Society, environment, home and school settings can play a huge role in a person’s propensity towards developing an eating disorder. When your life is dominated by physical appearance being the most important quality, you may tend to have a higher risk of acquiring an eating disorder. While it is good to want to eat the right things and be physically fit at all times, we all come in different shapes and sizes. As with personality, each person’s body type is different, so even when a person is physically fit, they can often heavier or lighter than someone else. The peer pressures that teens face daily have not fundamentally changed over years. A teenager who carries around few extra pounds, or appears larger than their peers, is a target for teasing and is often left out of by their classmates. If the teenager does not feel secure about their body, they will often, in a secrecy associated with shame, do something to change it. Image is everything to them and the average teenager, especially girls, want to be accepted. This will often be the cause of future bouts with bulimia and anorexia. It is dangerous for a young person to start down this road. Because most teens become obsessive in their ventures, they very rarely know when to stop losing weight and often go too far.
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