Eating Disorder Information

If you find yourself in a losing battle with an eating disorder like anorexia, bulimia, or overeating, you’ve probably been hurting yourself and those around you for much longer than you realize. You may have tried to change your behavior in the past, but quickly fallen back to into old habits and felt even worse than before. If an eating disorder has begun to control your life and you feel powerless to break free, it’s time to seek help and healing. Most people have a healthy relationship with food. Eating is a simple pleasure and a basic need. For some people, though, food has become their worst enemy or best friend, used as a pawn in coping with stress or exerting control. Eating disorders, which range from binge-eating to binging and purging to not eating at all, have deep physical and emotional repercussions, both to the individual suffering and those around him or her.

Symptoms of an eating disorder may include:

• Eating a large amount, quickly and in private, whether hungry or full
• Feeling a sense of shame, guilt, or failure after eating
• Purging the body of food by laxatives or vomiting after binging
• Developing an obsession with counting calories, weighing food, restricting food choices, eating only a small amount at a time, and other abnormal habits
• An obsession with weight and/or fear of weight gain
• Extreme weight loss/gain
• Skewed self-perception or a belief that one is fat
• Skipping meals excessively

If you suffer from an eating disorder, it may be a symptom of something larger going on in your life. Immense stress or pressure to perform or keep up an appearance of perfection can foster an obsession with weight and physique. Controlling your body and your food may give you a sense of power if everything else in your life seems out of your control. If you struggle with binge-eating, you might find comfort temporarily in eating instead of confronting someone who’s hurting you or facing other problems. If you’re bulimic, you find comfort first in food, then in purging the food. Though it’s possible to control your emotions and medicate other problems with food, these paths lead back to a feeling of failure and a fear that you’re not good enough. Deep issues like low self-esteem, a feeling of not being good enough, the weight of upholding an image, or a problem that’s just too big to handle on your own can send you back to controlling, back to indulging, and back to purging. It’s a cycle that’s nearly impossible to break alone. Consequences of eating disorders are both long term and short term, and they can affect your physical health.

These include: For binge-eating:

• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Type II Diabetes
• Obesity For bulimia:
• Inflammation and damage to teeth, stomach, esophagus
• Ulcers
• Long-term constipation
• Death from chemical and mineral imbalances For anorexia
• Brittle bones, hair or nails
• Dry or yellowed skin and fine hair growth
• Anemia

If you don’t seek treatment for an eating disorder, it could end in death. Depriving the body of the calories, vitamins, and minerals it needs to function properly can cause dangerous imbalances in vital systems, and inflicting stress by not eating on the body can cause it to just stop working. Binge-eating also pushes people to earlier death, by helping to bring on other conditions like diabetes and high cholesterol. If you or someone you care for is struggling with an eating disorder, it’s time to get help. The path to recovery and health is not fast or easy, but recovery is possible. Recovery from all addictions and disorders is a gift we can all have.