You have scored 56 which indicates that you have a severe Eating Disorder.An eating disorder is not a sign that you have had a traumatic childhood, or that you have serious psychological problems. However, there is probably something missing in your life, perhaps you are simply not coping with the day-to-day challenges that life and relationships are putting in your path. And your eating behaviour and abuse of food is a cry for help - telling you that you are in emotional distress.
Your eating problems are a mirror, a reflection of your struggles for control in other aspects of your life. Underneath, you are not a happy person but the trouble is that your struggles with food are making you feel even worse about yourself. You may feel trapped in a cycle of destructive-eating behaviours and low self-esteem from which is difficult to escape on your own.
An eating disorder not only makes you feel very unhappy, it also pays havoc with your health. If you are anorexic, you will be vulnerable to illness and you may damage your vital organs, including the structure of your heart and disintegration of your bones. This is also true of bulimia, which has the added risk of damage to the entire digestive system. Compulsive eating is dangerous, too, bringing the risk of diabetes and all the illness associated with being overweight.
Please don’t waste time trying to fix your eating disorder on your own. You need help from a professional who can restore your relationship with food and with yourself. This will usually be a counsellor or a psychologist with specialist training in eating disorder skills. They would identify all the issues in your current lifestyle - attitudes and emotions that are driving the eating problem and creating abnormal and uncontrollable hungers.
The first port of call is your GP who may know of a suitable counsellor or eating disorder service in your area. Other useful contact numbers include the Eating Disorder Association in Norwich (01603 621414) and the National Centre For Eating Disorders on 01372 469493
Types of eating disorders
Compulsive eating
You feel you eat enough, but you can't stop eating. However much you eat, you keep on having more. At times, it feels as if you have been taken over by someone else, and you can feel physically bad and very guilty when you stop but you do it again anyway.
You might make promises to stop, but, whatever triggers you, starts it off all over again and you feel out of control. You try to diet and you can't even get started, or you may lose weight, only to put it all on again and even more. You have probably tried lots of diets but you may be fatter than ever.
It seems like an unending cycle of eating, remorse, dieting and overeating again. You feel very ashamed of your eating habits and so you may eat a lot in secret. You can't make sense of what you do. You long to eat normally like everybody else, just take food or leave it. But it's never enough.
Bulimia
You have tried to lose weight earlier in your life but you started overeating and you thought that getting rid of it would be a good idea to stop you from gaining weight. But it has gone out of control and now these secret rituals of bingeing and purging rule your life.
You can eat just one bite too many and that can set things off. You eat large amounts of food, forbidden food: sometimes you don't even taste it, then you get rid of it. It makes you feel very bad, ashamed and ill but you simply cannot stop.
You long to be able to eat normally, or at least stop doing these terrible things to yourself, but you are terrified of gaining weight. And so it goes on and on and, although you long for help, you don't dare let anyone find out.
More on bulimia nervosa.
Anorexia
You have lost a lot of weight. People are worried about you but you wish they would leave you alone. You don't need any food, you are in fact terrified of gaining weight but you can't admit that to yourself least alone to others, so you pretend that everything is fine. You cant remember when dieting turned into a full scale obsession with being thinner and thinner but you cant worry about that now- all you care about is how to eat as little as possible and get as much exercise as possible to lose even more weight as quickly as you can.
You are cold and you have lost your periods (if you are a girl) and you're depressed but that is because you are feeling fat and ugly, so whatever you eat is still too much. You know you are in trouble but you don't want to think about that now. Lets just lose another pound. Then you might hate yourself a little less. But that doesn't work, either. ↓
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