Let's first touch on the definition of an eating disorder. An eating disorder is a mental illness, meeting certain criteria of the DSM V, where a person typically has a debilitating fear of gaining weight. Depending on the disorder depends on what behaviors the individual acts out because of the disorder. The two most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. The three most common ways of these people losing weight are restricting (not eating as much or skipping meals), over exercising, and purging (self-induced vomiting, laxative abuse, etc.). You can read more on the page "Eating Disorders Info."
All people with eating disorders are miserable inside, even if they portray happiness and excitement. So many times people are torn; she or he truly wants to recover and not have to deal with this killer anymore, but many times the disorder has controlled him or her for years and they are scared of life without it.
Unfortunately, there are some who are not ready for recovery and embrace their disorder. They can't see how deadly this disease is; they don't even see it as a disease. To them, it's a genius way to lose weight. These people are called "pro-ana" (for anorexia), "pro-mia" (for bulimia), or "pro-ed" (for eating disorders). For the purpose of this blog post, I'm only going to refer to pro-ana, but it will be meant to cover all of the above.
These people congregate together, making communities of (many times) women encouraging each others' negative and unhealthy disordered behaviors. There are several pro-ana websites on the internet. These sites are extremely dangerous, whether a person is pro-ana, pro-recovery, or simply browsing the web on ways to lose weight. If you are concerned about someone you love, especially if you are a parent, please pay close attention. The following information could change the direction of recovery.
These websites encourage the slowest form of suicide. Yes, you read that correctly. Starving yourself to death, dying of a heart attack before the age of 30, or having your esophagus rupture while you're purging are not quick or painless deaths.
These websites encourage deadlines for losing a certain amount of weight. They give tips on what to eat, what not to eat, how to handle laxative dependence without medical attention, and into how small of bites to cut your food. They give instructions on what exercises work best to lose the most weight the fastest, what you can take prior to a meal to increase your metabolism, and which foods and drinks will help you lose water weight. You can only be friends with others who think like you. As one website says, "Friends just get in the way. You have us." Of course, the truth behind that is that eating disorders feed off of secrecy. If you tell your REAL friends about what is going on, they may actually care and - God forbid - try and get you help!
Having personally been in over my head with anorexia, I remember talking to others who
thought this way and thinking that I wasn't alone. But once I devoted myself to recovery, I was terrified but again saw that I wasn't alone.
The pro-ana people break my heart. It makes me sad to know that they don't care enough about themselves to get help. There is a saying in the ED recovery community: The only perfect anorexic is a dead one. No matter how much a person reaches out to these people, that will be their fate until they personally decide to begin recovery.
Believing in or being proud of this disease is simply toxic...as are the people stuck in that mind frame. Recovery is hard but completely worth it.
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