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Eating Disorders and life with one - Discussions, Opinions, Advice.

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Original post by TotoMimo
I am very rarely this blunt, but this bit angered me to the point of infuriation.

So your body's shutting down, you've eaten a yoghurt and chocolate and now you're all better and miraculously as big as a whale? I'm sorry, but if nothing else, your ED needs addressing RIGHT NOW. You cannot keep making these excuses m'dear.



Couldnt agree more.
Original post by TotoMimo
I am very rarely this blunt, but this bit angered me to the point of infuriation.

So your body's shutting down, you've eaten a yoghurt and chocolate and now you're all better and miraculously as big as a whale? I'm sorry, but if nothing else, your ED needs addressing RIGHT NOW. You cannot keep making these excuses m'dear.


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Original post by Antiaris

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Thats exactly what I got!!.Hate the way you cant rep someone twice so quick.Stupid system
Just spent the whole weekend in bed with a chest/throat infection (yep, both are infected, I guess that smoking really isn't good for you) reading and I'm just really, really ready to fight this/get treatment. Honestly, this is the first time in my ED/mentally ill life that I've really wanted treatment. But I really don't see how I can continue with my first year of uni and tackle this at the same time. I DO NOT WANT TO BE A QUITTER, I DON'T WANT THIS TO RUIN MY EDUCATION. I just feel so lost, like I really am not enjoying my course, am so bored and despondent about the whole degree/uni but I don't want my family to see me give up. They think that starting uni has been so good for me when in reality it has bought all of my issues back to the front of my life. I just wish I could go and check myself into a hospital and just ignore the real world for a while but I know that I can't do that, I'm not sick enough. My BMI is stable and though I idealise the idea of suicide I know I would never actually attempt/ do it. I just feel like if my family knew I was still feeling this way (something that at my worst they blamed on a doctor prescribing sedatives to me at eleven, not any actual issue) they would just see it as me running away from life.
Can somebody tell me in simple terms what I should/ can do? I have a GP appointment on friday (for health issues) and I really want to bring it up then but I just don't know what to say.
Original post by TotoMimo
I'd love to open up the floor now to all and any input here into this very diverse topic, to hear perhaps your own stories or any input or advice you can give myself, my peers and anyone else potentially developing one of these insidious conditions.


Hi Tommy. I'm new here but I'd like to share my experience. I'm Jaz, 18 and I developed anorexia when I was 15. I've been recovered for about a year and a half now.

It all started with self-hatred. I'm not going to go into too much detail; we could be here talking for hours and hours. I was overweight -- at 14, I was a size 16 and about 13 stone (at least) so I decided to hit the gym and eat healthily because I only liked pizza and chocolate. Dropped to a size 12 by the next summer. Then I got injured, thus I couldn't go to the gym. I restricted what I ate until it became an obsession.

Work became a distraction from my illness so I was extremely studious in year 12. My hair was falling out and I couldn't style it as I wanted. I had to cut it short with lots of layers to hide the fact that I was balding. My boobs had become non-existent although previously I had been a 34D. I didn't feel like a woman. I had crushes on so many guys but they just saw a rake. I couldn't ever enjoy myself. I didn't really have friends because they would ask me out to dinner and I just couldn't do it. My feet were constantly swollen. My bones stuck out everywhere. I'd lost sensation in my toes.

Then there was the excessive exercising. Not only was I surviving on about 400 calories a day, I would wake up at 6am to climb up and down the stairs at home about 100 times and take laxatives. I lied to my parents about what I was doing. I became a compulsive liar who said she loved her mum but kept hurting her.

After my AS Levels, I decided enough was enough. I was going to turn 17 but I hadn't had a boyfriend in over 2 years, hadn't been able to go to parties and drink, wasn't allowed to go on holiday because my BMI was a measly 16 and I couldn't get travel insurance. There was so much I wanted to do. I wanted to go through what a normal teenager does. So I started eating. I went from having 400 calories in a day to having 500 calories just at dinner, not to mention all the other meals. My parents always cooked my favourite things and would let me choose flavours and such.

Then I fell victim to the refeeding syndrome -- when your body is suddenly fed with so many calories that it doesn't know what to do and you still lose weight. CAMHS hospitalised me. Whilst in general hospital for 10 days, I lost over 7kg...then they said I must have refeeding syndrome. Thanks for believing me before, guys!

I was transferred to a mental unit in Oxford and it was actually a lot of fun because there weren't just people with EDs there. I made friends for life and it is so good to see so many of them living as normally as possible.

I recovered and I have the record for the shortest recovery time at that unit. I was out within about 2 months; usually people with EDs are in there for at least 3 months without prolonged home leave.

After that, my relationship with food as been normal. I go to the gym to maintain my figure and weight. I indulge regularly and never deny myself. I admit that I have my fat days but I know deep down that I am not. I am a size 8. And no matter how bad things get, I simply will not do that to myself ever again. I have learnt to love myself after years of trying to destroy myself.

More importantly, I can't do it because of my mum. She is honestly the only reason why I decided to get better -- initially I couldn't do it for myself because I felt so worthless. I just couldn't let her bury her own child. And what about my brother? He was always so strong but you could see he was always on the brink of tears when he scooped me up on that hospital bed at a pathetic 5 1/2 stone (I'm 5'8"). Even if things are dire and I want to go back and be sick...I will not. I have too much to lose. The past year and a bit since I recovered has been full of ups and downs but I have had the best year of my life, honestly. It's all because I got better.
I also forgot to mention that I am now setting up a specialised eating disorders group at my university because there is no support for sufferers. I actually like helping people who are suffering because I just don't want them to regret the time they spend with an ED like I do. I can't believe I wasted 2 years of my life.
I'm posting this because I'm worried about my friend, or rather her mother's behaviour towards her. She always tells me how her mother tries to bribe her to lose weight (like saying she'd buy her designer clothes if she was smaller) and puts her down. The thing is, my friend may be overweight but she's naturally like that. She exercises a lot (she's a swimmer, does exercise classes, cycles) and doesn't binge on foods. From what I see she eats normal meals. She isn't flabby/spotty/lethargic, she's energetic and has a great fashion/make-up sense (to the point where I, as the skinny friend wish I could pull off the outfits she wears). But it's like she just isn't good enough for her family. They all joke about her weight and she was even taken to a nutritionist at fourteen for diet advice.
Last week she told me that her mother has been struggling with anorexia since her teenage years. (So that's 40+ years). As an ED sufferer this sickens me, that her mother would let her warped views about self and weight effect how she acts around her happy/healthy/active daughter. How can people be so callous, especially knowing how much an ED hurts?
Reply 2627
Original post by Anonymous
I'm posting this because I'm worried about my friend, or rather her mother's behaviour towards her. She always tells me how her mother tries to bribe her to lose weight (like saying she'd buy her designer clothes if she was smaller) and puts her down. The thing is, my friend may be overweight but she's naturally like that. She exercises a lot (she's a swimmer, does exercise classes, cycles) and doesn't binge on foods. From what I see she eats normal meals. She isn't flabby/spotty/lethargic, she's energetic and has a great fashion/make-up sense (to the point where I, as the skinny friend wish I could pull off the outfits she wears). But it's like she just isn't good enough for her family. They all joke about her weight and she was even taken to a nutritionist at fourteen for diet advice.
Last week she told me that her mother has been struggling with anorexia since her teenage years. (So that's 40+ years). As an ED sufferer this sickens me, that her mother would let her warped views about self and weight effect how she acts around her happy/healthy/active daughter. How can people be so callous, especially knowing how much an ED hurts?


Anon, this is a saddening thing to hear but unfortunately the ED "bubble" has a "blast radius" that hurts those closest to us too.

At my very worst I am really ashamed to admit I was making snide comments to people close to me too like, "Hah, are you eating a takeaway AGAIN?" or "Did you not just HAVE a bit of chocolate?" like I was some kind of junk food monitor for the family or something.

Of course you can condition yourself out of it and as my therapist says to me, the most interesting thing about ED is that it takes roughly the same time to recover from the ED as it did to develop it in the first place. Meaning if you've been enduring it for a year, expect at least that time to recover.

Sadly it also means that your friend's mother has an ED that is so deep seeded she may never actually "recover" from it and your friend herself may find that she simply needs to accept and endure the issues are not hers, but her mother's.
Original post by jazzykinks
Hi Tommy. I'm new here but I'd like to share my experience. I'm Jaz, 18 and I developed anorexia when I was 15. I've been recovered for about a year and a half now.

It all started with self-hatred. I'm not going to go into too much detail; we could be here talking for hours and hours. I was overweight -- at 14, I was a size 16 and about 13 stone (at least) so I decided to hit the gym and eat healthily because I only liked pizza and chocolate. Dropped to a size 12 by the next summer. Then I got injured, thus I couldn't go to the gym. I restricted what I ate until it became an obsession.

Work became a distraction from my illness so I was extremely studious in year 12. My hair was falling out and I couldn't style it as I wanted. I had to cut it short with lots of layers to hide the fact that I was balding. My boobs had become non-existent although previously I had been a 34D. I didn't feel like a woman. I had crushes on so many guys but they just saw a rake. I couldn't ever enjoy myself. I didn't really have friends because they would ask me out to dinner and I just couldn't do it. My feet were constantly swollen. My bones stuck out everywhere. I'd lost sensation in my toes.

Then there was the excessive exercising. Not only was I surviving on about 400 calories a day, I would wake up at 6am to climb up and down the stairs at home about 100 times and take laxatives. I lied to my parents about what I was doing. I became a compulsive liar who said she loved her mum but kept hurting her.

After my AS Levels, I decided enough was enough. I was going to turn 17 but I hadn't had a boyfriend in over 2 years, hadn't been able to go to parties and drink, wasn't allowed to go on holiday because my BMI was a measly 16 and I couldn't get travel insurance. There was so much I wanted to do. I wanted to go through what a normal teenager does. So I started eating. I went from having 400 calories in a day to having 500 calories just at dinner, not to mention all the other meals. My parents always cooked my favourite things and would let me choose flavours and such.

Then I fell victim to the refeeding syndrome -- when your body is suddenly fed with so many calories that it doesn't know what to do and you still lose weight. CAMHS hospitalised me. Whilst in general hospital for 10 days, I lost over 7kg...then they said I must have refeeding syndrome. Thanks for believing me before, guys!

I was transferred to a mental unit in Oxford and it was actually a lot of fun because there weren't just people with EDs there. I made friends for life and it is so good to see so many of them living as normally as possible.

I recovered and I have the record for the shortest recovery time at that unit. I was out within about 2 months; usually people with EDs are in there for at least 3 months without prolonged home leave.

After that, my relationship with food as been normal. I go to the gym to maintain my figure and weight. I indulge regularly and never deny myself. I admit that I have my fat days but I know deep down that I am not. I am a size 8. And no matter how bad things get, I simply will not do that to myself ever again. I have learnt to love myself after years of trying to destroy myself.

More importantly, I can't do it because of my mum. She is honestly the only reason why I decided to get better -- initially I couldn't do it for myself because I felt so worthless. I just couldn't let her bury her own child. And what about my brother? He was always so strong but you could see he was always on the brink of tears when he scooped me up on that hospital bed at a pathetic 5 1/2 stone (I'm 5'8"). Even if things are dire and I want to go back and be sick...I will not. I have too much to lose. The past year and a bit since I recovered has been full of ups and downs but I have had the best year of my life, honestly. It's all because I got better.


I feel lost and upset this morning and this has given me hope. Thank you.
Reply 2629
Original post by Liv1204
Can't say anything about the reason for the neg, but it was certainly not because you ate far too much, or because you ate too fat fat, or anything
like that! And it's certainly nowhere near enough to be unhealthy or to have negative effects.

In fact (although it may not seem like it, either because of overthinking or over-analysing the amounts of everything or whatever!) it sounds absolutely fine and very healthy. A lot of people will be reading what you have eating and wondering what on earth is bad about it (yes, even the chocolate. You're not living off chocolate, you're getting the nutrients you need, chocolate is fine. I would say that it is certainly a good thing for you to have. :smile:). That's not meant to sound patronising so I hope it doesn't, but I'm just trying to say that it is what you said - it's the health anxiety and the eating disorder telling you it's too much, not an objective thing.

You sound like you're doing really well at the moment, you can see in your posts that you're challenging yourself and becoming more confident and relaxed about it. But your dietician is certainly right. :smile:

And yes, tea is absolutely fine too (again, balance, but it would take a lot of tea to have any negative effects whatsoever). And I say this as a tea addict (honestly, my first phrase as a baby was 'cup of tea' :colondollar:), my mum and I have always had about 7-10 cups of tea a day (I'm on decaf these days but still!).

:smile:


Thanks Liv. I' just really annoyed. I'm barely allowd by my body to challenge the thoughts though-almost every time I have a treat it backfires and I feel wrecked the next day, usualy fro sleeping trouble.
Like eysterday I was quite lenient with my diet, but it backfired and I had insomnia, despite winding dow for ages and having a herbal remedy. So today I binged.
Seriously think I might need SSRIs. I can't have beta-blockers because my pulse is already too sow as it is (or was, probably not the way I've been going abut laely...)
Good to know tea's back on the cards :tongue: and yeah, decaf too! I've quit coffee entirely, not for ED reasons but the palps and jitters are unbearable.
:hugs:
Original post by x-Disenchanted-x
I feel lost and upset this morning and this has given me hope. Thank you.


Wow! Thank you so much. Honestly...I know it's hard. The first step to recovery is always the hardest but just remember, it doesn't mean that you will balloon and become fat. There are other ways of coping with emotional turmoil. I took up boxing as soon as I was healthy enough, for example. Trust me, life has so much to offer. Even normal things get stolen from you if you have an ED, like being able to go on holiday or go for a drink with friends. Never give up. Always here if you need help. I'm actually setting up an ED group at my uni to help sufferers because no one should ever have to feel like no one understands.
Original post by jazzykinks
Wow! Thank you so much. Honestly...I know it's hard. The first step to recovery is always the hardest but just remember, it doesn't mean that you will balloon and become fat. There are other ways of coping with emotional turmoil. I took up boxing as soon as I was healthy enough, for example. Trust me, life has so much to offer. Even normal things get stolen from you if you have an ED, like being able to go on holiday or go for a drink with friends. Never give up. Always here if you need help. I'm actually setting up an ED group at my uni to help sufferers because no one should ever have to feel like no one understands.


That's an excellent idea; there really does need to be more support so what you're doing in helping others through your own recovery is a wonderful thing.
I've had a really bad few days but positive people like you are a great influence in wanting to get better and give me something to work towards. You should feel so proud of yourself :smile:
Yeah. Our uni counselling service is rubbish! Also, I just think that I would've recovered quicker if I could physically see someone that had recovered, was still fit and in shape and had lived to tell the tale; one of the hardest thing is believing that there can be life after an ED.
Awww that is so sweet, thank you so much! I wish you all the best, feel free to message me or whatever if you're having a tough time. One step at a time :smile: the benefits are honestly awesome. Even the smallest things that people take for granted are like a gift when you recover!
That's why I haven't gone to mine, it's badly advertised and there's practically no info on it so I'm too scared to go! Thanks so much :smile: it's good to talk to people who know how you're feeling so I may well drop you a message at some point :smile:
Reply 2634
Original post by x-Disenchanted-x
That's why I haven't gone to mine, it's badly advertised and there's practically no info on it so I'm too scared to go! Thanks so much :smile: it's good to talk to people who know how you're feeling so I may well drop you a message at some point :smile:


At my ED service I got to meet a girl named Steph. We got to speak together in private, away from any therapist or third party. It was a liberating experience; she was a recovered anorexic who had been on death's door, been forced through a refeed clinic, then relapsed and self-recovered. I was asking her things like, "do you lie about things? Like, lie about being recovered?" and she would laugh, telling me we become the world's greatest liars until we have ACTUALLY recovered physically. Like, we say "Oh, yeah, it's great feeling better", when in reality we're telling porkies. It's turmoil. We hate gaining weight. Then one day, CLICK! Our head switches to "hey, y'know what? ACTUAL life is awesome. I didn't go on the scales today. Today I had rice krispies for breakfast and it was great. I might have some more. Maybe I won't. Who cares?" - it's like, before, she said she would get out a set of scales, weigh 22g or some weird arbitrary number.... and eat them with water. Then spend the remainder of the day running on a treadmill.

No friends. No job. No life.

I think because she was my peer and not a therapist it felt more like student to student as opposed to student and teacher chat; it felt safe and very real.

I suggest if you CAN speak to a recovered soul, your heart will be eased a great deal.
Original post by TotoMimo
At my ED service I got to meet a girl named Steph. We got to speak together in private, away from any therapist or third party. It was a liberating experience; she was a recovered anorexic who had been on death's door, been forced through a refeed clinic, then relapsed and self-recovered. I was asking her things like, "do you lie about things? Like, lie about being recovered?" and she would laugh, telling me we become the world's greatest liars until we have ACTUALLY recovered physically. Like, we say "Oh, yeah, it's great feeling better", when in reality we're telling porkies. It's turmoil. We hate gaining weight. Then one day, CLICK! Our head switches to "hey, y'know what? ACTUAL life is awesome. I didn't go on the scales today. Today I had rice krispies for breakfast and it was great. I might have some more. Maybe I won't. Who cares?" - it's like, before, she said she would get out a set of scales, weigh 22g or some weird arbitrary number.... and eat them with water. Then spend the remainder of the day running on a treadmill.

No friends. No job. No life.

I think because she was my peer and not a therapist it felt more like student to student as opposed to student and teacher chat; it felt safe and very real.

I suggest if you CAN speak to a recovered soul, your heart will be eased a great deal.


That's cool, glad to see how much it has helped you talking to someone! :smile: maybe I'll try and find out about it. I guess I'm scared that people will know I go there, which is silly, but it's just taking that step! But you're absolutely right, it's time to get our lives back.
Hello all, hope you're doing well :smile:

I have a bit of a favour to ask. My final year Psychology project is all about food preferences, and I really want to get a wide range of eating habits to analyse. It involves deciding between food options, and then some questions about your eating habits and weight, so if you might find this triggering then don't do it! You can withdraw at any time and it's totally anonymous, it's just 4 surveys over the course of 2 days. If you fancy helping a fellow TSRer out, this is the homepage that links to the four surveys. Thanks guys :smile:
Original post by SoapyDish
Hello all, hope you're doing well :smile:

I have a bit of a favour to ask. My final year Psychology project is all about food preferences, and I really want to get a wide range of eating habits to analyse. It involves deciding between food options, and then some questions about your eating habits and weight, so if you might find this triggering then don't do it! You can withdraw at any time and it's totally anonymous, it's just 4 surveys over the course of 2 days. If you fancy helping a fellow TSRer out, this is the homepage that links to the four surveys. Thanks guys :smile:


Heya, this actually looks really interesting! I'll do it starting from tomorrow if that's ok?
Original post by Liv1204
Heya, this actually looks really interesting! I'll do it starting from tomorrow if that's ok?


That's great, thankyou :biggrin:
Reply 2639
Soapy, I'll give the survery a go :smile:

____

Oooh, sugar. Late-night binge.
Anybody who lies awake tossing and turning, what do you do to comfort yourself once the immediate distractions like a book and music have ran dry?

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