The different eating disorders that our sons and daughters can have
There are more eating disorders beyond anorexia and bulimia, we show you some to which your teenagers may be vulnerable.
Eating disorders are behavioral problems , that is, a psychological problem, of not controlling our eating habits. There is an impulse that is not within normal limits and that lead a person to not have adequate health conditions, so they are serious problems. And it can not only cause a physical problem in the person, but it can also be emotional and psychological.
That person may eat too much, more than normal, and at times of the day when they don’t have to, or they may not eat enough to stay healthy. The two options fit into what we know as eating problems or disorders .
In addition, people who suffer from one of the eating disorders often have other problems. For example, after passing these episodes, a great feeling of guilt appears for what they have done and also depression , which can go beyond mild and that is what leads them to binge food.
There are different eating disorders and they are all different. They all have in common what the name indicates, a psychological change in their eating behaviors, which in turn leads to a change in their body weight. From PregDream we explain what each disorder consists of.
Index
BULIMIA
Bulimia, one of the eating disorders, is that a person acts by bingeing on food, in large quantities and which are usually recurrent. During these episodes, the person loses control of what he eats and, in addition, eats it in very short periods of time. Eat more than anyone else and in less time.
When a bulimic person does this they feel good, in that moment they enjoy it. However, immediately after you finish eating, you begin to feel guilty, a feeling of shame that you cannot control either. Therefore, they begin to think about what they have done, what it means to eat so much and what can lead to weight gain. The consequence of these disorders is a terrible physical and psychological state because they vomit, take laxatives or exercise excessively.
Bulimics do not usually look good, that is, they are not comfortable with their body, even though it is adequate and normal, that is, they distort their vision of themselves. To reach this state, many psychological factors, such as depression , but also social, cultural or biological factors influence .
To know that a person is bulimic is to look at whether he binges on food, that is, if he eats large amounts of food and with an anxious behavior, not to control what he eats or the time he does it. It will also be necessary to look at whether this person repeats these episodes, that is the key to a bulimic, the repetition . Finally, be careful with the use of laxatives or the vomiting that the person will cause to compensate for those binges.
ANOREXIA
Anorexia is the other most well-known and most common psychological eating disorder. This disease consists in that the person begins to lose weight, to a point that is not healthy neither for his age nor for his height . Despite the fact that this weight is less than what they should have, the person thinks they are fat, they have a distorted vision, as happened with bulimia. In addition, the patient is also afraid of gaining weight, so they begin to reduce their food intake and even stop eating or exercise excessively . The foods that they usually stop eating are carbohydrates, fats, proteins since they think that it is what makes them fatter. These people can even become dehydrated because they even eliminate liquids from their diet.
Again, social factors can be one of the reasons that lead a person to suffer from anorexia, since they can be made to believe that they are heavier than they should. That person begins to obsess, to wonder if it is true that he is fat and to believe it even if it is not. Therefore, he will stop eating to try to see himself better and for others to see him better. However, there are also other causes for anorexia, such as family problems that lead to stopping eating or some dramatic event that the person may suffer. Cutting back on eating is often a common way of “trying” to fix a problem they’re having.
To diagnose this disorder you have to be aware of the weight that the person loses. When you have lost 15% of your weight, you should start worrying about helping the person . In addition, the malnutrition it carries will cause it, for example in a girl, to stop menstruating. The family and its environment is important to be aware of if you make excuses to avoid eating or if you worry about food and your body image. This can be important to diagnose in time if the person suffers from this disease and to be able to treat it in time, since it can lead to serious health problems if it is not treated in time. Anorexia and bulimia have differences .
COMPULSIVE APPETITE DISORDER
Another of the eating disorders is basically not being able to stop eating. It could be said that these people are addicted to food, they need to eat food constantly , even if it has been very little time since the last time. To put it another way, they feel that food controls them, rather than the other way around.
The causes that lead these people to binge eat are usually the high level of stress or anxiety they have . In addition, they are generally perfectionists and, when they do not get something as they want, that level of stress begins, which leads them to eat without knowledge.
ORTHOREXIA
Perhaps less well known than the previous disorders, orthorexia is one of the most frequent psychological eating problems in recent times. It consists of obsessing over healthy food, taken to the extreme . The person, therefore, begins to exclude certain foods from their diet, such as trans fats , meat, artificial foods … because they consider them dangerous, which is completely wrong.
Orthorexia ends up triggering problems for our health , since when eliminating food, certain nutritional components that we need for a good functioning of our organism are also eliminated. For example, one of them is anemia .
MEGAREXIA
Megarexia is the antithesis of anorexia, that is, the opposite. Therefore, this is another of the eating disorders and affects people who are overweight or obese and who see themselves healthy and thin . Therefore, as with anorexia, they have a distorted perception of reality. By looking good when looking in the mirror, they will continue to eat without any worries.
The consequences of this psychological problem are translated into unhealthy habits, lack of exercise, the intake of foods with large amounts of calories and, therefore, the absence of any type of diet.
Dr. Tabriella Perivolaris, Sara's mother and fan of fashion, beauty, motherhood, among others, about the female universe. Since 2018 she has been working as a copywriter, always bringing to her articles a little of her experience and experience as a mother and woman.