Do people with anorexia really see themselves as fat when they look into a mirror?
Yes. An anorexic person is malnoursished, and therefore his or her brain is not getting enough glucose. Because it is not getting enough energy, the brain starts to hallucinate, believing that the person is much fatter than he or she is. Another common hallucination is that if others tell the anorexic person that he/she is really skinny and losing too much weight, the anorexic person might think “they’re just jealous because I look so good, so I’ll lose another ten pounds to make them more jealous.” I saw an Oprah special about a 48-pound adult woman who thought that she was overweight and tried to continue to lose weight. Anorexia is not a disease, it is a symptom of a psychological problem.
