Rough Draft

I’m a size 0! Yay?

Sofia Torra

Guerrero

Humanities

November 5, 2010

Abstract

            Eating disorders is such an important factor in our society that I think it is a topic where people need to be well specially teenagers since they are the ones that most often suffer from this disease. Most of us have heard of the most common eating disorders Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia, but not that many know that there are roughly around 9 different eating disorders. During this paper I will be going over all the different types of eating disorders, their dangers and consequences. I will also be covering the reasons why this disease is caused and the dangerous effects and consequences it has. Toward the end of my research paper I will be focusing on healthier alternatives to lose weight.

The reason I chose this topic is because I think many teens go through this without even realizing it. I personally cannot go a day without thinking about my weight, I've never been to the point where I've starved myself but I have been on several diets. I was about 9 years old the first time someone called me fat, sadly that person was my older brother. I had never seen myself from that point of view, I always imagined being fat something else, never something I would be. Since that day I started getting more comments on my weight and soon my younger brother started to follow my older brother. Now I had both my brothers teasing me about being overweight, which I wasn't, I was simply robust, I've always been a bigger girl, I was born weighing almost 11 pounds! I was constantly being called names like "puerca" which means pig in Spanish, even after I had told my parents they never really did anything about it. Of course I always tried not to show my pain hoping the teasing would eventually stop.

 I was 14 when I grew tired of all those years, we were at the pool and my brothers started yelling and calling me Shamu the whale, I blew up, made a scene and ran back home. Since that day, the name calling has stopped maybe an 80% but I still get those hurtful comments every once in a while because they know it's what hurts me the most. Thankfully I don’t suffer from an eating disorder but I still feel the pressure to be thin or the need to lose weight and be a size smaller. I constantly carry the guilt from over eating or maybe having too much of a desert, I often think that the pressure to have the “perfect” body, is what drives me to eat more.

Most of my friends are constantly criticizing themselves and comparing themselves to other girls or worse, models and celebrities. It bothers me to hear my friends talk about themselves in a negative way and constantly put themselves down, but then I think to myself, wow I’m doing the exact same thing. Teens need to lean to be comfortable with their image and understand that we all have different bodies and it’s quite impossible to mold your body into something it’s not.
            During my research I learned several things that impacted me and changed the way I feel about myself now, it’s important for other teens to realize the risks of having an eating disorder and learn the different ways of being fit.

You've probably heard of anorexia or bulimia right? Of course you think "Wow, how can someone starve themselves to the point where their bones stick out", well this is a bigger issue than many people think, more than 8,000,000 people in the United States suffer from eating disorders. The first thing that normally comes to mind when someone hears eating disorder is a skinny teen girl, well most people would be surprised to know that even though teenage girls are the ones who most commonly suffer from this disease, there are also males and adults.

What exactly is an eating disorder? Being too skinny? Not eating enough? Vomiting constantly after eating? The correct dictionary definition for and eating disorder is “any of several psychological disorders (as anorexia nervosa or bulimia) characterized by serious disturbances of eating behavior,” my personal definition is “A path to death”. Having an eating disorder is having an obsession over your weight and taking drastic measures, doing almost anything to lose weight, of course it’s normal to want to look your best but there are other many ways to lose weight in a healthy way without harming the body. It’s very easy and tempting to try new things to lose quick weight but the problem with having an eating disorder is that it becomes a disease that plays with your mind and it convinces you that you need to keep losing weight. As you can see this is very dangerous because no matter how thin a person may be, as soon as they look at themselves in the mirror, their vision is distorted and they are convinced they are overweight and in the need to lose more weight, this is when the disease become something emotional.

There are many different types of eating disorders, the most common ones are anorexia nervosa and bulimia; these both have the same negative effect of weight loss. Thinking that eating disorders only involve losing weight, is a big mistake many people believe. There is also a specific eating disorder that involves over eating which is called binge eating. For many, those might be the only eating disorders they have ever hear of, but there are also some less popular eating disorders, for example night eating and orthorexia. Another common question is, do eating disorders have to always involve food? Obviously, many would think yes, it does because it has the word eating, which automatically has to involve someone eating, right? Well the answer is no; there are two disease that would be categorized under eating disorder because it also involve an obsession with weight loss. Anorexia athletica and over exercising are two diseases, which also involve taking extreme measures to lose weight. 

Anorexia is categorized as one of the worst eating disorders. Although this disease is most likely to occur at the ages of 14 and 18, it is sometimes developed at the early age of 7 or later in life in the 40’s. The person with this disorder has a terrible fear of becoming fat and will go to extreme measures for weight loss; the dangerous thing about this disorder is that it plays with the persons mind, it tricks them in to feeling that they are fat even though they might be at life-threatening weight. To prevent people from noticing their problem, they will lie to their family and friends about how much they are eating and often abuse laxative. The million-dollar question of course, would be how could it be prevented? Well unfortunately there is no way to prevent anorexia but it is important to have it detected as early as possible so it start off by can be treated. There are many consequences that come with being anorexic; beside from having the bony unattractive look, there are also some health issues. Low blood pressure, Heart failure, reeducation in estrogen secretion, kidney failure, and of course death; these are just a few of the dangerous effects of being anorexic.

Bulimia is the most common eating disorder in the United States; this disease is somewhat similar to anorexia nervosa because they both involve the fear of weight gain. Unlike anorexia, bulimia is when a person eats large amounts of foods in a small amount of time, which is called binging. After this person has reached their limit they have an immediate feeling of guilt, which leads them to want to “take back” everything they ate, they do this by getting rid of the food hence, by vomiting.  Like anorexia, there is no sure way to prevent bulimia since it is a psychiatric disorder but it van be treated successfully if it is diagnosed early on. The treatment for bulimia is with a combination of drugs and counseling. The drug most commonly used to treat bulimia is an anti- depressant; so the patient can feel better about him or herself, since one of the most common causes for bulimia is low body image.

Binge eating is quite the opposite of anorexia nervosa and bulimia; this eating disorder actually involves a person over eating. Like it was mentioned before, binging is when a person eats uncontrollably large amounts of food and then feels guilty but they do not do anything to purge themselves like if they had bulimia. Although the cause for this disease is not quite know, it is thought that it is something mental “Researchers think this may be related to abnormalities in neurotransmitters in the brain that help to regulate appetite” says researcher Tish Davidson. Stress is another thing blamed for this condition, it is said that stress makes some people eat large amounts, which will eventually lead to binging. To treat binge eating, doctors say that it is important for patients to be comfortable with their body and they will provide valuable nutrition information, in some cases they might provide some drugs for stress relief.

At the beginning part of the essay night eating and orthorexia are mentioned but you think, what the heck is that? Well these are both eating disorders that are somewhat similar to binge eating since the both involve food cravings. Never heard of it? Well the reason you’ve most likely never heard of it is because it is a newly identified eating disorder that many as 6 million Americans suffer from. Night eating, is pretty self-explanatory you eat at night right?