How to recognize eating disorders in teenagers?

We live in times of the cult of figure and beauty. We start each year by planning changes in the way we eat and with the intention of exercising more. We talk loudly about starting a diet, and the messages children hear all the time are: " I can't do it ", " It's not compatible with the diet ", " It makes me gain weight ". At the same time, adolescence is a period in life when a child focuses very much on aspects related to the body. When the cult of thinness and the popularization of restrictive diets coincide with adolescence , it may contribute to eating disorders in a teenager. Unfortunately, this is a growing problem and affects increasingly younger children. Eating disorders can affect their physical and mental development.

Eating disorders are not just about not eating.

They may be completely opposite in nature. All eating disorders can be grouped into 3 coherent groups.

• Obesity-promoting disorders. It's about uncontrolled eating, night eating syndrome, emotional eating. We can also include bulimia in this group . In the case of this disorder, binge eating is followed by an attempt to compensate for it, i.e. inducing vomiting, fasting, using laxatives, etc.
• Disorders resulting from lack of acceptance of one's appearance . Here we can refer, for example, to anorexia, which most often affects girls and young women. We talk about anorexia in more detail in a separate article . This group also includes bigorexia , i.e. an obsession with building muscle mass, which most often affects young men;
• Disorders resulting from health concerns. The obsession with "healthy" eating is called orthorexia .

Excessive responsibilities, stress, and demands at school or in a competitive group may lead to an unusual eating pattern . Aesthetic sports or ballet in this sense are an additional aggravating factor. Idols that young people follow on social media also have an influence . The parent's role is to detect the disorder and respond appropriately, but it is not that simple.

What teenage behaviors may indicate eating disorders?

If a child was previously overweight or obese, we welcome his or her greater interest in sports and nutrition. We are glad that our suggestions for the child not to eat something or to move have finally been listened to. It starts with excessive interest in food, healthy eating, diets, counting and limiting calories, excluding sweets and fatty foods from your menu. And also - reducing the amount of food consumed, measuring meals precisely, and practicing physical exercises, which become more and more intense over time. Please note that the onset of the disease is difficult to detect by those around you!

Signals in a child's behavior that should draw our attention include:

• the child is morbidly preoccupied with body weight and his/her own appearance;
• has a distorted perception of his own figure (he claims that he is fat, when in our opinion he does not stand out from the group of his peers, and research does not confirm this);
• has a strong fear of weight gain and obesity;
• the child loses interest in food, has no appetite, does not want to eat meals with the family, may also run to the toilet immediately after a meal;
• is convinced of their healthy eating and considers the restrictive diets used as rational and justified;
• manipulates body weight when very slim - dresses in loose clothes, stands on the scale in heavy clothes, drinks a large amount of water before weighing;
• the child is irritable , gives up previous interests and activities in order to increase physical activity ;
• refuses to eat products that do not meet the criteria imposed by them.

The risk of developing eating disorders is increased by child characteristics such as sensitivity to criticism, low and unstable self-esteem . As well as a tendency to perfectionism, the need for control, the need for competition, the pursuit of perfection, an obsession with order, perseverance and diligence, which result in success at school and/or at work. This is often accompanied by parents placing excessive demands on the child, supporting perfectionism and competition in the child.

What to do if you suspect your teenager has an eating disorder?