How to recognise an eating disorder

Anorexia Nervosa

What are the signs?
You find that you:

• worry more and more about your weight
• eat less and less
• exercise more and more, to burn off calories
• can't stop losing weight, even when you are well below a safe weight for your age and height
• smoke more or chew gum to keep your weight down height
• lose interest in sex
• In girls or women - monthly menstrual periods become irregular or stop.
• In men or boys - erections and wet dreams stop, testicles shrink.

Bulimia Nervosa

What are the signs?

You find that you:

• worry more and more about your weight
• binge eat 
• make yourself vomit and/or use laxatives to get rid of calories
• have irregular menstrual periods
• feel tired
• feel guilty
• stay a normal weight, in spite of your efforts to diet.

Bingeing

You raid the fridge or go out and buy lots of fattening foods that you would normally avoid. You then go back to your room, or home, and eat it all, quickly, in secret. You might get through packets of biscuits, several boxes of chocolates and a number of cakes in just a couple of hours. You may even take someone else’s food, or shoplift, to satisfy the urge to binge.

Afterwards you feel stuffed and bloated – and probably guilty and depressed. You try to get rid of the food you have eaten by making yourself sick, or by purging with laxatives. It is very uncomfortable and tiring, but you find yourself trapped in a routine of binge eating, and vomiting and/or purging.

Binge Eating Disorder

This is a pattern of behaviour that has recently been recognised. It involves dieting and binge eating, but not vomiting. It is distressing, but much less harmful than bulimia. Sufferers are more likely to become overweight.