New-ish and looking for support with recovery :)

modelktford

Hello, everyone!

I'm relatively new here--I started an account several months ago and sort of fell off of it because life got a little bit hectic and I moved. I'll try to keep the novel-writing to a minimum, but I thought I'd throw this out there to see if I could find some support or friends going through the same thing.

For most of my life, I've struggled with restriction and borderline anorexic tendencies. I'm open about it and aware of it and trying to make it stop, but I can't seem to shake this obsession with food and calories. I go through periods where it's better/worse, but lately it's worse and I need it to stop. I thought this would be a good place to try making a change!

I'm a 22-year-old female, 5'3, 105-110 pounds (I quit checking forever ago because I was getting obsessive). I love to cook and be active, so I tend to do a lot of exercising and I cook most of my own food. Sadly, it's kind of to a point where I freak out if someone else makes my food because I need to know the nutritional information. (Not great, I know).

I've started tracking a little bit because my boyfriend was becoming concerned and thought I was starting to get worse vs. better. From my understanding, it looks like I'm restricting to anywhere between 1200-1500 calories a day. I wasn't sure how to put my activity level in, because I'm not as active as I usually am (we just moved here, I don't have a job yet) but I like to spend my time busy. I sit around the house sometimes, but I do a lot of cooking, cleaning, I go out and walk around shops, we walk several times a week for a half hour or so, plus I go to the fitness center 3-5 times a week for about an hour. I guess that's lightly active? I don't know.

From what MFP calculates, for my age/activity level, I'm supposed to be eating like 1700 calories a day to maintain. I'm not sure if I did something wrong, because I input my workout for the day and it said I "earned" an extra 300 calories and upped my daily goal to 2000. Now, the restricting part of me thinks that's way too much and refuses to do it, but it's a very real possibility for me to put my body into starvation mode and it's really messed up my metabolism in the past. I refuse to let it happen again, but I feel very lost. On the one hand, I don't want to shock my metabolism by suddenly eating the right amount, but I'm afraid of doing more harm than good by continuing to restrict to what averages out to maybe 1400 calories a day. My attitude toward food is horrible, and I want to get better. Lately, I've been fatigued, always hungry, out of it...and I suspect part of it is that I'm not really giving myself enough to eat.

Does anyone here share similar issues, and have suggestions for making a positive change?

Nice to meet you all again!

LMYERS94

Hey, I'm not quite going through what you are dealing with at the moment. But I have dealt with it in the past. I'll send you a friend request so we can offer advice/support each other!