Eating Disorders Become Their Own Religion

Eating disorders have been around for a long time, and probably started getting the attention they deserved when Karen Carpenter died as a result of a long battle with anorexia. Lately other stars like Mary-Kate Olsen have also fought public battles with the disorder. But apparently some girls have elevated their eating disorders to almost a cult status (from FoxNews.com):

They call her "Ana." She is a role model to some, a goddess to others — the subject of drawings, prayers and even a creed.

She tells them what to eat and mocks them when they don't lose weight. And yet, while she is a very real presence in the lives of many of her followers, she exists only in their minds. Ana is short for anorexia (search), and — to the alarm of experts — many who suffer from the potentially fatal eating disorder are part of an underground movement that promotes self-starvation and, in some cases, has an almost cult-like appeal.

Followers include young women and teens who wear red Ana bracelets and offer one another encouraging words of "thinspiration" on Web pages and blogs.

...Experts say the Ana movement also plays on the tendency people with eating disorders have toward "all or nothing thinking."

"When they do something, they tend to pursue it to the fullest extent. In that respect, Ana may almost become a religion for them," says Carmen Mikhail, director of the eating disorders clinic at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.

She and others point to the "Ana creed," a litany of beliefs about control and starvation, that appears on many Web sites and blogs. At least one site encourages followers to make a vow to Ana and sign it in blood.

People with eating disorders who've been involved in the movement confirm its cult-like feel.

"People pray to Ana to make them skinny," says Sara, a 17-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, who was an avid organizer of Ana followers until she recently entered treatment for her eating disorder. She spoke on the condition that her last name not be used.

I, too, have an eating disorder...I like to eat regularly and often too much. However, I think I'll skip trying to make overeating into a religion of its own.