Many factors come together to create the perfect storm of eating disorders.

Here are four examples of causes that can trigger eating disorders:

• Cultural Pressure: The media creates perpetual dissatisfaction with how we feel about our weight and bodies. Thinness is equated with popularity, lovability, and success. We compare ourselves unfavorably to actresses, models, social media influencers and sadly conclude we can never get it right!

• Diets Don’t Work: Virtually all eating disorders are set in motion by a weight loss diet! Binging and eating compulsively is directly related to restrictive dieting. Years of dieting causes people to get out of touch with how to feed themselves when they are truly hungry.

• Emotional Distress: People with eating disorders often suffer from depression, anxiety, grief. Sometimes people try to medicate these feelings through binging, purging, or starving. Food really is a mood-altering drug

• A Traumatic Life Event: If you have suffered a traumatic event, turning to food as a way to soothe yourself makes perfect sense. Trusting food can feel safer than trusting people: food never leaves you, never rejects you, never abandons you, never hurts you, never dies. YOU get to say when, where, and how much.       

• Addiction: Eating is an addiction when it becomes the most consuming relationship that the person has. Most people eat to live, addicts live to eat. The eating disorder addict suffers from a physical addiction + psychological obsession.

Emotional eaters are attempting to soothe themselves, to take care of themselves, and to make themselves feel better. This wish to feel better is a healthy intention. Remembering this will help lessen your shame and self-blame as you embark on your road to recovery. 

See the section on “How Can Therapy Help” for healing strategies and techniques.

No one should have to suffer in silence. If you think you may have an eating disorder, please reach out to The Mindful Eating Project for an evaluation and help. You are not alone!

Submitted by Mary Anne Cohen

Director – The New York Center for Eating Disorders