Breaking the silence during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week
COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Feb. 23 – March 1 is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.
Children, teens, and adults can face these issues, and sometimes the warning signs can go unnoticed. Eating disorders can affect anyone.
For Ryane Doty, when it comes to talking about eating disorders, it’s personal.
“I have struggled, I guess, my whole life with binge eating disorder and have done a lot of work surrounding that,” Doty said. “At one point, I weighed 350 pounds. Through learning about binge eating disorder and going through therapy myself and somebody that was really trained to help me with that, I’ve actually been in recovery from my binge eating disorder for about 7 years now.”
She says she wouldn’t be where she is today if she had walked the journey alone.
“Through my own personal journey, I decided I wanted to learn more about it because I am passionate about it and I want people to get the help,” Doty said. “If I can provide a safe, non-judgmental environment to help them get that help, then I want to be that resource for them.”
Doty says Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions often mistaken for phases or lifestyle changes.
“But it’s really not that. A lot of times, underlying mental health issues contribute to eating disorders. Eating disorders can affect a person’s health, emotional well-being, relationships, and they can actually be very life-threatening if they go untreated,” Doty said.
Lara Flores is the Mental Health Manager at Allegro Mental Health. She says early detection and intervention are some key goals when it comes to this topic.
“Someone who is struggling with an eating disorder, 9 times out of 10, they have that co-occurring or underlying mental health issue that needs to be touched on before we can start healing with the eating disorder,” Flores said.
Some of the most common types of eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating disorder, and avoidant restrictive food intake disorder.
anorexia nervosa is typically characterized by restrictive eating and sometimes has a distorted body image. Oftentimes, with these patients, Doty says they see significant weight loss or failure to maintain an adequate weight.
Bulimia Nervosa is typically characterized by recurring binge eating episodes with compensatory behaviors such as vomiting, excessive exercise, and laxative abuse.
Binge eating disorder is a frequent or recurring episode of eating large amounts of food and feeling out of control. Shame and distress often come with these episodes.
Avoidant and restrictive food intake disorder usually has an extreme restriction related to sensory sensitivity or fear of choking. This can come with a general lack of interest in food. These often come with nutritional deficiencies and weight concerns.
Doty says some common early warning signs of an eating disorder include obsessive calorie counting, strict food rules, skipping meals, extreme dieting, making frequent trips to the restroom after meals, rapid weight changes, excessive exercise, mood changes, and withdrawing from social situations involving food.
“A lot of times, what I see is a co-occurring mental health condition. A lot of times, we see anxiety, depression, OCD, and even bipolar disorder; there are some genetic and biological factors. There is also a little bit of debate surrounding nature vs. nurture,” Doty said. “One of the risk factors is people who exhibit perfectionistic tendencies, or who are in these high achievement environments. Of course, the big one is societal pressure and diet culture and body image, how the media portrays our body images and things. And one of the big risk factors I would have to say is trauma.”
Because these disorders involve restrictive eating and purging episodes, they can throw the body into serious medical conditions by throwing electrolytes off.
Others that don’t involve compensatory behaviors can cause one to develop larger body weights, metabolic concerns, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.
“Recovery is possible,” Doty said. “There is support available, and no one has to struggle alone.”
“Healing is possible,” Flores said.
Doty says awareness helps increase knowledge, compassion, promote body acceptance and mental health awareness, connect people with lifesaving resources, and help create safer spaces for people to break the silence and heal.
Resources are available for those struggling, such as the National Eating Disorder Association, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Suicide and Crisis Hotline – 988, registered dieticians, campus counseling services, and local therapists and medical professionals that specialize in eating disorders, such as Doty with Allegro Mental Health.
Doty says sometimes people aren’t ready to engage with professionals yet. For those, she recommends books to learn more, such as Goodbye ED Hello Me, Life Without ED, and 90 Ways in 90 Days.
Allegro Mental Health also offers services for medication management, a therapist who can provide psychotherapy, and a massage therapist is on staff.
For more information call (662)329-3973 or text (662) 500-0755.
