Athletes are particularly susceptible to eating disorders because of their involvement in physical training and achieving the most competitively successful physique. Eating disorders fall along a spectrum. Concern about weight, calories, diet, or figure is extremely common, if not normative, especially among college age women. Likewise, an occasional pizza or ice cream splurge with friends does not necessarily make you a bulimic or an overeater. However, the specific diagnosis of anorexia or bulimia or compulsive overeating must be explored when the pursuit of thinness becomes entrenched, when obsessive restriction or consumption of food worsens, when binge and purge cycles are frequent, or when the body image is extremely distorted.
Doctors usually rely on specific criteria for diagnosing someone with bulimia or anorexia.
The diagnosis of compulsive overeating is less specific and more based on the clinician's judgment about the compulsive need to eat large quantities of food. Regardless of the diagnosis, no list of symptoms can ever convey the totality of the pain and suffering of the person and the people surrounding them. In addition, many people suffer from eating disorders and do not meet every criteria on a doctor's checklist. Some of the telltale signs of both anorexia and bulimia are listed below Anorexia Refusal to maintain normal weight for age and height. Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight.