Anjanette Ly 3/14/14 Literature Review Terms: Eating disorder: Eating disorders are a class of illnesses characterized by atypical eating

habits such as cutting down on the amount of food one consumes, or almost completing eliminating food in other to lose or maintain a relatively low body weight. Eating disorders are more frequent among teenage girls, but could affect both males and females of any age. The consequences of eating disorders are quite serious and can be detrimental to ones overall health. Two common eating disorders include anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Anorexia: Anorexia is a type of eating disorder where one drastically reduces food intake, practically engaging in self-starvation, driven by the desire to be thin. Bulimia: Bulimia is another kind of eating disorder in which a person may consume a large amount of food at a given time but later purge everything back up. Dealing with Eating Disorders It is not uncommon for kids to be concerned about their appearance. Many people can become self-conscious about how their body looks. This can lead a person to develop an eating disorder. There is an estimated 10 million Americans who suffer from an eating disorder. I will discuss two individuals who have dealt with the eating disorder, bulimia nervous in different ways. 13-year-old Johnathan Noyes has been dealing with bulimia for about 3 years and still combating it. He begins with the statement, when youre eating, youre just like a machine, like you arent really thinking or feeling, youre just doing it. 2 It is strange because Johnathan is a boy and has an eating disorder. When it comes to having an eating disorder, it is commonly thought of for only females to have, but anybody of any age or any gender could develop an eating disorder. The vast majority of treatment programs that are available are geared toward females however. Johnathan dealt with many troubles as a result of bulimia but found comfort when he begin hanging out with Collin Schuster, another male he met while seeking treatment, who had also been dealing with eating disorders. The two meet regularly over video games and also discuss their hardships with eating disorders. When it comes to Johnathan fully healing, doctors say its like layers of an onion; its going to take a long time to peel them away. 2 Judy Arvin, the other person who Im about to discuss has had to deal with bulimia in quite a different way. She lost her daughter, Melissa due to the illness. She has created a documentary entitled Someday Melissa: The Story of an Eating Disorder, Loss and Hope depicting Melissas life but also giving Judy a therapeutic method to channel her grief. In one particular scene in the film, a journal entry of Melissas is discovered with a poem she wrote which talks about all of the somedays she wanted to accomplish, including loving someone, traveling wherever she wants, and making her family proud. 6 This experience has been extremely sad for Judy but she is also proud to be able to share Melissas story. Overcoming Eating Disorders Eating disorders can be exceedingly difficult to overcome, considering the fact that they seem to almost take over the lives of those who are struggling with them. Eating disorders can be very controlling in many aspects of a persons life. I will share the stories of two individuals who have overcome their troubles with the eating disorder, anorexia nervosa. Both are actually doctors today, but they did not always take good care of their health. Rebecca McKnight, when asked to describe her experiences of

Anjanette Ly 3/14/14 anorexia in one sentence, she was able to describe it in just a single word isolation.8 Knight has experienced many hardships due to her anorexia, including falling behind in medical school. She sought treatment and to this day is doing better, but did fall into periods of relapse throughout the process. The other doctor, more specifically a pediatrician, who once experienced anorexia, gives us her two cents about the disease. Dr. Leslie Walker was a senior in high school at the time and was heading off to college. She wanted to lose weight because many teenage girls wanted to lose weight but what she also loved most was the feeling that came along with all of this. It made her feel in control of her life and invincible. I was old enough to know that I was never going to be the smartest, the prettiest, the fastest, you know, all those superlatives. But I thought, you know what? I have a chance of being the thinnest. 7 She has long overcome anorexia but now her own children are actually experiencing this. She claims the most important thing when your child says he or she is fat is to not ignore it. Laughing it off and disagreeing is not the answer. Walker concludes instead one should complement and empower his/her child to take steps to lead a healthy life. What is better than trying to overcome something as difficult as an eating disorder? How about trying to prevent it in the first place? Six simple ways to help kids and teens develop a healthy relationship with food as described in this article include teaching embodied eating, dont make food bad, modeling healthy eating, reframing cultural message, not using the d word (diet), and cooking with your kids. 10 To illustrate one of the points, parents are recommended to change the language they use around food. For instance, instead of asking are you full? perhaps are you satisfied? would be better. It is also advised that parents not talk about their own struggles in front of their kids. When you talk about how awful you look in those jeans, you're telling kids to judge a body's worth by how it looks.
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Effects of Eating Disorders Not only will a person who has an eating disorder lose that desired weight and fit into the clothes that he or she has always dreamed of, drastic changes to his or her health can occur. It not only effects how you look physically or feel emotionally, but can also have long term consequences. There is a connection between eating binges and other problems that could come about because of it. For example, researchers have found a connection between eating binges and marijuana use. Not to mention, depression is also on the rise. 9 In addition, there seems to be a trend among who you choose to eat with and how much you end up eating. Apparently eating meals with males present may cause individuals to eat less. Both men and women seem to select larger portions of food around women. And when accompanied by men, again both men and women appear to choose smaller portions. 11 It is not uncommon for women to be expected to eat less food when men are present because cultural norms have deemed it socially acceptable for women to peck at their food while in the company of men. Perhaps eating disorders could be responsible in part for what constitutes womens beliefs about appropriate eating amounts. 11 But what else could be connected to eating disorders? Do gyms have a responsibility when it comes to eating disorder, wonders researcher Rony Duncan. He describes a young woman at the gym who is choosing to call Amy and suspects that she has an eating disorder based on her appearance and actions in the gym. He questions whether or not gyms have sort of a responsibility when it comes to their members maybe having eating disorders yet still come to the gym to excessively exercise. He states that an assortment of other businesses actively influence the health of their customers but are not obligated to

Anjanette Ly 3/14/14 monitor their outcomes. For example, fast food chains cannot refuse to sell food to obese customers, gambling addicts are free to enter casinos, and smokers with COPD are still allowed to buy cigarettes.3 Duncan concludes that banning someone with an eating disorder from coming to the gym will certainly not stop them from exercising. In my own personal observations of the gym, I have come across people of many different shapes and sizes. Some people are very thing looking that I have seen come to the gym often. People are constantly checking their weight before and after each workout Ive noticed. I do not want to make any assumptions that some people could have eating disorders but there is a chance that maybe at least somebody does. 5 In a way, since eating disorders have become more common, they are sort of seem like a trend right? Not everybody is as opposed to them, certainly not those who are pro-anorexia. They call her Ana. She is a role model to some, a goddess to others the subject of drawings, prayers and even a creed. 1 And by Ana, they mean the eating disorder and mental illness, anorexia nervosa (which Ana is short for). There are actually groups of people who gather on websites that promote anorexia, posting images and offering reassuring words of thinspiration to each other and tips for rapidly losing weight. What is this world coming to? The popular fashion magazine company, Vogue has decided to take action on the issue of eating disorders. Vogue has declared that it no longer wants to work with too thin looking models. They have made the initiative to now only use models that look healthy for their work. They have proposed a pact with 6 important points, but the most important that they wanted to get across is not knowingly work with models under the age of 16 or who appear to have an eating disorder. We will work with models who, in our view, are healthy and help to promote a healthy body image. 4 It is good that they are taking a stand on the issue of eating disorders, but their definition of healthy may not be what everyone defines as healthy.