A person who suffers from anorexia nervosa drastically restricts calories in order to reach an ideal weight. This is one of the most common eating disorders.

What makes this control of calories and food destructive is that the ideal weight being sought is generally far below a truly healthy weight. If you are anorexic, you need treatment. It can be seriously unhealthy, or even life-threatening, to be anorexic.

With some treatment, you can live a normal and healthy life. Here are a few options that may help:

Family behavioral therapy is often very helpful. Generally, when there is a person with anorexia in the family, other family members have to start controlling the eating habits of the affected person. This has to stay this way until the person who suffers from anorexia is back to a healthy weight. At that point they can once again control their own eating.

If you are worried you may be anorexic, you will want to seek medical treatment. Ask yourself if you are starving to try to be fit. If so, this is a problem. Your doctor can evaluate your condition and treat any underlying causes that may be encouraging the anorexia.

Meeting with a registered dietician will also be helpful to the treatment of anorexia. A registered dietician can give you nutritional counseling to help you learn about what is healthy eating. You need to know the proper ways to fuel your body for health.

Parents of an anorexic child will likely be instructed to go to joint therapy sessions. This is so all people understand the nature of the disorder and so that parents know how to change their child’s eating patterns. Parents will need to monitor the child’s food intake and also their exercise habits, and to prepare the meals for their child.

Anorexia nervosa is a dangerous health condition. It should not be taken lightly. If you have or suspect you have anorexia nervosa, seek help from a medical professional.

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categories: eating disorder,nutrition,health,fitness,psychology,stress management,advice,self help,self improvement,diet,food,weight loss,parenting,teens

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Whether you live on the west coast or the east coast, the silent killer called obesity is aggressively moving through our communities. More than likely, if you are not directly affected, the chances are that you have friends or family members who are loosing control of their weight.

In all honesty, we can not totally place the blame for this on the individuals themselves. Several studies have shown that for a number of people, their chemical and genetic makeup aide in their body’s ability to process certain fats. Sure being 100 plus pounds over weight might have been good in the Ice Age but today this is simply not the case.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in looking at childhood obesity and nutrition. Nutritionists estimate that for every point of body mass index a child is overweight by before puberty, the adult that child will grow into will be three points overweight by the time they’re thirty. Type II diabetes, where body stress from overeating builds up resistance to insulin, is becoming more prevalent in teenagers.

This is troubling because young people are most impressionable during their teenage years. Think about it, going through puberty was hard enough when you were approaching puberty at a normal weight. Just imagine how difficult it must be for kids these days that now carry an additional 45 to 70 pounds around. What is really startling is the enormous growth taking place within the dieting industry. Teens are quickly become the best potential customer bases before they are able to vote.

The good news is that this trend can be stopped. In fact, you may be surprised at the simple solution.

Remember when you were a kid? You know, before video games like the Nintendo Wii. You actually had friends who played outside with you. You had energy and used it.

If you felt tired or felt dehydrated, you immediately reached for a glass of water or milk. Sweets were a treat for good behavior rather than your main course. Snacks did not come prepackaged but rather apples, oranges and bananas were your choice.

While the fast food outlets might not want you to know this, many parents are successfully teaching their kids to make healthy eating decisions. Today however, water too many of our youth is like the library, they’ve heard about it but never fully experienced it. Listen up parents. Sodas, juices or energy drinks are not a substitute for water. When properly hydrated, hunger pangs were shown to decrease significantly compared to those individuals who consumed no water.

When they have snacks, give them fruits and vegetables, or baked goods that are also low in sugar. Make sure that you have a dedicated family meal every evening, where everyone talks about what they did during the day – these reinforce that meal times are an important social occasion, not a pit stop between bouts with the Game Cube or Wii.

Staying physically active is an absolute necessity. Children are usually mirror images of their parents. If you as a parent live a sedentary life, the chances of your child duplicating your example are very high. If you have little league teams in your town, encourage your children to participate. Not all kids are athletic but all kids need to be active. In addition, set aside at least one day in the week where the entire family is physically active together. It could be a walk in the park or playing tag in the backyard.

The key to providing life long health for your kids is inculcating these habits early in life, so they become habits. Explain why you’re doing it when they ask, but don’t preach. Your kids will adopt the behaviors they see you doing – you’re their parent, their role model, and these are the habits they’ll stick with as they get older.

If your teen is obese, what options do you have? Author Dorthy Weatherbush has taken the guess work out of determining if your teen would benefit from a doctor recommended meal replacement diet. Read more about her suggestions at http://www.StephensonandCompany.com

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I’m not going to make friends with my colleagues by saying this but I believe that the experts who work in residential treatment facilities or those involved with OA are doing more damage than good when it comes to helping people heal compulsive overeating.

Could it be possible that the traditional methods of treatment are causing a compulsive overeater to remain one forever? They put their clients on a strict diet immediately and use punishments as a way of conformity. They use diversion to get around triggers that set off binge cycles and it’s been this way for decades.

Let’s look at the Twelve Step Program approach that Overeaters Anonymous (OA) uses for their compulsive overeaters. It is the same program base as the AA program which requires complete abstinence however because we need food to survive they modify that to be a highly restrictive food diet.

One of the consequences of not following the OA diet is having your sponsor treat you like a five year old. You are sent to the corner of the room and you can only come out when you behave yourself and start following the rules. I’ve seen this happen. Unfortunately, I don’t think they understand that food is not the main issue for binge eaters.

By having to constantly repeat that you are a compulsive overeater, in the eyes of OA, you will always be one. They do not believe that you can be completely free of this disorder. What if their way of thinking is just years and years worth of the same old beliefs that have never been challenged? What would all the people who are in OA do if they found out it those beliefs weren’t true?

Now I’ll use a residential treatment facility as the next example. Residential treatment facilities do the same kind of food restriction, often times prescribing anti-depressants and having clients stay for 30-60 days at a time. They do “Talk Therapy” but I have yet to see them hold classes on becoming assertive and dealing with stress so that when the client is released back into the wild they can fend for themselves without falling back into the same trap they were in before.

So what if all the old ways of thinking are just that…old?

Now let’s say we taught clients how to reduce stress and use facts without emotions to see the real situations in front of them. What if we taught them how to make the brain want to achieve more by using small chunky goals that helped raise self esteem and self worth? How would they feel if we used positive means instead of resistance to completely heal compulsive overeating? Wouldn’t that be a better way of thinking?

We could send a message to the world that compulsive overeating is no longer a disorder you must live with forever.

I am reminded of when my dad had a heart attack a couple of years back. It was the old way versus the new way of thinking for us and we immediately chose what we thought would be the best for my dad. It came down to two cardiologists. One had graduated in 1968 and had a ton of experience and the other had graduated in 1990 with obviously less experience but specialized in the latest technology which meant my dad could have the heart catheterization procedure with minimal pain and not have to have open heart surgery.

So as you can see new ways of thinking versus old experiences may be the way to go!

Nadine Ann, founder of The BreakAway Program, has been helping people heal their compulsive overeating with an online program. For a short period, you can join at the present membership fee and have full admission to the soon to be released private social members site. Visit The BreakAway Program to Heal Compulsive Overeating Now.

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