Symptoms of Anorexia

The following are co-occurring disorders that are commonly found with eating disorders:

• Anxiety.
• Depression.
• Substance abuse/alcohol.
• Self-injury.
• Borderline personality disorder (BPD)
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

The eating disorders anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa present with comorbidity in a number of important areas, including depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders (obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder and other phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorder) and substance abuse.

• You don’t eat enough, so you’re underweight.
• Your self-esteem is based on the way your body looks.
• You are obsessed with and terrified of gaining weight.
• It’s hard for you to sleep through the night.
• Dizziness or fainting.
• Your hair is falling out.
• You no longer get your period.
• Constipation.

They may deny having a low body weight. Other physical signs include puffy cheeks, knuckle calluses from vomiting, hair loss, dry hair or skin, sensitivity to cold, absent or irregular menstruation, excessive facial or body hair, unusual sleep patterns, or feeling faint or tired.

The body will store the extra calories as fat. This is because the body is now primed to replenish the lost fat stores, not lean muscle, lost during starvation. Starving to lose weight makes your body more likely, in the long run, to replenish fat. It uses the new basal metabolic rate from starvation mode.

Exercise plans

1. Do cardio. To lose fat and gain or maintain muscle mass, do moderate- to high-intensity cardio for at least 150 minutes per week.
2. Increase intensity. Increase the intensity of your workouts to challenge yourself and burn calories.
3. Continue to strength train.
4. Take a rest.

Other research on alternate-day fasting has shown that 25–40 minutes of exercise on a bike or elliptical three times per week can help maintain lean mass during weight loss ( 17 ). Overall, performing exercise is highly recommended for maintaining muscle during intermittent fasting ( 8 , 16 ).

Starvation is usually caused by an overly simplistic scheduling algorithm. For example, if a (poorly designed) multi-tasking system always switches between the first two tasks while a third never gets to run, then the third task is being starved of CPU time. An example is maximum throughput scheduling.

“You’re consuming your own muscle, including the heart muscle.” In the late stages of starvation, people can experience hallucinations, convulsions and disruptions in heart rhythm.

During starvation, most tissues utilise fatty acids and/or ketone bodies to spare glucose for the brain. Glucose utilisation by the brain is decreased during prolonged starvation as the brain utilises ketone bodies as the major fuel.

Your body will use stored glucose as energy and continue to function as though you’ll be eating again soon. After eight hours without eating, your body will begin to use stored fats for energy. Your body will continue to use stored fat to create energy throughout the remainder of your 24-hour fast.

Restricted eating, malnourishment, and excessive weight loss can lead to changes in our brain chemistry, resulting in increased symptoms of depression and anxiety (Centre for Clinical Interventions, 2018b). These changes in brain chemistry and poor mental health outcomes skew reality.

Cerebral atrophy — or what’s known as “starved brain” — is a common complication of anorexia nervosa and describes a loss of brain mass due to starvation. Friends: the brain runs on glucose (what carbs are broken down into). It needs fuel in order to function properly.

(2012) reported those with anorexia have an increased top-down, prefrontal cortex (thinking and decision-making part of the brain) combined with reduced bottom-up somatosensory (body awareness; appetite) response around images of food.

Brain Recovery After Anorexia Parents of patients with anorexia report a range of time, from six months to two-plus years for full “brain healing” to occur.

Directed-forgetting: individuals with eating disorders, particularly anorexia nervosa, display more difficulty in forgetting information or cues related to body, shape and food than those without eating disorders. This leads to greater availability of such memories, facilitating the maintenance of the eating disorder.

Because an individual with anorexia is eating at an extremely restricted level, the muscles throughout the digestive system can begin to weaken and atrophy. In turn, a condition called gastroparesis develops in which the process of emptying the stomach becomes significantly slower or even stops altogether.