Exercise And Eating Disorders - Excessive Exercise And Eating Disorders Go Hand In Hand

Today the perceived ideal image of women falls right in line with the slenderness of girls 10 to 12 years old. This idealistic view spawned by the supermodels seen today in ads for popular out fit and undergarment makers such as Victoria's secret has caused many women to become obsessed with their own images. In present society, women are ten times more likely to develop eating disorders and obsessive exercise habits that can be life threatening and often do prove to be fatal.

Some commonly developed eating disorders among women are, Anorexia nervosa, which is a life threatening disorder that occurs when people eat very little food and become obsessed about their weight even when they are badly underweight. An anorexic person can often see themselves as being overweight when they look at themselves in the mirror even though they appear very skinny to everyone else. People with this type of mental disorder often turn to laxatives and various diet aids such as fat burning pills to bring their weight down to dangerous levels.

Bulimia is an eating disorder that occurs when people go on an eating binge, and then immediately purges it all out. People can eat a large amount of food, even junk food, and then get it all back out of their system by both self-induced vomiting and laxative use. This practice may throw off the mineral balance of the body in the blood and put the health of their heart at risk. Compulsive overeating disorder followed by compulsive over exercising is a pattern that is not as dangerous as anorexia and bulimia but still can lead to both physical and mental problems. This is a pattern in which people will eat a large amount of food followed up immediately by exercising excessively hard and for a long period of time. It is estimated that more than one out of three female athletes may at one time develop an eating disorder. If people suffer from an eating disorder, should seek medical help as soon as possible because if left untreated, these disorders can cause permanent health problems and even death.

Though most of the people worry about getting enough exercise, there is such a thing as too much exercise. Regular exercise is a healthy practice, but more is not always better and in some cases, compulsive exercise can be just as dangerous as eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. Compulsive exercise is just another way some people use to purge their body of calories, much like a bulimic that binges and purges. Exercise bulimia is hard to detect since everyone talks about how great it is to exercise. If people do more, that is never good for health. Not if they are taking it too far. If people use exercise to purge or compensate for eating binges or just regular eating, they could be suffering from exercise bulimia. Evidently knowing how much exercise is too much is something people may end up learning the hard way, but if they pay attention to their body, there are warning signs that they have taken exercise to the max.

• Cassandra Bagley
• 01/02/2009, 4:59 AM
• 0 Comments