Madison Liddic

English Comp 1201

Professor Kretzer

8 September 2019

Research Proposal : How do outside influences affect eating habits.

I decided to choose this topic because one of my close friends was diagnosed with

anorexia about five months ago. At the beginning of this year she was perfectly healthy and had

no history of her eating habits. It all started when her parents got divorced in March. She started

skipping meals and would go weeks with only taking a few bites of food. Me and all of my

friends were really concerned about her so we decided to talk to her about it. She denied

everything even though she had clearly gotten to an unhealthy weight and looked sick all the

time. Since she decided not to tell us anything we decided to talk to her mom about it and it

turned out that she had no idea about it but was very concerned. Her mom made the decision to

take her to a doctor to try and see what was wrong and get her a meal plan. Everytime her mom

tried to get her to eat she would refuse. This problem had gotten so bad that her mom decided to

bring her to a rehabilitation home with other people who had the same problem as her. With a lot

of help and support from me, my friends, and the doctors she really opened up and started eating

more. My mind through all of this was just all over the place. I thought “How could she go from

eating, not eating, and then eating fine again?” This is what sparked my research topic and this

whole situation just made me want to figure out how eating disorders worked and what caused

them.
I decided to do some more research about this topic and what I found was crazy. I found out that

different living situations and where you live can have a huge impact on the way you eat. My

friend is a great example because though she was eating fine, her parents had gone through a bad

divorce which changed her eating habits. That to me was just weird to think about because you

would think it would just have a toll on one’s mental state, but it can affect the way people live.

I feel that this topic is very important for our society to be educated on. People should not only

research about our eating habits, but they should know how many people are affected every day.

Before researching this topic my thoughts are that where you live can affect your eating habits in

terms of the food that is available. I also think that someone’s mental and physical health can

have a big affect on how they eat. I believe that this topic should educate every reader and make

them aware of how they don’t know what is going on in someone’s life. Though everyone judges

people on how they may look not everyone knows what is going on in their personal life. I

already know that people who may be depressed or have some type of mental disorder most

likely have problems with eating habits. I also know that many people eat horribly because

maybe the healthier food isn’t affordable to them.

With my research topic I would like to dive in more about the other eating disorders and what

causes them. I would like to research more about if people’s ethnicities have anything to do with

eating disorders and whether they are more likely to have an eating disorder or not. I think I will

start researching this by getting a book that is all about eating disorders. After that I will go to the

main research websites that have really dove into the topic I have chosen.