PSY 240 - Week 4 assignment
Week 4 Assignment
PSY 240
November 13, 2013
To Eat or Not to Eat Hello everyone. My name is Ruth and I want to talk to you guys about eating disorders. An eating disorder is essentially an illness that disrupts a person’s every day diet which can cause a person to pretty much stop eating or over eat, depending on the illness. These illnesses are more apparent in the teenage years and in to young adulthood (Pinel, 2011), which makes sense because this is when we start becoming more aware of our bodies as well as other people’s bodies. We might want to look like the model we just saw on TV and will do anything to get that body, right? But an eating disorder is not the way to go; we will get in to the effects of eating disorders here in a few minutes, but let us start with the types of disorders.
Most people think that the only kinds of eating of eating disorders are anorexia and bulimia, but that is not the case – you do not have to be stick thin to have an eating disorder. There is anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and the one that people do not think about it called binge-eating disorder. Each of these are extremely detrimental to one’s physical and psychological health. So, let us talk about some symptoms of these disorders and see if any of them sound familiar.
Anorexia nervosa is probably the most common and is characterized by an emaciated figure and an extremely restricted eating. There is an obsession with being thin and having thin role models and a total unwillingness to get to and keep a healthy weight. Along with that, there is an extreme fear of gaining weight as well (Pinel, 2011). With this fear comes self-esteem issues, a distorted body image – I bet there are a lot of you in here that think that you have weight to lose but the truth is, you do not. You are not seeing that you are dangerously thin even though you clearly are but we are going to help you get back to being physically and mentally healthy. When you are
PSY 240
November 13, 2013
To Eat or Not to Eat Hello everyone. My name is Ruth and I want to talk to you guys about eating disorders. An eating disorder is essentially an illness that disrupts a person’s every day diet which can cause a person to pretty much stop eating or over eat, depending on the illness. These illnesses are more apparent in the teenage years and in to young adulthood (Pinel, 2011), which makes sense because this is when we start becoming more aware of our bodies as well as other people’s bodies. We might want to look like the model we just saw on TV and will do anything to get that body, right? But an eating disorder is not the way to go; we will get in to the effects of eating disorders here in a few minutes, but let us start with the types of disorders.
Most people think that the only kinds of eating of eating disorders are anorexia and bulimia, but that is not the case – you do not have to be stick thin to have an eating disorder. There is anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and the one that people do not think about it called binge-eating disorder. Each of these are extremely detrimental to one’s physical and psychological health. So, let us talk about some symptoms of these disorders and see if any of them sound familiar.
Anorexia nervosa is probably the most common and is characterized by an emaciated figure and an extremely restricted eating. There is an obsession with being thin and having thin role models and a total unwillingness to get to and keep a healthy weight. Along with that, there is an extreme fear of gaining weight as well (Pinel, 2011). With this fear comes self-esteem issues, a distorted body image – I bet there are a lot of you in here that think that you have weight to lose but the truth is, you do not. You are not seeing that you are dangerously thin even though you clearly are but we are going to help you get back to being physically and mentally healthy. When you are