Besides this clear loss of weight anorexia can be recognized after some habits these patients have: they keep a diet for a long time, they always feel fat and are afraid of eating, they throw up and use laxatives and they practice sports too much.

Their body gets affected also. They will develop amenorrhea, meaning a lack of menstruation, they will lose hair, the breasts will shrink, and their skin will get dried and will get cold and blue. The heart will suffer, giving cardiac arrhythmias. Insomnia might also appear along with constipation, osteoporosis and low blood pressure.

In most of the cases mood changes will develop. The patient will feel depressed, impatient, will be much more nervous as before and some might even try to suicide.

In very young girls, puberty can be delayed by anorexia. The menstruation will fail to come and the breasts will not grow. If anorexia affects males, the level of testosterone might decrease, and provisional impotency will install.

Anorexia often begins sneaking. You take on a diet, because you want to loose weight, and when you do so, you start having a feeling that you can control your life. You might become addicted to that sense of control, and try to do more things, to keep proving your competence in a various shape of things. Because you succeeded to starve in order to loose weight, you might experience a raise of your self-esteem.

If people develop anorexia, it is often seen the fact that they have great emotional pain, they have a negative imagine about themselves, a dark perspective about their qualities.
They need to have the acceptance of the other people; they cannot have rest until they get this belief, even if this makes them feel uncomfortable. Living and guiding yourself after this concept has bad repercussions, you turn yourself from a healthy person into a sick one.

First, when you take on a diet, you see that you loose weight, and that will make you have a very fine perspective about yourself. You will think you look beautiful, and will have a great feeling, because our society is obsessed about thinness and the fact of being a thin person is assimilated with being a beautiful person.

The second step that follows is the idea that you permanently need to improve your aspect. You will try to do more in this way, and you might become obsessed of the idea of loosing weight. Your body is more and more devoided of the nutrients it needs, it cannot function normally in these conditions.

If others see that something is wrong with you, and tell you to eat more, you will deny your problem. You will say that everything is just fine, and you will deny the fact that you are tired and need more food.

Anorexia is an illness that can be fatal. With medical treatment, it can be reversible, and you can become again a healthy person. It will not be easy, it is quite hard to change your wrong eating habits and way of thinking, but with patience, counseling and typical treatment, you will get well, and this is a real reward for the will of defeating anorexia.