that can be solved by just telling the person to eat.  The symptoms have become the individual’s way to avoid facing problems more directly or are an attempt to feel in control when the rest of life feels out of control.

Serious Distress Signals

When someone:

• Fasts or severely restricts food intake
• Hides are sneaks food
• Spends excessive time in the bathroom after meals
• Vomits, takes laxatives, diet pills or other medications to lose weight
• Has lost a significant amount of weight
• Is tired and depressed
• Can’t concentrate
• Has irregular periods, swollen glands ore joints, broken blood vessels or bloodshot eyes.
• Wears layers of clothes even in warm weather
• Faints or passes out

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