New Year’s has recently come and gone and everybody is working on their new year’s resolutions, one of the most popular being weight loss. With 29,533 eating disorder-related hospital stays in 2000- 2009 it is important to love your body and lose weight in a healthy way.
It’s not a secret that pop culture on television and in magazines puts a lot of pressure on young women to be thin. Under the pressure they turn to binging and purging, and/or starvation.
“I see girls on TV and all I look at is their thighs because I hate mine” said junior, Julia Leone.
Leone doesn’t have a traditional eating disorder, but because she feels the need to be thin she has been on a fruit and vegetable only diet for the past week. She says she has lost seven pounds so far but is very moody. It is important to maintain a healthy and balanced diet in order to function.
What a lot of girls don’t understand is that eating disorders are a psychiatric problem as opposed to a physical one. Girls feel that they are fat and so they see themselves that way. Because of this image they have of themselves they create mental blocks that keep them from eating and purging everything they do.
Anorexia and bulimia are not the only forms of eating disorders, girls who over exercise or abuse laxatives suffer from the same weight obsession.
It is important to love your body and take care of it in a healthy way.
For more information on body images issues and how to help a friend in need visit the University Campus Health site at http://www.health.arizona.edu/caps_clinical_services_eating_disorders.htm