Anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa

This is voluntary starvation. A girl is abnormally sensitive about getting fat and about losing control over the amount she eats. Her body will tell her that it is hungry and needs food, but she will refuse to eat normally because of her obsessive desire to be "thin". An anorexic may look dangerously thin to her friends and family, but she is convinced that she is fat. Her obsession with her weight and with food leaves her very little time to live a normal teenage life.

Bulimia nervosa

"Bulimia" means to "eat like an ox". A girl who is suffering from bulimia nervosa has frequent periods of "eating binges" which she feels are outside her control. Most of us indulge in a "pig-out" every now and the, but bulimics, unlike us, won´t return to normal eating patterns afterwards. They may binge-eat every day. The binges amy last 2 hours. Afterwards, the girl may feel guilty about the amount of food she´s eaten and try and get it out of her body - usually in unhealthy ways, such as vomiting and starvation.