Disordered Eating
Sometimes you skip a meal. Sometimes your friend will go days without eating anything but water and apples or when they do eat they eat a huge amount, disappearing into the bathroom with each course. Do you know what we’re talking about here? If you do, you or your friend may have an eating disorder.
Having an eating disorder is more than just being on a diet. Disordered eating, commonly known as eating disorders (anorexia, for example), happens when someone engages in unhealthy eating and/or exercise behaviours. Disordered eating is an illness that affects every part of a person’s life. Unhealthy, destructive eating habits have different causes for different people. Often not only the person with the eating disorder is affected, but so are the others around them.
Eating disorders aren’t only anorexia and bulimia, although these are two you may have heard of, they also include irregular eating patterns, compusive eating and habitual eating.
Disordered eating can have negative physical and emotional consequences.
This is, by the way, a pro-recovery site. If you’ve come to this section looking for affirmation of anorexia as a “lifestyle choice” or for tips and tricks to continue and/or hide your eating disorder, you won’t find them. Before you go, though, know that you are not your eating disorder, and that you deserve the chance to be yourself… the real you that might feel like it’s buried under the eating disorder, the stress.
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- From the blog: Celebrating Our Natural Sizes, Part I (Jan. 29, 2010) - the media, Nat’l Eating Disorder Awareness Week 2010 and The Real Me Experience.