In the age of cellphones, social media and influencers, Americans view more advertisements than at any time in history. Hundreds of times a day, we’re being told we’re not strong enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, or something enough.
With this in mind, it’s no wonder so many people struggle with body image. In fact, an estimated 20 million women and 10 million men in America will have an eating disorder at some point in their life. Despite the stereotype that they only occur in women, about one in three people with an eating disorder are men.
Eating disorders are serious illnesses marked by a significant disturbance to one’s eating behaviors. While it’s typical to want to appear healthy and put-together, fixating or obsessing with weight loss, body shape or weight or purposefully restricting food are common signs of eating disorders.
The most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. Those with anorexia nervosa purposefully restrict intake of food or excessively exercise in an effort to be as thin as possible. Bulimia nervosa is marked by cycles of binge eating and subsequent purging to compensate for overeating. Binge eating disorder is characterized by incidents of extreme overeating and feeling as if the control over food is lost.
It’s important to note that people with eating disorders often hide their unhealthy behaviors, so recognizing signs and symptoms can be difficult.
Some common signs of an eating disorder are:
- Dramatic weight loss
- Preoccupation with food, dieting or counting calories
- Exercising excessively
- Avoiding mealtimes or eating in front of others
- Deny that extreme thinness is a problem
- Making comments about being “fat”
Like many diseases, treatment for eating disorders is often multi-faceted. Although everyone has unique needs, most treatment teams consist of a physician, a licensed therapist, and a dietician. While the focus of the physician and dietician is to ensure the individual is consuming appropriate nutrients needed to sustain a healthy body, the goal of therapy is to interrupt the behavior associated with the eating disorder (food restriction, binge eating, excessive exercising) and repair the broken relationship with food. While this can be done in individual counselling, both group therapy and 12-Step groups have been shown to be tremendously effective in the treatment of eating disorders as well.
Tim Fenton is an intern at Transforming Life Counseling Center.
