Eating disorders are real addictions. It is more than merely worrying about your weight and your figure. People with an eating disorder have a very negative self image, they often have the fear to fail and are bad at dealing with frustrations.

Eating disorders often develop through a combination of psychological, social and biological factors. It is very difficult to recover from an eating disorder alone. Do not wait, seek help.

With treatment 40 to 60 % of people recover from an eating disorder. In almost one third of people the eating disorder remains, however the problems become smaller and life can become manageable.

Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder in which someone has a distorted body image, a great fear to become overweight and doesn’t try to have a normal body weight. Everything pertaining to food, weight and body size becomes an obsession for anorexics. They count calories all the time and agonise over what to eat. Food is only allowed when it contains little calories, especially sugars and fatty foods are taboo. They are addicted to this behaviour, even when they are extremely thin.

Orthorexia nervosa is an eating disorder closely related to anorexia nervosa. The main characteristic of this disease is that the person who suffers from this illness has an unhealthy pre occupation or even obsession with eating healthy food. As a result of this, the person avoids eating some foods, especially food that contains fat or preservatives. Often the person will become a vegetarian or vegan, only eating biological food, raw vegetables or fruit.

Bulimia nervosa is a mental state in which the person has returning binges, followed by one or more acts to compensate and lessen weight gain, such as:
purging
vomiting
extreme exercise

Bulimia is about eating, not about hunger. The urge to eat resembles an addiction. Bulimia is often named eating addiction. During a binge, copious amounts of food are consumed, and the addict feels they have lost control over their eating. They cannot stop eating. During a binge, the addict enters a different state of consciousness, which can be compared to other addictions. Certain chemicals in the brain cause this feeling. This also pertains to purging, bulimics can feel a real ‘high’ .

As with bulimia nervosa the persons suffering from this disorder have times where they eat large amounts of food, but contrary to bulimia nervosa, the need to compensate does not exist. As a consequence the person can become obese. The shame over this obesity leads to more eating binges. The person will also tend to choose unhealthy foods.