Eating Disorder Programs: Mirror Mirror on the Wall – So I Am Old, but Am I Fat Too?

Eating disorders aren’t just for the young and the beautiful anymore! Age isn’t the factor driving it either. The need to be thin doesn’t go away when you get married nor when you have children. Self image is always in the fore front of our minds no matter what age. Most women with eating disorders in mid life have had some type of eating disorder since they were young. Often it’s gone unnoticed or diagnosed but as they get older keeping up the regiment gets harder. Experts say that the in the last 10 years more women are being treated for eating disorders such as anorexia, and bulimia which is often marked by extreme weight loss or binge eating. They are starving themselves, abusing laxatives, exercising to dangerous extremes and engaging in all of the self-destructive activities that have, for so long, been considered teenage behaviors.

The chief executive of the National Eating Disorders Association, Lynn Greffe states that extreme dieting fads like weeklong fasts are supported by our thin-obsessed culture. She adds that women who fall into the diet trap of over exercising and avoiding family meals are setting poor examples for their children. Children do not know what is going on they just know that mom is sick or doesn’t eat with the family. Diet centers that practice extreme calorie counting or do not promote making healthy changes to your eating habits can increase an already struggling person’s inability to handle their emotional issues that are feed from eating disorders.

According to Dr. David Herzog at Massachusetts General Hospital with the Harris Center for Education and Advocacy in Eating Disorders states that ” the problem is that friends an even doctors get used to someone who is overly skinny and recognize their habits and physique as dangerously unhealthy”.

Older women are more likely to go into treatment than younger women because they see their teenage daughters and realize they will go down the same path. Therapy is often more difficult for them though because they have years of baggage to unravel and it’s often weaved in deeply.

The Eating Disorders Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have helped women because they are studying whether family therapy works as well for adults as it does for teenagers with the disorder. But by bringing the family into the therapy the women realizes how the disorder has affected her family and the resentment that she often has for everyone trying to make her better. Both the patient and the family will benefit from the program and the success of beating the disorder becomes higher.

“I think the degree of despair we are seeing among adult women about their bodies is unrivaled,” stated Margo Maine, co-author of “The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure to Be Perfect” (Wiley, 2005). “Eating disorders creep up during periods of developmental transitions, so the peak had been 13 to 15 and 17 to 19 – moving into adolescence and moving into college. Now, we are seeing them again during or after pregnancy and as women hit other life phases, such as empty nesting.”

Research has not proven what triggers eating disorders. New studies point to altered brain signals but it is tricky to interpret whether biochemistry is the cause or is it a result of poor eating. The leading theory is the same as it is for so many syndromes with no known cause: some people are born with genes that make them highly vulnerable to the stimulus in their lives.

 

 

Therapy for Bulimia – Eating Disorder Programs – BulimiaTreatmentGuide.com – Therapy for Bulimia This really is not just a magic quick deal with pill either (sorry, these do not exist). It’s a methodology. It is a collection of simple measures you have out, that will guidebook one to lifelong recovery from bulimia. So in summary, this method is a series of procedures, things to do and techniques that enable you to stop bingeing, relearn normal taking in and get over bulimia for everyday living. For more information about bulimia treatment, please visit now http

 

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