Eating Issues

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Eating Issues

Welcome to the Rutgers University Eating Issues website. We hope you will find our information useful and find resources that can be of help to you.
Having an eating disorder is much more than just being on a diet. An eating disorder is an illness that permeates all aspects of an individual’s life. Eating disorders are multifaceted in origin and encompass biological, psychological, and social factors.
Dieting is about losing weight in a healthy way. Eating Disorders are about trying to make your whole life better through food and eating, or the lack of.
Dieting is about attempting to control your weight. Eating Disorders are about attempting to control your life and emotions through food/lack of food and often result in demonstrating how out of control a person really feels.
Dieting also leads to slowed metabolic rates and, in many cases, the "yo-yo" dieting which has been shown to have negative health consequences. Lastly, although not everyone who diets develops eating problems, almost everyone who has an eating problem began on that road by dieting.

1. The best defense against binge eating is to eat!
   True. Controlled studies have shown that eating three meals and two snacks at regular times every day reduces binge-eating behavior.
2. Fat people eat more than thin people.
   False. That the average daily caloric intake of fat people is not significantly different than that of thin people has been demonstrated repeatedly in controlled studies.
3. Prolonged calorie restriction can cause you to become preoccupied with food.
   True. During WWII, the effects of starvation (restricting calories by 50% until 25% of body weight was lost, on average, over the six months of the study) was studied, using normal-weight, psychologically-stable subjects. A dramatic increase in food preoccupation was noted- as were binge-eating, depression, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, social withdrawal, and a host of physical problems.
4. Laxative use can help you get rid of the calories consumed in a binge.
   False. Laxatives affect the emptying of the large intestine, which occurs after calories from food have already been absorbed in the small intestine. Studies have shown that even the use of large numbers (50 or more) of laxatives will only reduce calorie absorption by 5-10%. The weight loss that people "see" after laxative use is water lost through dehydration (from diarrhea), which is regained as soon as any liquid is ingested.
5. There is no such thing as an individual's natural or setpoint body weight. Your natural weight is what you make it.
   False. There's a lot of research showing that despite marked changes in caloric intake, body weight remains very stable over time.
6. Dieting speeds up your metabolism.
   False. Our bodies are very efficient. When we reduce caloric intake, our bodies go into "starvation mode" and slow down metabolism, in order to preserve weight. This is why 99% of dieters end up gaining more weight than they lost (after dieting, your reduced metabolism will mean you gain weight eating the same amounts on which you previously maintained your weight).
7. Regular exercise can lower your natural body weight and increase your metabolic efficiency.
   True. Regular exercise can keep your weight at the low end of your set-point range (but this will realistically be unlikely to be any more than a 5% weight loss from pre-exercise set point).
8. If I pig out, my best way to keep my weight down is to skip the next meal.
   False. Skipping meals is likely to lead to overeating and, if done regularly, to binge-eating.
9. Binging and purging just once a week is not really harmful to my body.
   False. Even once-weekly binging and purging (and very few people are able to "control" their binge/purge behavior for very long) can have serious health consequences.
10. If I only lost 10 lbs., everything in my life would be OK.
    False. Eating problems are about feelings, not food or weight! Your focus on losing those 10 lbs. robs you of the energy and time to live your life. Don't weigh your self esteem!

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