Most of us have a normal and healthy relationship with food. We eat to keep our bodies functioning properly, we eat for the sheer taste and enjoyment of it, and we eat together with friends and family as a way to bond and stay in touch with our social partners. It can be very hard for those of us who have normal healthy eating habits to understand the hell that those with eating disorders have to endure on a daily basis.

An eating disorder is an extremely harmful condition in which a person adopts harmful practices involving food as a way to deal with emotional pain. Once the eating disorder has truly taken control of their lives, the sufferer often has no control of their own to break free. They can be stuck in a downward spiral of negative activity that leads to ridicule, concern of family and friends, and a host of negative medical ailments that only gets worse with time. Unfortunately, many people don’t understand these disorders and instead of trying to empathize with their situation, they merely look down on them for having lack of discipline in their eating habits. If it were only as easy as snapping out of it, many who suffer eating disorders certainly would because going through the pain and torture of having an eating disorder can not only be one of the most serious things that ever affects one’s life, it can also lead to one’s death.

Let’s look at a scenario of someone who is suffering from bulimia. Bulimia is a condition in which a person will first binge eat all kinds of food often totaling thousands of calories, and then once they realize what they have done, they choose to force themselves to vomit to avoid gaining weight from all those calories. In addition, they may resort to such tactics as using laxatives to lose weight or even exercising for hours at a time to burn off any excess fat they did gain. These individuals feel a strong compulsion to this binge and purge relationship with food and often simply can’t break free. Believe me it can be incredibly difficult to suffer with because many bulimics maintain a fairly normal weight and others may not know about their condition. This leaves the sufferer to keep their condition in the dark and they may suffer alone for years before the secret ever comes out.

It is important for us as individuals and members of society to try to understand that people suffering from eating disorders have a sickness which they have little control over. Because of the stigmas associated with them, many folks won’t ever seek treatment for fear that their secret will become public and they would have to deal with the shame thrown on them by their peers. If we could begin to use compassion versus criticism, many more people may seek to speak about the troubles that they are suffering from and seek help from others to rid themselves of horrible conditions such as eating disorders.

Just about all of us at one time or another has been on a “diet.” Whether you need to lose a lot of weight or merely try to tone up a bit before the beach season, dieting is a common and accepted practice by almost everyone. The fact is, however, dieting often leads to the exact opposite effect which is you end up gaining weight rather than losing it. Some statistics show that people who are involved in moderate diet programs are up to five times as likely to gain more weight than they started with and those that are involved in extremely intense diet programs are nearly 20 times as likely to gain weight.

The reasons for this weight gain are fairly easy to understand when you look at some of the facts surrounding them. First of all, many diets promise quick weight loss but that doesn’t necessarily mean healthy weight loss. If your diet program sees you eating an extremely low amount of calories and losing significant weight in a short period of time, it is very common for people to over eat once the diet ends and thus gain back all the weight they lost and sometimes even more. In addition, those who are on diets that are restricting the calories have less energy and therefore oftentimes engage in less exercise as a result. If they simply lose weight by restricting calories and not exercising then this inactivity will lead to weight gain once the diet is over and they began eating normally again. Because of these negative effects of dieting, many folks choose extreme measures surrounding their goal of weight loss which can lead to several types of harmful eating disorders.

One reason people fall prey to eating disorders stemming from failed diets is that they become simply frustrated with the up-and-down process of weight gain and weight loss associated with these diet plans. They may choose instead to eat whatever they want and simply throw the food up so as not to gain weight from the calories. This is known as bulimia and is an extremely harmful eating disorder that often stems from failed dieting. People assume that diets just don’t work so they’re going to go about it their own way which is often counterproductive to their real goals.

Another eating disorder that can stem from a diet is known as anorexia. This can occur if someone is on a diet that is extremely calorie restricted and loses weight but then only gains it back once they start eating properly again. This can lead them to stop eating altogether as it was that part of the diet that seemed to work well for them. Unfortunately, they may never start eating again and lose extreme amounts of weight and they can eventually die from starvation.

Diets in and of themselves are not necessarily harmful if the proper amounts of nutrition and exercise come into play. It is only when diets are not followed properly or consistently that yo-yo dieting can occur and may lead to harmful eating disorders.