Eating disorder vs disordered Eating?

[Rainydays26]

Sorry if this is a stupid question. But can anyone explain the difference between eating disorder and disordered eating?

Much the same, the difference is to get a diagnosis of an eating disorder you have to meet a certain threshold. Someone who does meet the threshold for diagnosis but engages in similar behaviours around food would probably be described as having disordered eating.

Seems same to me.

I don’t know what the ‘official’ difference is.

But I would say that I have been through periods of disordered eating. I wouldn’t say that I have had an eating disorder.

What I was doing for a period of time wasn’t very normal or healthy. I wasn’t overweight to start with but I began weighing all my food, weighing myself multiple times a day, counting and restricting calories and going to the gym every day and sometimes more than once a day (if I had eaten something ‘bad’, I felt I ‘had’ to go back to the gym). But it was all fairly short-lived and I was able to get myself back to normal behaviour reasonably easily. Whereas a full-blown eating disorder usually requires intervention from Drs/therapists etc.

To me that’s the difference, but I don’t know if professionals who work in the field would agree.

Thank you that's makes sense. So almost like the pattern may be the same/similar but one person get themselves out of that pattern the other can't ? And needs support.

‘Disordered eating’ is a horrible term used to dismiss some people… I hate it because it makes the ED diagnosis ‘elite’ and it’s basically used as a catch all to avoid putting support in place. It’s used to mean ‘not severe enough’. It’s also used to dismiss OFSED and atypical EDs, as well as ARFID.

I don't know the answer, but I do know that CAMHS would not diagnose my daughter with an eating disorder even though she had become severely underweight through restricted eating because she couldn't give them a reason for why she was restricting her eating.

Thats awful. Your dd may not have known the answer herself. And sge shouldn't have to know.

I had binge eating disorder before it was an official diagnosis. So I guess the medics would have described me as having disordered eating rather than an eating disorder, but now it would be an eating disorder, go figure. It was impossible to get help as I didn't make myself vomit, which would have given me bulimia and therefore a proper illness. The fact I had gone from 7stone to 14stone in under a year didn't count for anything.

Having said that, I think (very sadly) that many/ most women have some kind of disordered eating, without it necessarily ruling and ruining their lives like mine did. So I do think the term has some merit.

An ED is worse the DE. It's basically one is not quite strong enough to qualify as full blown ED but your eating isn't fully normal or trouble free.

People might say DE about someone if they don't know whether or not they've been diagnosed with ED which is classified as a mental illness. But they can tell their eating looks a bit unusual.

There are diagnostic criteria to be met for any official mental health diagnosis. In my CAMHS, the ED team often use the term disordered eating when they recognise there is an issue but cannot officially diagnose due to not meeting criteria.

This, I was diagnosed with disordered eating. I was eventually hospitalised for a very long time because I was at risk of death but could not be formally diagnosed as anorexic as I had not lost my periods (criteria has since changed).