What is Anorexia?

Anorexia

What is anorexia?

Anorexia is a condition that leads to problems with eating. Its full name is anorexia nervosa. If you have anorexia, you're very underweight and you dread being fat.

Having anorexia means you think you are fat even when you are very thin. You often go to a lot of trouble to avoid eating. You may also make yourself throw up, take laxatives (drugs that make you go to the bathroom) or spend hours exercising.

If you have anorexia, you may not understand the way you behave. You may feel ashamed and guilty about your behavior. But you may also be telling yourself there's nothing wrong. But anorexia is harmful. You can die from starving yourself.

Getting help is very important. Admitting you have a problem is the first, yet hardest, step. If you do take that step, you can find the support and treatment you need to keep anorexia from taking over your life.

Key points for people with anorexia

Anorexia is a serious medical condition, not just a phase or a fad.
If you have anorexia, you may not be able to admit you have a problem. You may not want treatment.
You dread getting fat. And you think you are fat even when you are much too thin and weigh too little for your height.
Having anorexia seriously damages your health. It makes you starve your body of the food it needs to work properly.
It is possible to get better. You can put on weight and keep it on. And you can change how you think about weight and food. But it's not easy.
Most people think of anorexia as something women get. But men can get it, too.

You may think that someone in your family or a close friend has anorexia. To learn more about the signs to look for, see Worried someone close to you might have anorexia?

What is normal eating?

It's hard to say what "normal eating" is. But usually, people eat when they feel hungry and stop when they feel full. These feelings are partly controlled by chemicals in your brain. Most of us eat three meals a day, with a couple of snacks in between.

Food plays a big part in most of our lives. We spend a lot of time shopping for and preparing food. When we meet friends or relatives, we often eat together. How do we decide what to eat? We make choices because of our lifestyle and attitude toward food and health, but also because of what tastes good.

Some of us worry about food or our body size more than others. Many people, especially women, worry about their weight and try to control how much they eat.

Sharing food with family and friends is part of normal healthy eating.

But whether we think about food a lot or a little, worry about it or just enjoy it, our feelings about food don't usually stop us from living a normal life.

What goes wrong in anorexia?

If you have anorexia, you worry about food and your weight a lot more than most people do.

You are very frightened about getting fat.
You think you are fat, and you think other people think so, too.
You spend most of your time thinking about how much you weigh and how you look. You become obsessed with losing weight.

Source:
American Psychiatric Association.
Eating disorders.
In: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th edition. American Psychiatric Press, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.; 2000.

¹

Source:
Kerr JK, Skok RL, McLaughlin TF.
Characteristics common to females who exhibit anorexic or bulimic behavior: a review of current literature.
Journal of Clinical Psychology. 1991; 47: 846-853.

²
Fear of putting on weight is part of having anorexia. You may have other fears, too. You may fear losing control. You probably fear other people finding out that you have anorexia. You may be afraid of being told you have a mental health problem.

These kinds of thoughts and worries go around and around in your head.

Here's a list of some things you may do if you have anorexia. You may:

Skip meals or avoid eating, even when you feel hungry
Hide food or keep a lot of it around (hoard it)
Cut your food up into tiny pieces and push it around your plate to look as though you've eaten some
Avoid eating with others
Deny that you have a problem with food
Carefully weigh your food and only eat small quantities
Get rid of the calories you've eaten by making yourself vomit or by taking laxatives
Do other things to lose weight, like exercising more than you need to and more than is healthy

Source:
Hartman D.
Anorexia nervosa: diagnosis, aetiology and treatment.
Postgraduate Medicine Journal. 1995; 71: 712-716.

³
Check your weight all the time and examine your body in the mirror (especially your belly, thighs and buttocks)
Worry about your weight so much that you don't have time for studying, working or socializing. The rest of your life can start to fall apart.

Source:
Hobbs WL, Johnson CA.
Anorexia nervosa: an overview.
American Family Physician. 1996; 54: 1273-1279, 1284-1286.

⁴

But anorexia is not just about how you feel about food. It's also about how you feel about yourself.

A person with anorexia is terrified of being fat, even when their weight is normal.

If you have anorexia, you can't see that you are very underweight. You may feel deeply unhappy.

Starving yourself can seem like a way to control difficult emotions and stress. You may think that losing weight is the key to a better, happier and more successful life.

Anorexia is a real and serious illness. It's not a diet that's gone wrong or a fad. It's one of a group of illnesses called eating disorders, along with bulimia and binge-eating.

Source:
American Psychiatric Association.
Eating disorders.
In: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th edition. American Psychiatric Press, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.; 2000.

¹ To learn more, see other eating disorders.

If you think you have problems with food, there are some questions you can ask yourself. These are the questions doctors use to help them decide whether you have an eating disorder.

Why me?

There's no simple reason why someone gets anorexia. We don't know exactly what causes eating disorders. But we think it's probably a combination of the

genes
Your genes are the parts of your cells that contain instructions for how your body works. Genes are housed on chromosomes, structures that sit in the nucleus at the middle of each of your cells. You have 23 pairs of chromosomes in your normal cells, each of which has thousands of genes. You get one set of chromosomes, and all of the genes that are on them, from each of your parents.

genes you're born with and the things that happen to you in life that lead to anorexia. Here's a list of some of the things that have been linked to anorexia.

Emotional problems
Dieting
Wanting to look like models on television and in magazines
An imbalance of chemicals in the brain
Genes and family history

For more information, see Possible causes of anorexia.

Some people are more likely to get anorexia than others. Things that can increase your chances of getting a condition are called risk factors. The risk factors for anorexia include:

Having low self-esteem (this means you feel worthless and don't give yourself credit for the good things you've done)
Wanting to be perfect as a child and always doing exactly what you're told.
Having mental health problems like depression, anxiety or obsessive thinking
Being competitive.

For more information, see Who's at risk of getting anorexia?

Sources for the information on this page:

American Psychiatric Association.Eating disorders.In: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th edition. American Psychiatric Press, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.; 2000.

Kerr JK, Skok RL, McLaughlin TF.Characteristics common to females who exhibit anorexic or bulimic behavior: a review of current literature.Journal of Clinical Psychology. 1991; 47: 846-853.

Hartman D.Anorexia nervosa: diagnosis, aetiology and treatment.Postgraduate Medicine Journal. 1995; 71: 712-716.

Hobbs WL, Johnson CA.Anorexia nervosa: an overview.American Family Physician. 1996; 54: 1273-1279, 1284-1286.

This information was last updated on Feb 09, 2009

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