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Tell-Tale Signs of An Eating Disorder

Although professionals can easily detect a sign of eating disorder, for the average person, and especially for parents of teenagers, these signs are not so obvious. Even though they are not obvious, and perhaps because they are not obvious, it is very important that they be noticed. Signs pointing to an eating disorder do not always indicate that the person in question is living with an eating disorder.

Signs of problems should be carefully investigated before a dialogue is opened, as most teenagers will take the approach of the subject as a reason to flee from the conversation. If you’ve done a lot of observing and you are certain that an eating disorder is part of the problem, you should persist in having that conversation.

If you have not yet carefully evaluated the facts, opening the conversation can be a mistake because then the person in question will most likely modify their behavior to ‘prove’ to you that there is no problem. Usually this doesn’t involve changing habits; usually it involves hiding a sign of eating disorders more thoroughly.

What to Look Out For

An early sign of eating disorder would generally have less to do with behavior with food than behavior towards food. For most teenage girls, the first step toward developing an eating disorder is a poor attitude toward food in general. If your child is embarrassed to eat in front of other people, for instance, or embarrassed to eat certain foods (ice cream, pizza, and other notably fattening things) in front of people outside your family, you should open a dialogue about attitudes toward food.

Developing a healthy attitude toward food throughout childhood is important; the most important is nurturing it through the difficult years of adolescence. New views on food and eating are certain to develop during adolescence, but these changes should not be too prevalent. An extreme change in attitudes toward food is one of the first sign of eating disorder.

As an eating disorder develops, the signs of it change. Many young people progress from this negative attitude toward food and eating to an ambivalent attitude toward food and eating. Nothing gets a reaction in this stage because food is alien. This can often be a sign of eating disorder. At this stage, anorexic people tend to ignore food entirely, leaving a room where food is being served and avoiding the topic entirely. Bulimic people tend to act a little bit like anorexic people in public, and then go home and pig out.

In addition to attitudes toward food, you should watch for extreme changes in weight and extreme changes in energy levels and tiredness. Anorexics tend to show a lot of physical signs of their illness, including dark circles under the eyes, poor skin tone, poor hair luster or even loss of hair, yellowing of nails and general sickliness. Since they don’t get vitamins through eating, their immune systems become weak. Another telltale sign of eating disorder is fainting. Be on the lookout, but treat the subject like the delicate one that it is when bringing it up in conversation.