Dr. Linda Helps - Ann was dying and we all knew it. Anorexia had ravaged her 5-foot-1inch frame. She looked more like a 10- year-old little girl than an 18-year-old ready to go off to college. At 72 pounds, she was facing another hospitalization. Ann’s family wondered what it would take to convince her to seriously confront the eating disorder.

Ann felt hopeless and abandoned by God. Her sunken eyes revealed desperation as she told her family, “I can’t make myself eat, and I don’t want to gain weight because I’m fat. I wish I could just disappear. Then I wouldn’t upset anyone anymore.”

Ann started to diet because she didn’t like her body. She especially didn’t like the changes she noticed as her sexual development began. Worried that she would look fat in a society that prizes thinness, Ann started to lose weight. Now, she couldn’t stop.

Ann was frightened by the idea of leaving home to go to college. She felt incompetent when it came to competing with other girls, dating and making friends. She worried that she was not good enough, that others would see her flaws, and that she was a disappointment to God.

Although Ann struggled over food, food was not the root of Ann’s problems. Ann’s physical starvation was a sign of deeper emotional and spiritual pain. She deceived herself into thinking that the perfect body would make her happy. She was terrified that she might lose emotional, interpersonal and psychological control of her life. Food was the one thing she could control.

Ann is anorexic. Like others who share her struggle, Ann has an intense fear of gaining weight. She starves herself to the point of threatening her life. Ann represents one out of every hundred girls and young women who have this disorder.

Signs of Anorexia:

• Weight loss and refusal to gain to normal weight (15% below an acceptable weight is in the clinical range for anorexia)
  
• Intense fear of becoming fat or gaining weight
  
• Body image disturbance
  
• Loss of menses in females  
  
• Wearing baggy clothing to cover body form
  
• Cutting up food in tiny pieces, moving food around the plate versus eating it
  
• Weighing food and obsessing on calories
  
• Excessive exercise
  
• Preoccupation with food and dieting
  
• Physical and medical symptoms related to weight loss (dry skin and hair, cold hands and feet, weakness, constipation, digestive problems, more infections, ketosis, stress fracture, osteoporosis, heart problems, mild anemia, swollen joints)
  
• Weighing multiple times a day
  
• Foods are discussed as “good” or “bad”
  
• Anxiety when eating with others
  
• Fatigue
  
• Feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness
  
• Signs of depression – loss of interest in things, poor concentration, irritability, agitation, restlessness, withdrawal, sleep problems, suicidal thoughts

If you or someone you know struggle with anorexia, there is hope. Get help immediately.

Dr. Mintle – author, professor, Approved Supervisor and Clinical member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy – is a speaker and media personality, as well as a licensed clinical social worker with over twenty years in psychotherapy practice.

For more articles and information, visit Dr. Linda Mintle's Web site.