Introduction to Eating Disorders

What is an eating disorder?
According to the National Institute of Mental Health's public health service titled "Eating Disorders: Facts About Eating Disorders and the Search for Solutions", humans control their eating habits in many ways. The article states, "Eating is controlled by many factors, including appetite, food availability, family, peer,and cultural practices,and attempts at voluntary control" (NIMH, 2001). From this we can conclude that it is a natural process to desire to be skinny and do certain things to make us skinny.
Eating disorders come in many forms some of which include, Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia, and Binge Eating disorder.

What is Anorexia Nervosa?
According to Melissa Spearing the author of the booklet released by the NIMH in 2001 Anorexia nervosa is characterized by;

•Resistance to maintaining body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height
•Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight
•Disturbance in the way in which one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight
•Infrequent or absent menstrual periods (in females who have reached puberty)
(Spearing, M. (2001)

Basically an adolescent/teen who is characterized as Anorexic desires to be thinner and achieves exterme degrees of thin by repeatedly starving themselves of needed nutrients.

What is Bulimia?
A great definition of Bulimia is found from the website http://mirror-mirror.org/bulimia.htm.

The website offers an equisite definition of Bulimia and what a person who suffers from Bulimia often goes through. The website says, "Bulimia is an eating disorder in which the person eats large quantity of food in a short period of time (binges) and then rids him or herself of the food to avoid weight gain (purges). They may purge by vomiting or by using laxatives to make the food leave their system faster so less of it gets absorbed. People with bulimia may also abuse diet pills and/or exercise compulsively in order to avoid weight gain" (Mirror-Mirror, 2011).

What is Binge Eating Disorder?
According to Spearing in her article from 2001 Binge Eating disorder is characterized by Binge Eating episodes: which means that the person eats an excessive amount of food in a short period of time and marked distress relevant to the Binge Eating episode. It is important to note that Binge Eating disorder is not associated with any of the following behaviors; purging, fasting, or excessive exercise (Spearing, 2001).

This should give you a lay out of the three main eating disorders that may affect your child's life and health. Remember that Childhood Obesity is also a type of eating disorder that affects many children today. This will however not be covered in this workshop due to lack of personal experience.