Anorexia Nervosa Treatment
Children as well as adults can suffer from anorexia nervosa. Common symptoms could include vomiting, negative body image, overeating, binge eating, or other common eating disorder symptoms. You should consult a professional to asses the best treatment plan to combat this disorder.
Avalon Hills provides anorexia nervosa treatment options to assist you or someone you know in overcoming this obstacle in life. Through receiving an individualized treatment plan you can be confident that you are taking the best possible steps to treating this eating disorder.
We are located in the great outdoors in Utah. We feel like you should be able to enjoy life while receiving treatment through participating in uplifting activities such as horse back riding, boating, skiing, and more. We are not a lock-down facility and encourage you to have fun while at the same time improving your condition with those who want to help you.
If you are interested in finding more treatment options for anorexia nervosa please contact us from the link below.
Eating Disorder or Diet?
In today's world, beauty and happiness is often symbolized by thinness and the ability to look like the supermodels that we see in magazines or on television. If you ask a group of teenagers or women whether they are happy with their weight, you will probably get a large percentage who say that they would like to lose at least some weight. Dieting is a huge industry with diet pills and products, books, personal trainers, etc. However, there can often be a thin line between dieting and an eating disorder, so it is important to know what the limits to dieting are before it becomes a risk to your health or the health of someone that you care about.
What is Dieting?
- Dieting is losing weight in a natural healthy way, such as through a combination of watching what you eat/making good choices and getting exercise on a regular basis.
- Dieting is about being healthy – making the choose to lose weight, changing your eating habits and exercising in order to be a stronger, healthier person, and not to gain control or feel powerful over your body and your life.
- Dieting is about taking control of your eating choices, not trying to control or change your entire life and making all your happiness dependent on whether you have lost weight.
- Dieting is not seeking to change your stress level, emotions or pain by controlling what you eat and the amount of weight you lose.
On the other hand, eating disorders, such as Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia have an impact on all the aspects of a person's life and become their reason for living. Food becomes all-important and a way to gain control, especially when they may feel powerless about other areas of their life. Those with eating disorders generally have low self-esteem and are trying to "fix" their entire lives through the loss of weight or prevention of new weight gain, not just losing some weight in a natural, healthy way.
Anorexia Nervosa
Those with Anorexia Nervosa have the following symptoms according to the DSM-IV:
- Refusal to maintain body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height (they are less than 85% of what would be expected)
- Intense fear about gaining weight or becoming fat, even though they are underweight already
- Disturbance in the way in which they their body weight or shape is experienced
- Loss of menstruation in females
Anorexia is generally about restricting and counting every calorie that enters the body. The person may give the appearance to others that they are eating a meal, but the amount of food that enters the person's mouth is generally almost nothing. The person may push food around on their plate, hid it in a napkin to be thrown out later, etc. The person is often "stick" thin, but when he/she looks in the mirror, the view seen is one of a person who is overweight and needs to lose more weight.
Bulimia
Those with Bulimia have the following symptoms according to the DSM-IV:
- Recurrent episodes of binge eating
- Recurrent inappropriate compensatory behavior in order to prevent weight gain, such as self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives, diuretics, fasting, or excessive exercise
- The binge eating and compensatory behavior occurs on average at least twice a week for 3 months
Bulimia can often be harder to spot than Anorexia because the person will often still maintain a normal weight or even be slightly overweight. In this situation, the person is generally eating more frequently or the amount eaten at a single session is many times an appropriate, healthy amount. Again, with this eating disorder, control becomes the important point. The person may binge and then feel guilt, shame or fear afterwards about the amount of food he/she has just eaten and then must exercise control by participating in a compensatory behavior to get rid of the food that was eaten.
Treatments for eating disorders will generally include combinations of psychotherapy, hospitalization, medications and self-help strategies, such as support groups. The path to recovery can be a very long one since the importance of food and losing weight/preventing weight gain has become such a critical one in the person's life. It is an area that they have had control over for a long period of time and recovery involves giving up that control, which is a very scary step for those with an eating disorder to take.
As you can see, the symptoms and affects of eating disorders are vastly different than making the decision to diet and live a healthier lifestyle. Again, remember, dieting is about losing some weight in good ways and not about gaining control or changing your life based solely on what you eat and what you weigh. Beauty and happiness in life are about much more than just a number that appears on your scale.
