What exactly is bulimia and when do you know that you suffer from it? There are eating disorders in many different forms and types. Bulimia is pretty common but still confused with other disorders.

Eating disorders come in many forms and names. There is anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, binge eating just to name the most common ones. Anorexia and bulimia are often confused.

Anorexia is self starvation. Anorexic people suffer from a serious and fatal disease when not treated early. Even with treatment, anorexia ends still fatal in many cases. An anorexic person just starves to death because of the strict control of food intake. These people believe they are still fat and overweight when they are not. They keep dieting until they are death.

Bulimic people instead are usually slightly overweight but also not happy with their weight or body shape. Binge eating is very common in bulimia patients. Binge eating means that these people have periods of excessive food intake, often thousands of calories per meal.

After eating they feel so bad that they see the only way to get rid of all the calories by vomiting. The process of purging though is very harmful to the body when repeated often.

Another symptom for a person with bulimia is overdoing exercise. They train a lot, sometimes several times a day to get rid of the calories. The behavior of binge eating, vomiting, exercise, dieting etc. is very bad for the body long term.

The treatment for bulimia starts with a mental therapy. Bulemic people are often not much overweight but obsessed with their body shape. The bad eating habits can even lead to heart problems or cancer. There is no need to suffer from it. Bulimia is easier to treat than anorexia.