hi keith – thanks for your well thought-out comment. i agree with you, issues such as self esteem, cultural/media influences and family history definitely play a role. however, as dohfiddle says, there’s more to it. the book “gaining” by aimee liu paints a very good picture of the numerous factors that may be the cause of anorexia, and one of them that you haven’t mentioned yet is genetics.

the attraction to people with anorexia is also based on a number of different things. as i mentioned, this post gives a bit of an overview. again, it’s a bit of a mystery. the difference between saying one is attracted to someone very thin and actually BEING with someone like that is one of them.

re the clarification: i really did mean that overeating is an addictive problem for SOME people (i.e. not for ALL).

there are many reasons why people weigh more than they would like to; compulsive overeating is just one of them.

you may want to refer to this post on research on obesity.

so i would agree with you, rachel – obesity MAY be a sign of an eating disorder but it is not a SURE sign. it’s best not to go around diagnosing people – although i also get it that people who are recovering want to help others so much that sometimes they can see a problem where there is none (or point one out when the person in question isn’t ready to hear about it).

and yes, it IS about the relationship with food. i know numerous people with eating disorders whose difficulties are compounded by the fact that they don’t “look” like they have an eating disorder. in the same vein, not every thin person has anorexia and not every overweight person is a food addict.

I’d like a clarification on the above statement: Are you saying that the reason fat people are fat is because they have an addictive problem with overeating?

I don’t disagree that some fat people (as do some thin people) have classifiable problems with binge eating or compulsive overeating, but I would hope that you would also recognize that there are many, many people who eat a healthy balanced diet and exercise regularly, and yet are still fat. Fitness, not fatness, should be the best marker of good health.

having said that, yes, morbid obesity, along with overweight and obesity has risen dramatically – it would be silly to disagree with that.

Not so silly if you look at the numbers. Americans, on average, have gotten heavier through the years but the average increase is 5 to 7 pounds. Women today are no heavier than they were in the 1990s.

As well, lobbyists who have a financial interest in making people feel they have to lose weight have continued to push for a lowering of the overweight bar defining who is and who isn’t overweight. In the late 1990s, the government arbitrarily changed the definition of overweight, thus turning 35 million Americans overweight overnight.

And as for Althea’s very misinformed comment: “I agree totally: obesity is a sure sign of an eating disorder and an eating disorder is an addiction.”

Obesity in and of itself is not a sign of an eating disorder. Those who have researched eating disorders and who have had personal experiences with an eating disorder will tell you that it’s one relationship with food and weight that forms the basis of an eating disorder. And this relationship is something that cannot be assumed on the basis whether one is too fat or too thin.

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