Eating Disorders Awareness Week (EDAW) takes place from Feb. 26, 2024, to March 3, 2024. EDAW is an annual campaign launched by the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) to spread awareness about eating disorders and provide support to those struggling.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), an eating disorder is an illness associated with severe disturbances in eating habits. Additionally, eating disorders have a major psychological aspect.
“I would say an eating disorder is, for most people, their experience with having an eating disorder is an unhealthy relationship with food and body,” Chelsea Tobias, therapist and clinical education coordinator for Eating and Behavioral Health Associates, said.
The term “disordered” is frequently used when describing this interaction between someone with an eating disorder, food, and body.
“When we say ‘disordered,’ it generally means like, it just takes up a lot of someone’s time and energy and focus. It takes them away from the things in their life that really matter,” Tobias said.
Eating disorders can take a variety of forms. According to NIMH, types of eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, avoidant restrictive food intake disorder, and other specified feeding and eating disorders.
“There are like a handful of diagnoses that fall under eating disorders,” Tobias said. “The most common one is what we would think of as like, it’s an ‘atypical eating disorder,’ which really just means that it doesn’t meet full diagnostic criteria for any one specific one – maybe people jump around [with] their behaviors and habits.”
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that is, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, indicated by a fear of gaining weight and being underweight or malnourished, among other symptoms. Additionally, people with anorexia often deny that their weight is an issue and refuse to maintain a healthy weight.
Atypical anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder where previously higher or overweight people experience body image disturbance and lose weight through unhealthy behaviors. This type of eating disorder results in weight loss, but they may remain normal or above the normal weight range for age. However, the binge eating and purging that takes place in an attempt to lose weight may not occur often enough to be classed as a “problem.” Atypical anorexia nervosa fulfills some of the patients’ features of anorexia, but their overall physical image does not justify an anorexic diagnosis.
“What we know from the research when it comes to people with eating disorders is that they really do and can affect anybody,” Tobias said. “There is no one kind of person that’s specifically at a higher risk.”
Other eating disorders include pica, in which a person eats a non-food substance with no nutritional value, and bulimia, which involves binging (eating an excess of food at once) and purging (taking measures to expel that food from the body).
In addition to consuming mental energy, eating disorders can be physically detrimental. NIMH lists osteoporosis, low blood pressure, organ failure, and mild anemia as potential symptoms of anorexia nervosa, among others.
Senior Lauren Thornton described her experience with an eating disorder.
“As time went on, like I remember in seventh grade, my hair fell out, and it was coming out all the time,” Thornton said. “And I was cold–I just vividly remember sitting in a classroom, like the third week of school. It was 80 degrees, and I was purple and shivering.”
Eating disorder treatment takes on several faces, including medication and nutritional counseling. Commonly, eating disorder patients attend inpatient treatment at hospitals or centers specifically designated for eating disorder treatment.
“I went into inpatient treatment–I did two treatments, actually, one at Nationwide Children’s and [one at The] Ohio State University Hospital, at their Harding Hospital,” Ryler Gill, a 2023 UAHS graduate, said. “I met with several different doctors–specialists. It was really tough, and within that time, I was able to gain healthy weight and get back to the normal body weight I should be at for my age.”
Different treatment programs are effective for different people, but a person’s environment plays a universally large role in prevention and recovery.
“Just don’t comment about what somebody looks like, especially if someone’s going through recovery,” Thornton said. “Like there can be like weight gains, and definitely the biggest aspect is [to not] point anything about that out because that can be like the most harmful.”
Tobias weighed in.
“We need to do better as a culture at reducing something called weight stigma or weight bias, which is this system of beliefs that people have that weight is a controllable thing and that it is something that we need to make people feel bad about,” Tobias said. “Patterns of dieting are the biggest risk factor for the development of an eating disorder. So if we can help people see [that] dieting is not the answer, controlling our food and bodies isn’t the answer, we can hopefully help prevent the start of an eating disorder.”
