National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
I couldn’t let this week pass by without mentioning National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. Eating disorders affect millions of people each year, including a disturbing number of teenagers. As someone who has struggled with eating disorders, I know firsthand the anguish and difficulties that can go along with them.
As a teenager, I suffered from binge eating-recurrent episodes of compulsive overeating. In my twenties, I did a complete 180-degree turnaround and suffered from anorexia nervosa-self starvation and excessive weight loss. At nearly 5 feet, 8 inches tall, I weighed only 100 lbs. at one point! My body image was terrible. No matter how much or how little weighed, all I saw was fat! I look back at pictures of myself now, and realize that I was skin and bone at one point, but I couldn’t see it.
I was helped by a combination of mental health counseling and good nutritional counseling. I learned to look at the state of my health, rather than the look of my body. Having learned so much from those days, I’ve tried to put it to the best use as the parent of a daughter.
Basically, I’ve never made weight an issue with my daughter. We talk about health rather than weight. We discuss healthy eating and exercise habits, as well as healthy body image. When we look at teen and fashion magazines, we discuss whether the models look healthy, and what both my daughter and I should do to maintain healthy weight.
After years of walking and using a “Gazelle” for working out, I joined “Curves” a few months ago. I’ve been really enjoying the program. The variety of exercises done in 30-second increments helps avoid boredom, and the complete workout in 30 minutes makes it easy to fit into my schedule. Recently, my daughter asked to join with me. She doesn’t feel she’s overweight, but she wants to do some tightening and toning. I’m really looking forward to it, as time we can spend together doing something worthwhile!
National Eating Disorders Awareness Week’s website offers tons of information on the different types of eating disorders, how you can get involved in educating the public on them, different types of treatments, and many other aspects of eating disorders. It also offers ways to improve body image and offers you a chance to register with their Parent and Family Network to receive updates.
If you suspect your child or teen has an eating disorder, make an appointment with a doctor right away. Eating disorders are often deadly diseases and, even when they are not, they cause lifelong physical and emotional problems. Make sure you are proactive in dealing with them.
eating disorders, binge eating, anorexia nervosa, National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, exercise, healthy eating, Curves, teens, teenagers, parents, parenting
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:44 am
I also feel a need to contribute to the National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.
I am a former sufferer of anorexia and bulimia. I had a long road before I finally recovered of these disorders. For more then 10 years I was battling the disease: had bouts of anxiety without a reason, sudden depression with even suicide thoughts, I ended up in hospital having a tube feed once after collapsing at home and losing consciousness for more than 5 minutes.
I was extremely thin, like a prisoner from a concentration camp really. I lost my identity completely and the only thing I had in my mind was my eating disorder that controlled me 100%.
Why did I get it ? – I don’t know for sure, but I remember that I wanted to be thin and beautiful since I was 11 or 12. I was bullied at school a few times especially when I was doing dancing classes at school (I loved dancing) and wanted to participate in a lot of dancing competition but one of the girls who also was in the dancing class with me always was telling me that with big butt like mine and big hips I should not dance at all (she actually was anorexic – I knew it only later- so she wasn’t satisfied with the way she look either).
Once I wasn’t picked for a Christmas extravaganza to perform on the stage and I took it very personally, I thought it was only because I was fat that I missed out. This episode was the trigger that put me on the dangerous road of anorexia than bulimia that nearly killed me.
I had a lot treatment .Actually, I tried probably all the treatments for eating disorders – you say one – I tried it. And I did not have much luck with any of them.
What helped me and actually cured me was the treatment system developed by my mom (she is my savor in real words). She tried so hard to find something useful to help me so she attended many lectures and seminars, read hundreds of books, talked to many famous psychologist and others if they had any ideas that could help me, but none of them knew anything special.
Once she was reading a book about ancient Roman psychology and found an interesting fact that some ancient Romans suffered eating disorder especially during feast time and some of them even had severe eating disorders.
Of course, at that time there was no antidepressants or other drugs we have nowadays. So how did they treat suffers?
My mom took this passage about the treatment they used and started thinking how she can adjust it to modern times, than she started trying all these things on me.
Now I am in my middle twenties and I am absolutely free from any eating disorders and have been for more than two years how.
This treatment also has helped many other people as well. You can read more about it on http://www.mom-please-help.com
I mean it is just another alternative to the common treatment for eating disorders around today and certainly works. For different people different things will work, some have quick results, some take longer.
I really believe that all eating disorders are treatable and people should not suffer from them, my mom proved that.
I wish all parents would be more active about treating their children and searching for help like my mom did. Only in this way can we reduce the number of deaths and severe complications from eating disorders.
March 30th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Anorexia Nervosa generally stems from the victim feeling negative about her own body.This leads to a constant self-consciousness regarding her own body, and how she appears to other people.