5.04: Eating Disorders

• Introduction
• Learn
• Try It
• Task

Introduction

Have you ever seen someone in the mall or walking down the hall at school and thought to yourself, "She is so skinny, I wish I was that skinny," or "I wish I had that problem," or "Wow, does she have a problem?"

Most of us have seen someone on one end or the other of that scale; either too thin to be healthy or too large to be healthy.

An eating disorder is an illness that causes serious disturbances to your everyday diet and life. A person either eats extremely small amounts of food or they severely overeat. A person with an eating disorder may have started out just eating smaller or larger amounts of food, but at some point, the urge to eat less or more spiraled out of control. Severe distress or concern about body weight or shape may also signal an eating disorder. Common eating disorders include anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. In this lesson you will learn about both, and also about obesity.