What Causes Eating Disorders?

Find Out Why People Develop Anorexia, Bulimia and Binge Eating

Jul 20, 2006

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To understand what causes eating disorders and why people develop anorexia, bulimia and binge eating, you have to look at many reasons.

So what causes eating disorders? Why do people develop anorexia, bulimia, binge eating and compulsive overeating disorders?

Pressure from family members, especially parents, is common for many people. Their mothers could have been on a perpetual diet or yo-yo dieted for their while lives; fathers could have encouraged their daughters or sons to focus on appearance as the way to succeed; siblings could have called them "Fatty" or other derogatory names; schoolmates and bullies could have picked on them for their size or the individual noticed how much others' were being ridiculed and vowed to be skinny so no one would tease them; a group of friends could have decided they will participate in the behaviours together and push each other to do more extreme things.
Sexual abuse is cited as a common thread for a lot of sufferers: after being violated, they turn to food. Using it to shove down feelings of guilt and to become unattractive to prevent it from happening again, or not eating to numb the pain and humiliation of being a victim. Food either becomes the devil or the only comfort.
Dieting is a gateway to developing disordered eating, if not an Eating Disorder. What can start out innocently enough can easily lead to an obsession with losing weight; the preoccupation becomes overwhelming and the behaviours more and more desperate. A lot of the times officially diagnosed Eating Disorders aren't developed, but the battle with disordered eating will plague them until they can find healthier ways to live.

The above causes aren't the only ones and every individual has their own combinations of factors that lead to their development of an Eating Disorder. People recovering must dig deeply into their memories to discover the reasons why they needed this vice and can only fully recover when they have faced those issues. The maze can be dark and scary but the light at the end is brilliantly bright.

To read the first segment of this article, please click here.

The copyright of the article What Causes Eating Disorders? in Eating Disorders is owned by Lori Henry. Permission to republish What Causes Eating Disorders? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.