African Americans Can Develop Eating Disorders

I have a friend; I will call her Beth. She wanted to become a model and after a while she came to the conclusion that she was too fat so she was going to lose some weight. Everyone told her that she was not fat, but she was determined to lose natural curvy figure.

A couple of month later, since the diet was producing the shape she wanted she decided that she would start taking diet pills. I soon discovered that she was not only taking diet pills she was also purging the little food that she did eat. When I confronted her about it she laughed and told us “don t be crazy that is a white girl problem.”

That statement is a common thought when you think of eating disorders. And yes, a lot of African Americans may accept their body shape but to think that we could not develop eating disorders is incorrect.

This is going to be a three-part story. The first part is going to give definition of the most common eating disorder is and the signs. The second part will discuss how are African Americans are effected by eating disorders. And the final part will discuss the treatments for them.

The most common ones are anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating or compulsive over eating. We have all heard of these disorders in the news but exactly what are they

Anorexia Nervosa- “anorexia happens when a person has a pronounced fear of weight gain and a dread of becoming fat even though they are under weight. The two subtypes are restricting type (a person maintains their low body weight purely by restricting food intake and increased activities), and binge-eating/purging type (a person restricts their food intake but also regularly engage in binge eating and/or purging behavior).” (http://www.edreferral.com/anorexia_nervo...

Bulimia Nervosa- “a person who suffers from this disorder regularly engage in discrete periods of overeating, which are followed by attempts to compensate for overeating and to avoid weight gain. This disorder divided into two subtypes. The purging type (a person regular compensation vomiting, laxative abuse, diuretic and enemas) and non-purging type (describes individuals who compensate through dietary fasting or excessive exercising).” (http://www.edreferral.com/bulimia_nervos...

Binge Eating- according to an article on the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital “binge eating resembles bulimia nervosa and is characterized by episodes of uncontrolled eating or bingeing. It differs from bulimia because its suffers do not purge their bodies of the excess food, via vomiting, laxative abuse or diuretic abuse.” (http://www.jeffersonhospital.org/show.as...

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