Competitive Dieting Can Cause Eating Disorders, Fatal Sicknesses

Dr Alex Yellowlees, a medical director and consultant
psychiatrist said more and more young women suffering from eating disorders are
taking pictures of themselves and sharing them with friends thinking they are
having a healthy diet.

This competitive selfie dieting ‘diaries’ trend is creating
damaging psychological pressures that can exacerbate anorexia and other
potentially fatal illnesses, he says.

Selfies – a self-portrait photograph taken with a hand-held
digital camera or camera phone – have become increasingly popular among social
media users over the last few years and has made a lot of young women mainly in
their teens and twenties develop eating disorders.

‘We are in the middle of an epidemic of women who are not
satisfied with their body shape and women in middle age are increasingly
vulnerable to developing an eating disorder,’ Dr Alex Yellowlees said.

1.6 million people in the UK are affected by an eating
disorder, of which around 11 per cent are male and 89 per cent female.

Anorexia, one of a number of eating disorders, has the
highest mortality rate in UK at the moment.