NEDAwareness Week Day Five: Dieting and Eating Disorders

35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting. Of those, 20-25% develop an eating disorder 

Americans get many mixed messages about health—and many of those messages are far from healthy. We hear about the virtues of "good" foods and the evils of the “bad” ones. Our national fixation on weight loss has resulted in $60 billion in profits for the diet industry – an industry whose products and weight loss plans are often the catalyst to an eating disorder. Research shows that 35% of “normal dieters” progress to pathological dieting and of those, 20-25% continue on to develop partial or full-syndrome eating disorders (Shisslak, Crago, & Estes, 1995). From TV commercials to bestselling books, there are countless ideas about what we should be eating and how we should be exercising. But this focus on food and weight in the name of “health” can become a dangerous and disruptive preoccupation for some.

All too often, the drive for thinness begins early in a person’s life. For example, 46% of 9-11 year-olds are “sometimes” or “very often” on diets (Gustafson-Larson & Terry, 1992) and 35-57% of adolescent girls engage in crash dieting, fasting, self-induced vomiting, diet pills or laxatives (Boutelle, Neumark-Sztainer, et al. 2002; Neumark-Sztainer & Hannan, 2001; Wertheim et al., 2009).

"Extreme dieting is never a healthy alternative. Among "normal" dieters, 35 percent will progress to pathological dieting and of those, 20-25 perfect progress to full-blown eating disorders. The Biggest Loser is not only a trigger to those on the show who are predisposed to develop an eating disorder but to viewers at home as well. We need to quit looking at the number on the scale and adopt a healthy lifestyle."

Read Here for More Information:

Orthorexia: Those who have an "unhealthy obsession" with otherwise healthy eating may be suffering from "orthorexia nervosa," a term which literally means "fixation on righteous eating."

-10 Ways to Recognize Orthorexia

Stories of Hope:

"My symptoms violently bounced between anorexia and bulimia and I became a master at hiding them. My eating disorder could not be perfectly boxed into a diagnostic code, which made it easy for my ED voice to always tell me, 'See, you're not that bad. You aren't underweight and you don't purge that much.'"
-Read More Here: A Scale Can't Measure the Severity of Your Eating Disorder

"They do not have a clue about men having an Eating Disorder; I guess that is why I am there to help them to better understand the disease."
-Read More Here: Reclaiming My Life

Get Involved:

Use the #NEDAwareness hashtag to join us for a Tweet Chat, A Slippery Slope: Identifying Disordered Behaviors Before they Go Too Far