Eating Disorder Awareness

Last week was the National Eating Disorder Awareness week!!

The mission of NEDAwareness Week

The aim of NEDAwareness Week is to ultimately prevent eating disorders and body image issues while reducing the stigma surrounding eating disorders and improving access to treatment. Eating disorders are serious, life-threatening illnesses — not choices — and it’s important to recognize the pressures, attitudes and behaviors that shape the disorder.
NEDAwareness Week is a collective effort of primarily volunteers, including eating disorder professionals, health care providers, students, educators, social workers, and individuals committed to raising awareness of the dangers surrounding eating disorders and the need for early intervention and treatment.

2011 Theme: It’s Time to Talk about It

This year the National Eating Disorders Association is stressing that it’s time to talk about
eating disorders. We live in a culture saturated with unrealistic body-image messages and
almost all of us know somebody struggling with an eating disorder. Because this is true, we
urge you to talk about it......and do just one thing during NEDAwareness Week to 

1) raiseawareness that eating disorders are serious illnesses, not lifestyle choices; 

2) provide accurate information to medical, educational and/or business communities, and 

3) direct people to information and resources about eating disorders.

On their site they said that the week went really well!! I think where it says that we live in a culture that has a unrealistic body-image is very true. It really hits home about everyone probably knows someone who has had a eating disorder. I have had many friends who struggled with their weight and eating disorders. I often think that eating disorders get over look many times because of the obesity epidemic. So many people suffer from these disorders and we do need to talk about them and bring them to the forefront.