Topic

Eating Disorders

Explore the best available guidance in eating disorders.

We’re currently looking for an official guide for Eating Disorders.

Choose what you want next

Articles

All articles about Eating Disorders

Everything currently available in articles for Eating Disorders.

Show top picks

***Why Diets Don’t Work

Have you ever dieted? More than once? Most of the methods we may have tried to control our eating have not worked long term. I hope to explain why diets don’t work and present some ideas for you to consider that do work. Diets don’t work. Let me contradict myself now and say “all diets work.” The protein diet, the grapefruit diet, low carb diet, the (fill-in-the-blank) diet, all work. The more bizarre the regime the better it works, at least temporally.

Eating Disorders can be Deadly

ELEVEN MILLION people in the U.S. have an eating disorder, and you may never suspect it by their physical appearance. Here are the major types of eating disorders, and symptoms and behaviors to look for.

***High Fructose Corn Syrup - Not Such a Sweet Deal!

Recently proven to be more addictive than cocaine, a closer look at High Fructose Corn Syrup may help to explain America’s rise in obesity and the new focus on food addiction.

***The Binge Eating Cycle: Breaking Free

We develop patterns of behavior early in life. We start associating certain events with certain behaviors. One such pattern is our behavior with food. Being fed by our parents when we were young may come to represent being cared for or being loved. On the other hand, not being fed when we were hungry may have produced a deep insecurity about whether there would be enough food in the future.

***Celebrity Eating Disorders

The shame, guilt and misunderstanding of eating disorders makes it hard for anyone to come forward to get help, but it is so much harder for a public figure to do so. Celebrities may put their fame, career and acting opportunities on the line and open themselves to, ridicule and criticism if they disclose they have an eating disorder. Some will die as a result.

***The Inconvenient Truth About Male Eating Disorders

Today researchers find that for every four females with anorexia, there is one male, and for every 8-11 females with bulimia, there is one male. (American Jou al of Psychiatry) The majority of men suffer with Binge Eating Disorder and the majority does not get treatment until they have diabetes, heart attacks or other weight-related disorders.

***A Day in the Life of a Bulimic

The way I learned to deal with my feelings was not to feel. One of the ways I learned to do this was to think of something different. For instance, I looked forward to getting some candy from the little store on my way home from school. I would get a cola soft drink and a frosted pastry or candy. I always felt better when I ate that. Little did I know that I was opening a floodgate of addiction with this newly learned coping behavior.

Addictions and Food

Over the years I have been asked if there is such a thing as food addiction. First, let’s look at what is an addiction? Here is one definition: An addiction causes people to engage in a recurring activity that causes harm to the person. It is often described as a compulsion to engage in some specific activity to produce mood-altering experiences, and this experience has life-damaging consequences.

***Chapter 1 – Facing the Fact that Diets Don’t Work

Have you ever dieted and gained the weight back? Statistics show that sixty-six percent of the American population is overweight. Only one out of 200 dieters loses the weight and keeps it off for a year or more. Out of the 25 million Americans that are seriously dieting in the United States 40 to 60 percent are high school girls. Studies show that 35% of the normal dieters progress to eating disorders. Thirty percent of post-bariatric or gastric bypass surgery patients develop a substance addiction. The body may, but thinking remains the same.

High Fructose Corn Syrup - Not Such a Sweet Deal!

Recently proven to be more addictive than cocaine, a closer look at High Fructose Corn Syrup may help to explain America’s rise in obesity and the new focus on food addiction.

***Do Sororities Cause Eating Disorders?

“A binge-purge party is a harmless way to enjoy some fattening foods without getting fat”, my patient told me. “At my sorority a few of us girls would buy all of the forbidden and fattening foods we have been denying ourselves. Then we would have a binge-purge party. It’s a way to have your cake and not get fat. Three of us meet in my room. It was like a secret society. We ate donuts, chips, pizza, ice cream, fast foods and fried foods then we purged the food.”

***7 Reasons Why Diets Don’t Work

Have you been on more than one diet? How many? Just answering that question tells you a lot. If diets worked you would not be spending your money on one diet (plan, book, program, supplement, diet foods, pill, etc.) after another. Marketdata Enterprises, Inc. (2011), an independent market research firm who is an analyst of the U.S. weight-loss industry since 1979 reports Americans are spending over $60 billion on dieting and weight loss products each year.