Treading a thin line: Disordered eating or eating disorder ?

It’s not news that a heaping plate of cookies, despite its deliciousness, is not the best meal choice. Neither, however, is a stick of celery.

In a culture of fast food, junk food, and nutrient-starved meals on the run, it’s nearly impossible to achieve the sought-after twiggy arms and leggy legs of today’s ideal, and perhaps unreal, female body. After several futile weight loss attempts via lifting weights and powering through marathon treadmill sessions at the gym, many women find themselves asking: What’s a girl to do?

For some, the solution is dieting. Whileeffective when constructed with health as a priority, a diet can be the literal meal ticket to a thinner physique; when pounds supersede overall wellbeing, however, a diet can border dangerously on the verge of disorder.

As outreach director for the American Anorexia Bulimia Association (AABA), Pamela Guthrie recognizes the distinction between disordered eating and eating disorders as imperative to accurate diagnoses. Both disordered eaters and sufferers of eating disorders fixate on the scale, count calories, and frequently miss meals altogether. Despite the similar nutritional abnormalities, the two conditions diverge into the decidedly devastating anorexia and bulimia nervosa and the comparatively benign routine of disordered eating.

Guthrie explains that although both problems seem to center on weight concerns, eating disorders are often only superficially about weight. For anorexics and bulimics, food presents a means of essentially controlling a life out of control. By monitoring every calorie that enters their body or purging after an indulgent binge, sufferers of true eating disorders not only create the illusion of stability, but also manage to conceal deeper issues. The anxiety, lack of self worth, and depression that encourage the development of eating disorders remain relatively absent from purely pound-driven disordered eating habits.

According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), there are specific warning signs that are indicative of potential eating disorders.

Signs of Anorexia Nervosa:

-Significant weight loss, often to the point of a less-than-recommended weight for a given height
-Distorted perception of weight and/or body image
-Preoccupation with fat and calories, eventually leading to self-starvation
-Avoidance of mealtimes or situations that involve food
-Amenorrhea, or stopping of menstrual periods

Signs of Bulimia Nervosa:

-Consumption of exceptionally large meals, also known as binge eating or bingeing
-Compensatory behaviors which include self-induced vomiting or purging, the use of diuretics and/or laxatives, and compulsive exercising
-Marks or calluses consistent with purging on hands or knuckles
-Tooth discoloration

Typically, bulimics do not exhibit the intensely thin physique of anorexics and, in many cases, even maintain a normal weight. Because bulimia lacks the tell-tale outward manifestations of an eating disorder, the AABA advises behavioral analysis to diagnose the disorder. Frequent trips to the bathroom after eating a larger-than-normal meal commonly inform observant parents and friends of bulimic tendencies in their family members or peers.

Nutrition experts and psychiatric specialists alike, though primarily concerned with eating disorders, also acknowledge the potentially damaging effects of disordered eating. The possible nutritional deficiencies associated with the occasional skipped meal are not as severe as the brittle bones, dehydration, and heart failure that often occur as a result of anorexia and bulimia, but they do, nonetheless, pose a very real health risk.

Whether the periodically skipped breakfast or lunch of a disordered eater, or the habitual single-snack regimen of an anorexic or bulimic, nutritional issues are problems of increasing prevalence in the United States. I’m, Like, SO Fat!, Dr. Neumark-Sztainer’s 2005 book that promotes parenting to engender health-conscious habits in teens, reveals that over 50% of teenage girls engage in unhealthy dieting. Including fasts, purging, and cigarettes, such attempts at weight control reflect the ever-diverging concepts of the real woman and the female ideal. At 5’11” and under 120 pounds, the models of today’s runway are a constant reminder of the perceived inadequacies of the average 5’4”, 140 pound woman.

While the pressure to be thin will endure for years to come, experts maintain that steps to shed excess weight should be taken only when necessary. If you have weight to lose, the solution should never be skipping meals, but rather sensible exercise and a balanced diet. If you have few, if any, pounds to drop, calories should be the last thing on your mind.

In either case, the occasional cookie—or two—could be just the indulgence you deserve for being a beautiful and talented woman, regardless of the scale’s most recent reading.