FitSugar

Toddlers With Eating Disorders: A Troubling New Trend

Natasha Dantzig — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 11:56:00 PST

Do I look fat? Obsessing over body image and calories to the point of disordered eating is an affliction most commonly associated with young women and the glare of Hollywood, not with the sweet young things running around the playground. Sadly though, there's a disturbing trend that's seeing younger and younger children being treated for serious eating disorders. Reporting on the results of a new study on eating disorders - which shockingly included two 6-year-olds, four 7-year-olds, and even a tot as young as 3 in treatment - doctors say that statistics like this are likely just the "tip of the iceberg" when it comes to the number of preteens actually suffering from debilitating conditions like anorexia and bulimia. Though it's nearly impossible to pinpoint one cause, doctors did say that "the pressure put on young people to conform to a certain body image could be blamed on a large number of eating disorders."

We've been hearing a lot about the childhood obesity epidemic lately, but not so much about the other end of the spectrum. Are you concerned about tots developing disordered eating?

Proposed Warning Labels on Photoshopped Celeb Photos to Prevent Eating Disorders

Jenny Sugar — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:14:11 PST

Alcohol can lead to liver problems and cigarettes can cause lung cancer, so it's obvious why these products have warning labels. What about Photoshopped images of celebrities and models? Should these come with warning labels, too? Research shows that images portraying "perfect bodies" can have negative effects on body image, leading to anxiety and eating disorders, especially in young women.

Last June, the American Medical Association urged advertisers to work with child and teen health experts to set limits on Photoshopping. In response, two Dartmouth computer science researchers are proposing a new software tool to measure just how much an image of a face or body has been altered, using a scale of one to five to indicate the extent of the changes. Warning labels on images would allow the viewer to know just how extensively a photo has been manipulated.

Child psychologists aren't convinced these labels are the answer, feeling the most effective solution to preventing poor body image or eating disorders lies in the hands of parents. Modeling healthy eating habits and encouraging regular exercise is key, as well as not focusing attention on appearance. What do you think about these warning labels?

DrSugar Discusses Mommyrexia

DrSugar — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:38:53 PDT

DrSugar is in the house! This week she's discussing mommyrexia and the implications of eating disorders during and after pregnancy.

I recently read an article from the New York Post on "mommyrexia," a phenomenon garnering a lot of public attention recently. Mommyrexia describes pregnant women obsessed with staying skinny during pregnancy and then doing whatever they can to get back, as quickly as possible, to their prepregnancy weight/size after delivery. According to the article, these women count calories, exercise excessively while pregnant, and sometimes even forgo breastfeeding after delivery to free their schedules for tons of personal training and exercise. Society today is so obsessed with celebrities and body image, and in my opinion, is placing unwarranted pressure on women to maintain their slim physique during pregnancy, like Victoria Beckham and Rachel Zoe, and to be bikini-ready three weeks after delivery like Bethenny Frankel. As if there isn’t already enough pressure on the general population to be ridiculously skinny, this pressure now extends to the sacred time of pregnancy?

I feel compelled to write about eating disorders and their potential implications in pregnant women. However, I must add that there is a large spectrum of what can be considered normal regarding weight gain and activity during pregnancy. Every woman is different and will gain differing amounts of weight. Both activity and weight gain in pregnant women depend on multiple factors and should be determined on a case-by-case basis between a woman and her OB-GYN. By no means am I here to judge anyone on how they behave during their pregnancy. The purpose of this week's DrSugar column is to provide information on how eating disorders can affect pregnancy. To learn more, keep reading.

Adult Picky Eating Thought to Be Its Own Disorder

Susannah Chen — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 10:30:20 PST

Do you hate fruit, vegetables, or food that isn't white? If so, there may finally be a scientific explanation for your picky eating habits. It's called selective eating disorder.

Researchers at the Duke Center for Eating Disorders say that preliminary results of a new survey suggest adults with an extremely limited food repertoire suffer from a previously unrecognized illness that they're calling selective eating disorder.

Rather than having a handful of food items they avoid, these diners eschew everything but several choice items. For reasons potentially both biological and behavioral, they reject foods based on qualities other than taste, like sight and smell.

Those of you acquainted with extremely picky eaters: do you consider it an illness - or simply fussy behavior?

Be Prepared For an "Anorexia Is Not a Contraceptive" PSA

Colleen Barrett — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:45:26 PST

How is it that women who identify as anorexic are nearly three times as likely to have an unplanned pregnancy than other women? Simple. Just because a woman stops menstruating doesn't mean she stops ovulating.

The results shocked the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study, who conducted the study. Out of 62,060 women who participated, 62 identified as anorexic and half of them got pregnant by accident compared to only 19 percent of other women. Of course, where there are pregnancies, there are abortions, so anorexic women have more of them.

Amennhorea, period cessation, can be caused by a number of changes in the organs, glands, and hormones. Some anorexics stop ovulating, but clearly most don't. And lots of women with anorexia still have regular periods, so it's all very ambiguous.

Whatever it is, one thing is clear: women don't realize pregnancy can occur when periods cease, and that's a public health message that needs to be sent.

Do Models in Ads Affect Your Body Image?

FitSugar — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 03:00:28 PDT

Magazines and TV ads have always emphasized that what's most important for a woman is how she looks, and that there's an "ideal" appearance we should all aspire to - tall, skinny, toned, big-breasted, with perfect skin, perfect hair, perfect everything. After constantly seeing the pencil-thin bodies that are expected from models, it can make real women feel that it's expected for them to be thin and flawless as well. What's ironic is that most of the images we see are unattainable, since airbrushing and photoshopping have become the norm. Even Cindy Crawford has been quoted saying, "I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford."

To document how genders are represented in advertising, Jean Kilbourne created a compelling series called Killing Us Softly. Check out the trailer for her latest documentary below.

After watching that clip, tell me, when you see women in ads, does it affect your self-confidence or body image?

Diet du Jour: L’Air Fooding

TresSugar — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:45:06 PST

Sound delicious? Let's translate: it means "air diet" or as it's less commonly called "anorexia." France's latest fad diet is all the chore of eating (buying, preparing, plating), and none of the pleasure (tasting, chewing, digesting).

A Dolce and Gabbana ad campaign that features Madonna holding food to her mouth, but never actually ingesting, is being blamed/credited for the fad diet. Its job, though, is to create sexy pictures that build a brand and sell clothes. Madonna chewing and swallowing probably would hardly have the same je ne sais quoi. What is absurd is that French magazine Grazia is using this campaign to say L’Air Fooding is the new "it" diet. It even provides recipes for those moments when your lips win out over hips: boil water and add salt. Bon appétit!

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week: Better Body Image

TresSugar — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:00:25 PST

Since it's National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, NEDA ambassador and best-selling author Jenni Schaefer is sharing her insights with us. Yesterday Jenni told us that although she struggled with serious eating disorders for years, she thinks recovery gave her a better body image than she could have ever hoped for. She said: "I spent years talking to a therapist about the size of my thighs. Normal women out there they don't have that luxury, they don't get those tools." So I asked her to share ways we can all improve our body image.

Focus on what your body does, not what it looks like. Jenni says: "Rather than always concentrating on what my body looks like, I shifted my focus to what my body does. I started focusing on how lucky I am to have legs that can hike up a mountain, rather than thinking 'wow my legs are so big.' Instead, we should appreciate what our bodies do. Especially with women, our bodies are so amazing. We can bear children. If we started shifting our focus on what our body does and not what it looks like - that was big for me."
Replace negative body image with life experiences. Jenni explains: "Realize that your body is just a vehicle for life. I've heard people say it's like an earth suit. It's what you get to wear to walk around and experience the world. Instead of staying in my apartment and hating my body and wrapping myself up in sweats and big blankets and hiding from the world, I started taking off those things, putting on a swimsuit, and going swimming with my friends.
"I was replacing the negative shame I had for wearing a swimsuit, with the life experience of getting a swimsuit, putting it on, and jumping in the pool. At first, women, and men, need to know, they're going to feel uncomfortable. If they hate their body and they put on a swim suit and go in the water, they'll probably still hate their body. But if you do it slowly over time that experience will become fun and joyful that you'll stop hating your body so much. Bad body image is like a prison, it keeps people trapped in their minds and in their houses, literally."

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week: The Thin Ideal

TresSugar — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:00:55 PST

Since it's National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, NEDA ambassador and best-selling author Jenni Schaefer is sharing her insights with us. After struggling with anorexia and bulimia, Jenni finally divorced her eating disorder. Here are Jenni's thoughts on how society plays a role in eating disorders.

How much does society contribute to an eating disorder and how much is it an individual's issue? Leading researchers on eating disorders often say: genetics loads the gun, and environment pulls the trigger. Certain people are born with certain personality traits that can lead to an eating disorder. Some of those traits are compulsivity, high anxiety, perfectionism.

I was born with all of those traits. And then environment pulling the trigger, for me that was mostly being in our society with the media and with the focus on the thin ideal and the message that if you're thin you'll be happy and you'll be smart and successful. So when I applied all those traits - compulsivity, high anxiety, perfectionism - to trying to meet the thin ideal, for me it was the perfect storm for an eating disorder.

Still, Jenni says society's thinness obsession can have a negative impact on anyone: But what I see now is that regardless of whether someone has a clinical eating disorder, so many people in this world live in this disordered-eating zone. They're worried about food all the time, they still eat but it's a constant worry, a constant weight. They're a healthy weight, but they still worry. And I think it's really sad that the norm is to not like your body. I think society really has an eating disorder - I call it "societal Ed."

How did you get past the thin ideal? The keys for me with body image was giving myself time and patience to accept and then love my body. Also it's a continuum as well - I started off hating my body, moved to not liking it, then I moved to accepting it, then I moved to liking it, then I moved to loving it. That continuum of my body image improving took years and years. What I've learned, it's really wild, people I know who have recovered from eating disorders have so many more tools to deal with "societal Ed," aka the thin ideal. I spent years talking to a therapist about the size of my thighs. Normal women out there - they don't have that luxury, they don't get those tools. I feel that my eating disorder forced me to be healthier than I ever would have been.

Come back tomorrow to learn more about the tools anyone can use to improve body image.

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week: Divorcing Ed

TresSugar — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:00:37 PST

At age four, author Jenni Schaefer felt fat in dance class. At the age of 22, when her life had become unmanageable thanks to anorexia and bulimia, Jenni committed to getting help and began the long path toward successfully "divorcing" her eating disorder. Jenni has written two books - Life Without Ed and Goodbye Ed, Hello Me - and now serves as an ambassador for the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA). This is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, so I talked to Jenni about her journey toward life without an eating disorder and will share her insight with you this week.

How did you become a NEDA ambassador? I got help at 22. I was struggling with anorexia and bulimia and it took many years to get better, but once I finally did I wanted to help get the word out. I recovered using a unique technique - my first book is called Life Without Ed, and "Ed" is an acronym for eating disorder. I was taught to treat my eating disorder like a relationship, rather than an illness. So in therapy I actually talked to Ed, and I learned to find my own voice and eventually divorce Ed, which is a metaphor I used a lot in recovery. . . It's a little confusing now, that "ED" actually stands for something else!

How did you know you needed help? I actually thought for so long that I was really healthy, and I think that's what most women and men that first get into eating disorders initially think - and maybe they are initially healthy, but so many times dieting can spiral fast into a clinical eating disorder. I think I finally realized I had a problem in college when my life was spinning out of control. I felt hopeless; when I graduated I couldn't even hold a job waiting tables. Here I was, I was supposed to go to medical school, I had straight As in college and I couldn't hold a job waiting tables because my eating disorder was so bad. And that's when I finally decided to get help, when I was at rock bottom. I didn't want to live another day if I had to live with my eating disorder, but I actually wanted to live.

Jenni acknowledges that the line between an eating disorder and dieting isn't always so clear: It'd be safe to say for someone struggling with an eating disorder that in the beginning, they're not going to know. They're going to think they're being healthy. They're going to be receiving compliments for their eating behaviors. A key question to ask yourself: is my life unmanageable because of food and weight? Is my life miserable because of food and weight? And if your life is unmanageable and you're unhappy because of food and weight then you need to get help regardless of what you're doing with food, regardless of what you weigh.

Jenni, who lost a friend to anorexia last year, says that if you suspect a friend is struggling you have to do something: So many people are afraid to approach someone about a mental illness regardless of what it might be, but this is an illness that kills.

So what should an outsider do? To find out,

read more. It's different for different people, but one of the worse things you can say is, "You're so thin," or "I've noticed you've lost a lot of weight," because they'll take that as a compliment. So it's best to be very specific and point out behaviors that you've seen, but don't gear them toward weight. You might say: "I've noticed in the past few weeks you seem to be isolating more, you seem to be moody." Because a sign of an eating disorder is isolation and moodiness, depression. Another thing people might point out is, "I notice that when we go out to eat you always get up and go to the bathroom immediately after eating and I'm concerned about that" or "Lately you've been skipping lunch, and I'm concerned about that." It's OK to mention specific behaviors but steer away from weight. And also use "I" statements rather than "you." "I'm concerned," "I'm here for you." "I want to help you." Instead of focusing on "You've lost weight," or "You're killing yourself" that just makes people feel ashamed and with eating disorders they already feel ashamed. And they don't need to feel any more guilt because this is an illness, not a choice. They don't choose to have it, but they do choose to get better, and a friend can be a key in making that choice. Jenni says one of the best things about NEDA is the anonymous helpline: People can call, and no one will ask their name and they can actually get resources and ask questions, and it's a free anonymous helpline. You can call the hotline at: 1-800-931-2237.