What are anorexia and bulimia?
Anorexia and bulimia are serious eating disorders mainly affecting females. Both disorders involve a preoccupation with body weight and food, but anorexics strive intensely to control the kinds and amounts of food they eat, while bulimics tend to feel out of control in relation to food. Bulimia will often begin with rigid dieting which leads to inadequate nutrition, hunger and fatigue, followed by powerful urges to binge. The bulimic person, fearful of gaining weight from the binge, resorts to self-induced vomiting or purging with laxatives (and/or diuretics). Although body weight may appear normal, the distress of the binge-purge cycle adds to feelings of guilt, worthlessness and depression. Anorexics, far more visible because of their underweight bodies, may also induce vomiting, or keep their weight extremely low by eating minute amounts of food and exercising vigorously. They may still continue to regard themselves as overweight, no matter how skeletal they appear to others. In lat
