‘All bodies are good bodies’: Raising awareness for eating disorders during NEDA Week

National Eating Disorders Awareness Week began on Monday and will last through Friday with the goal of educating people about eating disorders and providing hope, support, and visibility to people affected by disordered eating.

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — National Eating Disorders Awareness Week began on Monday and will last through Friday with the goal of educating people about eating disorders and providing hope, support, and visibility to people affected by disordered eating.

Meghan Shapiro, clinical director at the Chrysalis Center for Counseling and Eating Disorder Treatment in Wilmington says three behaviors classify disordered eating.

“One is binge eating, that’s when a person consumes a large amount of food and feels a sense of being out of control when they’re eating. Another is restriction, that’s when a person by numerous means restricts their food intake. And compensation,that’s when a person eats food and feels like they have to compensate for what they’ve eaten by exercising or sometimes purging or laxatives,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro says the amount of people struggling with eating disorders has increased in the last two years, saying the CDC has reported a 50-percent increase in people presenting eating disorder symptoms at emergency departments before the pandemic began.

“50-percent of women and about 30-percent of men experience some disordered eating in their lifetime. So, it touches a lot of people,” Shapiro said. “The number one environmental contributor to disordered eating is our idealization of thinness in our society.”

While she says the body positivity has been sort of helpful, she says more work needs to be done.

“The idea that a person who is living in a body that is not the idealized body in our society has to work hard to appreciate their body is embedded in that and again, I think there’s some messaging in that that they’re not okay and they’re going to figure out how to be okay,” Shapiro said. “So I think, more of a body neutrality stance and just knowing that all bodies are good bodies.”

The disorders don’t have a certain “look.” Shapiro says people of all sizes, cultures, and communities can experience disordered eating and malnutrition is equally as damaging no matter if you are very thin or living in a more “normal” sized body.

If you or someone you know may be struggling with an eating disorder, visit the NEDA webiste.