When to seek help?

• You experience changes in your mood such as being withdrawn, anxious or depressed

• You feel tired a lot of the time

• You feel ashamed or guilty

• You feel scared of other people finding out

• You spend a lot of time worrying about your weight and body shape

• You avoid socialising when you think food will be involved

• You eat very little food

• You make yourself sick or taking laxatives after you eat

• You exercise too much

• You have a very strict habits or routines around food

You experience physical signs, including:

• feeling cold, tired or dizzy

• pains, tingling or numbness in your arms and legs (poor circulation)

• feeling your heart racing, fainting or feeling faint

• problems with your digestion, such as bloating, constipation or diarrhoea

• your weight being very high or very low for someone of your age and height

• not getting your period

Is your eating problem connected to anything specific?

Anorexia Nervosa – refers to trying to control your weight by not eating enough food, exercising too much, or doing both; Anorexia includes believing you are fat when you are a healthy weight or underweight.

Bulimia Nervosa – refers to losing control over how much you eat and then taking drastic action to not put on weight – hence it the uncontrollable episodes of overeating are followed by purging with methods such as vomiting or misuse of laxatives; bingeing is eating much larger amounts of food than you would normally eat in a short period of time, usually less than two hours.

Binge Eating Disorder – refers to eating large portions of food until you feel uncomfortably full

Other specified feeding or eating disorder (OSFED) - It is not uncommon that problematic relationships with food do not exactly fit the expected symptoms for any specific eating disorders. In fact, the difficulties corresponding to the OSFED is the most common eating disorder diagnosis. Symptoms can also change over time.

Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) - ARFID refers to avoidance of certain foods. Beliefs about weight or body shape are not reasons why people develop ARFID, however, possible reasons include negative feelings over the smell, taste or texture of certain foods or a response to a past experience with food that was upsetting, for example, choking or being sick after eating something.

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