Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified (ED-NOS)

This category includes forms of nutrition and body image disturbance that do not fit neatly into the more well-known categories of eating disorder. An "ED-NOS" diagnosis means that a person's body image and nutritional disturbance hinder his or her ability to live an optimal life by interfering with aspects such as health, concentration, job performance, or relationships.

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Behaviors may include extreme methods of weight regulation, such as over-exercising; chronic dieting; the abuse of diet pills, laxatives, enemas, or diuretics (with or without binge eating); chewing and spitting out food; and binge eating at lower frequencies than in binge eating disorder.

While these behaviors are frequently exhibited by individuals with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, they also make up a category of their own and have a strong psychological component.

Because there are currently no standardized diagnostic criteria for these disorders, national statistics for them do not exist. However, the Eating Disorders Program at Duke University Medical Center reports that approximately half of its clinical patients fall into this category—and that many of these individuals suffer from similar levels of social and cognitive impairment as do those with anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa.

While sufferers are overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, teenage girls and young women, all sufferers struggle with nutrition and body image disturbances at levels that interfere with their functioning and have a negative impact on their lives.