Eating Disorder

It begins as a diet. The normal amount of calories a person should consume daily is around 2500 to 2000. So you make it 1500 calories a day. Then you end up at 1000. Then 500. And then one day, you just stop eating. You go days without eating but your mind is still telling you "You're fat. You can't eat. You don't deserve to," so you don't eat. Or maybe you do eat, but your mind is telling you "you just ate that whole cookie! You're already fat enough, you can't get fatter. Go throw it up." So you go to the bathroom, and you put your fingers down your throat or a toothbrush, anything to make you gag, and you throw up. You get all the food you ate out of your body before it can be digested because your mind is telling you that you can't gain weight. These mind consuming disorders are known as anorexia and bulimia.

' Up to 24 million people of all ages and genders suffer from these mind consuming eating disorders which along with affecting your mind, affects your body as well by risking kidney failure, heart attacks and maybe even death. Many people with eating disorders are aware of the side effects of their disorder but continue to do it anyway because they cannot stop, which is something most people do not understand. It isn't a choice; it's a mind alternating illness. There is no "end" to an eating disorder, it doesn't just stop once an anorexic or bulimic reaches their goal weight, they have to get smaller and smaller.

Taj Butter has been struggling with anorexia for years with binging tendencies. "Sometimes I'll eat everything in sight and then I'll stop and not eat for three days. It's a never ending cycle," she said while crying. She's also not sure what triggered her eating disorder. It's believed that the main causes of eating disorders are actually biological, so if someone in your family has had an eating disorder you are