How to Take a Self Test for Eating Disorders

An eating disorder is an irresistible persistent impulse to eat or avoid eating, which can lead to a negative impact on both the physical and mental state of an individual. This type of disorder may not sound that severe but it can potentially become a life-threatening condition. Those who have eating disorders such as binge eating, bulimia and anorexia nervosa do not only suffer from serious food issues but also struggle from behavioral and emotional problems. When you feel that you are battling an eating disorder, it is very important for you to take a self test-- in order to recognize your problem and get help immediately before it's too late. Here are some useful tips on how to take a self test for eating disorders.

Instructions

• 1

  Observe how often you think about food. When you think of food most of the time, this can be a sign of an eating disorder. Excessive indulgence of food sets in, especially in situations where you are depressed, down or sad. You usually find comfort in food and you find it difficult to stop once you start eating. You always crave for food and go on eating even if you are not hungry.

• 2

  Notice how you repeatedly avoid food. Because of your fear of gaining weight, you implement severe dieting restrictions. You become too preoccupied about how much you weigh that you begin to calculate the amount of calories or grams of fat are on the food you are eating. Even if you have already calculated the amount of food you ate, you still feel guilty about it. A little bit of a weight gain, makes you so depressed that your diet can progress to a complete avoidance of food--since you believe that “not eating” is the only way to maintain your figure.

• 3

  Take note of how you dislike eating with others. With an eating disorder, you will find it uncomfortable eating with other people, including your family. You prefer eating alone because you are trying to avoid others bugging you about your eating habits, and are afraid that people might talk about how and what you eat. You may also just not like to be interrupted when you are eating.

• 4

  Monitor your exercise routine. When you have an eating disorder, you often feel anxious, depressed and guilty when you are not able to perform your exercise routine regularly. You become so compulsive about your workout schedule that you often push yourself far beyond your limits as a punishment for missing an exercise session.

• 5

  Try to know about how conscious you are regarding your weight. You are too concerned about your weight that you usually weigh yourself more than once in a day. And when you do weigh yourself, you often feel ungrateful about it--you either feel angry or sad with the result even if it's not at all bad.

• 6

  Think about how constantly you worry over your body image. This is another sign that you have a problem. You always feel that you are fat even if other people say that you're not. And you start to wear bigger sized clothes because you have this belief that baggy clothes will cover your excess fats--when in fact, you don't have any. Shopping for clothes is not fun for you anymore since you feel like nothing looks good on you. You begin to dislike looking at your self in the mirror and you also begin to avoid cameras since you hate seeing yourself in pictures.

• 7

  Contemplate about the methods you are using just to counteract your intense craving for food. You know that you are battling a eating disorder when you start to induce yourself to vomit after you eat, just to make yourself feel better. You also start using different sorts of diet pills or laxatives to put an end to your binging.

• 8

  Keep watch of some changes in the state of your health. When you develop any type of eating disorder, you begin to feel some unusual changes in your system. You may feel colder even with slight decrease in temperature. You may also suffer from dizziness and fainting spells when you stand up for a certain period of time. Breathing difficulty sets in even after a simple body workout; and menstruation schedules often become irregular and sometimes come to a halt.