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, compulsive eating and habitual eating.
As you’ve probably figured out, we’re generally a “pro-recovery” site… We generally want to see people manage their weight, their eating and their lives in a way that isn’t wholly consumed by any of the eating disorders we named. But we do get that not everyone is ready to change what they’re doing right away nownownow, though, and that it’s not always easy to talk about that when it feels like everyone around you is pushing to “get better” and give up all of these things you’ve been doing for ages… And that can sometimes freak you out. For a while, it might actually be even scarier to give all of that up than facing the risks to your health from the ED itself! But we think it’s worth talking about, so you can chat with us if you’d like… you can look around and read what we’ve written about it if you’re not quite ready to talk… But hopefully we can find a way for you to be heard.