Sunday night, January 30, 2011

My goal for this blog is to gather those of us with eating disorders (EDs) together to discuss them, learn from each other, support each other, and teach those without them what EDs are and how they can help.

I'll start out my blog discussing what EDs are--how they develop; who's vulnerable to them; their dangers to the sufferer; how they can be treated, and what's their usual outcome. Later, I'll discuss in depth the five major EDs: Compulsive Over-Eating (COE), Binge Eating Disorder (BED), Bulimia Nervosa (BN), Anorexia Nervosa (AN), and Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS).

If you have COE, you might not be interested in AN, so I'll try to keep each type separate. However, obesity can be a result of both COE and BED. Someone with AN may have started out obese and once she began dieting, became ill and "fell" into self-starvation. Thus, you might find something of value in another section. However, it's all up to you what you want to read. I'll try to title the entries so that you can judge whether or not you want to skip them.

Remember: I'm not a doctor, psychologist, or licensed therapist, just an obsessive reader who's digested everything I can find on EDs. I've studied both professional and popular books, research papers, and videos. Each has different--sometimes very different--information about EDs. I'll try to present all the answers I've found and will find, since I'll continue to learn as much as I can, some of it from you. I'll offer links for more information, too.

I'll try to write every day, but blogging is new to me. Sometimes I'll bore you, since some of the material is dry, but I'll do my best to keep your interest until we get to more interesting and personal stuff--about you, people we don't know who we admire or like (celebrities), and so on. Together, we can accept and love who we are, and with hard work, recover from an ED, no matter which one we have. I certainly don't think this place can take the place of a therapist or doctor. As I said, I have no qualifications to do that. But we can help each other--I'm sure of it.