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Not only do these websites advocate that people can choose to have an eating disorder, but they also perpetuate the myth that this type of illness is not a problem, but rather a weight loss solution. For individuals with a relatively stable body image and average self-esteem, these websites may look ridiculous; why would anyone want to engage in eating-disordered behavior? Why would anyone want to deprive themselves from the joys of food, induce hair loss, isolate themselves socially, and risk contracting one of the many dangerous health problems associated with eating disorders, all for the purpose of losing weight? The answer to these questions may be beyond you. But if you are someone with low self-esteem, who struggles with body image issues, who has been belittled or criticized for your weight, you are very likely to crave these exact results and would actively engage in trying to achieve the aforementioned outcomes. You would go to any length to lose weight, even if that means starving yourself for weeks on end and punishing yourself whenever you do not achieve a weight loss goal. In a sense, this vicious cycle of self-harm can be explained by behavioral psychologists as following Mowrer’s two-factor model of avoidance learning. According to Mowrer, individuals are motivated to escape fear; in this case, the fear is gaining weight or not losing weight. Thus, individuals will engage in a series of classical conditioning behaviors whereby they begin to associate gaining weight and food (unconditioned stimulus) with disgust and guilt (unconditioned response). Soon enough, food alone (conditioned stimulus) will become associated with disgust and guilt (conditioned response), and they will no longer desire eating. These behaviors are maintained by operant conditioning, in which their behavior (food deprivation) is paired with a desired outcome, i.e. losing weight. This cycle perseverates via negative reinforcement (taking away the guilt) or positive reinforcement (weight loss).