Are you or a loved one struggling with anorexia? Explore the signs, symptoms, and causes of the this and how to get assistance.
Anorexia Nervosa
Many of us worry about putting on weight or wish we looked different in today's image-obsessed society or could fix something about ourselves. That's just a human thing. But if your eating habits, emotions, and life have been taken over by concern about being thin, you might have the extreme eating disorder, anorexia nervosa.
Anorexia can result in unhealthy weight loss, which is also harmful. The desire to lose weight may actually become more important than anything else. The desire to see yourself as you really are can also be lost. Anorexia can affect women and men of all ages and is characterized by a failure to maintain a healthy body weight, an extreme fear of gaining weight, and a distorted body image, although it is most prevalent among teenage women.
By starving yourself, exercising excessively, or using laxatives, vomiting, or other methods to purge yourself after eating, you can attempt to lose weight. It may take up most of your day to think about dieting, food, and your body, leaving little time for friends, family, and other things you used to enjoy. Life becomes an unrelenting search for thinness and drastic weight loss. But it is never enough, no matter how skinny you get.
Restricting type of anorexia is where weight loss is achieved by restricting calories (following drastic diets, fasting, exercising to excess).
Purging type of anorexia is where weight loss is achieved by vomiting or using laxatives and diuretics.
The constant dread of weight gain or disappointment about how your body looks can make it really stressful to eat and eat. And still, virtually all you can think about is food and what you can and cannot consume. But there is hope, no matter how entrenched this self-destructive trend seems. You can break the self-destructive grip anorexia has on you with medication, self-help, and encouragement, build a more positive body image, and recover your health and self-confidence.
Signs and symptoms of anorexia
While people with anorexia often have different behaviors, one constant is that living with anorexia means that those habits are continually hidden from you. This can make it difficult for friends and family to identify the warning signs at first. You might continue to justify away your disordered eating and brush away questions when questioned. Yet people close to you will not be able to ignore their instincts that something is wrong as anorexia progresses, and neither can you. If your life is regulated by eating and weight, you do not have to wait until your symptoms have worsened or your health is dangerously low until you seek treatment.
Food behavior symptoms
Dieting in spite of being slim. Following a seriously restrictive diet. Eating only such foods that are low-calorie. "Banning "evil" foods such as fats and carbohydrates.
Calorie obsession, fat grams, and nutrition. Reading food labels, calculating and weighing portions, keeping a log of food, reading books on diets.
To pretend to feed or to lie about food. To avoid eating, hiding, playing with, or throwing away food. "Making excuses ("I had a big lunch" or "My stomach is not feeling good") to get out of meals.
Food Preoccupation. Thinking constantly about food. Cooking for others when eating very little, gathering recipes, reading food magazines, or making meal plans.
Strange or secretive rituals for food. Refusing to eat in public places or with others. Eating in rigid, ritualistic ways (e.g. cutting' just so' food, chewing and spitting out food, using a particular plate).
Appearance and body image symptoms
Dramatic loss of weight. A sudden, dramatic loss of weight without any medical cause.
Despite being underweight, feeling fat. In some areas, such as the chest, hips, or thighs, you can feel overweight in general or just "too fat."
Body image fixation. Obsessed with weight, type of the body, or size of clothing. Frequent weigh-ins and anxiety about minor weight variations.
Critical of appearance harshly. Spending a lot of time looking for defects in front of the mirror. Something to criticize is still there. You're never sufficiently thin.
Denial that it makes you too thin. When trying to hide it, you can deny that your low body weight is an issue (drinking a lot of water before being weighed, wearing baggy or oversized clothes).
Purging symptoms
Using diet pills, diuretics, or laxatives. Abuse of water tablets, suppressants of herbal appetite, prescription stimulants, ipecac syrup, and other weight loss medicines.
Throwing up after having fed. After meals, they sometimes vanish or go to the toilet. The water can run to disguise vomiting sounds or reappear to smell like mouthwash or mint.
Exercising compulsively. Following a punishing routine of exercise aimed at burning calories. Exercising by collisions, disease, and poor weather. Upon bingeing or eating something "bad," working out extra hard.
Anorexia causes and effects
No easy solutions to the causes of anorexia are available. Anorexia is a complex disorder that results from a mixture of several factors that are social, mental, and biological. While the idealization of thinness by our society plays a strong role, there are several other contributing factors, including:
Insatisfaction of the body
Strict Dieting Procedure
Poor self-esteem for oneself
Emotional challenges
Perfectionicism
Troubled relationships with relatives
Physical or sexual assault history
Additional stressful events
Family history with eating disorders
Effects of anorexia
Although there are unclear causes of anorexia, the physical symptoms are apparent. It goes into starvation mode when the body doesn't get the fuel it needs to work normally and slows down to conserve energy. Your body, ultimately, begins to eat itself. Medical problems mount up and the body and mind pay the price if self-starvation persists and more body fat is lost.
Getting help
It is not an easy decision to make to decide to seek treatment for anorexia. It is not unusual to feel that anorexia or even your "friend" is part of your identity. You may think that anorexia has such a powerful hold on you that you will never be able to overcome it. But while change is difficult, it is possible.
Admit that you've got a problem. Up to now, if you lose more weight, you have been investing in the belief that life will change, that you will actually feel healthy. The first step in the treatment of anorexia is to admit that your constant pursuit of thinness is out of your control and accept the physical and emotional harm you have suffered as a result of it.
Chat with someone. Talking about what you're going through can be challenging, especially if you've kept your anorexia a secret for a long time. Maybe you're ashamed, ambivalent, or scared. But knowing that you're not alone is vital. Find a good listener when you continue to recover, someone who can help you.
Keep away from individuals, locations, and behaviors that trigger your obsession with being slim. You will need to stop looking at fashion or fitness magazines, spend less time talking about weight loss with friends who are actively dieting and talking, and stay away from weight loss blogs and anorexia-promoting 'pro-ana' pages.
Seek clinical assistance. Professional eating disorder therapists' advice and guidance will help you recover your health, learn to eat regularly again, and develop healthy attitudes towards food and your body.
I think the randomrewarder has some adhd. Lol