Eating disorder Eating disorder An eating disorder is a mental disorder defined by abnormal eating habits that negatively affect a person's physical or mental health. They include binge eating disorder where people eat a large amount in a short period of time, anorexia nervosa where people eat very little and thus have a low body weight, bulimia nervosa where people eat a lot and then try to rid themselves of the food, pica where people eat non-food items, rumination disorder where people regurgitate food, avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder where people have a lack of interest in food, and a group of other
Hunger (motivational state) person's energy levels fall below a certain threshold, the sensation of hunger is experienced, which is the body's way of motivating the person to eat again. The set-point assumption is a negative feedback mechanism. Two popular set-point theories include the glucostatic set-point theory and the lipostatic set-point theory. The set-point theories of hunger and eating present a number of weaknesses. The positive-incentive perspective is an umbrella term for a set of theories presented as an alternative to the set-point theories of hunger and eating. The central assertion to the positive-incentive perspective is the idea that humans and other animals are