What is Anorexia nervosa?
Anorexia nervosa, also known as anorexia, is a serious eating disorder where you are worried about your weight, you want to lose weight and you eat less and less food.
You think about calorie intake and maybe excessive exercising too. You avoid eating to try and take control in some way. Maybe you have lots of things going on in your life that you can’t control and what you eat is one thing that you feel you are in control of. You may judge yourself on what you eat and feel you have ‘let yourself down’ if you have eaten what is in your eyes too much. Other people may tell you that you are thin but you think you are fat.
Symptoms of anorexia include losing a lot of weight quickly, eating less and less food, thinking about the calorie content of food, feeling panicky about eating food with other people or having a big meal. You may feel moody or irritable because of the lack of food and girls’ periods may stop, while boys stop having erections. You may become obsessed with everyone else’s body size and compare yourself to them. You may feel cold a lot of the time and grow a downy hair on your body.
If you are not eating enough you may:-
- Sleep badly
- Have difficulties concentrating
- Feel depressed
- Lose interest in things.
- Feel weak
- Become constipated
- Be unable to get pregnant
- Get brittle bones
Eating problems such as anorexia are not just down to food, they are about feelings too. You may get anorexia because you want to be in control of something in your life at a stressful time or it might be because you are dieting and cannot stop or because you hate your body. It may be because you want to be popular or because you are linking being slim with success and wanting to look like models or celebrities. You may be depressed or have low self-esteem or anorexia may be in response to something that has happened such as abuse. Young people with anorexia feel that things will be better if they are thinner.
Anorexia usually starts during the teenage years although there are reports of children as young as eight having eating disorders. One fifteen-year-old girl in every 150 has anorexia and one fifteen-year-old boy in every 1000 has it. Girls and women are 10 times more likely than boys and men to suffer from anorexia or bulimia although eating disorders are becoming more common in men.
Anorexia is a serious eating disorder and if it is left untreated you can become malnourished and have long-term physical problems such as osteoporosis, a weakening of the bones. However, it is possible for you to recover with help and treatment. If you think you have anorexia, speak to someone you trust straight away or talk to your GP.See our section on getting help.