People often reach out asking how they can tell if their loved one is anorexic or not. One would think it would be a fairly straightforward and easy thing to identify. But you have to remember that the anorexic is gifted when it comes to covering up their anorexia. Pure genius in fact! There truly is no end to the creative ways that individuals suffering from anorexia come up with to hide the disorder from the people who love them.
So some of the subtle signs that you won’t see in the diagnostic and statistical manual of psychological disorders are as follows:
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Changes in routine. Suddenly they stop doing things they had always done or start doing things they have never done. For example, an individual May begin to eat meals alone. Sometimes that means eating meals in private away from other members of the family. It is not uncommon for an individual with an eating disorder to pretend to be eating food, when in reality they are packaging it up and pitching it. Obviously, it’s easier to do this if you are not sitting down for a meal with other family members.
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Refusing to join in celebrations where food is the focus. Making excuses about not going to holiday events, (even the big ones) begging off on attending weddings or parties, suddenly not hanging out with friends especially when food is involved. In adults that means no cocktail hour, in teens that means no overnights….too much pressure to eat and drink on moral principal.
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Changes in the way they dress. Some individuals go from wearing normal fitting clothes to wearing only baggy clothes to hide their thinness. Whereas other individuals suffering from anorexia want to display the thinness and do so too excess. In other words, they wear clothing that is very tight, very short, very sheer, or a combination of such characteristics, with the goal of flaunting their newfound thinness.
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Abrupt dietary changes. Another common scenario is that the individual suddenly becomes vegetarian, and/or then vegan. In fairness, some people become vegan because they feel morally compelled to do so. But there’s such a high percentage of individuals suffering from anorexia who end up being vegan that the correlation has to be viewed from the perspective of the anorexic thought process. It goes something like this: “No one is going to argue with me if I tell them I don’t eat meat on moral principles, whereas if I tell them I’m afraid to eat meat because of all the fat I am much more likely to get pushback.” What is interesting about this one is that for those who use animal rights as an explanation for restricting, they often discover over the course of treatment that being vegan makes it much more difficult to maintain a healthy/slender weight than if they allow themselves to eat 100% grass-fed, wild-caught animal or fish protein. Being vegan means that you are often stuck eating more carbs because you have limited options for protein and carbs are generally more “fattening” than protein.
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Social isolation. Withdrawing from friendships and/or important relationships is another common early sign of an eating disorder.
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Giving up sports. Even sports in which the individual has excelled can also be another early symptom of anorexia.
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Developing obsessive-compulsive rituals. As the anorexia worsens, so too do the rituals around food preparation, eating rituals, and patterns of restricting. The individual may develop a full-blown obsessive-compulsive disorder that is tied directly to the eating disorder. If you think of the eating disorder as an anxiety disorder, the OCD and ritualized behavior is an attempt at managing the anxiety.
If you are seeing any of these or a combination of these characteristics in a loved one, don’t wait. It’s easier to treat an eating disorder in the early stages than it is to treat an eating disorder that is well entrenched. For more information about anorexia click here. To schedule, an appointment with Dr. Norton click here.
