DO YOU OR A FRIEND HAVE ANOREXIA?
Everyone diets, but not everyone gets anorexia. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen both watched their eating, as teen celebs who are constantly in the spotlight, but only MK got sick and had to get treatment. How do you know when a diet is getting dangerous, and when thin becomes scarily skinny?
Dieting Vs. Anorexia
There is dieting, and then there is anorexia. Dieting is when you eat less food than normal for a short period of time – for example, a week or two – in order to lose weight. It’s not the smartest or healthiest thing to do, but lots of teenage girls do go on occasional diets.
What Is Anorexia?
Anorexia (properly called “anorexia nervosa”) is different. It is basically a condition of self-starvation, when a person refuses to maintain a healthy weight. People with anorexia have a distorted view of their own body image – like looking into a funhouse mirror, they think they are fat when they are really underweight.
The Warning Signs of Anorexia
According to the Mayo Clinic, here are some of the common warning signs of anorexia:
You are thin and keep getting thinner, possibly severely thin
Dieting or restricting foods even though you are not overweight
Having a distorted body image - you feel fat even though everyone else sees you as thin
Being preoccupied with food, calories, nutrition or cooking
Denying that you are hungry, even when you have hardly eaten anything
Throwing up or using laxatives to purge your body of food that you have eaten
Exercising obsessively to burn calories and/or weighing yourself obsessively
Being cold all the time, no matter what the temperature
Your period stops
It's Important to Get Help.
These symptoms (some or all of them) often are accompanied by feelings of depression. If you recognize yourself in some of those symptoms, you need to get help right now. It is important to visit your family doctor as soon as possible, because if you leave anorexia untreated, the disorder can become part of a destructive cycle which may continue for years and even lead to death.
If you do have anorexia, your doctor can recommend a healthy eating plan to get you back to a normal weight. He/she will likely also recommend therapy, nutritional counseling and/or medications to treat your depression and reduce your food-related anxieties.
For confidential, one-on-one help, you can also call one of the free teen hotlines for eating disorders. Find phone numbers on the Myjellybean.com Hotlines Page.
Even if You're Not Anorexic...
Even if you don’t have the symptoms of anorexia listed above, you still need to stop and think about what you’re doing to your body through dieting. Dieting slows your body’s metabolism and makes it harder to maintain a healthy weight. Instead, you should focus on eating regular meals, making healthy food choices, eating enough to make you full, and exercising on a regular basis (but in moderation). Doing these things will make your body look and feel great – and won’t put you at risk for developing an eating disorder.