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When most people hear about eating issues, their minds usually go to well-known disorders like anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder. But there’s a broader category that often gets overlooked—disordered eating. Though it doesn’t always meet the clinical criteria for a diagnosable disorder, disordered eating involves unhealthy patterns around food and body image that can still be serious.
This can include everything from constant dieting, skipping meals, or obsessing over calories, to feeling shame or guilt about eating. These habits often fall in the gray area between “normal” behavior and a full-blown eating disorder, making them harder to recognize but just as important to address.
Because traditional diagnoses like anorexia or bulimia require people to meet specific criteria, many individuals struggling with damaging food-related behaviors slip through the cracks. Even umbrella terms like EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified) don’t always capture the full picture.
That’s why it’s more accurate to view disordered eating as a descriptive term—a way to bring attention to behaviors that may not be diagnosed but still have real consequences. And those consequences can be serious. Without early intervention, disordered eating can lead to clinically diagnosable eating disorders.