• Maintaining an excessive, rigid exercise regimen
• Withdrawing or avoiding activities once enjoyable
• Expressing anxiety about being fat
• Inducing vomiting
• Using diet aids, diuretics , laxatives, enemas , or vomiting aids excessively
• Bingeing and purging, with alternate periods of severely restricted dieting and overeating
• For many women, problems with menstrual cycles and fertility.

Anorexia can often be diagnosed by a person's refusal to maintain a normal weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, or an abnormal perception and preoccupation of body weight or shape.

People with anorexia could experience the following symptoms:

• Heart palpitations
• Osteoporosis
• Hypotension
• Muscle loss and weakness
• Severe dehydration and electrolyte imbalance
• Fainting
• Weakness and fatigue
• Dry skin
• Hair loss
• Lanugo (downy "peach fuzz" growing on the body).

Persons with bulimia often eat abnormally large portions of food in short bursts. They often feel a sense of shame and lack of control afterward. To compensate for these feelings, they make themselves throw up, misuse laxatives, starve themselves, or exercise excessively. Their feelings of self-worth are often based on their weight and shape.

Bulimia is associated with many of the same dangers found in anorexia.

• Swelling of the face and neck
• Tooth decay and erosion (from vomiting)
• Kidney damage
• Peptic ulcers and pancreatitis
• Inflammation and probable rupture of the esophagus
• Irritable bowel syndrome.

In many people, an eating disorder could indicate another psychological problem, including obsessive-compulsive disorder , depression, anxiety, social phobias, substance abuse, borderline personality disorders, and bipolar disorder.

Someone with an eating disorder often has difficulties in other areas of day-to-day living as well. An eating disorder can affect one's ability to perform a job, relate to family and friends, be intimate with a partner, or maintain social contacts.

What Causes Eating Disorders?

People develop eating disorders for a variety of reasons. Some people may feel pressured by society and the media to be thin. Other people may have feelings of low self-esteem or avoid pressing problems, and then establish destructive eating patterns to gain a sense of self-control. For others, there may be an underlying psychological condition. For successful treatment, it's extremely important for the person with an eating disorder to develop a support network of qualified professionals and caring friends and family.