Images of woefully thin celebrities are shoved in our faces so often that they have become the default for beauty. Once, women were considered beautiful for being large and curvy because it was a sign of wealth. They had families that could afford to buy them enough food to eat. Skinny women were considered unhealthy because they most likely had to work hard in the fields all day and didn’t have enough food.

Now, it is reversed. Women who are skinny represent health and wealth and beauty. After all, only celebrities have the wealth to afford chefs and personal trainers. The rest of us just have to work with what we have. And that can leave us feeling very inadequate.

This is why it is so easy to turn to unhealthy eating to try and create a perfectly “beautiful” skinny body. Even though our culture is working to say that too skinny is ugly and unhealthy, we still feel pressured. In fact, researchers have shown that women who aren’t overly skinny are treated very differently than women who are very skinny. Women who are average to overweight are avoided more often, not smiled at as often, and not treated as nicely by perfect strangers. And this feels horrible. So we do what we can to change the situation.

This can lead to an eating disorder, especially since a “desirable” weight can feel so impossible because it is so unhealthy. Eating disorders come in two types: anorexia and bulimia. Anorexia is the denial of food overall. Bulimia is when you eat or even binge (overeating in a short amount of time) and then purge (get rid of the food before it is digested either through vomiting or laxatives). Both can cause great medical problems or even death.

And both are very easy to acquire because of the social pressures already mentioned. After all, if we are being treated so badly by others because of our weight, why should we respect ourselves enough to eat healthy? Perhaps, we might reason, we even deserve to be “punished” and not eat or binge and purge. It can feel like it is making a perverse type of sense and can reinforce the eating disorder and make it even more dangerous to our health.
Eating disorders are also very easy to hide. Unless one person is with you when you eat all the time, no one will notice if you tend not to eat (anorexia) and purging happens in privacy. Some people with eating disorders may even feel a sense of pride at being able to hide their disorders because often the only thing people will notice is the weight that is being lost and give their praise for it. This also reinforces the eating disorder.

But, the truth is, eating disorders are just another word for “suicide on the installment plan”. Anorexia leads quickly to dehydration, malnourishment, organ failure and, eventually death. Individuals with advanced anorexia are often found hiding food in the hospital while they are dying because they still don’t want to eat. And bulimia often leads to not only malnourishment but problems with swallowing and digestion because purging causes the corrosive acid in the stomach to burn up the esophagus or intestines. In other words, eating disorders aren’t natural.

But some individuals think that they can just start eating disorder behaviors “for a while” or “just to lose the weight” and then start eating normally again. This doesn’t work for two reasons. First, even if the person can stop eating this way, once they resume eating normally again the weight will come back. And second, these behaviors often become very compulsive. In other words, you desire very strongly to do them over and over again and get stuck in a pattern you can’t change.

Eating disorders aren’t something to be played with. If this sounds like you or a friend of yours, seek help. Talk to a parent, teacher, counselor, or doctor. It’s okay to ask for help because sometimes it takes more than just you or your friend to overcome the powerful pull of an eating disorder.