Blog #8 - Hurting the ones who love and care about you the most!

The affects that anorexia has on your loved ones is devastating. This eating disorder primarily affects women. Many women experience body changes such as the development of breast and hips. These areas of a woman are features that normally enhance a woman’s body. When some women in their teenage years begin to develop many develop more rapidly than others and they begin to be teased or picked on. Peers are the worst critics and they never know if they are hurting someone’s feelings and quite frankly they really don’t care. These young woman begin to fell threaten or feel as if they are big, fat or overweight. When they have just began to hit puberty and they don’t know what they are experiencing or why they are developing as such. So they stop eating and begin to lose weight dramatically they feel as if now they are more likeable but they also begin to feel that they are still overweight. These young girls begin to develop more conditions such as depression, anemia, amenorrhea, and malnutrition. The lack of nutrients in the body starts to take a toll on the person who is dealing with the fact that they are obese and they are a size 2. If women start to notice that others are aware that they are not eating normally they start binge eating. So now they are eating to satisfy others and regurgitating to satisfy themselves. These women are now bulimic or binge eaters. They don’t realize how much pain they are placing on their real friends and family. They almost seem as if they are withering away. They are so thin and yet they feel they are so big. This takes time and counseling to get the loved one to change before it is too late. This topic is a very emotional topic to discuss because my older cousin followed this same pattern of anorexic to bulimic. Being that I was young I didn’t quite understand why she was doing this because she was a pretty, smart and popular young lady that was in high school. When my mother and I would go over to their house to visit, my aunt my mother’s sister would tell her to talk to her niece. My mother would go in her room and it would be filthy with clothes everywhere and it smelled like spoiled milk. My cousin would have regurgitated in the clothes and stored it in corners of the room or up under the bed that my mother would barely be able to stomach. It took much counseling and determination on my cousin behalf to rid her of this disorder. Eventually, she had gotten so small that she stop it took months for her to overcome this disorder but she understands now and is back to being a healthy woman. Another contributing to factor to this disorder for women is the media. Models, television ads, and Barbie are very thin and this is America’s “ideal” of how you should look. Don’t give up on your loved ones help them through this rough time and try your best when you notice changes to address it then before it gets too late and she begins to go down the wrong path. America’s “Ideal” size, that’s a joke right.