rd "anorexia" itself means lack of appetite. But that doesn’t mean anorexics aren’t hungry. Usually they do crave food and just deny their feelings. Most of them even dream about food or become focused on cooking for others. Despite their real hunger, their struggle for thinness is more important to them than anything. Some signs of anorexia nervosa are, reduction of food intake, especially of high-calorie items, denial of hunger, especially claims of feeling full or feeling fat after a few bites of food. Also, excessive exercise in spite of fatigue, extreme fear of weight gain, strange patterns of handling food like playing with it or pushing it around on the plate but not eating it and changes in personality and behavior including increased withdrawal, irritability, nervousness, and depression.Bulimia nervosa is characterized as binge eating and then purging their food, most commonly in the form of forced vomiting or abuse of laxatives. The word " bulimia" means "animal hunger". Bulimics consume large amounts of food. Sometimes ten thousand or more calories during binges. Most of this food is high in carbohydrates and fats. Bulimics usually binge in secret and are ashamed of their behavior afterwards. Bulimics purge because they feel that they need to "cleanse" and empty their body after bingeing. Bulimics share some common characteristics with anorexics. Both are preoccupied with food and weight control and use extreme methods to pursue it. Both use weight control as a substitute for personal pressures, and both anorexics and bulimics are perfectionists.The biggest differences between bulimics and anorexics is that bulimics turn to food to cope with stress and anorexics turn away from it. Anorexics deny their problems and bulimics usually recognize their problems. Bulimics try to maintain their weight rather than to keep losing more. Though bulimics outnumber anorexics, it is much harder to recognize the...
