EATING DISORDERS

Eating disorders are described as “maladaptive shape and weight-control behaviours which impair physical and psychological functioning.” Known as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, they are not thought to be a psychological disorder. They may also occur alongside depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or addiction.

These disorders mostly start at early adolescence and often evolve from one disorder to the next, which leads the experts to think they are all part of the same psychological dysfunction. It is believed that the struggle for control of one’s shape and weight are an expression of underlying issues such as low self-worth, difficulty managing emotions, and/or shaky personal boundaries. Thus the person suffering from these issues generally has difficulty with social situations.

NB: For simplicity’s sake the feminine pronoun is used throughout. This is not meant to indicate that men and boys do not also suffer from eating disorders or food addiction.

FOOD ADDICTION

The food addict is the person who reacts to food or to certain foods differently from how a “non-addict” would react.

A non-addict, for example, is satisfied with one piece of cake or a single slice of bread, whereas a food addict is not. She is most likely to continue eating to the point of being sick, putting her own health in danger.

Obsession with food and body image is also main characteristic of the food addict. Similar to the alcoholic or the drug addict, the food addict experiences a “compulsion” to eat and then to overeat. For this reason the sufferer is also called a “compulsive overeater,” just as those alcoholics who drink to excess are known as compulsive drinkers.

The food addict may be able to refrain from eating too much, but her obsession with food will continue nevertheless.

Food Addiction is really only the tip of the iceberg as the addict uses food to temporarily escape life and the feelings associated with life.

Food addicts may also be involved in co-dependent relationships or suffer from a sex and love addiction. Robin Norwood, who wrote “Women Who Eat Too Much,” a book about food addictions and its symptoms and issues, also wrote on the same subject of escape from life and feelings in her book on sex addiction, “Women Who Love Too Much”.

EATING DISORDERS VERSUS FOOD ADDICTION

As in other forms of addiction, sufferers of food addiction are motivated through the use and abuse of food to seek positive sensations and/or to self-medicate painful feelings.

Biologically, the mechanisms determining the progressive nature of food addiction as compared to other addictions are very similar. With eating disorders, what usually begins as a simple desire to meet body image standards as expressed in the media will end up a food addict due to the person’s lack of self worth and unwillingness to feel emotions.

Not all people who suffer eating disorders are food addicts.

However, someone who might to be “cross addicted” to alcohol, drugs, relationships, and overspending most likely will identify herself as having a food addiction.

Other clients with eating disorders, especially anorexic clients, also may not be food addicts.

The individual is the only person who can decide what level of dependency she experiences, and if it is not merely a matter of readjusting their eating habits or wrong association with food. The anorexic can, however, experience the compulsion not to eat at all, as an addiction, as can the bulimic to vomit or the compulsive overeater to overeat.

BULIMIA

Bulimia consists in eating (or more often binging) and then purging by using one or more of the following methods:

• vomiting (most common)
• excessive exercise
• using laxatives

The bulimic normally isn’t overweight as he/she can control her weight through purging the enormous amounts of food eaten usually within a period of 2 to 3 hours. The bulimic normally binges and vomits a few times a day (up to 20 times in the worst cases). The stomach acid regurgitated causes severe damage to the teeth, throat, digestive system, and lips.

Bulimia itself causes a dramatic disruption to a normal daily routine because the bulimic must buy huge amount of foods and then find a place and time several times a day to eat the food and then to purge.

ANOREXIA

Anorexia is an illness that affects mainly teenage women, however middle-age women and men are also affected. The anorexic is normally drastically underweight up to the point of putting her life in danger and having to be hospitalized. Some bulimics and binge eaters can also have anorexic tendencies.

The way to distinguish a bulimic from an anorexic is by checking their Body Mass Index (BMI). The anorexic client’s BMI will be below 17. The anorexic knows how to control the amount of her food to the point of eating very little to virtually nothing at all. She starves herself due to fear of putting on weight, and will do so even if it means putting her life in danger. Hospitalized force-feeding can be the last resort taken to make sure an anorexic survives.

More and more young girls are affected by this disease because of the pressure created by the media to be at Size 0. The doll “Barbie” so loved by young female children has a BMI next to that of death, thus saying a lot about the role models female children and women have been and continue to be exposed to.

BINGE EATING DISORDER (B.E.D)

B.E.D is the most common form of eating disorder, and the most overlooked. The binge eater eats a large amount of food to cope with emotions but does not purge resulting in massive weight gain. The obesity resulting from binge eating may be confused by the client with a “love for food,” a “very good appetite,” or simply “lack of exercise”.

The Binge Eater unfortunately puts herself at risk of heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, and joint problems, not to mention the emotional effects the sufferer leads from a secluded life, being too ashamed to appear in the world to lead a normal social life.

It is of paramount importance that we understand that most sufferers of eating disorders will swing between one aspect and another of the illness; for example moving from being anorexic, to bulimic, and then a binge eater, or possibly vice versa. They are just two sides of the same coin.

ORTHOREXIA or Orthorexia Nervosa

Is an eating disorder characterized by a fixation on eating what the sufferer considers to be healthful food, which can ultimately lead to early death.
Sufferers of orthorexia often display symptoms consistent with obsessive-compulsive disorder and have and exaggerated concern with healthy eating patterns.
A diagnostic questionnaire could be: “Do you care more about the virtue of what you eat than the pleasure you receive from eating it? Or Does your diet socially isolate you?
Orthorexic subjects typically have specific feelings towards different types of food. Preserved products are described as “dangerous”, industrially products as “artificial” and biological products as “healthy”.

VIGOREXIA (Muscle dysmorphia)

Mainly affects men as is a disorder in which a person becomes obsessed with the idea that he or she is not muscular enough. Those who suffer from muscle dysmorphia tend to hold delusions that they are “skinny” or “too small” but are often above average in musculature.