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Anorexia nervosa

• Refusal to maintain the minimal normal weight for age and height (i.e., weight loss [or failure to make expected weight gain during period of growth] leading to a body weight less than 85% of that expected.
  Note: The threshold of 15% below expected body weight, or body mass index of 17.5 or less, has been used in the definition by the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases [ICD-10]). For prepubertal patients the paediatric percentile height-and-weight charts should be used instead.
• Intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat, even though underweight.
• Disturbance in the way in which one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body weight or shape on self evaluation, or denial of the seriousness of the current low body weight.
• Amenorrhoea in postmenarcheal females (i.e., the absence of at least three consecutive menstrual cycles).

• Recurrent episodes of binge eating characterised by both of the following:
  1. Eating, in a discrete period of time (e.g., within any two hours), more food than most people would eat during a similar period of time and under similar circumstances.
  2. A sense of lack of control over eating during the episode (e.g., a feeling that one cannot stop eating or control what or how much one is eating).
• Recurrent inappropriate compensatory behaviour to prevent weight gain, such as self-induced vomiting, misuse of laxatives, diuretics, enemas, or other medications, fasting or excessive exercise.
• Binge eating and inappropriate compensatory behaviours both occur, on average, at least twice a week for three months.
• Self-evaluation is unduly influenced by body shape and weight.

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