I'm worried for a friend. Adivse?

ebony_jade

So my friend has been apparently very effectively been losing weight (from 75kgs to 55kgs in 2 months) all due to a very healthy diet and exercise, "okay..." you might say, but the problem is I'm pretttty sure shes lying about the 'healthy diet' part, all she EVER does is talk about how much calories are in everything and how she would never eat it, and this is stuff that I eat - being a zucchini stuffed with maybe 2 Tbs goats cheese and spinach or flat, wholemeal flour / mashed chickpea based pizza with dry roasted pumpkin and soy cheese (and I'm a very steady 60 kilos) - I don't know about what you guys think, but I think that's pretty healthy stuff... I work with her sometimes and she eats about 1/4 cup of rice and maybe 50gs of beans and then goes ON and ON and ON about how full she is for the next four hours, and I don't know who shes trying to fool but she also constantly goes on about how muscley she is, and honest to god even when shes tenses all there is is bone and sinew.
I'm a qualified chef and I know the ins and outs of what is good food, and I thought 'if shes trying to diet I'll make her a good healthy birthday cake that you can eat and still not feel guilty about!' it had NO sugar, NO added fat - not even oil, basically it was pureed apples mixed with almond meal, psyllium husks, flax seeds, gogi berries blueberry juice, mixed frozen berries, sunflower seeds and buckwheat, so high fiber, high protein, health cake! and she straight out refused to eat it because it would make her fat... this was kinda the tip of the iceburg for me, I mean there's dieting and there is dangerous behaviours... when you wont let up to eat a slice of birthday cake I think there is something to worry about, when you're birthday cake is THAT good for you, and a best friend has tried really hard for you and you still wont even TASTE it is it too much?
Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, what do you guys think, should I be worried? I am worried, but is there cause to?
This is what she looks like http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v221/ebony_jade/ahem.jpg

nilisabel

it sounds like you're worried, but what can you do about it?

ebony_jade

Well, thats why I'm here.. because I need advise, I've seen too many of my friends slip into mild cases of anorexia / bulimia and I've seen the devastating effects that it has on their bodies, I don't want her to be sick and I want to try to stop her from going down that path if she is

jgoff3003

It is great that you are concerned for your friend, that is true friendship, having come from an eating disorder (I met my best friend in a support group) I had many friends that tried to help me when I was sick but what you need to realise that if you think she is developing an eating disorder that it is as much a mental illness as a physical illness, I often used to push friends away, saying to my self they are just jealous and just saying that i look skinny, what would they know they are huge yada yada yada,

What woke me up to my issue what my sister got me into volunteering at a local women's refuge and hospital and ensured that we were working with girls that were suffering and at that stage i saw how these girls and women destroyed their bodies and one woman told me how she couldn't have kids and that snapped me right out of it.

While that is an extreme that worked for me and may not work for her, it was good as i felt my sister wasn't pushing or bulling me into changing my ways she just educated me to see what it would do long term, It is hard not to get frustrated but maybe ask her what she wants to achieve and what does she see as realistic goals for her, and find pictures of ppl that weight that for her height and see if that is realistic.

Another idea is to go to a nutrinsist with her under the guise you can work together on your health and see what they say.

I will pray for her and i hope that she receives the help she needs and she realises what a great friend she has is in.

also on another note...can i have that cake recipe it sounds amazing!

ebony_jade

I know that its a mental illness and she does suffer from very bad depression - which is another reason I think that she might be going down an eating disorder pathway, and she has already accused me of being jealous of her and said mean things like "you're just upset because I made it to your goal weight and you never could" which I took -relatively- in my stride, just felt a little sad about myself for a few days haha.

I'd love to do something like your sister did for you but she would NEVER go along with something like that, outside of work I never even see her anymore, she says she doesn't have time because of uni and work - even when its the holidays.

I've asked her what her goal is and shes told me that shes not dieting anymore but visually she is losing weight every time I see her and getting more and more gaunt, shes also lost a lot of her characteristic 'self confidence' despite her original size every time we went to the beach she would wear a bikini, now its a t-shirt and long boardies.

I'm very well educated on nutrition because I've done my cheffing, and because when I wanted to lose some kilos I knew the best thing to do was see a professional and get some real personal advise and then I thoroughly researched super ingredients that I could use (like the psyllium husks, flax, gogi, apple cider vingar etc)

I really do love her and I wish there was something I could do, but no matter what, any time I show any concern she just brushes it off and yeah, as I said, we don't even hang out anymore.

P.S. about the cake, hahah I don't have a recipe, its kinda always been my thing to whip up cakes without even trying... basically it was 3 pureed apples (to act as eggs - binding agents) maybe a cupish of almond meal, there was some dessicated coconut in there come to think of it too, and some oats, and cinnamon and vanilla bean seeds and the blueberry juice was instead of milk, to water it down a bit... yeah I'm sorry, I don't really know, I just kinda put everything in a bowl and mix random stuff I have into it until its of cake batter texture, stick it in the oven and hope for the best.
I started doing this type of thing a while back when I was making vegan cakes and a website advised that a great egg substitute is apple, and the cake was AMAZING, so next time I made a cinnamon cake I used apple instead, cut out all the sugar and used cloudy apple juice instead of milk, it kinda evolved from there with all the other ingredients and combination of which