Exemplification Essay: Anorexia Nervosa :: Expository Exemplification Essays

People who intention altogethery famish themselves suffer from an eating disorder called anorexia nervosa. The disorder, which usually begins in young people around the snip of puberty, involves extreme weight loss--at least 15 percent below the individuals customary body weight. M any people with the disorder look emaciated al wholeness are convinced they are weighed down. Sometimes they must be hospitalized to sustain starvation. Deborah developed anorexia nervosa when she was 16. A rather shy, studious teenager, she tried hard to recreate everyone. She had an attractive appearance, but was slightly overweight. Like many teenage girls, she was interest in boys but concerned that she wasnt pretty enough to get their attention. When her pose jokingly remarked that she would never get a date if she didnt take rack up some weight, she took him seriously and began to diet relentlessly--never believing she was thin enough hitherto when she became extremely underweight. Soon afterward the pounds started dropping off, Deborahs menstrual periods stopped. As anorexia tightened its grip, she became haunt with dieting and food, and developed strange eating rituals. Every day she weighed all the food she would eat on a kitchen scale, curing solids into minuscule pieces and exactly measuring liquids. She would then put her daily ration in refined containers, lining them up in neat rows. She also exercised compulsively, even after she weakened and became faint. She never took an elevator if she could walk up steps. No one was able to convince Deborah that she was in danger. Finally, her doctor insisted that she be hospitalized and carefully monitored for treatment of her illness. While in the hospital, she secretly continued her exercise regimen in the bathroom, doing strenuous routines of situps and knee-bends. It took several hospitalizations and a good deal of individual and family outpatient therapy for Deborah to submit and solve her problems. Deborahs case in not unusual. People with anorexia typically starve themselves, even though they suffer terribly from hunger pains. One of the virtually frightening aspects of the disorder is that people with anorexia continue to think they are overweight even when they are bone-thin. For reasons not yet understood, they become terrified of gaining any weight.