The practice of an eating disorder may be an expression of something that the individual has found no other way of expressing. Anorexia Nervosa - Anorexia is a disorder where the main characteristic is the restriction of food and the refusal to maintain a minimal normal body weight. Any actual or perceived weight gain is met with intense fear and is often experienced as body image distortions. Those areas of the body usually associated with sexuality of maturity such as the buttocks, hips, thighs and breasts are visualized as being fat. In the obsessive pursuit of thinness, anorexics participate in restrictive dieting, compulsive exercise, and laxative and diurectic abuse.
Weight loss is sometimes can be so servere that there is a loss of menses.
If Anorexia Nervosa is left untreated, it can be fatal. The bulimic eats compulsively and then purges through self-induced vomiting, use of laxatives, diuretics , diets, excessive exercise or other compensatory behaviors to prevent weight gain. The binges usually consist of eating a large amount of food in a short period of time and usually in secret. Bulimics are usually obsessed with their bodya shape and weight. Like Anorexia, Bulimia can be fatal if untreated.