Eating Disorders: I Had No Idea

This week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week and the theme this year, announced by the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) is: I Had No Idea. I've had friends in the past who were dealing with an eating disorder and have had the pleasure over the past six months to get to know a lot of new people with eating disorders as they seek treatment at the clinic where I work as a dietitian. Sticking with the theme of "I Had No Idea", here is some information about eating disorders you might find surprising.

Definitions. There are several different ways to define an eating disorder. There are official definitions in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM 5).  Then there are more fluid definitions that indicate a broken relationship with food, regardless of current or past weight.

Food on the Brain. Jessica Setnick is an RD who has a training curriculum called Eating Disorder Boot Camp. In it, she states that people with anorexia nervosa spend 90-110% of their day thinking about food. I use this as a quiz question when teaching medical residents about eating disorders: who spends the most amount of time thinking about food, people who are on a diet, people with bulimia nervosa, or people with anorexia nervosa? Last week I had the first group get it right - most guess that it is people on a diet. Sadly, it is those who are eating the least who are thinking about food the most.

No One Image. When you think of a person with an eating disorder, does an image of a skinny female model with her ribs poking out pop into your head? Frail women are often portrayed as the image of a severe eating disorder. But in reality, this disease spares no one and affects people of all genders, race, shapes, and sizes. We're seeing an increase in our clinic of patients who had been told they were overweight or obese and began to lose weight, which everyone around them applauded, not knowing that they were doing so in an unhealthy and potentially dangerous way.

Mental and Physical. There is almost no part of the body or mind that an eating disorder will spare.

Whether you know someone who has been officially diagnosed or just someone who struggles with self-esteem and has a disordered attitude towards food, take a moment this week to think about them and what they might be going through.