What Causes Eating Disorders?

What Are Eating Disorders?

Eating disorders are life threatening disorders that are centered around disordered eating practices. These can be accompanied by compensatory behaviors, such as purging or over-exercise, distorted thoughts about body image, or intense anxiety about weight. Symptoms of eating disorders include fixation on body image or weight loss as a goal, evidence of compensatory behaviors, and even health complications.¹

There are different types of eating disorders, and there is variation in symptoms for each type. It is a common mistake to believe that all people with eating disorders are very thin, or acquired their eating disorder because they wished to attain a specific type of body. Eating disorder symptoms can be very painful for all those that are close to the person with the eating disorder. Some people have multiple eating disorders at the same time or during different stages of life.

What Causes an Eating Disorder?

Eating disorders can be caused by a multitude of factors, including a family history of eating disorders, perfectionism, bullying, and childhood trauma. Someone can develop an eating disorder due to one of these triggers, but more often it is due to a convergence of a few of them. While eating disorders are more common in women and girls, there are a growing number of men and boys diagnosed with eating disorders.²

Biological Risk Factors for Eating Disorders

Biological risk factors are chemical, physical, or neurological components that contribute to disordered eating. While some of these factors can be changed, others cannot, and it is healthy to accept limitations we cannot change.

Common biological risk factors for eating disorders include:

1. Age

Adolescence is the most common onset time for anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.³ Sometimes the experience of going through puberty, and some of the emotional aspects of adjusting to puberty can contribute risk factors for eating disorders. Fortunately, research has also indicated that the onset of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa is much less common later in life.

2. Genetics

Research has demonstrated a highly significant correlation between a family history of eating disorders and a person developing an eating disorder. These results have led to widespread acceptance of the heritability of eating disorders.⁴ The inheritability of related genetics is a significant factor to consider and look out for in our children or loved ones with family histories of these behaviors.

3. Birth Complications

Research has shown that certain neonatal complications or issues in neurodevelopment are strong predictors of the development of anorexia nervosa.³ Specifically, those with cephalohematoma at birth, neonatal cardiac problems, maternal placental infarction, preeclampsia, anemia, and diabetes mellitus have all been found to be independent predictors of anorexia nervosa in the future for infants.⁵

Despite the increased risk, it is important to recognize that birth complications do not mean that there is a certainty of developing an eating disorder. Neither does it prevent recovery in the event that an eating disorder does develop. Recognizing these risk factors can help explain the root causes of eating disorders and protect families from excessive guilt.

4. Other Mental Health Diagnoses

Major depressive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and anxiety disorders can increase the likelihood of developing an eating disorder.⁶ The co-occurrence of these diagnoses may heighten the severity of each disorder. An eating disorder can exacerbate symptoms of anxiety or compulsiveness. It is also common for people to experience depression and eating disorders at the same time. Treating each comorbid diagnosis is important for recovery.

Psychological Risk Factors for Eating Disorders

Psychological risk factors are the beliefs you hold and the ways you have learned to think or act. These factors are difficult to alter, but many of them can be addressed over time. You may think psychological factors are the easiest to address, but beliefs and behaviors tend to be deeply ingrained.

Common psychological risk factors for eating disorders include:

5. Excessive Focus on Weight Loss

Focusing too much on weight loss can create unhealthy thought patterns, including fear of failure and perfectionism. This focus can artificially raise the stakes of weight gain and lead to harmful behaviors. It can also create excessive negative feelings towards natural changes that occur in the body during puberty.⁷

6. History of Failed Dieting

Repeated attempts at dieting and lifestyle adjustments are risk factors for developing an eating disorder.⁸ It is easy for people to find online groups that encourage these unhealthy behaviors. The desire to lose weight can lead people to embrace fad diets and thinspo influencers. This loyalty and obsessive focus contribute to harmful weight loss and body image beliefs.

7. Low Self-Esteem

Low self-esteem and insecurity about one’s body can can add to the risk of developing an eating disorder. People with low self-esteem often develop body dysmorphia or muscle dysmorphia, which can exacerbate eating disorder tendencies. Low self-esteem also contributes to other mental health symptoms, which are risk factors for eating disorders.

Social Risk Factors for Eating Disorders

Social risk factors are the environmental influences that surround a person, which may trigger an eating disorder. Social risk factors include personal interactions as well as societal expectations. It is essential to differentiate between social risk factors that are changeable in a person’s immediate environment, and factors that are not changeable, like cultural messaging ingrained into our society. The goal of addressing social risk factors is to learn how to shift your immediate environment and tune out the societal messages that are causing harm.

Common social risk factors for eating disorders include:

8. Bullying

Bullying, including cyberbullying and relational aggression, is a significant risk factor for eating disorders. One literature review found that, across 22 different studies, bullying was the highest correlating factor to the presence of eating disorders.⁹ This relationship was especially strong in cases of bulimia nervosa.

9. Limited Social Support

Isolation is a significant factor in developing an eating disorder. When people have limited social support, they often feel lonely and turn to an eating disorder to cope. A lack of friends and social support can build and deepen isolation. Recognize that your or your loved one’s isolation can harm you or them, and work to address it.

10. Thin-Ideal Internalization

Society often idealizes a thin body type, and internalizing this belief can lead to unhealthy expectations for a body’s shape.³ This idealization is often promoted in advertisement, tv, movies and social media. Additionally, diet culture can celebrate unhealthy body compositions. This ideal, once internalized, can make looking in the mirror intensely shameful, even if your body is healthy.

7 Tips for Preventing an Eating Disorder

Both simple changes and more significant lifestyle shifts can help prevent an eating disorder. Prevention requires you to look at what practices you have developed around eating and exercise and the people and media you are surrounded by. Although biological risk factors cannot be prevented, there are ways to protect against psychological and social risk factors for an eating disorder.

Here are seven tips for preventing an eating disorder:

1. Set healthy goals: When making new years goals, birthday goals or any other goals, make sure that they are healthy. Although the media and people around you may be making drastic weight loss goals, or intense exercise routines, focus your goals on the things that matter, like your mental health and the way you feel, not the way you look.
2. Critically evaluate your social media: Oftentimes, social media intensifies eating disorders. The content you follow impacts your thoughts and beliefs. Examine who you follow on instagram, TikTok and facebook, and make sure that the messages being promoted are healthy.
3. Educate your friends: The people we surround ourselves with influence us. If your friends begin to chat about the latest diet fad, or obsess over someone’s weight, talk to them about the harm these ideas can create.
4. Get to know your children: If you understand your child, and the norms of the behavior, you will be able to recognize if they begin to develop an eating disorder. Early intervention is incredibly helpful, so the sooner you spot disordered eating, the easier it will be for your child to develop a healthy attitude towards weight and eating.
5. Eat family meals together: Eating family meals together can model healthy eating for an individual struggling with disordered eating. Additionally, it can help distract the person’s mind away from the food and towards the conversations that are occurring. This bonding time with the family can also be a crucial time to build togetherness and intimacy
6. Challenge cultural beliefs: Our society has developed some very harmful beliefs around bodies. Challenging these beliefs can help shift a person away from being self-critical.
7. Examine your role models: As children we tend to turn the adults we are surrounded by into role models. Examine who you tend to look towards, and ask yourself whether they are deserving of the credit you give them. Are they setting a healthy example for eating an exercise? Or do you need to find new role models?

How to Cope With an Eating Disorder

Professional help is crucial when it comes to healing from an eating disorder, but there are also strategies you can use to bolster professional support and hopefully speed up your way to recovery. Eating disorders are often maladaptive coping mechanisms, so developing healthy coping mechanisms is important.

Some tips for coping with an eating disorder include:

• Challenge your thoughts: Eating disorders thrive in a black-and-white belief system. Learning to challenge this type of thinking helps to quiet the eating disorder voice and opens your mind to more nuanced ways of thinking about food.
• Be patient: You may have struggled with these thoughts and behaviors for a long time. Be prepared for recovery to take time and love yourself throughout the journey.
• Build self-esteem: Working to build self-esteem can help battle the eating disorder’s voice around negative beliefs about body image. Practice self-love and appreciation for your body whenever these negative thoughts enter your mind.
• Practice mindful eating: Eating disorders often confuse the body’s natural hunger and fullness cues, and practicing mindful eating can help you learn what your body needs to treat it well.
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help: If you have hit a wall in your recovery or find yourself regressing, reaching out for support is the kindest gift you can give yourself. Eating disorder recovery is difficult; the more people support you, the better.
• Check-in with yourself: Take a moment and reflect on your eating behaviors. Eating disorder recovery is not linear, so check in with yourself and objectively observe whether you are still on the path to recovery.
• Broaden your focus: When you begin to heal, you will find that you have a lot of extra energy that the eating disorder used to take up. Take advantage of this and focus on developing new friendships and hobbies.

When to Seek Professional Help

Eating disorders spiral out of control quickly, and so receiving care as soon as the eating disorder begins to develop is crucial. There are multiple levels of care that are typically involved with treating eating disorders, and it is important to have a trusted professional assess the level of care needed. It can be challenging to understand the severity of some symptoms without an outside perspective. Start with primary care, or ask them for a referral to help you get started in addressing your needs.

If the symptoms are developing and stable, finding the right therapist is a good place to start. Also, eating disorder group therapy is a good way to bolster support. You could also utilize an online eating disorder recovery program, like Equip Health. However, if the functioning of the person has been impaired, a higher level of care is necessary. This can range from an intensive outpatient program, partial hospitalization program, or inpatient hospitalization to protect you or your loved one.