The way a person treats an eating disorder depends on the situation of each specific individual. Those who have eating disorders spend a lot of time going to different physicians, trying to figure out how to medically treat their disorder.
Stress can trigger an eating disorder, which is why avoiding the doctor’s office is the best choice for some people.
Treating an eating disorder naturally is possible. The root of the disorder may stem from psychological reasons, like low self-esteem or anxiety. Anxiety counseling in East Lyme, CT can help with naturally treating an eating disorder.
Regardless of the reason behind it, treating an eating disorder naturally is worth a try.
What does it mean to have an eating disorder?
Many millennials grew up watching movies where eating disorders were glamorized. Movies often portray a female character who makes herself throw up or refuses to eat in order to look better. Though these types of situations do happen, this halved visualization of eating disorders negates the severity of it.
Eating disorders are serious conditions revolving around continuous eating habits. Eating disorders degrade one’s health, emotions, and their ability to function in all aspects of their life. The most common eating disorders that people are familiar with are anorexia nervosa, binge-eating disorder, and bulimia nervosa.
Types of Eating Disorders
With a better understanding of each disorder, one can better treat eating disorders, naturally. So here is a list of eating disorders:
- Anorexia Nervosa – a potentially life-threatening eating disorder. Includes self-starvation and excessive weight loss in a short time.
- Bulimia Nervosa – also potentially life-threatening. Includes a cycle of binge eating followed by atoning behaviors, such as self-induced vomiting. Atoning behavior is an attempt to undo the effects of binge eating.
- Binge Eating Disorder (BED) – a serious eating disorder. Characterized by recurrent binge eating without the use of atoning weight control behaviors.
- Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID) – eating and feeding disturbances or avoidance, resulting in significant weight loss and other medical complications.
There is also another category, Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED). This is a kind of an alternative category. The majority of those with eating disorders do not fall within the guidelines for anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder. Instead, they are classified as OSFED.
To have an OSFED diagnosis, one must have eating behaviors that cause crucial medical distress and impairment in their ability to function. However, they do not meet the full criteria for any other eating disorders.
An explanation as to why the candidate does not meet the criteria for any of the other eating disorders should be notated.
Another category of eating disorders is Unspecified Feeding or Eating Disorder (UFED). Here, behaviors cause clinically significant distress/impairment to one’s ability to function. Again, this eating disorder does not meet the full criteria of any of the Feeding or Eating Disorder criteria.
UFED may be used by physicians when they decide not to specify why criteria are not met. This includes times where there may not be enough information to make a specific diagnosis.
Learning Body Awareness through Therapy and Yoga
Partaking in body awareness therapy is a great therapeutic tool to treat eating disorders. This approach connects you to every aspect of your body. It focuses on intentional movement awareness. Body awareness therapy forces people to pay attention to their bodies and how they care for their bodies in the space around them.
Those who complete this kind of treatment with anorexia, bulimia, and UFED have claimed to experience a lack of body and self-awareness before starting the therapy.
Similarly, one of the goals for yoga is to be mindful and connect not only with your body but your mind, too. Yoga can help to reduce stress and promote clear functional thinking.
Another good thing about yoga is that it is a form of exercise. Yoga is a low-impact exercise with slow movements that nurture people into becoming more in tune with their bodies.
All-in-all, yoga has left people experiencing fewer negative eating habits, positive feelings, and a sense of well-being, less self-objectification, and a more positive body image.
The effects of yoga are so inclusive that sometimes, yoga therapy is used in marriage counseling as well as other forms of therapy.
Using Acupuncture and Relaxation Therapy
Acupuncture originates from Chinese medicine and consists of an acupuncturist inserting tiny, sterile needles into certain points in your body. It improves one’s overall health. After several sessions, you can experience improvement in mental and physical health, symptoms of depression, and a sense of self-control.
Another way to increase positive attitudes towards recovery is through relaxation therapy such as massage as a form of treatment. It can increase levels of serotonin and dopamine while decreasing levels of depression, stress, and anxiety.
Those with eating disorders can benefit from lower stress hormones, decreased body dissatisfaction, and increased dopamine and norepinephrine levels. Similar relaxation therapy treatments are aromatherapy and meditation, which both result in benefits to lowering stress.
General Ways to Naturally Treat Eating Disorders
Follow healthy lifestyle habits to help defeat eating disorders. This can be self-care such as regular exercise, maintaining meals, and sticking to your treatment plan.
Engaging in social activities with friends and family, or even distracting yourself from watching the scale or the mirror with animal therapy for anxiety can also help to combat eating disorders.
Eat a healthy diet by making healthy recipes as smart food choices instead of eating junk food that would leave you sluggish and feeling bad about yourself. Putting bad things into your body are not helpful when trying to change how you feel.
Get support from others. This support can be from using social media outlets as inspiration to keep going, making friends who will support you and push you, or even by joining support groups with people who struggle with the same disorder as you.
You can even find support through general sessions of counseling in Southeastern Connecticut. There are many different resources and options for help when trying to fight an eating disorder.
Don’t be discouraged when combating eating disorders. You are not alone, and there are several ways you can help yourself by naturally fighting it.
