I would add that while birth control is always a good practice when someone is sexually active and not prepared to conceive a child, it is also true that severe anorexia can seriously limit a woman’s ability to conceive.

Another point missing from the quiz relates to bone strength. Many young women with eating disorders develop osteoporosis. It doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t show. Some anorexic women who are only 17 years old have lacey bones comperable to a very old and fragile woman.

That said, stating health risks will not scare a person into recovery. But they might scare a person into treatment!

I hope so. I’ve recovered from bulimia and have been a psychotherapist dedicated to eating disorder recovery for many years. It seems that girls and women need to notice that the eating disorder eventually causes more pain than they can bear before they are willing to risk giving it up.

This requires a desperate kind of courage because they genuinely face the unknown in the therapy work. It can be almost impossible to imagine a life without the eating disorder. Yet, a glimmer of the freedom that might be possible if they were genuinely free of the behavior, the thoughts, the anxiety, the planning and strategizing, the need for the cover up lies
can keep a person on the recovery road.

Thank you again for this site and this quiz. You are giving many people an opportunity to awaken to their own potential recovery.