1. Eating Disorders; The Facts and The Help.
Amber-louise ingleton

2. What is the definition of an ‘eating disorder’?
Eating disorders are mental and physical (side effects of mental) illnesses, where the victim/person dealing with the disorder have a severely bad relationship with food.
Contrary to popular belief, eating disorders are not a fad, lifestyle or choice. They are serious and complex mental, as well as physical, disorders that put strain on relationships, damage lives, and even can end them.

3. What are the different ‘categories’ of eating disorders?
The different ‘types’ of eating disorders, so to speak, include;
Bulimia Nervosa
Anorexia Nervosa
Binge Eating Disorder
Emotional Overeating
EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified)
Disordered Eating/Eating Problems
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (Exercise, Restricting, Dieting etc.)

4. Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia Nervosa, contrary to popular belief, is a disease of the mind which creates a poor relationship between the victim and food.
People with anorexia often end up severely underweight and malnourished as a result of their toxic behaviour. They try to keep their weight low via dieting, restricting intake of food and drink, starvation, vomiting, laxatives or excessive exercise.
People suffering with anorexia usually suffer with body dysmorphia too. This is where the person in question has distorted views of their weight and body.
Those with anorexia often try to hide their behaviours from family and friends.
As a side effect of the mental illness, more often than not, those with anorexia will become severely underweight and will have many health complications.
You can be an ‘average’ body weight and still be anorexic for it is a mental illness. Malnourishment is just a very common side effect.

5. Body Dysmorphia
Body Dysmorphia is a mental disorder which means a person will have a very abnormal and distorted of themselves.
They look in the mirror and see someone that is ‘too fat’ or ‘too skinny’ or ‘too ugly’ and will pick apart their appearance, seeing things very differently to how they really are.
Body Dysmorphics often go on to have eating disorder/disordered eating or very self destructive behaviours. They will try anything to change their appearance in order to see what they want.

6. Bulimia Nervosa
Bulimia Nervosa is the feeling of the loss of control of eating habits. People with bulimia evaluate themselves based on their weight and often use bingeing and purging to gain control of their weight.
‘Bingeing’ and ‘Purging’ is the act of consuming a vast amount of food and then ‘ridding’ themselves of it by vomiting, laxatives or excessive exercise.
Those dealing with bulimia often hide their behaviours from those around and tend to stay within a healthy weight range, however, in some cases, the person in question can experience extreme weight loss (I know, from personal experience).

7. Binge Eating Disorder
Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is a serious mental illness (as all eating disorders are) that causes a person o ‘binge’ or severely overeat on a regular basis. The victims experience loss of control over how much the eat.
Those who deal with BED will often ‘binge’ in private and will have special ‘binge foods’.
Extreme guilt an embarrassment usually follows after a binge, which is why binge eaters keep their binges private.

8. Emotional Overeating
Emotional Overeating is the consumption of large amounts of food in order to ‘cope’ or ‘silence’ negative emotions, but often leaves the person feeling worse than they did to begin with due to the guilt that accompanies it.
Unlike physical hunger, emotional hunger comes on suddenly and feels as if it needs to be satisfied straight away. Also, when physically hungry a range of different foods sound appealing, but emotional hunger usually makes you crave food high in sugar and fat.

9. EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified)
ENDOS is the diagnosis given to a person if their symptoms do not meet the criteria of bulimia, anorexia etc.
ENDOS patients also show symptoms for a couple of different eating disorders, making it hard for a diagnoses.

10. Disordered Eating/ Eating Problems
Disorder Eating is the title for a having eating problems.
For example the person may have infrequent binges, skip meals, have days where they eat a lot less or will generally have a strange eating pattern.
This too can be dangerous as it effects the metabolism, may cause health issues and may weaken the immune system, as all eating disorders do.

11. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (Restricting, Over Exercise etc)
OCD is a part of eating disorder. It is about control.
Binge eaters will restrict or over exercise or purge (Laxatives, vomiting etc). Anorexics will become very ‘nit-picky’, will only have certain foods they deem ‘safe’ to eat 9as do binge eaters) and will restrict calories and nutrition intake. Binge eaters will have specific binge foods and a specific place to binge.
Its is all about feeling like you have control. Whether that be over your weight, the way your body looks or just over life, he majority of eating disorders stem from a desire for control.

12. The statistics
The Costs of Eating Disorders - Social, Health and Economic Impacts report, commissioned by Beat and produced by PwC in February 2015, estimates that more than 725,000 people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder.
The National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence says, roughly around 11% of those affected by an eating disorder are male.
Recent research from the NHS showed that approximately 6.4% of adults displayed signs of an eating disorder (Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey, 2007). This research showed that up to 25% of those showing signs of an eating disorder were male.

13. The Warning S igns
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14. The Help Available
The stop when looking for help is always through your GP. It is an incredibly brave thing to speak out and ask for support and if it is something you’re anxious about you can speak to our Helpline about your anxieties. You could also talk to your parents or someone at school, university or work, even a friend!
Your GP and other members of the primary care team will play an important part in this first step of identifying your eating disorder and getting the proper help. Sometimes a GP might refer you straight to an eating disorder specialist or they might want you to come back after to see how you are. Please don’t see this as a sign that you don’t deserve treatment but persevere.
Your GP will look at your weight for your age and might monitor significant weight changes, ask about concerns you have over your weight or body shape, talk about eating disorder behaviours and might also take some blood for testing. Although it might seem daunting try to be as open with the doctor about how you are feeling and the impact your eating difficulties are having on you.
If your GP thinks you might have an eating disorder they should refer you for an assessment and possible treatment by a person who has specialist eating disorder knowledge. This should happen as quickly as possible.

15. Bibliography
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