Eating Disorders are persistent conditions that disturb the behaviour of eating leading to the impairment of physical and mental health. Most Eating Disorders have a combination of both neurological and cognitive drivers that lead to the disturbed eating pattern, and both of these need to be addressed for a person’s eating to return to healthy. In understanding Eating Disorders, we can better keep ourselves healthy.
There is a high correlation of Eating Disorders and ADHD [External LINK]. Women with menstrual cycles often find they binge the worst during PMS, and often may be diagnosed with PMDD [External LINK]. Of course, this is a bit redundant as PMDD and ADHD have a very strong overlap [Understanding PMDD LINK]. ARFID is often an indicator for Autism [ARFID Neurodivergence and You LINK].
It is important to not confuse an Eating Disorder with culture, a food preference (such as bland, spicy, vegan), with developmental stages (where our taste buds change as we grow), or with allergy/intolerance avoidance.
Treatment Basics
A treatment plan needs to recognise potential neurodivergence, mood disorders (such as anxiety), specific food issues (sensory, allergy and intolerance), culture (where relevant), personal preferences and behaviours around food.
Generally, a combination of targeted medication to manage the mood disorder that is the basis for most eating disorders and CBT to target the erroneous beliefs and behaviours is needed to manage and treat Eating Disorders.
Eating Disorders
Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by the restriction of food intake leading to a desired low body weight. This is typically accompanied by an intense fear of gaining weight and or disturbed perception of body weight and image. The fear component is often accompanied by various anxiety disorders, such as General Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety and Rejection Sensitivity.
There is nothing wrong with eating in moderation and curbing a desire to have more if that has been unhealthy. What can become a problem is when this desire to eat in moderation exceeds personal health, leading to your body not having enough food resource to manage your bodies needs.
Binge Eating Disorder
Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is specifically characterised as frequently eating excessive amounts of food. Almost everyone eats too much at time, but most people do not do this frequently.
Research on people diagnosed with BED find that people often feel a strong mood dysregulation first, which then prompts the person to eat a comfort food to self-regulate. Rather than eating a small amount of the comfort food, the person will find they eat far too much. This can then lead to shame and a few days of near starvation and or purging. In people with an active ovary/uterus reproductive system, the times of binge eating are often strongly correlated to their menstrual cycle.
We have more on how the menstrual cycle can affect you at ADHD, PMDD, Mid Cycle Crash and Hormone Interactions.
Frequently the foods that a person will binge on are the Dopamine Foods, often referred to as “the white diet”, “the beige foods” or “the tan foods”. These are generally highly processed foods that are consistent in flavour and texture, mostly made of fat, sugar, carbohydrate, salt and protein.
ARFID – Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder
More specific information for ARFID can be found here [Link].
ARFID stands for Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder.
ARFID is a diagnosis often given as to people with an extreme aversion to foods, that result in clear negative health consequences. ARFID can also be considered for people who have a more subtle aversion to core foods that can cause subtle consequences.
People struggling with ARFID can have a range of reasons why they are avoidant of foods.
- Sensory Nope, where something about that food triggers a sensory based rejection
- Food phobia, such as fearing that the food has gone off or isn’t safe to eat
- Frequent Fatigue, which interferes with the ability to make decisions about what to eat, make food and push oneself to eat
- Dopamine Chasing, where the person finds only beige foods are palatable
ARFID is very common with Autistic People and ADHD.
Orthorexia Nervosa
Orthorexia is medical term to describe a condition where eating “healthy food” has become obsessive. It comes from the Greek words ortho, meaning ‘correct’ and orexis, meaning ‘appetite’.
People struggling with this condition are over focused on the “quality” of the food they eat, to the detriment of the quantity of the food. This condition can start with just trying to eat more healthy and can then combine with anxiety, rejection sensitivity or OCD to become a more manifest eating disorder.
It is important to understand the difference between “Healthy Food” and “Health Food”. Healthy food includes a healthy balance and quantity of fat, sugar, carbohydrates, protein, salt with vitamins, macro nutrients and micro nutrients. “Health Food” is a short hand for an extreme diet where important fat, sugar and often carbohydrates and protein has been removed. This can be an over compensation for a binge eating diet, or because peers, parents or mentors have over emphasised that evils of “junk food”.
For someone struggling with Orthorexia Nervosa, you have likely associated being a good person with eating health food, and lost the ability to eat a balanced diet of healthy food.
Eating Disorders Victoria [Link] has a fairly good additional information.