Eating disorders
What’s an eating disorder?
Eating disorders are abnormal patterns of eating and exercising that severely interfere with your everyday life. The most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. All eating disorders can occur in both males and females of any age. With treatment, most people with an eating disorder make a good recovery.
What causes eating disorders?
Eating disorders happen because of a combination of factors. These factors can be biological (the way your brain works), genetic (familial), psychological (how you think), social (your relationships with other people) or cultural (the customs and values of the people around you). Generally, girls/women are at higher risk of developing an eating disorder than boys/men.
Symptoms of eating disorders
These are some of the early symptoms of eating disorders:
- You’ve started restricting how much food you eat
- You feel out of control around food
- You make yourself vomit after eating
- You worry too much about how you look
- You don’t like eating around other people
- You feel cold all the time, weak or lightheaded
- You are afraid of putting on weight
- You think about food all the time
- For girls and women, your periods have stopped
- You overeat uncontrollably
- You hoard food to binge on later
- You take laxatives to make you lose weight
- You check yourself in the mirror constantly
- You exercise too much
- You lie about what you eat or how much you eat
- You weigh yourself all the time
- You feel anxious at meal times
You don’t have to have all these symptoms to be diagnosed with an eating disorder. As well as these symptoms, you may feel bad about yourself or that you are not good enough, feel sad, anxious or irritable, or not feel like spending time or getting involved in activities with other people. Even if you are not unusually skinny or do not feel skinny, you may have an eating disorder if you are experiencing the above symptoms.
Are you ready to make a change?
You are very welcome to get in touch, for any enquiries or questions you may have, or to schedule an appointment.