Eating disorders

What is an eating disorder?

Eating disorders all have one thing in common - they all involve problems related to your relationship with food. However, eating disorders are as much or more to do with control (or loss of control) over your body than they are to do with not liking food. See also the separate leaflet called Types of Eating Disorder.

What causes an eating disorder?

Food is the tool you use to help you cope with emotional distress, or to feel more in control of your life. Sadly, the food-related behaviour that results can fuel your psychological problems. For instance, self-loathing and low self-esteem are common in bulimia and binge eating disorder. You may feel an overwhelming urge to binge, because it gives you temporary relief from these feelings. However, afterwards you may feel even more disgusted with yourself because of your 'weakness' for giving in to the urge to binge.

Patient picks for Eating disorders

Mental health

What triggers eating disorders in men?

Our image-conscious world puts pressure on both sexes to look perfect, but while for girls and women it's all about being model slender, for men the perfect chiselled, muscular physique is often the Holy Grail. That means that the proportion of men with bulimia or binge eating disorder is much higher than the proportion with anorexia. Men are less likely to purge and more likely to exercise to excess than women are. But the underlying mental suffering is very much the same.

by Dr Sarah Jarvis MBE, FRCGP

Mental health

Bulimia nervosa

Bulimia is an eating disorder. People with bulimia nervosa have episodes of binge eating. This is followed by deliberately fasting, making themselves sick, excessive exercise or other measures to counteract the excessive food intake.

by Dr Colin Tidy, MRCGP

So eating disorders are classified together because they have two things in common: the first is an unhealthy relationship with food (too little, too much, only the 'right' kind) and the second is the psychological distress which goes with it. Whatever kind of eating disorder you have, it's likely to have a major impact on your life.