If you think a great deal about food and weight and your self-esteem is strongly linked to how satisfied you are with your body, you may have an eating disorder. Although eating disorders are most common among young girls, you can develop an eating disorder regardless of your age, body type or gender. All eating disorders damage the body and are harmful to your self-esteem and mental wellbeing. Treatment can help cure your eating disorder.
If you have an eating disorder, you’re often strict with and judgmental about yourself. It’s common to feel ashamed of your eating habits or physical appearance. You avoid eating with others, often skip meals and think a great deal about food, weight and appearance. Thoughts about what you need to do from moment to moment can become exhausting and take much of your energy. You may suffer from anxiety and feel all alone.
It might feel like most of your life revolves around food, shame and control. You perhaps feel that you have to do things in a certain way to keep your anxiety at bay. It’s common for sufferers to have trouble concentrating and sleeping. Over time, you may develop low mood or depression.
There are several types of eating disorders, and they can manifest themselves in different ways. An eating disorder isn’t linked to your appearance or weight, but rather your feelings and thoughts.
Sometimes the problem stops at thoughts of wanting to change your body, but if you start doing things to control your body, it could be an eating disorder. You may, for instance, go too far in your desire to eat healthily or exercise and instead develop harmful behaviours. You might also regularly skip meals or binge eat when alone. Food, eating and weight take up excessively large parts of your thoughts and life.
Anorexia, which means that you want to keep your weight as low as possible and that you keep your energy intake so low that your body enters a state of starvation.
Bulimia, which involves binge eating large amounts of food in short spaces of time. You feel that you’ve lost control over your eating. Afterwards, you try to get rid of – or purge – what you’ve eaten, such as by inducing vomiting, abusing laxatives or exercising excessively.
Binge eating disorder, which means that you binge eat. The difference from bulimia is that afterwards you don’t try to get rid of what you’ve eaten.
There are other types of eating disorders that are equally serious. One example is ARFID, which stands for avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. This involves avoiding most types of food altogether and eating only a few, specially selected items. It’s not about losing weight or avoiding weight gain, but rather an aversion to different types of food or drink. ARFID is most common in children but is also seen at other ages.
If you have an eating disorder, you can also suffer from what is often termed orthorexia. This is when you exercise compulsively while following a very strict diet. You may suffer extreme anxiety if you can’t exercise when you want to. Orthorexia is not a diagnosis in itself. Instead, the diagnosis you receive may be anorexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or anxiety disorder.
There are many different reasons you might develop an eating disorder. It could be due to personality traits, such as how you deal with emotions like sadness or anger or interpersonal relationships, but it could also be a reaction to how food, control and appearance are valued in society.
The pressure to have a faultless appearance and live a perfect life while also being surrounded by mass consumerism and expectations to control our needs and emotions can seem impossible to achieve. It could all start as a need for control, wherein you try to control your eating. However, over time, that need for control starts to control you.
Eating disorders can seriously harm your physical health as well as your mental wellbeing and must be taken seriously. If you think you have an eating disorder, don’t wait, seek help immediately. The earlier you seek help, the better. Treatment to help with eating disorders is available.
You can be cured of your eating disorder with the aid of treatment. Many different types of treatments are available, including talking therapy and medicinal treatment. Sometimes, both psychotherapy and medicinal treatment are necessary.
If you think you have an eating disorder, you should contact healthcare services. If you feel reluctant to seek help yourself, you could ask someone to accompany you. Visit 1177.se for information on where you can seek help in different parts of Sweden. This website also provides information on treatment. There is also support available at Frisk & Fri (Healthy and free), the Swedish national association against eating disorders.
If you’re feeling so low that you’re considering taking your own life, don’t delay, seek immediate medical attention at a psychiatric emergency clinic or call 112.
Many people who’ve suffered from an eating disorder have come out the other side. Admitting that you’re not doing well and seeking help isn’t a sign of weakness or failure but quite the opposite in fact. It’s a way to give yourself a chance to get better.
Reviewed by: David Clinton, associate professor at Karolinska Institutet, psychologist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst.
Last edited 2024-01-31