Different Types of Eating Disorders and Effective Treatment Options

An eating disorder is a mental health condition that involves abnormal eating habits such as overeating, undereating, or eating nonfood items. Symptoms may vary, but the common thread underlying them all is an unhealthy preoccupation with food, body image, and/or weight that negatively impacts your physical and emotional health, makes it hard to focus on other aspects of life, and robs you of your joy.

The 2022 text revision edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5-TR) recognizes eight different types of eating disorders.

Eating disorders can manifest at any age and affect people of any gender, race, or background. Left unchecked, they can lead to serious health problems and, in extreme cases, even death.

Studies indicate that eating disorders are the most lethal of all mental health conditions. According to the Eating Disorders Coalition (EDC), at least one person loses his or her life because of an eating disorder every 62 minutes.

How can I tell if I or someone I know has an eating disorder?

Not all warning signs of an eating disorder are externally visible, but some possible red flags include:

• Weight fluctuations.
• Spending an excessive amount of time thinking about food, weight, and/or body image.
• Obsessing over food, calories, or body size and shape.
• Constantly trying different diets to lose weight.
• Frequent fasting or skipping meals.
• Continually making excuses for not eating or to avoid eating with others.
• Compulsive exercising.
• Feeling out of control when eating.
• Frequent comments about being fat or flawed.
• Eating large amounts of food in the middle of the night.
• Unusual eating habits such as eating quickly or rigid adherence to specific foods.
• Engaging in rituals around food and eating such as excessive chewing, cutting food into small pieces, or keeping foods from touching.
• Dressing in layers or baggy body-concealing clothes.
• Feeling uncomfortable eating in public.
• Hiding or hoarding food.
• Repeatedly weighing oneself.
• Frequently checking self in the mirror for perceived flaws.

Different Types of Eating Disorders Recognized by DSM-5-TR

Anorexia

People with anorexia have a severely distorted self-image and an intense fear of gaining weight. They are obsessed with the need to be thinner even when they are already underweight and will drastically limit the amount of food they eat.

Anorexia is a potentially life-threatening disorder and has been linked to the highest mortality rate of all mental health conditions.

Bulimia

People with bulimia have a fear of gaining weight but lack control over their eating. As a result, they binge eat large quantities of food and then try to offset the amount of calories they consume by purging, fasting, or compulsive exercising. Common ways of purging include self-induced vomiting or the excessive use of laxatives, enemas, or diuretics.

Binge eating disorder

Binge eating disorder is like bulimia in that the person binges on large amounts of food in a short period. He or she has no control over his or her eating, is unable to stop, and will continue to eat even after feeling full.

Unlike bulimia, however, people with binge eating disorder do not try to compensate by purging or exercising to work off the calories consumed. Instead, they feel guilty or ashamed and follow up with another binge. As a result, they tend to be overweight or obese.

Rumination disorder

People with rumination disorder regurgitate partially digested food they have already chewed and swallowed, re-chew it, and then either swallow it again or spit it out. Unlike self-induced purging, however, rumination is an involuntary action.

Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID)

People with avoidant restrictive food intake disorder lack an interest in eating and have an aversion to specific sensory characteristics of foods such as tastes, smells, colors, or textures. They will only eat a select number of things and may also have a fear of choking or vomiting.

As a result, people with ARFID are likely to experience malnourishment along with weight loss because they do not consume enough calories and nutrients to support their essential body functions.

Pica

People with pica crave and consume nonfood items such as dirt, chalk, pebbles, soap, hair, paint chips, cloth, paper, crayons, or ice. Consuming these items can cause severe, potentially life-threatening complications.

Other specified feeding and eating disorders (OSFED)

This category includes eating disorders that have symptoms like anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder, and cause the person distress, but do not meet the full criteria for being diagnosed as any one of them. Some examples of OSFEDs are:

Purging disorder

People with purging disorder regularly engage in purging behavior to control their weight, but they do not engage in binge eating.

Night eating syndrome

People with night-eating syndrome regularly wake up during the night and consume large amounts of food, sometimes even more than what they eat during the day.

Unspecified feeding or eating disorder (UFED)

Unspecified feeding or eating disorder is applied to people whose symptoms do not meet the full criteria for any of the other disorders or when there isn’t enough information to make a more specific diagnosis.

Eating Disorders Not Officially Recognized as Such by DSM-5-TR

Compulsive overeating

Compulsive overeating is like binge eating disorder, except that the compulsive overeater eats large amounts of food all day long as opposed to just binging in spurts.

Prader-Willi Syndrome

Prader-Willi Syndrome is an inherited genetic disease that leads to compulsive overeating and obesity. It begins with weak muscles and a poor ability to feed, but as the child gets older, the disease causes insatiable hunger.

Diabulimia

Diabulimia is descriptive of people who have diabetes and who intentionally skip their insulin dosage to induce weight loss.

Orthorexia

People with orthorexia are so obsessed with eating food they feel is healthy and pure that their whole life revolves around their food plan.

Emotional overeating

Emotional overeaters turn to food for comfort, as well as to help them cope with their emotions.

Effective Treatment Options for Different Types of Eating Disorders

Although treatment depends on your particular disorder, all different types of eating disorders can be successfully treated with the right support. Typically, treatment includes a combination of medical care and monitoring, nutritional counseling, and a psychotherapy technique such as:

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)

Cognitive behavioral therapy involves learning how to recognize and change distorted thought patterns that drive your emotions and behaviors and perpetuate the disorder.

Enhanced cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT-E)

Enhanced cognitive behavioral therapy is an evidence-based form of CBT that is specifically designed for eating disorders.

Maudsley method

The Maudsley method is a family-based therapy with the best evidence for teenagers with anorexia or bulimia. Treatment is focused on behavior change and teaching the family how to facilitate it.

Parents take charge of preparing and supervising meals and implementing strategies to prevent eating disorder behaviors such as purging or excessive exercise to help their child return to good physical health and resume normal psychological and social development.

Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT)

Dialectical behavioral therapy uses emotional regulation to treat eating disorders. It is a combination of CBT and mindfulness techniques. Treatment involves helping you use mindfulness skills to stay in the moment and become aware of your thoughts, emotions, and body sensations without judging them or acting on them.

If you are struggling with body image or feel you have an eating disorder, you do not have to go through this alone. Please reach out to us today to set up an appointment with one of the faith-based counselors in our online directory. Your worth is not defined by your shape or the number on your scale, but rather by who God created you to be.