Understanding the mindset of someone suffering with an eating disorder may help you save them.

“Why can’t I do it,” you wonder every day.  Why can’t I go without eating?  Why do I still want to eat?  Where is my willpower?  Why am I so weak?  One day I can go the entire day without eating, and the next day I fail.  I feel so good about myself when I overcome my disgusting need for food.  But still I fail.  I read stories about people that can go without eating for longer periods of time and get down to weights I know I’ll never reach.  Yet I don’t even have the ability to avoid eating half the time of these others.  What is wrong with me?  Why can’t I do this? 

If I eat two tablespoons of ice-cream, I just need to exercise for an extra 45 minutes.  Since I exercised today, I can eat.  If I miss my workout, I will have to wait until tomorrow to eat.  If I eat and I don’t exercise, I will have to take laxatives.  If I cut my workout short, I will have to cut the amount of food I can have at my only meal of the day.  If I rest too long between sets of exercises, I will have to exercise longer.   

These are some of the thoughts that run rampant through the mind of someone who suffers with an eating disorder.  Every food related decision requires careful analysis.  Each action has a dire weight consequence.  It is never as simple as ‘getting help’ or ‘just eat’.  Your mind screams at you.  Your emotions overrule your stomach and fatigue.  Depression results from every perceived failure.  And every morsel of food eaten is a failure of will power.   

“You need to get help if you think you are fat.”  That is what everyone says to the skinny girl still trying to lose more weight.  What you don’t understand is what ‘help’ means to the person suffering with an eating disorder.  Help is someone telling you to eat.  Help is someone forcing you to gain weight.  Help is getting fatter and losing the progress you made through painstaking efforts.  Help is turning over your body to someone who wants you to be fat and calls that ‘healthy’.  You don’t need help gaining weight.  You need help losing weight.  You need to finally reach the goal you have been striving to accomplish.   

 

If someone you love is suffering with an eating disorder, you must understand that reason will not help the person overcome an eating disorder.  Only love and understanding will help.  Don’t belittle or minimize the agony the person is suffering through.  Eating disorders are emotional issues, not physical problems.  If you don’t keep this in mind when trying to help the person you love, you will fail.  You will not reach them because they will not believe you could ever understand what they are going through each and every day.  Talk to an expert about how to reach out before trying on your own.  The insight could make the difference you need to help. 

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