Orlando Eating Disorder Counseling

Watch out dieters! There’s a new kid on the block! If you are counting calories and on the go, there is a new iPhone Application designed to help you keep track of your food intake while on the run. Thanks to modern technology and the smartphone, battling the bulge is much easier. There are new applications designed specifically for aiding dieters in the calculation of caloric intake. In addition to the calorie-counting feature, the smartphone applications also provide nutritional information at the touch of a finger.

For some, this is an amazing discovery, however, for others it can be an accident waiting to happen. Although the new device is helping many in the fight for healthy living, there are some doctors that are concerned this new dieting tool may be dangerous if landed into the wrong hands. The wrong hands would be anyone that struggles with any form of eating disorder such as anorexia and bulemia. Some doctors believe that the new apps are enabling the negative thought patterns of those with eating disorders.

Pence, a clinical psychologist and clinical supervisor at the Renfrew Center, an eating disorder treatment center in Dallas, is seeing increased use, and abuse of these applications. “I think that it’s tying into the eating disorder mentality of making sure that you know everything that’s going into your body, having those obsessive thoughts of calorie counting, keeping track of your weight, keeping track of what goes in and what goes out through exercise,” Pence said.

If you are concerned about the symptoms of anorexia, you may look for the following signs:

• Losing weight even after he or she is underweight
• Fear of being fat, and belief that he or she is fat even if he or she is underweight
• Denial that he or she is underweight
• Obsession with what he or she eats, especially obsessively counting calories, weighing food, or developing strict eating rituals
• Eating hardly anything at all and saying he or she is never hungry
• Excessive exercising to lose weight
• For teen guys, an obsession with looking athletic
• Staying away from social activities, especially those involving food

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