Anorexia Nervosa

Sufferers of anorexia stop allowing themselves to satisfy their hunger. You are likely to be restricting how much you eat and drink, controlling the types of food you eat and may exercise in order to burn off what you perceive as excessive calories. A combination of these behaviours will result in weight loss and chemical changes in the body that affect your mood and your ability to make rational decisions about food.

 

How you might behave

  • Restrict your intake of food and drink.

  • Use of exercise or purging to get rid of what you perceive as excessive calories.

  • Repetitive or obsessive behaviour around food such as cutting food up into small pieces, eating at specific and exact times of day and/or using small plates and cutlery for eating.

  • Restrict your dietary range to foods that you perceived as ’safe’. ‘Safe foods’ will vary from one person to the next. Sufferers of Anorexia often reduce their intake of carbohydrate and fat restricting their diet to mainly fruit and vegetables.

  • Restlessness and hyperactivity.

  • Avoid eating food that you have not prepared yourself and avoid eating in company. This may start to have an affect on your social life and relationships.

  • Become defensive and angry when people talk about food, exercise and weight.

  • Deny you have a problem even when those around you express concern.

  • Obsessive checking of the calorie and/or fat content of food.

  • Find excuses to skip meals.

 

What you might feel

  • Intense fear of gaining weight.

  • Irritable and anxious, especially around food.

  • Increased or obsessive interest in diet and nutrition.

  • Distracted by thoughts of food and eating.

  • Fat or overweight despite being told the contrary by those around you.

  • Low self-esteem.

 

How you might be affected physically

  • Weight loss.

  • Constipation and abdominal pains.

  • Dizziness and feeling faint.

  • Bloated stomach, puffy face and ankles.

  • Growth of downy hair on the body.

  • Feeling cold.

  • Discomfort while sitting or lying down.

  • Dry, rough, or discoloured skin.

  • Disrupted menstrual cycle in women.

  • Loss of libido.

  • Reduction in bone mass possibly leading to osteoporosis.

 

Affects on your mood

The relationship between what you eat and your mood is complex. It is likely that you have developed anorexia as a way of coping with or controlling difficult thoughts and feelings. As time goes by, the eating disorder will start to take control. The chemical changes caused by reduced food intake will start to affect your emotions, distort your thinking and make it more difficult for you to make rational decisions. It is this complex relationship that make anorexia so difficult to recover from; you need to understand and work to overcome the underlying emotional issues in order to improve your eating while, at the same time, needing to improve your eating in order to be in a mental state to confront the underlying problem. It is a daunting task but with the help and support of professionals and loved ones a balance in tasks can be achieved.

 

Long- term physical affects

Anorexia can, unfortunately, have long-term affects on your physical health. The most common are infertility and osteoporosis. If caught early on in their development, these affects can be reversed with improvements to diet and a gradual increase of food intake.

 

WHAT CAN YOU EXPECT DURING RECOVERY?

 

How you might feel


Recovering from Anorexia is a long and difficult journey but it is worth it. While you are recovering you may feel more tired despite eating more and exercising less. You may also experience more extreme mood swings and feel more irritable. This is because recovery is emotionally exhausting. You will be constantly fighting anorexic thoughts and feelings, battling to hear the rational voice that knows recovery is the best option. The rational voice will not always win; you will have good days and bad days. This is ok. The important thing is that you keep reflecting on your behaviour, thoughts and feelings. Keep asking yourself why you acted the way you did and what you were thinking and feeling at the time. This knowledge will not only help you to get better, it will also help you to stay better and to cope with difficult situations in the future without using your anorexia.

 

Physical changes


When you restrict your food intake your metabolism reduces to match the amount of calories you consume; your body slows down to conserve energy. This is why you feel cold. When you begin on the road to recovery and increase the amount of food you are eating your metabolism will also increase. It can however take a while for your metabolism to respond to your increased food intake. You need to eat regularly for weeks or even months before your body trusts that it is going to get enough food to sustain the energy you are using to live. Because of this delay in response you may find that you initially put on weight relatively fast. You may become bloated and experience an increase in appetite. These experiences can be alarming and frightening. Try to trust that the weight gain and increase in appetite will settle down as your body adjusts. You will not put on weight infinitely. In time you will settle at your natural weight; a weight that allows your body to function affectively and allows you to do the things you want to do without feeling exhausted.