For Friends and Families
What Are Eating Disorders?
Eating disorders are complex mental health conditions that affect how a person thinks and feels about:
- Body weight, shape and size
- Food, eating and nutrition
- Physical activity
- Self-worth and self esteem
How Do Eating Disorders Start?
We all have stress in our lives. There are both healthy and unhealthy ways to deal with this stress.
Eating disorders begin as a way to manage life stressors when a person lacks healthy coping skills. Lacking a sense of power or control over parts of a person’s life is a common stressor that leads to disordered eating behaviors. As these behaviors occur more often, they alter chemical pathways in the brain. This creates an addiction to the disordered eating patterns. Because of this change, a person with an eating disorder cannot “just stop” their unhealthy behaviors. The addictive cycle of unhealthy coping creates a great deal of social and emotional distress. This furthers the cause and effect nature of the illness.
Some people think that disordered eating behaviors must happen every day to be considered an “eating disorder.” This simply is not true. There are people with eating disorders who engage in unhealthy behaviors multiple times per day while others only do so a few times per week.
Types of Eating Disorders
There are many types of eating disorders. Some of the conditions share several attributes with each other. Commonly shared behavior changes you might notice in your family member could include:
Other Things To Keep In Mind
You might also notice physical changes in your family member, such as:
However, each condition has a unique set of behaviors that define one disorder from another. No two people experience the same eating disorder in exactly the same way.
Anorexia Nervosa
A person with Anorexia Nervosa usually has an intense fear of gaining weight. Some describe this as a fear of “becoming fat.” Because of this, a person prevents weight gain by:
- Restricting the amount or types of food you eat (dieting or fasting)
- Burning calories by exercising a lot more than most people
- Purging the body of extra calories after snacks or meals by:
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- Self-induced vomiting
- Taking pills (diet pills, diuretics, or laxatives)
People with Anorexia often view their body shape or size very differently from how others see them. They might look in the mirror and see themselves as overweight. However, you might recognize that they are actually normal weight or even underweight. People with severe cases of Anorexia may not even recognize that their condition has become life-threatening.
Bulimia Nervosa
A person with Bulimia Nervosa typically feels bad about their current body shape and size. It may cause the person to feel out of control when eating, which can lead to excessive overeating. Afterwards, the person might purge the calories by:
- Forced vomiting (self-induced vomiting)
- Using pills (laxatives or diuretics) to rid the body quickly of calories
- Exercising intensely or for long amounts of time
- Avoiding food (fasting)
Similar to Anorexia, people with Bulimia tend to feel shame about their eating behaviors, leading them to hide them from others.
Binge-Eating Disorder
Unlike what many people think, those with Binge Eating Disorder (BED) are not “lazy.” In fact, many people with BED are considered perfectionists. For these people, disordered eating becomes a way of coping with the pressures they place on themselves.
A common pattern for a person with BED is working in a high-stress environment during the day, possibly skipping all day time meals. Avoiding eating all day leads to extreme hunger followed by binge eating. The amount of food eaten during a binge is generally more than most people can eat at one time. A person with BED might also:
- Eat when not hungry
- Feel out of control when eating
- Eat until feeling uncomfortably full
- Eat alone due to feeling embarrassed about their eating behaviors
- Feel sad, angry, guilty or disgusted after a binge eating episode
Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)
A person with ARFID is not typically concerned about body weight, shape or size. They may have been known as a “picky eater” in childhood. As a person with ARFID ages, they often maintain a strict list of foods they are willing to eat. Food restriction may also happen due to:
- Generally lacking interest in eating or in food
- Disliking the textures, tastes or smells of many foods
- Worrying about possible health risks of certain types of foods
Avoiding many types and categories of foods can then lead to:
- Having a lower body weight than expected for the person’s age or size
- Extremely low levels of important vitamins, minerals and other nutrients in your body (nutritional deficiency)
ARFID differs from other eating disorders in many ways. However, it can still be dangerous. In very serious cases, your family member may need nutritional supplements at home or in the hospital, depending on how severe the nutritional deficiency becomes.
