Common Myths About Eating Disorders

Excerpted from When Your Child Has an Eating Disorder by Abigail Natenshon

Myth 1: An eating disorder is mainly about eating too much or too little. Eating disorders have less to do with food and more to do with how an individual thinks, feels, and copes with life stresses.

Myth 2: Eating disorders are contagious. People become ill through exposure to others' disordered behavior. Exposure may encourage experimentation, but an eating disorder will not take hold unless there is a chemical predisposition and a ripe emotional environment.

Myth 3: Exposure to information through the media or reading can cause disease. Again, only individuals who are emotionally predisposed and biochemically susceptible to disease will succumb. Media exposure may trigger disordered behaviors in some children who are not susceptible to the disease itself. Disordered behaviors not connected to disease are easily extinguished.

Myth 4: A person never fully recovers from an eating disorder. Depending on the strength and motivation of the patient and family, recovery from eating disorders tends to be complete and everlasting in a substantial percentage of patients. Another large percentage recovers adequately but may require additional therapy on occasion to prevent relapse. A very small percentage of eating disordered patients do not achieve any degree of recovery or eventually succumb from complications of the illness.

Myth 5: Once a anorexic achieves a normal weight, she is recovered. Changes in weight and eating behavior alone or changes in emotional function alone do not constitute recovery. Both types of change must occur simultaneously .

Myth 6: Anorexics are always noticeably thin. Particularly at the beginning of the disease and in the lattermost stages of recovery, anorexics may exhibit no visible effects from disease; in fact, disease characteristics sometimes resemble the patient's quest for good health and a demonstration of self-control.

Myth 7: Anorexics eat little or nothing at all, having lost their appetites. Anorexics do eat. What distinguish them from others are the motivations and purposes behind their eating rituals and responses to food. If they eat little, it is not because they don't long for food but because they fear becoming fat and believe that giving in to their hunger is equivalent to losing self-control.

Myth 8: You can't be a highly functional person if you have an eating disorder. Most individuals with eating disorders remain highly functional though the quality of certain role functions may be compromised.

Myth 9: Eating disorders affect only adolescent girls. Eating disorders are not limited by gender, age, nationality, social class, or culture.

Myth 10: Persons with bulimia eat a lot and are not primarily concerned with being thin. Bulimia is motivated by the urge to be thin and generally begins through dieting efforts. The bulimic purge is also motivated by the need to undo or expel shameful or uncomfortable feelings by flushing them away.

Myth 11: A binge always involves eating large quantities of high-caloric food in a short period of times. This is not necessarily the case. One recovering bulimic found herself in a Seven_Eleven store mindlessly purchasing a low-fat muffin on the heels of a serious argument with her boyfriend. Next thing she knew, she was hiding behind the building, stuffing the unchewed muffin down her throat. She consumed only one muffin and its caloric content was minimal, but this episode qualifies as a binge due to its motivation, the aftereffects on her psyche, and her amnesic, trance-like state. Some bulimics consider five grapes a sizable enough binge to warrant purging. Bingeing should not be confused with purposeful eating.

Myth 11: A binge always involves eating large quantities of high-caloric food in a short period of times. This is not necessarily the case. One recovering bulimic found herself in a Seven_Eleven store mindlessly purchasing a low-fat muffin on the heels of a serious argument with her boyfriend. Next thing she knew, she was hiding behind the building, stuffing the unchewed muffin down her throat. She consumed only one muffin and its caloric content was minimal, but this episode qualifies as a binge due to its motivation, the aftereffects on her psyche, and her amnesic, trance-like state. Some bulimics consider five grapes a sizable enough binge to warrant purging. Bingeing should not be confused with purposeful eating.

Myth 12: Laxative and diuretic use results in weight loss. Laxatives and diuretics expel fluids from the body. This is interpreted by the scale as weight loss, but is is not.

Myth 13: A person who eats meal does not have an easting disorder. Some anorexics may eat three meals a day plus snacks but be so restrictive and exclusive in their food choices that they still manage to deprive their bodies of necessary nutrients.

Myth 14: Physicians can be counted on to discover and diagnose an eating disorder. The symptoms of eating disorders do not readily show themselves in the typical physical examination. They are not even evident through laboratory testing on blood and urine until the latter-most stages of disease.

Myth 15: Parents are the cause of their child's eating disorder. Parents are to the cause of their child's disorder. They may contribute in some ways to the onset of disease. But short of abusing their child, the cannot be considered responsible for causing a disease that is the result of an integration of neuro-chemical and socio-cultural factors.

Myth 16: If a person can stop bingeing, her purging will cease. Purging is not necessarily the result of overeating or bingeing It is an ingrained habit that takes on an independent life of its own.

Myth 17: Undereating and overeating are functions too diverse to be part of the same eating disorder syndrome. Undereating and overeating are flip sides of the same coin; they are both manifestations of feeling out of control.

Myth 18: The severity of symptoms is the best indicator of how hard to will be to recover from an eating disorder. It is not the severity or the frequency of symptoms that determines the prognosis of a child with an eating disorder but the health and resiliency of her underlying personality along with early disease detection and family support.

About the Author

For 25 years Abbie Natenshon has specialized in eating disorder treatment with individuals, families, and groups. As cofounder of Eating Disorder Specialists of Illinois, A Clinic Without Walls, she provides consultation for parents, schools, social service organizations, and mental health professionals.

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