There are several forms of eating disorders: anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. With anorexia, a young person follows a severely restricted diet that results in weight loss. Bulimia is characterized by food binges, followed by purging through self-induced vomiting, exercise, laxatives, or fasting. This often leads to weight fluctuations - sometimes large, sometimes small.
Both anorexia and bulimia are about eight times more common in females than in males. Young people work hard to keep their struggles with food secret, so it's hard to know just how many suffer from eating disorders. It's estimated that somewhere between 1 and 13 percent of American high school and college age women are anorexic or bulimic.
An eating disorder arises when a person develops a distorted relationship with food, but it involves much more than simple dieting or feeling too full.
Sometimes the problem begins with a weight-loss diet, but then something goes wrong. Once five pounds have been lost, the weight goal is lowered another 5 or 10 pounds. Or perhaps the original goal is never quite reached, and instead the teenager's weight goes up and down in a seesaw pattern. Sometimes no actual diet is involved; the teen just believes that he/she is much too fat, and experiences a relentless drive to be thinner.
Eventually, the pursuit of thinness becomes an obsession that assumes more importance than anything else in the young person's life.
Food Isn't The Real Problem. Both anorexia and bulimia arise from a complex web of factors. There's no simple, single cause. The relentless focus on calories, diets, secret eating, exercise and purging are just the outward signs of emotional confusion.
Conflict with friends and family and societal messages can all contribute to this problem. An individual with an eating disorder usually has a poor self-image and low self-esteem - no matter how "perfect" he/she may appear to others. Family members may be overprotective and too close, or emotionally cut off from each other. On the social level, every teen gets the message that "thin and muscular is in," and that "anything goes" in the struggle to achieve this image.
Especially for teenagers and young adults, eating disorders are desperate attempts to control a world that feels uncontrollable. It is often difficult for the person with an eating disorder to admit they need help. That's why it may be up to friends, family members and respected coaches or teachers to guide the young person to the help she or he needs.