Does Eating Disorder Affect My Body Shape

Yes, Eating disorder affects body shape. Eating behavour of humans is influenced by socio-cultural factors, family dynamics, personality traits and biological factors that sometimes due to unfavourable conditions lead to eating disorders particularly among adolescents and woman.

In some cultures, food is abundance but slimness has high value and there is a pressure to be thin. Individual tends to develop dissatisfaction with body weight and shape and indulge in unusual ways of diet. Young teenage girls may be driven by television advertisement and achieve unrealistic body shape.

Eating disorders are common in members of family where communication is poor and expectation from each other is high. Children often fill pressure to please their parents and avoid conflict and thus develop these disorders. Person’s having low self-esteem, lack of confidence, anxiety; feeling of helplessness may also have eating disorder. Chronic stress is also one of the major causes of eating disorder.

Sometime there is a disturbance in nervous and endocrine system or hormonal secretion which also leads eating disorder. It occurs when the eating pattern of individual is disordered or disturbed by self choice in order to satisfy any psychological need rather than fulfilling physiological requirement. There is consistently under eating or overeating, with food being used as the mechanism by which the person tries to feel better about self. Such irregularities in eating have adverse effects on physical as well as psychological health of a person.

In general three types of eating disorder i.e. anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating are there:-

Anorexia Nervosa refers to abnormal lack of appetite or lack of desire to consume food even when there is a physiological need for food. It involves self denial of appetite and eating even if they feel hungry and became underweight. Bulimia Nervosa is also a nervous disorder when person is afraid to gain weight and eats large amounts of food. Such a person indulges in episodes of rapid eating followed by vomiting, strict dieting, taking diuretics or laxatives. Binge Eating is episodes of uncontrolled eating large quantity of foods. There is desire to eat and the person eats rapidly.

Eating disorder affects the man, woman of all age, race and background. Food which we consume provides nutritional support for the body. It contains essential nutrients such as carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals. These nutrients are necessary for the body to function properly. Not eating enough or overeating leads to serious illness. When the calorie intake is more than requirement leads to overweight or obese and less than requirement leads to underweight or malnutrition. It is very important to make a balance between all these nutrients to maintain proper body shape. So, we can say that eating disorder directly affect our body shape.