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| Women and Food Addiction | Eating disorders persist to be on the increment in today's civilization and not just amongst teenage girls. A lot of people believe that eating disorders influence only teenage girls, but that could not be further from the truth. Women are also under just as much pressure to be thin as teenagers are. More and more women are developing eating disorders in their twenties, thirties, forties, and beyond. The impact on anorexia, bulimia and compulsive eating can happen at any time in a person's life.
Even if the reasons for the growth of an eating disorder may be different, the feelings about oneself are usually the same. As a rule, the women suffer with feelings of self-hate, insignificance, low self-esteem, and they typically feel that in order to be happy, they must be thin. Some may feel their lives are out of control and they turn to the one area of their lives that they can control their weight. Others may consider that once they reach the “ideal” body image, then their lives will become perfect.
Reasons why eating disorders may develop later in one's life:
 With the high tempo of divorce, lots of women are finding themselves back in the dating game in their forties and fifties. They believe that in order to find another man, they must be thin.
If they are married and get to know that their husband has been having an affair, they may blame themselves for that.
The woman might feel that her husband has strayed because he no longer finds her attractive. She will then concentrates her attention on her weight and feel that if she had only been thin; her husband would not have been disloyal.
Generally when affairs happen in a marriage, weight is not the problem. There are deeper problems in the marriage that possibly provoked the affair to happen.
Women need to stop blaming themselves for their husband's unfaithfulness. Sometimes blaming themselves and their weight for the affair is easier than dealing with the deeper problems that caused the marriage to fall down.
Moreover eating disorders may develop one time the children are grown and out on their own. A women who has dedicated her life to raising her children, may all unexpectedly find herself alone and begin to feel like she has no real reason anymore. She may start concentrating on her weight, believing that she will be happy, once she becomes thin.
The public also puts women under a lot of pressure to be thin. Women are continually being told that they must have a perfect marriage, be a perfect mother, and have the perfect career. They are given the message that in order to achieve all that, we must have the perfect body. Growing older in today's society is much unlike for women than it is for men. If a man's body changes or his hair starts to turn gray, he is considered to be “distinguished”.
If a woman's body changes and her hair start to turn gray, she is considered to be “letting herself go”. Eating disorders become a woman's way of avoidance the daily pressures of life. Women can no longer enjoy food or allow themselves to supply their bodies with the nutrition it needs, because society and the media makes women feel guilty for eating.
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