What Is An Eating Disorder?

An eating disorder is a mental health condition where you may use food to manage or cope with feelings and other situations.

Anyone can develop an eating disorder. It does not matter what your age, gender, social class, or ethnicity is, or where you live, but it seems that teenagers and young adults are mostly affected.

There are many different types of eating disorders and eating problems:

• Anorexia - trying to control your weight by not eating enough food, exercising too much, or a combination of the both. Seeing your body differently than others do, thinking you are overweight and fear gaining weight.

• Bulimia - losing control over how much you eat and then taking drastic action to not put on weight, such as vomiting, taking laxatives or over-exercising. The eating is called binging, and what follows is called purging.

• Binge Eating Disorder (BED) - eating large portions of food within a short period of time until you feel uncomfortably full. Not being in control of your eating, possibly secret eating, and finding it hard to remember what you have eaten, feeling guilty or disgusted as a result.

• Avoidant/ restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) - when you avoid certain foods and/or restrict intake of certain foods. This behaviour is unrelated to beliefs you may have about body shape or weight. Negative feelings about the smell, texture or taste of certain foods, or a bad experience previously may be reason for ARFID.

• Other specified feeding and eating disorder (OSFED) - you have symptoms of an eating disorder, but you don’t have all the typical symptoms of anorexia, bulimia or BED. It may be a mixture of symptoms from different eating disorders.

• Emotional overeating - You turn to food when you have negative feelings, eating can help you feel comforted to overcome feelings of sadness or anxiety.

Whilst it can often be difficult to see that someone around you has an eating disorder, there are warning signs to look out which include:

• dramatic weight loss

• lying about how much they've eaten, when they've eaten, or their weight

• eating a lot of food very fast

• going to the bathroom a lot after eating

• exercising a lot

• avoiding eating with others

• cutting food into small pieces or eating very slowly

• wearing loose or baggy clothes to hide their weight loss

If you believe you, or a loved one are suffering with an eating disorder, make an appointment with your GP as soon as you can. They may make a referral to a specialist easting disorder team who will review eating habits and general health.