SG wrote:
To anyone, is the eating disorder more of a physical pain or a mental path to "fitting in"(?) what ever that is...
It's definitely much more of a mental thing than a physical thing. It's considered a psychiatric condition. It's not a physical illness making someone gain or lose weight (if it is, it's not an ED, it's something else).
Usually all eating disorders start out with some sort of stress. Anorexia is usually about control, bulimia is a combination of control and lack of control (bulimia is incredibly difficult to beat, because of this, though of course all EDs are), and binge eating is the lack of control. In the end, they're all due to underlying problems, which is why the 70's method of force feeding didn't work as a cure. One has to treat the original cause of the problem (usually depression, anxiety, OCD, etc) before anything will improve.
I read somewhere that an estimated 2% of men and 3.5% of women in the US are diagnosable with binge eating disorder, and don't know it. BED is basically bulimia minus the purging; the symptoms/feelings/etc are basically the same. It's usually very hard for these people to seek/receive treatment, because of society's view of fat people. We as a culture like to blame overweight people for their condition, though very often it's not their fault, and they would honestly improve with therapy to deal with their depression and anxiety issues...
Very sad, imo.
(EDs used to be one of my "special interests," in case anybody can't already tell... Sorry lol.)