Like teenagers with anorexia, teens with bulimia have great concern with weight and shape. There is a tendency to link a teen's body weight with self esteem.

Teenagers with bulimia regularly (at least twice a week) engage in overeating-even when not hungry. This is followed by guilt and anxiety and an attempt to remove the food from the body to avoid weight gain. Undoing the consequences of eating too much may involve self-induced vomiting, laxative use, diuretics (water pills), or enemas. Adolescents with bulimia may periodically skip meals, restrict food or engage in over exercising. In spite of this, most people with bulimia are of normal weight.

Many people with bulimia have other behavioral and mental health problems, such as impulsivity, depression, self-inflicted harm like cutting and burning, and substance abuse problems.

Over time, bulimic behaviors can result in physical problems. Some of these are swollen salivary glands, electrolyte and mineral imbalances, long lasting disruption of normal bowel function, erosion of the dental enamel, and rarely, tearing or rupturing of the esophagus or stomach or heart irregularities.

Bulimia is not generally seen in younger children and in general, has an older age of onset than anorexia (late teens and twenties). Similar to anorexia, recovery rates with treatment are about 50%, with an additional 30% who improve somewhat and about 20% who continue to have chronic symptoms of bulimia. Long-term follow-up studies, however, indicate that many people who suffer from chronic bulimic symptoms do eventually recover.