Warning Signs

Be on the lookout for:

 

• Constant thoughts of food

• Counting calories

• Weighing several times a day

• Complaining about being fat or about specific body parts

• Severely limiting food intake

• Labeling certain foods as “good” or “bad”

• Obsessive Exercising to the extreme to burn calories

• Exercising as a punishment for eating a “bad” food

• Vomiting after eating

• Severe anxiety

• Using laxatives, diet pills, enemas, diuretics, and or ipecac

• Hiding foods

• Exhibiting food rituals (such as cutting food into tiny pieces)

• Frequent or often long trips to the bathroom, often with water running

• Avoiding people, lying, keeping secrets, stealing, cutting or compulsively shopping

• Perfectionism

• Reading books or visiting websites on eating disorders and dieting

• Considerably thinner in a relatively short period of time with no explainable reason, such as a medical cause

• Swollen neck with enlarged salivary glands resulting from excessive vomiting.

• Lying and secretive behavior

• Absence of menstrual cycles  (in younger ages, 3 cycles may be rather late in the game to intervene)

• Maintaining a body weight of 15% below normal for age, height, and body type

• Dressing to hide body shape

• Avoiding meals

• Dental Problems

• Brittle Nails & Hair

 

* Studies have shown that anorexia and bulimia have a hereditary factor of 50-80%.  It is important to address one’s “family history” of an eating disorder and be especially mindful of this factor.