2. ANOREXIA AND OBESITY: TWO
SIDES OF THE SAME COIN
• Unrealistic body types portrayed through various media outlets. These images and expectations
of beauty feed into poor self image and unhealthy expectations of beauty.
• No valuable source of healthy food options for consumers. Most consumers believe it is easier,
quicker, and cheaper to buy junk food than healthy food.
• The perception of a healthy individual is focused more on outward appearance instead of internal
health.
Anorexia and obesity are two types of eating disorders which vary drastically in
appearance, yet they are both physically and mentally detrimental to those individuals
who live with these conditions in a society that does not support developing a healthy
body image.
Society Sells:
3. WHAT IS ANOREXIA NERVOSA?
According to Health Making Choices for life,
Anorexia Nervosa is a mental disorder
characterized by :
• Extremely low body weight
• Body image distortion
• Individuals see fat where there is none
• Severe Calorie Restriction
• Refusal to maintain a normal body weight
• Obsessive fear of gaining weight
• Individuals will refuse to eat or have eating
patterns that tightly restrict food intake
(Lynch, 195)
4. WHAT IS OBESITY?
A weight disorder that results in:
• Excess accumulations of
nonessential body fat
• places individuals at a increased risk
for developing health issues
• A weight resulting in a BMI (body
mass index) of 30 or higher (Lynch,
174)
5. WHAT ARE THE HEALTH EFFECTS?
Anorexia Nervosa
• Changes in brain chemistry
• Moody
• hair thins and breaks
• Low blood pressure & heart rate
• Heart palpitations
• Anemia
• Weak muscles & bone loss
• Kidney stones & failure
• Irregular body fluids
• Bowel problems
• Fertility and pregnancy complications
• Bruise easily
• grows fine hair all over body
Obesity
• High blood pressure
• Type 2 diabetes
• Abnormal blood lipids
• Coronary heart disease
• Stroke
• Cancers
• Osteoarthritis
• Sleep apnea
• Gallbladder disease
• Fatty liver disease
• Fertility and pregnancy complications
(Lynch, 196, 179-181)
6. HOW ARE ANOREXIA AND OBESITY
SIMILAR?
• Poor body image and unhealthy eating are
linked to development of anorexia and obesity.
• Anorexia and obesity can both stem from a
poor relationship with food.
• Both cause internal health risks that can shorten
your life span.
• Depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders
are associated with both eating disorders and
obesity.
• Our society contributes to both eating disorders
and obesity.
(Michaewa)
7. HOW IS ANOREXIA AND OBESITY
DIFFERENT?
• Anorexia is basically self starvation. The individuals don’t feel hunger cues like the
normal brain.
• Obese individuals have over active hunger cues, or they may use food to cope with
emotions.
• With obesity, food is the disease; with anorexia, food is the cure.
(Live Science)
9. • In conclusion, while there are many of the same internal struggles, feeling
inadequate, having poor self esteem body image, that lead to an eating disorder of
anorexia or obesity, they manifest themselves in very different ways. Unhealthy
habits develop to try to shape a person into their perceived idea of a perfect body.
Yet, this perfect body, one that society often pushes, cannot be attained. Society
sells an image that is killing people to attempt to attain.
• Whether your brain listens a little or a lot to the hunger cues, the people struggling
with these disorders are struggling. They need a society that doesn’t sell them a low
self-esteem. They need a society that sells them support and a healthy image of
what they can become.
10. WORKS CITED:
• Hill, Laura. “Eating disorders from the inside out.” YouTube, TedTalksX , 31 Oct.
2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEysOExcwrE.
• Lynch, April , et al. “Chapter 7: Body Image, Body Weight: Achieving a Healthy
Balance.” Health Making choices for Life, second ed., Pearson, 2014, pp. 174–199.
Custom edition for Ozarks Technical Community College.
• Michaewa. “Sign In.” At Health, 23 Oct. 2013, athealth.com/topics/eating-
disorders-and-obesity-2/.
• Live Science. “Anorexic and Obese Brains Differ.” LiveScience, Purch, 15 May
2012, www.livescience.com/20315-anorexic-obese-brains- differ.html.
Editor's Notes
Speaker notes:
This topic is important to anyone who has ever been disappointed with the way their body looks. Typically, that is a struggle that many women deal with, yet a growing number of men are suffering as well. There are dangers caused by both disorders, but society still promotes images that create unhealthy images. Movies and advertisements, with the recent exception of Dove, always display women and men with perfect bodies and faces. Magazine shoots are photoshopped to make the already skinny models skinnier. The visuals put in front of society are of people with perfect looking bodies.
People go to the store to buy food that will help them achieve this perfect body. However, it is commonly believed that junk food is cheaper. It is more convenient. It is quicker. Healthy food takes time, costs more, and is complicated to prepare. In an effort to meet the demands of the consumer, companies try to create cheap and quick healthy foods. Their labels are not always as accurate as they would lead the consumer to believe. Naked, a healthy drink that was marketed as organic, was in the news in the past couple of years for mislabeling their product. Money, not the health of the consumer was the bottom line.
Society makes money off of keeping the consumer with a low self-esteem. What society sells does not help the mental struggles of eating disorders, whether it is anorexia or obesity.
Anorexia is more than just not eating. Body image distortion creates a delusional image of what they look like and creates an image of what they want to look like. Due to the distortion, they would never achieve their goal. Physically, they try to reach the goal by limiting their food intake to drastically low daily calories.
Obesity is more than just eating too much. For emotional or physical reasons, a persons body accumulates more fat than they need. For some people, eating food is an addiction. For some, health issues and medicines cause weight gain.
When looking the outside, anorexia and obesity look like you are just too small or too big. Bodies are designed to be healthy and functioning. Both too little and too much weight can create problems that interfere with the healthy functioning of the body. While some of the effects are different, the health of the person suffering from one is decreasing, just as it is decreasing for the person suffering from the other.
Physically, they do not look the same. Yet, the people who struggle with any eating disorder experiences similar internal struggles. The person who is “too thin” or “too fat” typically has a poor body image. Nothing is as simple as just doing something. They don’t just go bowling. They think about what they are going to wear so no one will notice how big or little they are. They think about what food will or won’t be there. They think about who is going to be there, and how they compare to that persons perceived perfect body. They mentally fight a battle before they leave their house. And sometimes, they mental battle is too much, and they isolate themselves at home. Missing out because of the depression and anxiety that they can not control. Not only do they sometimes miss out on life because of the mental battles, they miss out on life because of a shortened life span.
Whether the person has anorexia or obesity, it is an exhausting disorder for the person.
The physical differences seem obvious, yet those are just the outward consequences of internal causes. While the brains of each disorder are wired in a way that creates an unhealthy body image, the specifics are different. Anorexia wiring creates a fear or food. Obesity wiring creates a chemical imbalance where fat is stored. This could be for many reasons. According to research, “Many causes have been suggested for obesity, including genetics, viral infections, and even chemicals in food, but most likely it's a complex disease with many different causes” (Live Science).
Food. Some are addicted to it. Some fear it. A healthy relationship with food is a cure for both obesity and anorexia. For obesity, learning to control what is sometimes an addiction is the cure. For anorexia, learning to accept that it is part of life needed to sustain a healthy life is the cure.
In this video, Dr. Laura Hill shows that mentally anorexia is more than just wanting to be thin. There is a science behind the madness. There is a “mental noise” that follows those dealing with anorexia. Dr. Hill explains the mental noise of the disorder so succinctly with examples from her patients, that this is a video any person struggling with a disorder needs to watch. Her goal is to have people learn to turn down the mental noise in order to function and live a full life.
