Anorexia

Anorexia

There are diets every where in this world, whether it be pills, exercise programs, or foods like Jenny Craig. Reading through magazines or watching television there is always some time of weight loss advertisement. Society has this image that thin is beautiful and people wonder how someone is anorexic. This paper is gong to discuss anorexia nervosa which is usually developed during puberty of both boys and girls.

Those suffering from anorexia nervosa have an obsession with the amount of fat on their body. This results in the loss of appetite completely and dangerous weight loss. How can a girl be confident about her self when every magazine she looks through has advertisements with thin, beautiful women in it? How can a girl be confident when she is watching television and every commercial has a thin, beautiful woman? How can a girl think that people want to help on a talk show and the talk show host is complaining about weight when she already has stick-like legs? More that thirty years ago Marilyn Monroe was a sex symbol, even with her size 14 to 16 figure, and in today’s society standards she would not be approved. Back in that day and age people ate what they wanted and what was healthy for them and just bought clothes to hide the weight that they did not want to show. "Due to cultural ideals of feminine beauty, young women feel a strong desire to be thinner than their bodies naturally tend to be." (www.something-fishy.org/cultural/ballet.php). And as a result they change their eating patterns. An anorexic will avoid eating to the point where they have done damage to their body that is irreversible. Approximately 60% of anorexics develop bulimia and about 20% die. An anorexic is diagnosed by having a body weight twenty percent below the expected body weight of a healthy person. The patient shows a fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, they may feel too fat even though their body weight is well below the average weightfor their height. Anorexics look at others to see how their own body size compares to others, their weight determines how they feel about themselves, checking the diameter of the wrist for size maintenance, and asking others about weight to compare their own and they also “fish for compliments.”

Anorexia could be cause by many different events. The first would be what the girl thinks about her own body weight. Anorexics feel like they are fatter than anyone else they are around and they think to lose that feeling is to get smaller is and to not eat at all. If there is no food going into their bodies then they think that eventually the body will lose their fat and eventually be thin. This is a misleading notion because when a person stops eating the body will go into starvation mode, which means that the body thinks it is starving and will develop less energy to operate, and the girls loses small amounts of weight. When the body does receive food, the body stores it until the next time food is consumed. Most anorexics are perfectionists and they desire excellence in all the areas of their life. She will stop eating to fit her opinion of the ideal weight. The girl does not want to be equal to anyone, and if she sees someone with a smaller waist size, she will strive to be smaller than her. Anorexics also need control over their lives and in every other aspect of their life. Anorexics feel like the only thing they do have control over is what they out into their bodies. If she can go for long periods of time without eating she feels good about her accomplishment. Some causes for anorexia are deeper than that. Some people have emotional conflicts that are left unresolved. Children who have been abused have a higher rate of anorexia then a child who comes from a home who is not abused. When a girl is told they are fat or ugly, most often they believe those words. When she grows up and goes into puberty, her hips start to widen and fat begins to come up in places she has not seen before. When she looks into the mirror she sees a fat girl. She starts to diet, take diet pills, and exercise but it is still not good enough because she still sees a fat girl in the mirror, and that is how easy anorexia can start.

The most obvious symptom of anorexia is the unwillingness to eat and fast weight loss. Their personality changes, including increased isolation and moodiness. Food becomes the most important thing in an anorexic’s life. They will read cook books, collect recipes and look at food to satisfy