
Anorexia Nervosa (AN)
Anorexia is a psychiatric illness involving an obsessive fear of weight-gain / food, a restrictive mentality and significant limitation of calorie intake. Excessive amounts of exercise, purging or other behaviours are sometimes used to control energy intake. It is usually accompanied by low self-esteem and poor body-image, as well as a fear of losing control and perfectionist tendencies.

Bulimia Nervosa (BN)
Bulimia is when a person feels compelled to binge (often following a period of restriction) and then purges (laxative use, vomiting, excessive exercise, pills and other forms are used) to compensate. Low-self esteem and poor body-image are also characteristic. People with eating disorders sometimes go from AN to BN as time goes by and their body rebels against excessive restriction or it becomes unsustainable. The binge-purge cycle is either in response to physical needs or a way of processing difficult emotions.

Binge Eating Disorder (BED)
Binge Eating Disorder is the compulsive eating of large quantities of food at a time, even once the person feels uncomfortably full, and not in response to physical hunger but as a coping mechanism for emotional turbulence, or the body’s response to previous restriction. It does not involve compensatory behaviours to reduce weight. People with BED often have trauma in their history and suffer high levels of shame but may have difficulty accessing treatment due to high BMI.

Orthorexia
Orthorexia is when a person becomes obsessed with ‘healthy’ ‘clean’ or another regime of ‘correct’ eating, to the extent that their fear of eating the ‘wrong’ types of food affects their ability to eat a wide range of foods freely, enjoy a normal lifestyle, or eat a substantial or nutritious enough diet.

Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)
ARFID is the significant limitation of food and / or drink, because of an inability to tolerate different textures, or tastes, or due to a fear of choking or vomiting. It can be provoked by high sensory sensitivity present from birth (it is more common amongst people with Autism or Sensory Processing Disorder than the neurotypical population, and much more commonly diagnosed among children than other eating disorders). ARFID can also be brought on by a trauma or obsessive anxiety associated with eating or drinking, such as a near-choking experience. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and phobias, as well as non-ED illnesses are quite common co-morbidities, as these can contribute to the restrictive attitude or fears of food or liquid intake.

Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED)
OSFED is an umbrella term to describe anyone affected with a kind of Eating Disorder which does not fit the fairly strict criteria used to diagnose the above or a few other particular types of ED. It may mean a person has typical symptoms of a particular eating disorder but to an irregular or lesser degree. It is the most common form of eating disorder and still needs professional treatment and intervention to address both psychological and physical concerns.

Pica
Pica is when a person compulsively and regularly eats substances which are not food. It does not usually involve any restriction of regular food intake, but can be very dangerous depending on what is consumed.

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