To Eat or Not to Eat? That is the Disorder

Eating disorders among college students is a very pertinent issue of debate seeing that it so frequently occurs throughout the world. The article “Cognitive Behavioral Theories of Eating Disorders” by Williamson et. al gives a broad spectrum of various eating disorders that people encounter and the reasons to why they are so detrimental. Presumably many college students have encountered individuals who are diagnosed with some kind of eating disorder, and it is not an issue that should be left unattended. It is important to understand why individuals resort to eating as a coping mechanism for various problems and Williamson et. addresses some of these reasons. Eating disorders are a very pertinent area of psychological research since those who have encountered them wish to maintain a certain image, which in turn causes detrimental health affects.

Body shape and size is one of the main cognitive aspects that many people store, and have the need to maintain. Eating disorders have arisen from the need to maintain a certain image, and these thoughts have caused one’s memory to store the need to eat a certain way just to obtain these bodily outcomes. Williamson et al talks about a self-schema or self-representation that we all have and need to maintain. Food acts as a stimulus and triggers emotions related to cognitive behavior. For example, people who have eating disorders correlate “feeling full” after eating a meal as “feeling fat”. The authors hypothesized that anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are often caused by the development of a highly organized self-representation concerning body and weight related images. This means that people generate thoughts and cognitive memories relating food to a negative memory, causing eating disorders to occur.

The authors also include that negative emotions such as anxiety, feelings of fatness, depression, anger, and self-loathing are qualities that people who have eating disorders tend to have. For binge eating, when individuals indulge in food to relieve short term problems, individuals tend to obsess over eating and obsess over their body size. Binge eaters feel as though they need to “escape” from their surroundings and use eating as a management technique. When individuals feel as though they can’t ever be healthy or lose weight, they resort to binge eating just to cope with their negative emotions.

People who have eating disorders tend to have a large misconception about body image and how they perceive their body to actually look like. For example, individuals with anorexia and bulimia tend to feel that their body mass or size is larger than it actually is. This causes people to have the continuous need to decrease their body mass in unorthodox ways. This also relates to the main hypothesis that Williamson et al presents that people form a self representation to look a certain way. Even though individuals are fit in actuality, their stigma to lose weight empowers the desire to maintain a healthy diet.

The points listed above are merely some of the major points that the article “Cognitive Behavioral Theories of Eating Disorders” makes about why people resort to various eating habits to maintain a self image. Anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating are qualities that a handful of college students encounter due to various factors. Individuals who have eating disorders have a drive to maintain an ideal body size and do so in unhealthy ways. The cognitive side of eating disorders is a very important area of research and should be noted thoroughly due to the large numbers of people who are diagnosed with eating disorders and the detrimental affects towards their bodies.

Works Cited

Williamson, Donald A., Marney A. White, Emily York-Crowe, and Tiffany M. Stewart. "Cognitive-Behavioral Theories of Eating Disorders." Behavior Modification. 28.6 (2004): 711-38. Print.