Eating Disorders

These days, dieting takes different forms: restricting overall food intake, cutting out certain foods or whole food groups, going for long periods of time without eating (fasting), or replacing food with non-food (shakes). None of these are normal eating behaviours, and they increase the risk that you will develop an eating disorder. Dieting is not healthy – it places a strain on your body, not to mention your mind. It slows down your metabolism so you feel tired and lethargic, it makes you more hungry so you constantly think about food, and when you do let yourself eat you’re more likely to feel out of control. It messes up your hunger and fullness signals and makes you think you can’t trust your own body. If you have depression or anxiety, it can make these worse. Does that sound normal or healthy?

Anyone of any gender and any age can get an eating disorder. While some disorders are more likely to happen during adolescence or early adulthood, they are actually more common in adults, and the risk increases in middle age.  

Anyone can get an eating disorder, and the number of men with eating disorders and body image distress is increasing in Australia. 

People with eating disorders often don’t look unwell at first, and may never look unwell.  Even people who restrict food may not look unwell at first, so by the time their weight loss is noticeable, they are actually very, very unwell. 

People in any size body can have an eating disorder.  You can’t tell whether someone has a disorder just by knowing their weight or BMI. Unfortunately, many people in larger bodies who have eating disorders are not diagnosed and don’t receive treatment because of the common (but wrong) belief that you have to be thin to have an eating disorder.

Eating disorders are complex psychological disorders which have serious medical implications which can be lifelong, and can unfortunately lead to death.  These disorders impair all aspects of life: eating, working, socializing, relationships, exercise and movement, even sleep.  They impair all systems of the body: the heart and circulation, muscles and bones, hormones, fertility and the endochrine system, brain function, the gut and digestive system, even bladder and bowel function.  

In young people, normal adolescent development is impaired, and some of these effects can be lifelong, particularly the impact on fertility, bone health, height, the heart and the endochrine system. 

Of course, they also impair all aspects of cognitive functioning and psychological health: thinking and concentration are impaired, perception of reality is distorted, self awareness is reduced, body image and self esteem are usually low, and there is often a high level of self criticism,  perfectionistic thinking and obsessiveness.

Eating disorders develop for many reasons, including a person’s genetics, their personality, their life experiences, and their eating habits.  When young people develop eating disorders, we see their parents as part of the solution, not the problem.  Research consistently shows that young people are more likely to recover, and to recover sooner, when we include parents in the therapy progress, called Family Based Treatment (FBT).