The Relationship between Anxiety and Eating Disorders
by Anonymous | Thursday, Jan 22, 2026Studies have shown that anxiety disorders can cause the onset to multiple other psychological disorders, such as eating disorders. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH, 2021) has concluded that anxiety disorders have the highest rate of comorbidity with eating disorders: Around 47.9% of adults with diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, 80.6% with bulimia nervosa, and 65.1% with binge-eating disorder have at least one co-occurring anxiety disorder.
People with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa often see themselves as overweight even though a prominent symptom is being concerningly thin. They tend to pick at the food they eat, eat in surprisingly small quantities, and avoid meals. These habits typically become obsessions and make the patient's conditions even worse. People with bulimia nervosa usually weigh within the normal average body weight. However, they also fear gaining weight, which leads to recurrent and frequent episodes of binge eating followed by purging such as vomiting, fasting, and excessive exercise. Binge eating disorders typically occur when people lose control over their eating and have recurring episodes of eating unusual large amounts of food.
Eating disorders typically start during adolescence, when young people start to recognize their physical appearance. Dealing with anxiety also contributes to disordered eating in those who consume food for comfort (NIMH, 2021). Consuming large amounts of food can help short term relief from anxiety, but the problems only get worse over time.
From my personal experience, during high-school, my anxiety levels were always high from immense pressure from school work and surrounding friends and family. I was an honors medical academy student, so we always had to look and perform our best in school. That means complete the most amount of school work, get the highest grades, and perform a tremendous amount of volunteer activities. Staying on top of this and always being anxious to complete my next task had actually made me avoid eating. During my time in high school, looking skinny also meant that I needed to eat a hamburger while in my culture, looking skinny meant I looked my best. So with the constant judgments from society living in America and my South-East Asian culture, I never understood if I looked good and instead developed the mindset that I always looked bad. From this constant battle of hating how I looked and dealing with immense pressure at school, eating felt like the overall issue. If I did not eat, I had more time doing school work or other activities, and I still looked skinny. I would also try to exercise to look healthy and athletic with no nutrition consumptions, which led me to feel tired constantly. Feeling tired 24/7 from the lack of food I consumed had also helped me pick up my caffeine addiction. I would consume an average of 3 medium size cups of coffee all day when I was in school and hardly ever had even one nutritious meal throughout the day. With the overwhelming amount of caffeine consumption and dealing with anxiety to always perform my best it has led to me losing a lot of weight. Although I have never been treated for anxiety or an eating disorder, I wish there was more information available to me at that time to seek help and treatments.
Anxiety and eating disorders can be treated at the same time although the recovery of one will not always guarantee the recovery of another. The most recommended form of therapy to treat these conditions would be cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT focuses on identifying and focusing on certain thoughts and behavior and how we can change these thoughts and behavior. Everything depends on the individual themself although significant results from CBT can be shown within 12 to 16 weeks. Medications supervised by medical professionals and joining support groups can also help treat anxiety. Treatments to help with eating can include nutritional management and counseling.
Our mind works in a million different ways throughout our whole life so it is important to stop and recognize how caught up we get sometimes. Mental health is just as important as our physical health, and it is also important to recognize these two also work together.
References
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/eating-disorders
https://toledocenter.com/social-media/the-connection-between-anxiety-and-eating-disorders/
https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-illnesses/eating-disorders