Eating disorders are serious conditions related to persistent eating behaviors that negatively impact your health, your emotions and your ability to function in important areas of life. The most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge-eating disorder.
Most eating disorders involve focusing too much on your weight, body shape and food, leading to dangerous eating behaviors. These behaviors can significantly impact your body’s ability to get appropriate nutrition. Eating disorders can harm the heart, digestive system, bones, and teeth and mouth, and lead to other diseases.
What is Eating Disorders?
Eating disorders often develop in the teen and young adult years, although they can develop at other ages. With treatment, you can return to healthier eating habits and sometimes reverse serious complications caused by the eating disorder.
Symptoms
- Extremely restricted eating
- Extreme thinness (emaciation)
- A relentless pursuit of thinness and unwillingness to maintain a normal or healthy weight
- Intense fear of gaining weight
- Distorted body image, a self-esteem that is heavily influenced by perceptions of body weight and shape, or a denial of the seriousness of low body weight
(ARFID)
Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) is a new name for an old disorder.
Coping and support
It's difficult to cope with an eating disorder when you're hit with mixed messages by the media, culture, and perhaps your own family or friends. Whether you or your loved one has an eating disorder, ask your doctor or mental health professional for advice on coping and emotional support.
Learning effective coping strategies and getting the support you need from family and friends are vital to successful treatment.
Post On Eating Disorder
In 1972 an American psychologist named Walter Mischel developed the Stanford marshmallow experiment geared to…
