12 Types Of Eating Disorder And How To Recognize Them

Most people will have heard of, or even be familiar with, anorexia, and perhaps bulimia, but there are actually many more recognized eating disorders than these two.

While some people may make fun of people with some of these disorders, it is a larger problem than you might imagine.

For example, it is estimated that almost 10% of Americans suffer from some type of eating disorder, with over 20 people a day dying because of it.

It is also worth noting that men are affected too – at about half the rate of women.

This guide provides information about these disorders, and how to recognize their symptoms.

Anorexia Nervosa

Usually just shortened to anorexia, this is the stereotypical eating disorder.

Symptoms include:

• amenorrhoea (i.e. the loss of menstrual periods)
• being overly concerned with dieting, food, body shape, weight, and sometimes exercise
• highly restrictive eating patterns
• intense fear of weight gain or being perceived as fat (either by themselves or others)
• losing a lot of weight but still feeling fat
• refusal to maintain their body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for somebody of their activity level, age, body type, and height

Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)

Some people choose what foods they eat or don’t eat based solely on factors such as their smell, taste, or texture.

In some cases, aversions to foods with certain textures, say, may originate with a particularly bad experience you had previously (e.g. as a child).

In others, people reject some foods because of a fear of choking or vomiting.

ARFID can also be a symptom of Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), something from which I suffer. Apart from being sensitive to continued pressure on my body (especially my feet), whether that pressure be light or heavy, there are some foods I can not bring myself to eat because they make me heave. Such foods, for me, include those with textures that are neither firm nor liquid, including (but not limited to) oatmeal, cereals with milk on, and mayonnaise and other similar products such as salad dressing.

Binge Eating Disorder

As its name suggests, binge eaters consume large amounts of food within a very short period of time – and they often do this in secret.

Note that compulsive overeating, as it’s also known, is not the same as somebody occasionally just “pigging out”.

Symptoms include:

• being obsessive about their body shape and weight
• continual cycles of bingeing and then usually, but not always, purging (typically via diet pills, diuretics, enemas, exercise, fasting, laxatives, and deliberate vomiting)
• feelings of guilt or shame
• frequent dieting
• not being able to stop eating, even after feeling full, because of a feeling of a lack of self-control

Bulimia Nervosa

Again, this is colloquially known as bulimia, and its primary characteristic is trying to get rid of whatever you’ve eaten, almost immediately.

It is very similar to binge eating disorder, except with that, people do not always purge after they eat.

Also, the foods people with bulimia eat are often those they would usually avoid.

Methods for doing this may include the use of diet pills, diuretics, enemas, laxatives, or deliberate vomiting.

Symptoms / side-effects include:

• acid reflux
• dehydration
• electrolyte imbalances, particularly of calcium, potassium, and sodium, which can, at worst, lead to a stroke or heart attack
• hormonal imbalances
• Irritated gut
• sore / inflamed throat
• swollen salivary glands
• tooth decay

Compulsive Exercise

While not directly related to eating itself, this is included because some people exercise excessively because of an overly exaggerated fear of weight gain.

Nobody is saying exercise, in general, is a bad thing – quite the opposite, in fact – but if any of the following are true, then you may be suffering from compulsive exercise disorder:

• you continue to exercise even after injuring yourself or after experiencing medical complications
• you exercise in inappropriate settings or situations
• you exercise at inappropriate times
• your exercise routine interferes with your day-to-day life

Diabulimia

This disorder applies to diabetics (usually, but not always, Type I) who depend on insulin and who deliberately inject less insulin than they need in an attempt to lose weight.

Symptoms include:

• being secretive about their eating habits, as well as their blood sugar levels
• delayed puberty
• depression
• dry skin
• eating more frequently than usual
• excessive exercising
• hair loss
• mood swings
• preference for sugary foods
• sweet-smelling breath, which is a sign of ketoacidosis
• talking a lot about body image
• thirst
• tiredness / fatigue

Night-Eating Syndrome

Some people do most of their eating at night, partly because they have no appetite in the morning, with the result that they may feel agitated and have trouble sleeping, and while this may sound like nothing more than a bad habit, it is now classified as an illness.

Symptoms include:

• a preference for sugary and starchy carbs
• consuming more than half their daily food intake after dinner but before waking up
• eating more food after dinner than during it
• feelings of anxiety or guilt when eating
• insomnia, both in terms of getting to sleep and then staying asleep throughout the night
• not eating breakfast (or, at least, eating very little)
• not eating for several hours after waking up
• snacking during the night
• suffering from depression as well

Orthorexia

There is a distinction between trying to eat a healthy diet and being obsessive about it.

Othorexia is the latter, and people diagnosed with this may, for example, try to eliminate entire food groups (e.g. carbs, sugars).

However, this definition seems somewhat subjective. For example, many people try to eat only organic, non-GMO foods because of concerns about foods that do not meet those criteria. What makes this a grey area is the fact that the official government stance (in the USA at least) is that organic foods are no different to non-organic foods (e.g. in terms of safety and nutritional value) and that GMOs are safe – even though there is a growing body of evidence that this is not true.

So, the more of the following questions you can answer “yes” to, the more likely you are to be diagnosed with orthorexia:

• Do you feel guilty, or do you dislike yourself, if you eat something you do not now consider healthy?
• Do you feel as though you’re in total control when you eat the right way?
• Do you feel more virtue than pleasure about what you eat?
• Do you feel “superior” to those who eat less healthily than you?
• Do you find it hard to eat out (e.g. at a restaurant or family member’s / friend’s house) because of your concern for eating healthily?
• Do you plan tomorrow’s menu today?
• Do you spend more than three hours a day thinking about healthy food?
• Even though the quality of what you eat has improved, do you feel that your quality of life has simultaneously decreased?
• Have you become more strict with yourself?
• Have you eliminated foods you used to enjoy because they do not meet your current criteria for being healthy?
• When you eat healthily, does your sense of self-esteem increase?

Otherwise Specified Feeding Disorder (OSFED)

Sometimes also called Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS), this is like a catch-all name for people with some type of eating disorder that does not fully meet all of the criteria for any of the other recognized disorders.

For example:

• people may meet all of the diagnostic criteria for bulimia nervosa, except their eating binges occur less frequently than normal
• women may meet all of the diagnostic criteria for anorexia nervosa, but they still have their periods

Pica

This is a disorder where people feel a compulsion to eat items that are not food and that have no nutritional value. In addition, the items consumed must not be a normal part of that person’s culture or religion, and it must not be considered socially acceptable by others in that group.

There are many defined subtypes of Pica, including, for example:

• Acuphagia (sharp objects)
• Amylophagia (starch)
• Cautopyreiophagia (burnt matches)
• Coniophagia (dust)
• Coprophagia (feces)
• Emetophagia (vomit)
• Geomelophagia (raw potatoes)
• Geophagia (dirt, soil, clay)
• Hyalophagia (glass)
• Lithophagia (stones)
• Mucophagia (mucus)
• Pagophagia (ice)
• Plumbophagia (lead)
• Trichophagia (hair, wool, and other fibers)
• Urophagia (urine)
• Hematophagia (aka Vampirism) (blood)
• Xylophagia (wood, or derivatives of wood such as paper)

Needless to say, eating some of the above is dangerous!

Unless you see somebody actually eating any of these non-food items, sometimes the only symptoms will be when what they have ingested is causing physical problems.

Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS)

This is a rare, largely hereditary disorder where an insatiable appetite is one of several traits.

The result of this overeating is, not surprisingly, obesity.

Other characteristics of PWS include:

• decreased muscle tone
• emotional liability (which is a neurologic disorder characterized by sudden uncontrollable and unintentional crying or laughing, or other uncontrollable emotional outbursts)
• mental retardation
• short stature

Diagnosis of this condition is usually two-part – clinical assessment followed by genetic testing.

The reason it is listed as an eating disorder is because it is suspected problems with the hypothalamus, which registers feelings of both hunger and repletion, cause the overeating. This problem means that people with PWS never truly feel full – so they keep on eating because they cannot control it.

Rumination Syndrome

This describes a condition where food is regurgitated, either voluntarily or involuntarily, and then rechewed, after which it may be swallowed again, or it may be expelled (i.e. spat out).

This entire process can appear to be effortless, there may be one or more belches first, and it usually does not involve heaving or feelings of nausea.

Symptoms include:

• changes in posture
• halitosis (i.e. bad breath)
• indigestion
• lack of disgust at vomited food being present in their mouth
• lips that are frequently chapped and raw looking
• malnutrition symptoms
• putting their hands inside their mouth
• regurgitation
• respiratory problems (e.g. asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia)
• signs of vomit on the person’s face (e.g. chin, neck), as well as on their clothing
• tooth decay
• weight loss

Conclusion

If nearly 10% of Amercians suffer from some form of eating disorder, there is a good chance that somebody you know (if it’s not yourself) have one.

Hopefully, this guide will help you determine whether anybody close to you is affected, because the one thing most of these disorders have in common is that the behaviour is usually secretive.

Additional Resources

These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:

1. US National Eating Disorders Association (1-800-931-2237)