What are eating disorders, and how can I get help?

It seems that both women and men in today’s society, are rarely satisfied with their body shape or weight and most people will diet at some time.

Anyone, from all types of background and ethnic groups can suffer from eating disorders. Eating disorders may be a way of coping with feelings that are making you unhappy or depressed. It may be difficult to face up to and talk about feelings like anger, sadness, guilt, loss or fear. An eating disorder is often a sign that you need help in coping with life and sorting personal problems.

Typically eating disorders are perceived to be conditions that affect only women – this is far from the case. Between 10% and 25% of those people experiencing eating disorders are male.

We know that the majority of men who have eating disorders struggle to get access to appropriate support and treatment. Therefore, it is difficult to know how many men are affected by these conditions.

Conditions as complex as eating disorders mean that there are variations in the typical signs, and not all symptoms will apply to all people. You may feel that you have a mixture of anorexia and bulimia, or alternate between them. You may find that you are focused on food and exercise and cannot think of much else. Some people also find they are affected by an urge to harm themselves or abuse alcohol or drugs.

Eating disorders don’t include food allergies, selective eating issues or disorders of the digestive system. However, a GP should be the first point of call for these issues, as well as for eating disorders. Counselling might be an additional or a first point of contact to talk through these issues further.

Anorexia is a disorder (or illness) which stems from low self-esteem and an inability to cope safely with worries and problems. It involves lowering food intake by skipping meals and cutting down the types and amounts of foods eaten; some people over-exercise as well.

Beliefs such as: ’losing weight will make life happier’ may be typical, as well as ‘people will like me more’, ‘I will be more successful’ or even perhaps that ‘I may be noticed less’.

Individuals may punish themselves if weight loss is not significant enough, or eat something not usually ‘allowed’. Losing weight is not the answer to everything. It is important that you try to focus on yourself.

Bulimia is also a disorder linked with self-esteem, emotional problems and stress. One may constantly think about calories, dieting and ways of getting rid of the food eaten. Bulimia is actually more common than anorexia, but is more of a hidden illness, because people with bulimia usually remain an average or just over average body weight. Bulimia can go unnoticed for a long time, although one may feel ill and very unhappy.

Individuals with Bulimia become involved in a cycle of eating a very large amount of food, making themselves sick (purging), cutting down or starving for a few days or trying to find other ways to make up for the food eaten.

Starving causes extreme hunger that then leads to excessively large amounts of food being craved, because your body is craving nourishment.  Some people will not vomit but will take laxatives; both behaviours may be described as ‘purging’ by medical professionals, but taking laxatives is particularly dangerous.

Just because bulimia does not cause the extreme weight loss that anorexia does, it does not mean that it is less serious. Help and support is needed. The side effects and consequences of bulimia can be very serious.

If you binge eat, this usually means that you would eat large amounts of food in a short period of time (perhaps not at a normal mealtime) and have associated feelings of lack of control during these binges.

However, unlike someone with Bulimia Nervosa, you may not try to get rid of the food. You may feel out of control around eating, eat what may be thought of as an unusually large amount of food, eat much more quickly in these binges, eat until feeling uncomfortably full, eat large amounts of food when not hungry, or eat alone.

You may well do this for similar reasons to someone with bulimia. Compulsive overeating involves ‘picking’ at food all day. There may be different reasons why you may do this, but as with eating disorders, food and eating is used as a way of dealing with difficult feelings. If you compulsively overeat or binge eat, you may feel depressed or inadequate because of a lack of control around eating, which can lead to further eating and weight gain.