Dealing with an eating disorder
What is it?
If you are preoccupied with your weight, appearance and diet in an unhealthy way, you are probably dealing with an eating disorder. You consider yourself fat. Eating evokes anxiety, which you try to neutralise or compensate for by exercising a lot, throwing up or dieting more strictly. If this starts to control your daily life then you may have an eating disorder.
An eating disorder is characterised mainly by the following:
- You have unrealistic thoughts about food, your body and weight;
- You are anxious about gaining weight and think your appearance is overly important;
- An eating disorder can also stem from a disinterest in food, aversion.
Anorexia nervosa also involves underweight and absence of menstruation.
In bulimia nervosa, there is usually a healthy weight and you mainly suffer from binge eating. After the binge, measures are taken to get rid of the food, for example by exercising excessively, vomiting or using laxatives or fasting.
Binge eating disorder involves eating a large amount of food in a short period of time. You feel a sense of loss of control during a binge. You eat faster than normal, you eat until it feels unpleasant or you eat only out of shame and feel gloomy and guilty afterwards. You do not have compensatory behaviour as in bulimia nervosa.
The consequences of eating disorders are serious. Nutritional deficiencies can cause a variety of physical, emotional and psychological problems.
What can you do yourself?
Most people with an eating disorder are reluctant to seek help quickly. However, it is actually important to seek help as soon as possible. To do so, contact your general practioner.
If this step is too big, you can make an appointment with a student psychologist. The student psychologist will then work with you to see how you can take the steps towards external help. Being underweight leads to a loss of concentration, causing you to experience loss of control and failure, which then makes you want to diet again to regain a sense of control.