As a freelance writer for Eating Disorder Hope and Addiction Hope and a mentor with MentorConnect, Margot is a passionate eating disorder advocate, committed to de-stigmatizing these illnesses while showing support for those struggling through mentoring, writing, and volunteering.
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Resources: [1] Griffiths, S. Peebles, who studies both eating disorders and obesity, and Wilson collaborated on the research, which was presented earlier this month in poster format at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Washington, D.
Iris Litt, MD, the Marron and Mary Elizabeth Kendrick Professor in Pediatrics and a specialist in adolescent medicine at the hospital, was the senior advisor for the work.
Litt is also former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Adolescent Health. The research is the culmination of a preliminary study conducted through an anonymous survey of medical histories and Internet use sent to the families of adolescents diagnosed with an eating disorder at the hospital since Patients and parents were asked to fill out separate forms documenting their struggles with the condition. Fifty-two adolescents and 77 parents responded.
Wilson and Peebles found that 40 percent of the adolescents who responded had visited Web sites promoting eating disorders and 34 percent had visited sites dedicated to recovery from the condition. About one-quarter frequented both types of sites and half the respondents had visited neither.
Parents of teens who visited the sites promoting the disorder were more likely to know about the sites and to be concerned about the information their child accessed online than were parents of non-users.
Although adolescents who visited the pro-eating disorder sites reported spending less time on schoolwork and more time in the hospital, they did not differ from those who didn't visit these sites in a number of other health measures: how their weight compared with their ideal body weight, the duration of their eating disorder, the number of missed menses and the presence or absence of osteoporosis.
While the sites provide "thinspiration" in the form of pictures, body weight goal charts, exercises and low-calorie recipes, they don't uniformly tout the perceived advantages of eating disorders. The researchers also found that about one-quarter of those visiting sites intended to help teens recover from eating disorders actually learned about and tried new weight loss techniques or diet aids as a result of their visit. For example, maybe you feel powerless in many parts of your life, but you can control what you eat.
Anorexia may also be a way of distracting yourself from difficult emotions. Restricting food may provide an emotional numbness, anesthetizing you from feelings of anxiety, sadness, or anger, perhaps even replacing those emotions with a sense of calm or safety.
Unfortunately, any boost you get from starving yourself or shedding pounds is extremely short-lived—and at some point, it will stop working for you at all.
The only way to do that is to identify the emotional need that self-starvation fulfills and find other ways to meet it. While your weight usually remains quite constant over the course of, say, a week, feelings of fatness can fluctuate wildly.
Often, feeling fat is a mislabeling of other emotions, such as shame, boredom, frustration, or sadness. Identifying the underlying issues that drive your eating disorder is the first step toward recovery, but insight alone is not enough. When you take that coping mechanism away, you will be confronted with the feelings of fear and helplessness your anorexia helped you avoid.
Reconnecting with your feelings can be extremely uncomfortable. Is it guilt? Avoidance and resistance only make negative emotions stronger. Dig deeper. Where do you feel the emotion in your body?
What kinds of thoughts are going through your head? Distance yourself. Realize that you are NOT your feelings. Emotions are passing events, like clouds moving across the sky.
Once you understand the link between your emotions and your disordered eating patterns—and can identify your triggers—you still need to find alternatives to dieting that you can turn to for emotional fulfillment. For example:. People with anorexia are often perfectionists and overachievers. But while they may appear to have it all together, inside they feel helpless, inadequate, and worthless.
All-or-nothing thinking. You have a hard time seeing shades of gray, at least when it comes to yourself. Emotional reasoning. You believe if you feel a certain way, it must be true. Musts, must-nots, and have-tos. You call yourself names based on mistakes and perceived shortcomings. You jump to the worst-case scenario. Once you identify the destructive thoughts patterns that you default to, you can start to challenge them with questions such as:.
As you cross-examine your negative thoughts, you may be surprised at how quickly they crumble. Developing a healthier relationship with food entails:. Let go of rigid food rules. The truth is that these rules are controlling you, not the other way around. This is a big change that will feel scary at first, but day by day, it will get easier.
Get back in touch with your body. You may not even recognize them anymore. The goal is to get back in touch with these internal cues, so you can eat based on your physiological needs. Allow yourself to eat all foods. Instead of putting certain food off limits, eat whatever you want, but pay attention to how you feel physically after eating different foods. Ideally, what you eat should leave you feeling satisfied and energized.
Get rid of your scale. Instead of focusing on weight as a measurement of self-worth, focus on how you feel. Make health and vitality your goal, not a number on the scale. Develop a healthy meal plan. If you need to gain weight, a nutritionist or dietician can help you develop a healthy meal plan that includes enough calories to get you back to a normal weight.
Getting back to a normal weight is no easy task. The thought of gaining weight is probably extremely frightening, and you may be tempted to resist.
But this fear is a symptom of your anorexia. Reading about anorexia or talking to other people who have lived with it can help. It also helps to be honest about your feelings and fears. Having anorexia can distort the way your loved one thinks—about their body, the world around them, even your motivations for trying to help.
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