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do I have disordered eating?

I see a eating behaviors on a spectrum or continuum.

The spectrum ranges from so-called ‘normal eating’ (if that even exists nowadays) to disordered eating. Certain types of eating behaviors can gradually shift into an official eating disorder and/or food addiction.

Where on the disordered eating spectrum would you place yourself?

How many of the 25 physical, mental, emotional or social factors listed below stop you from enjoying a happy and fulfilling life?

If there’s more than a handful or so, you don’t have to work through any of this alone. Reach out to explore how we can work together.

25 questions about disordered eating

Physical: How often does your body suffer because …

  1. You can’t say no to a food craving – you have to have it
  2. Once you start binge-eating, you can’t stop
  3. You’ve eaten way past the point of fullness, to the point of discomfort
  4. You wake up feeling hung-over, bloated, sluggish, and sometimes nauseous
  5. Your clothes are too tight (but you don’t want to buy new ones until you lose weight)
  6. Your weight fluctuates up and down like a yo-yo
  7. You feel tired a lot of the time because you are eating so much junk
  8. You feel like you’re stuck in a cycle

Mental: How much time do you think about or obsess over …

  1. Food you’ve already eaten, should eat, shouldn’t eat, plan to eat, want to eat, wish you hadn’t eaten
  2. How much weight you’ve gained, lost, regained or want to lose
  3. How much exercise you used to do, don’t want to do, should be doing, are doing now, wish you were doing
  4. How different your life would be if you were a certain size or weight
  5. Whether or not there is any diet or weight loss scheme you haven’t tried

Emotional: How much time do you spend hating how you feel because …

  1. You can’t seem to control your eating, at least not for very long, and certainly not as long as you used to
  2. You can’t let anyone see what or how much you eat
  3. You’re tired of feeling frustrated, disappointed, ashamed, guilty and hopeless
  4. You wake up feeling bad because of what you’ve eaten the night before
  5. You go to sleep feeling bad because of what you’ve eaten that day
  6. You let the scale decide whether your day will be a good or bad day
  7. You feel stuck — you’ve been here too many times before

Social: How often do you avoid social situations because …

  1. You can’t commit to anything in case you have a binge or purge session, or both
  2. You avoid getting together with friends whenever food is involved, so they won’t comment on how much or how little you are eating
  3. You avoid parties because of the food that’s usually there — you won’t be able to stop thinking about it, and worry that others might see you eat
  4. You don’t feel good about the way you look
  5. You can’t go to the gym because you’re embarrassed about how you look in gym clothes

feature image by Muhammad Ma’ruf from Pixabay