Kids Awareness Series

There seems to be alot of confusion and misinformation as to exactly what an eating disorder is and misconceptions about the reasons why a person would engage in these types of self-damaging behaviors.  The three main and most common eating disorders are anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating disorder.  Stated simply, anorexia is when a person starves themselves as a result of the intense fear of becoming fat.  Bulimia involves the destructive cycle of binging and purging and then following out of contorl eating and these individuals usually take laxatives or some type of diuretic.  Binge-eating disorder is simply when a person overeats a large amount of food in a very short period of time and are unable to control this compulsive eating. 

Eating disorders involve extreme disturbances in eating behaviors followed by rigid diets, throwing up, counting calories, weighing themselves, and gorging on food.  People with eating disorders use FOOD as a way to deal with uncomfortable emotions and a way to control what is going on around them.  At its very core root, people with eating disorders have very self-critical attitudes, are perfectionistic in nature, and are striving to deal with  negative emotions and feelings that they have about themselves. 

What eating disorders are NOT: I recently had a patient that was referred to me after she was diagnosed  a few months ago with anorexia after seeing a psychologist in town.  Prior to coming to see me, she had seen her pediatrician for a physical examination and he stated to her, “gee, I thought you would be thinner.”  This is the last thing you want to say to someone with an eating disorder.  You do not have to be underweight to have an eating disorder.  In fact, most of the individuals I have seen are of average weight and many are even overweight.  Eating disorders also affect men and boys, this diagnosis is not given only to girls and women.  People often think that people that have eating disorders are consumed with their physical appearance, in essence they think they are very vain and self-absorbed.  This is very untrue.  They engage in these behaviors as a way to control their feelings of anxiety, guilt and they have  a very self-distorted self-image.  Lastly, individuals with eating disorders are engaging in very self-injurious and damaging behaviors and these types of behaviors should be handled very carefully and seriously.  That is not to say that you should start waving materials and information about eating disorders at them and telling them if they don’t stop they are going to die.  The best thing you can do for someone with an eating disorder is to encourage them and often support, but at the same time strongly encouraging them to get professional help.  Forcing them to get help or to change the way they think will only exacerbate the problem.

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