• Overweight, may be obese
• Obsessive eating – life revolves around eating
• Fulfilling an emotional need or avoidance
• Diabetes, cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, etc
• Always dieting
• Binge eating

Subconsciously patients affected by an eating disorder may have a history of sexual abuse or other severe trauma. Their subconscious solution is to make themselves as unattractive and unavailable as possible to avoid further sexual or other unwanted attention. These conditions are usually linked with depression which was triggered by unresolved personal issues and traumatic events. Unlike other eating disorders, Binge eating and comfort eating, affects males and females equally.

• A deeply ingrained desire to be extremely thin, to an unhealthy level
• Self perception of ugly and fat.
• Believing that they are weak and this fills them with self hate.
• A deliberate maintenance of a very low body weight
• Cease menstruation
• An obsessive excrutiating exercise regime
• Compulsive weigh ins
• Dry dull skin, brittle nails, dry dull hair, sunken eyes, protruding hip and cheek bones
• Lanugo covering skin
• Secret eating habits
• Obsessive interest in food preparation

Although anorexia nervosa is usually associated with teenage girls, some boys are also at risk. In unlikely cases it effects some adults. An eating disorder is usually created and develops from a number of factors in the life of the patient. Anorexia Nervosa, is often a history of sexual abuse or other severe traumas. These situations have made the patient feel out of control to some degree. They realise that one thing they can control, is their intake of food, and slowly this becomes and obsession and an escape from the realities of their life, until their once control of food, turns into a very difficult life pattern and even life ending.