FBW: Eating Disorders & The Elderly By Sandy of Toy With Me

You see typically I’m not a blogger.  Oh, I have a blog!  And although it’s filled with bold, snarky, in your face, grammatically correct, sometimes NSFW content, the words are not mine.  I know what my strengths are – writing is not on the list.  So consider yourself warned.  Hopefully you’ll bare (pun intended) with me!

The concept behind the Blogger Body Calendar, to me, is brilliant.  A group of amazing bloggers striping down as naked as we could get without being porn  for a good cause!  Exposing ourselves in the buff to show the world that it’s OK to be comfortable with your body no matter your size, shape, scars or wounds.

Did I mention they are a very brave group of people?  Well they are!

I’m still not sure how I ended up here.  After all I am 45, shit shifts with age (and not in a good way), trust me.  I don’t have a particularly hot body.  Gravity and I have had a falling out.  Gravity can be such an asshole.  Then again, the idea behind the project is not about perfect bodies but having a healthy body image.   Although sometimes, like many others, I tend to focus on my body weight to much, I do realize that my body does not define who I am.

Enough about me though.  Today what I really wanted to do was focus some attention on a growing group of people suffering from eating disorders that so few know about.  The elderly.  Not usually the first image that comes to mind when discussing eating disorders.

Unfortunately eating disorders in the elderly often go over looked.  This is mainly because health care professionals rarely think to screen for it, yet seniors face many issues that can lead to an eating disorder.  Losing their spouse, economic hardship, depression, medication (alters appetite) or even for attention from friends and loved ones.   On top of that some elderly citizens also feel that they are no longer able to make certain, sometimes life altering, decisions for themselves.  Without feeling they have control over their own lives they opt to control the one thing they feel they still can, food intake.

For those who have underlying health problems due to aging, self-restricting their diet can have devastating effects.

“Psychologists at the University of British Columbia examined 10.5 M death records, for a four-year period,  in the U.S.  They found that the average age of death from anorexia nervosa for women was 69 and for men 80.” (Full article here)  Very shocking statistics!

Since the awareness of seniors with eating disorders is extremely low my hope is that through this project we can help you understand how far reaching this debilitating disorder truly is.

Please help us support the NEDA by purchasing a Blogger Body Calendar TODAY!!  If not ….. we will hunt you down and find you!

Sandy is our Ms. June.  You can find an endless supply of the inappropriate on her blog.  Or stalk her on twitter where filtered tweets are rare.