Eating disorders are severe disturbances in eating behaviour characterized by preoccupation with weight concerns and unhealthy efforts to control weight (Weiten, McCann, 2007: 614).
Eating disorder is a terrible illness that affects people in many ways. Eating disorders affect the way people eat the food and the way people feel about the food. People that suffer from this illness have unhealthy ways of eating. People may eat too little and turn out to be very thin or eat too much and become overweight.
The people that eat very little, sometimes do not eat at all and commence to starve themselves, this process is called anorexia nervosa. The people that tend to eat a large portion of food at once and than do things like vomit to get rid of all the food they ate is entitled bulimia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the two main eating disorders that people predominantly suffer from.
Females primarily suffer from this illness because the media portrays an ideal image which most females want to have. Those who suffer from an eating disorder tend to feel their overweight and are terrified of gaining weight. This causes the illness to deteriorate because people begin to get out of control and do everything they can to lose all the body fat they think they have.