You can overcome you’re eating disorder.
“I became anorexic when I was fifteen. In my family, I always felt like I had taken more than my share and my mother told me that she could never give me enough. I’m the second of three girls, and I have two brothers. I had no outstanding family position and felt as if I had no outstanding trait among my pears. I was in competition with them to be thin, smart, and popular. Being thin was the one area I felt I could compete in. This was the beginning of my anorexia. I felt in control of at least something, best at something. I never felt completely secure in being thin. I had to work at it daily, for fear of gaining weight, for loosing self-control. Denying myself food was also a reaction to my mother who though I took more than my share.” –Mel’s story age 15. (Anorexia Stories, 2012)
This is just one example story of a young girl that struggles with an eating disorder called anorexia nervosa. There are many other young girls and women out there fighting this illness. 91% of women surveyed on a college campus had attempted to control their weight through dieting. 22% dieted “often” or “always. 86% report onset of eating disorder by age 20; 43% report onset between ages of 16 and 20.6 (Eating Disorder Statistics, 2014). Eating disorders vary in how someone started having their eating disorder symptoms. How people take care of themselves when they have an eating disorder, and what kind of treatment they will undergo to recover from this mental and physical state. Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder that many young teens, young adults, and even middle aged women have problems with. The causes, warning signs, and treatment are all important information to know whether you, or a friend in undergoing this hardship in life.
The term for anorexia nervosa is translated “nervous loss of appetite.” This doesn’t mean that anorexics don’t experience hunger or “loose” their appetite, instead it means that they are obsessed with food. Not obsessed in the way you would think either. Anorexics are obsessed with every calorie that they consume, most anorexics could tell you how many calories are in any specific food. When anorexics look at foods all they see are calories, and potential weight gain (McMahon, 2013).
Cause of anorexia nervosa are different from case to case. It is believed that is a result of a weight loss program gone wrong. Or the diet never stopped and kelp on getting more severe as it progressed. A lot of times females feel as if they don’t have any control in their life, and food is the one thing that they can control. Triggers of anorexia usually happen when a boyfriend, coach, mother, father, or family member tell the girl that she should go on a diet or lose weight. One reason young adolescent girls become anorexic is because they might have been sexually abused when they were young. When they start showing signs of puberty they will stop eating because they do not want to be physically attractive to men. They do not want to be hurt or used again (McMahon, 2013).
If there is ever a concern that about someone having anorexia nervosa there are some warning signs that can watched out for. Anorexics start avoiding certain foods, continually count calories, cut up their food in small pieces, chew there much longer than needed, push their food around in their plate, and exercise for an excessive amount of time. Anorexics will drink up to 30 cups of water or diet soda each day just to suppress their hunger. Anorexics also don’t get emotionally attached to people. They try not to have close friends, so people don’t know that they have a problem. Usually they are the people that will appear to have a perfect life and are also super friendly. Anorexics won’t eat the majority of foods, but they are the type of people that will bake or cook food and give it to others (McMahon, 2013).
Even though anorexia is a fatal condition you can treat it. Just like there is no single cause of anorexia there is no single way to cure it. Every person is different, and will take different pathways to overcome their sickness. Successful treatments of anorexia nervosa consist of a number of numerous people working together. People specialized in nutrition, medical specialist, and physiatrist. Anorexia doesn’t just have to do with nutrition, even though that is a big part of it. Anorexia nervosa is a mental state of mind, you think that you are overweight, and you perceive that you are overweight. With this mental perception it is hard to stop what they are doing to themselves, because in their mind they are helping themselves by not eating. The sooner someone starts treatment for this illness the better they have at overcoming it (McMahon, 2013).
Anorexia nervosa can be a heartbreaking illness to the person that is undergoing it, and to the loved ones that are helping fight it. It can be a slow agenizing process of realizing that person has a problem, and establishing a treatment program and sticking to. Many people that have or had this illness will tell us that they want to get better but just don’t know how. Here are some quotes of girls that are struggling with anorexia (McMahon, 2013). “You don’t control your sickness, it controls you.” – Jade. “Life as an anorexic is no way to live, it’s a way to die.” –Anna Claire.
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