6 Common Types of Eating Disorders

Want to become a member of Eat My News? You can enrol for EMN membership now from here.

What are eating disorders?

Eating disorders are usually looked upon by most people but they are a serious issue for those who have it. They refer to persistent eating disorders that affect your physical, mental health, emotions, and ability to perform various functions. This disorder also includes distress and concern about body weight and physical appearance.

What are the symptoms of eating disorders?

There are various symptoms of eating disorders, both emotional and physical. They are as follows-

• Hoarding a large amount of food in your personal space and planning on eating it later.
• Being extremely concerned about your body weight and appearance.
• Skipping meals daily for a long period and having small proportions of food.
• Frequently dieting and being over conscious about what you eat and when you eat.
• Having extreme mood swings.
• Feeling very cold or very hot all the time or at unexpected times.
• Suffering from insomnia.
• Not being able to concentrate well.
• Wounds heal at a very slow rate.
• Females might also face menstrual irregularities in their period cycle.
• Not wanting to eat for days but later, overeating suddenly.

What are the different types of eating disorders?

There are 6 major types of eating disorders. They are as follows -

1. Anorexia Nervosa

This type of disorder is characterized by extremely low body weight accompanied by a fear of gaining excess weight and being conscious about your weight, appearance, and physical features. Anorexia is not just about food. It is about a person’s way of dealing with emotional stress and lack of self-confidence.

A person with anorexia might not focus on their real self that would most probably be underweight. No matter how much weight he/she has lost, he/she will always have a fear of being overweight and therefore, this will urge him/her to follow unhealthy ways of staying fit and thin such as not eating at all for a long period, exercising excessively, vomiting right after eating food with fats or carbohydrates, etc.

2. Bulimia Nervosa

Bulimia nervosa is almost the same as anorexia nervosa. The former is also characterized by an irrational fear of gaining weight even when severely underweight. They only and a key difference between the two is that bulimia and anorexia have different food-related behaviors. The former refers to a person who eats a lot of food all at once to avoid eating for the next few hours. Whereas, the latter is characterized by eating no food at all or very less amount of food, or vomiting after having a heavy diet.

3. Pica 

Pica is a disorder that is characterized by a habit of eating non-edible things. People mostly develop this habit due to stress that they cant cope up with or sometimes, young children develop this habit at an early stage are their parents do not really pay attention to it and therefore, it turns into a pica disorder.

Things that people eat if they are suffering from this disorder are- hair, nails, metals, soil, glass, paper, ice, chalk, feces, etc. Eating such a thing can lead to serious effects on a person’s health, for example- eating lead might lead to poisoning, etc.

4. Binge Eating Disorder

Binge eating disorder refers to typical overeating. People who suffer from this order have constant urges to consume food in large amounts almost all the time. Sometimes it is confused with those who like to eat when they are binge-watching a show, but it is not so. Binge eating disorder is something where a person can not control when to stop eating even if he/she knows that it is embarrassing to eat so much in front of people. Those who have this disorder feel uncomfortable and somewhat suffocated if they do not get enough food to eat when they want to.

5. Rumination Disorder

Rumination disorder refers to a condition when a person spits up food from the stomach usually within 30 minutes of the last meal, re-chews it, and either spit it out or swallows it. The taste of the food stays the same, it might have a slight change but it is not acidic like vomit. There is no specific cause behind this disorder. It usually develops in people when they are infants. It might not even require any medication to treat it as it often goes away on its own.

6. Avoidant- Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)

This disorder is characterized by a person who avoids the intake of some food items or consumes them in very small quantities or both. There are three major reasons for this disorder. Firstly, the person might not just be very fond of eating and have a low food intake. Secondly, the person might have had certain bad experiences or incidents the last time he or she consumed that food item. Lastly, he or she might not just like the taste, smell, color, or any other specific thing about the food item. 

How to cure an eating disorder?

To cure an eating disorder, one usually uses natural ways to do so. These ways include having a regular eating schedule and strictly following it, staying away as much as possible from the weighing machine, stop comparing themselves to others in terms of body weight and physical appearance, staying active but not too active, etc. Therapies have also proved to be helpful to treat an eating disorder. Therapy can be done with a group of people with the same disorder as you, or even with your own family and friends.

It is very important to keep a track of how your habits have improved, or the times when you relapsed, keeping in mind what caused the relapse. This record helps you avoid things that lead to the worsening of your condition. Medication for the same should be avoided as much as possible. But in extreme cases, doctors prescribe medications for a stipulated time.

Written by - Hunnar Kaushal

Edited by - Chhavi Gupta