What are people's ideas on anorexia? If anorexic please answer me.?

Question

I'm doing a project for college on this and desperately need people's opinions on the subject. what pressure are people under for being thin? is it a celebrity reason? why and when did you start doing this if you are anorexic? Both male and female answers will be accepted. This is so important to me. It's not a joke it's not a hoax or anything daft like that, i just need people's opnions. Would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

"being anorexic sucks, but think of how much less you weigh!" (i don't have it, but my friend does and thats what she says.)

Answer 2

I think that the term anorexia is used too lightly. I have been accused of being anorexic because I am a size 4-6 when in fact I'm just a normal person who cares about my health and has an active life style. So it seems to me that if you are under a certain weight or size you are branded anorexic and that is that - whether or not you have the disorder or not. I think that people are generally losing touch with what anorexia means other wise they wouldn't be accusing me (a happy confident person) of having a problem. I have read that you don't have to necessarily be under weight to be anorexic either. My male friend is anorexic - it's a frightening disorder that should be taken seriously.

Answer 3

Daft! Are you English?
Well, I'm not anorexic, but there is so much pressure to be pretty and girls think that being a pound above normal is unusual. In their mindset, no matter how skinny they are, they are still fat when they look in the mirror. It is not just being uncomfortable with your body and wanting to lose some weight, it is a medical condition. I think that a lot of people that are anorexic are also depressed. Celebrities don't help either. I mean, young girls have Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and other skinny blonds and think that they have to look like that to be "normal". Being 100 pounds is out of the question for them.

Answer 4

I don't think anorexia is necessarily about being wanting to be thin, it can sometimes be about having control if under pressure or in a stressful situation.

When I was going through separation from my husband I felt like I didn't deserve to eat because I thought I wasn't a good person for putting him through it and became very thin (I am now a healthy weight). I lived on coffee and the odd pack of crisps for about a year.

When my life got back on track I slowly began to eat more and more until I reached a healthy weight.

Hope this helps.

Answer 5

the majority of people that become anorexic believe that beauty = being thin. if you see all of the celebrites on tv they all get compliments for being thin. the thinner they are the more compliments they recieve. not to mention guys mostly like thin pretty girls. so being an overweight girl can make you feel unattractive and unwanted. once you get the sickness it becomes an obsession almost a mental illness and a lot of people can't control it.

Answer 6

Well, couple of times i starved myself cause i thought i looked fat and while i was starving, i would tell myself how fat i was and that i needed to lose weight. I mean, i'm 5"8 and weight 145 and that is perfectly fine, but for me, i'm like, no i need to lose weight. I think the pressure started cause it was a bit about how all the models and celebrities are so skinny and i wanted to be like that, but i think that it mostly started for me because i have friends who weight less then me cause they're shorter, but if i say i weight 140 or even 130 and they weight 100 then they'll make fun of me, so i started losing weight as fast as i can.
Also, i never wanted to starve myself till my dad putted all this pressure on me. I kinda felt depressed i guess and then all that negitive energy happened and then i felt fat so i started starving myself.

Answer 7

the pressure to be thin comes from everywhere: Images we admire and want to live up to, other peoples comments about us and themselves, our desire to be loved/admired. It is very very widespread.
teenagers are particularly vulnerable to influence because this is the time of our lives when our looks are most important. Being young and thin and beautiful is actually much more highly prized in western cultures than being eg: old and wise, or caring and experienced, or very intelligent.
If people feel fat and ugly and are disturbed enough by the pressure to be thin, they can show themselves and other people how self controlled they are by starving themselves. It is within their power to stop the pain they feel from being fat (even just a little bit of fat) and win the praise of their taunters.
the mechanisms of the brain then kick in; designed to stop us from starving to death and from suffering too much anguish if we do starve to death. Our bodily processes alter so that food intake is utilised more effectively and our brain chemicals alter so that we actually stop feeling hungry and start to feel good about being hungry.

Answer 8

terra_chan says it PERFECTLY! I'm the 'sweetie' she is referring to who is currently recovering with her. the causes of anorexia vary for every single person. i am 14 and started this because it gave me a feeling of power and control i strived for. my parents are sort of overbearing and i felt that they controled my life. anorexia gave me a sense of accomplishment and a way of rebeling against them. kind of a 'you can't make me eat if i dont want to' kind of thing. being hungry started becoming a necessity, i always HAD to be hungry. being full would make me go crazy and feel terrible about myself. i started weighing myself many times a day and hoped every day that the number would be less than the last time. it turned into an obsession that i could no longer control. luckily i realized that there are better ways to deal with life than hurting myself and am now in the process of gaining back weight. it really is hard for me to handle, but i now realize how important it is for me to get healthy again.

Answer 9

I myself was anorexic (currently recovering) I find that the situation varies for everyone and the reasons of WHY are different. It is not just the media that causes eating disorders, though that can certainly play a role in helong push an individual towards it. The main factor for me, and for many people who have suffered is control, or lack thereof. I often feel as if I have no control over my life, it is out of my grasp, I do nothing to change. so, I grasp on to one of the things I CAN control, my weight and my food. I feel out of control, so i FORCE myself not to eat, I discipline my body and though I think of sweets I do not eat. This gives me satisfication knowing i have control (though the ironic part is, I dont have control) My hunger and thiness, that all gives me a since of accomplishment.

Another factor is my low self esteem. More specifiacally, my low self esteem of my body. I am under developed for my age, no breast worth speaking of, a childish pudgy tummy, you get the picture. Mainly I focused on the stomach. I noticed that when I didn't eat breakfast, my stomach was smaller. Low and behold, the less I ate and more I excercised, the smaller the tummy. From then on I was obbsessed. I focused soley on my stomach, I was already thin for my age, and it just got worse. my arms turned to sticks, my almost non existant breast became even more non exestintant. I looked horrid, but as long as my waist and stomach were small, I was happy.

And then, after a while your clear reason of WHY you did this to yourself is unimportant,you are losing weight, reaching for some perfection only reached through pain. You see fat, that isn't there. People comments that you are thin and need to eat more, and you look sickly, just give you a since of accomplishment.

Thats just me, as I said, cases vary. People who have controlling parents or where sexually abused as a child I know one severe case (she was hospitalized) Where a girl developed early for her age, and as a result was sexually abused. This lead her to dread her development. She attempted to flatten her breast, taped her thighs, and lost weight in order to look more childlike. As a result, she soon began to fear weight gain. Even now, she has to be weighed backwards so she doesnt see the scale. Dreading that she will her the click, telling her she has reached 100 pounds.

this link has a bunch of clips made by a recovering anorexic nervosa (full name) I highly suggest you watch and use them all. They are very powerful and emotional (to me, because of my situation) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stH-LRTjEC0

I am recovering now, I got sick of it. I was hurting me and my parents (who had by then noticed) I couldn't snorkel on our summer vacation because my body couldn't take the cold water, I couldn't even ride my bike the 1/4 mile to the store without taking long breaks, I then also met Sweetie(my IM friend) and we are recovering together.

Answer 10

I think there is a common misconception that this disease affects only girls, which isn't true. I worked on an eating disorders unit and there were more boys than girls in there. I think in the general population though the numbers are about even.

Answer 11

When i was about 14 I sufferd with anorexia and ended up in hospital because of it. It wasnt because of celebrities and that sort of crap it was because i got bullied at school. No one would stop them. But after a lot of counselling here I am.