If
you have anorexia, you probably engage in some or all of the following characteristic
behaviors. Because anorexia is progressive, you can expect all of these
behaviors to become more pronounced or frequent the longer you have the
disorder and don’t seek treatment.
Restricting
food intake — severely
The
hallmark of anorexia is your refusal to eat, even for basic nutritional needs,
in spite of facing starvation and the risk of death. The official criteria consider
refusal to eat as anorexia when your weight falls below 85 percent of what is
normal for your age and height.
Your
food restricting is mostly in the form of calorie counting. Intake of just a few
hundred calories a day is not unusual. But you may also cut out entire food groups.
Fats, of course, are out. Carbs — that is, starches and sweets — are almost
always out. Anorexic restricting is not just dieting. It’s dieting run amok.
Becoming
ritualistic
As
anorexia develops, your eating habits get a little more precise. Everything related
to the food you eat (or don’t eat) comes under the strictest control, and you
practice certain rituals related to eating. For example:
·
Only
certain foods are eaten.Foods
are eaten only in certain combinations, in a certain order, or in certain bite
sizes.
·
You
eat on a schedule others find strange, and you usually eat in private.
·
You
focus excessively on calories. Food accompaniments like condiments and spices
get elevated to food group status because of their low caloric value.
And,
as quirky as it may seem, you are frequently the family chef. Your interest in
food has become obsessive and may lead you to pore over recipes and to shop for
and prepare gourmet meals for your family (excluding yourself, or course,
except as a test of your willpower to abstain).
Exercising
compulsively
In
anorexia, your basic drive in life is toward thinness and away from fat. Restricting
calories is one major means to this end. Burning them up is another. If you
have the restricting type of anorexia, you’re particularly likely to be
obsessively devoted to your exercise routines and any other extra motion or
exertion that will burn up more calories. You probably feel the same loss of
control if you miss your exercise session as you do if you eat more than you
meant to. And you probably exercise excessively, maybe for several hours a day,
even if you’re ill or injured, or your body is what others consider emaciated.
Feeling
hyperactive
As
anorexia progresses, you may show a kind of restlessness that seems to be
driven from inside. It goes beyond your weight loss strategy and isn’t something
you can voluntarily control. Researchers think this form of hyperactivity is
probably an outcome of starvation, either in the way starving affects body
chemistry or the way it lowers your core body temperature. The hyperactivity is
thought to be your body’s instinctive response in an attempt to raise its
temperature.
“Bingeing”
A
binge isn’t the amount you eat at the company picnic or even the tub of popcorn
you go through while watching a movie. A bona fide binge involves taking in as
much as 4 to 5 days’ worth of calories within a short period of time — and
feeling desperate about it afterward. The notion that having anorexia means
you’re not hungry is a myth. In reality, you’re likely to experience constant
hunger (not surprisingly) — you’re starving! What do you do with that hunger?
At times, you may do exactly what your body is screaming at you to do — eat!
Bingeing is a normal response to starvation.
Using
laxatives or enemas to atone
In
the purging form of anorexia, you take action to get rid of calories when you
believe you’ve eaten too much. Use of laxatives, enemas, or diuretics (water
pills) and self-induced vomiting are common practices. Purging practices put a
severe strain on your body, which is already stressed to its limits by
starvation. The outlook for the purging type of anorexia is actually a lot
hairier than that of restricting anorexia. Getting better is harder if you
purge.
