Solutions for Eating Disorders

• Resistance to maintaining body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height
• Intense fear of weight gain or being “fat” even though underweight.
• Disturbance in the experience of body weight or shape, undue influence of weight or shape on self-evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of low body weight.
• Loss of menstrual periods in girls and women post-puberty.

Warning Signs of Anorexia Nervosa:

• Dramatic weight loss.
• Preoccupation with weight, food, calories, fat grams, and dieting.
• Refusal to eat certain foods, progressing to restrictions against whole categories of food (e.g. no carbohydrates, etc.).
• Frequent comments about feeling “fat” or overweight despite weight loss.
• Anxiety about gaining weight or being “fat.”
• Denial of hunger.
• Development of food rituals (e.g. eating foods in certain orders, excessive chewing, rearranging food on a plate).
• Consistent excuses to avoid mealtimes or situations involving food.
• Excessive, rigid exercise regimen--despite weather, fatigue, illness, or injury--the need to “burn off” calories taken in.
• Withdrawal from usual friends and activities.
• In general, behaviors and attitudes indicating that weight loss, dieting, and control of food are becoming primary concerns.

• Approximately 90-95% of anorexia nervosa sufferers are girls and women (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).
• Between 0.5-1% of American women suffer from anorexia nervosa.
• Anorexia nervosa is one of the most common psychiatric diagnoses in young women (Hsu, 1996).
• Between 5-20% of individuals struggling with anorexia nervosa will die. The probabilities of death increases within that range depending on the length of the condition (Zerbe, 1995).
• Anorexia nervosa has one of the highest death rates of any mental health condition.
• Anorexia nervosa typically appears in early to mid-adolescence.