Defining anorexia nervosa Anorexia nervosa is a psychiatric and medical condition which involves an individual dramatically reducing their calorie intake to the point of self-starvation. People exhibiting anorexic behavior patterns frequently hide and hoard food, exhibit strange or bizarre eating rituals, appear to eat at meals when in fact they are hardly eating at all, or cook lavish meals for others which they themselves refuse to eat. During a binge, a person exhibiting bulemic behavior patterns may eat as few as a couple of extra cookies to as much as three grocery bags full of food. The individual may binge on a variety of foods, or the individual may eat a single food like a chocolate cake. The individual may intentionally vomit up all of the food, take an extreme amount of laxitives or engage in compulsive and intense physical exercise.
Food is used as a way of numbing uncomfortable emotions and providing an illusion of self-control.
As with anorexia, people going through bulemia often center their lives around food. There often develops an obsessive preoccupation with weighing oneself. Food is often hoarded, hidden or stolen. A person experiencing bulemia often has a preoccupation with body image and view her or himself in a highly negative fashion that is completely out of kilter with how an outside observer might see that person. Answer the following questions honestly.