Anyone here struggled with an eating disorder?

charmingopal

When I was in high school, my parents became divorced (it was the happiest days of my young life), but the aftermath of that divorce was messy to stay the least. My mom wanted to move out of the state so my dad would not get any visitation, only to have us humiliated in court when he said he didn't want visitation either and that she could take his kids whereever,

Needless to stay, I feel like my life was out of control and i was drawn to anorexia nervosa because it gives you a sense of control at a point in your life when you literally make zero decisions. Luckily, I wasn't caught up in it too long, maybe a month or two until my mom caught on and made me eat dinners in front of her and if I threw up, she'd make me eat more. I didnt put up a fight mainly because I was starving.

Now that people are on MFP hopefully rehabilitated with their ED problems, tell us your stories and your daily struggles to not succumb to that unhealthy lifestyle.

Please feel free to add me, every day is a struggle and I will let you know how I get through it.

Opal

TheMaidOfAstolat

There are plenty of us on here.

No worries, we are all on MFP for different reasons and it's a very accepting community.

Welcome, feel free to friend me if you wish. I'm a former ana/mia. Suffered from ages 10-13, I wouldn't say I'm fully rehabilitated as there is no such thing....I have a few bad days every once in a while, but they are few and far between.

Best of luck! :flowerforyou:

FitJoani

Very Borderline if not undiagnosed for lack of better words. I was in a bad emotionally abusive relationship and he would rip apart my meals apart telling me they had sooo many calories in them and hot hot really scary skinny women were and it made me fear food to the point when i wouldnt touch it and would work out for hours a dayn almost everyday.

misssuperstitious

I was anorexic for two years in high school, I was depressed and it was the only thing I felt I had control over. I'd eat an orange and apple for breakfast (4:00am), then go to the gym, then school, them sports practice, them bed..,day in day out, that's all I ate, once a day. Finally my parents hauled me to the ER, and I got help. Sometimes I worry I'll fall back into it, but I think everyone around me is on the look out because of my past, so I'm sure I'm in good hands.

charmingopal

Very Borderline if not undiagnosed for lack of better words. I was in a bad emotionally abusive relationship and he would rip apart my meals apart telling me they had sooo many calories in them and hot hot really scary skinny women were and it made me fear food to the point when i wouldnt touch it and would work out for hours a dayn almost everyday.

That sounds terribly abusive. I can't imagine anyone forcing you to be afraid of food. How have you been coping since then?

charmingopal

I was anorexic for two years in high school, I was depressed and it was the only thing I felt I had control over. I'd eat an orange and apple for breakfast (4:00am), then go to the gym, then school, them sports practice, them bed..,day in day out, that's all I ate, once a day. Finally my parents hauled me to the ER, and I got help. Sometimes I worry I'll fall back into it, but I think everyone around me is on the look out because of my past, so I'm sure I'm in good hands.

I think the silver lining to this is that you really do see how many people love you and will look out for you for the rest of your life. Thats a nice story.

misschaplin

MY STORY

Thought I would share with you my battle with anorexia/bulimia and general disordered eating. Its a difficult story to tell and I still have a daily battle but for different reasons,
As a very small child I have been told by my mum I had problems with food. from the age of 3 I refused to drink milk or eat meat. Meat would literally make me gag, my mum would force me to eat it and I would chew and chew until it was impossible to swallow, I still now remember the feeling of it.
My mum suffers from OCD and part of her problem shows in her eating habits, she constantly weighs everything she eats and religiously counts calories. From the age of 11 I began stealing my mums calorie counting book and counting my calories, By age 13 I was starving for entire days and only forcing a dinner down to keep my mum happy. She would argue with me every morning about breakfast and eventually I would take a slice of toast upstairs, I would break it into tiny peices and then flush it down the loo, or I would wrap it in toilet roll, shove it in the bottom of my school bag and chuck it away later. I would skip lunch completely and then say I was not hungry so only have a tiny dinner at home. I weighed next to nothing and when my period eventually started I used to faint at school ect.

I left home at 16 and then went through an terrible period in my life for the next almost 10 years. I turned to drug and alcohol, continued to starve myself and also took aphetamines. My mum still remembers visitng me one day for coffe and says she went home and cried because she was convinced I was dying. I met my ex partner and replaced amphetamines with cocaine, I would spend 3 days on coke, not eat a thing, and then a couple of days where I would pig out, and the cycle would start again. By this point I had begun to make myself sick.
My Ex partner was a violent *kitten* hole. Somehow (by some miracle) I got pregnant with my daughter. At the time of her birth (Iwas age 23) I weighed approximately 8 stone 6.

I gave birth to a perfect miracle little girl, weighing in at 6lb14oz She is what keeps me going and the best thing to ever happen to me
The violence at home continued though and even began to get worse. When Isabelle was 5 months old we left and went into womens refuge. I had lost the baby weight straight away, but was very poor so eating little, and still being sick after meals.

Evetually things setttled down, I got a flat, and then the house I live in now, and that for some reason is when things got the worst ever for my ED.
I felt I needed to lose some weight so started counting calories religiosly again, I dropped my caloire intake from 1000-200 in app 6 months, I also dropped down to app 6 stone, and then even lower to 5 stone 7, My BMI dropped to 16 and I was dangerously ill. But I couldnt stop, I felt so fat, I could see fat areas all over my body and hated myself. I then discovered laxatives.
My periods stopped, I started to get lanugo, I could not bath for my bones hurt so much, but had to shower (I would have cold showers as I read it would help me lose more weight)
I had to sleep with a duvet under me as I was so uncomfortable ect ect. Eventually my mum intervened, She came round one day and just obviously thought enough was enough, She called the mental health team who came out to see me and took me in for examination, At this point my BMI was 15 something, I was classed as emaciated. I also had a dangerously low blood pressure and any levels of nutriants ect were non existant.

I started a program, at home with daily visits to get better. My scales were removed, I was visited every day to have my blood pressure taken and be "fixed" through therapy. I had to keep a food diary and was told if nothing else I was to eat a banana every day (?)
I slowly started to improve, gained weight to a healthy weight and program was stopped.

So happy days right? NO, Since then I have gone the other way, I stopped caring, my weight has gone up and up and UP, I have stretched my stomach to breaking point on many occasions, and then made myself sick until my stomach was empty.
I have tried starving, but then binged, Its like I lost all my self control.

I have recently knocked the vomiting on the head almost completely. But sadly the binging has stayed Hence the weight has continued to rise.
I have decided now to get healthy, I want to change my attitude to food, learn about how my body works, and waht things I can do to lose weight and still be healthy and enjoy food. I know there is no quick fix, I know that I will never completely lose the voice in my head that is anorexia. But I can learn to love food and love myself, and keep the voice quiet.

I suffer with a personality disorder and Bi-polar so I do have up and down days but doesnt everyone. I am not going to put my body through hell ever again. Being thin (sickly skinny) did not make me happy, in fact I still thought I was fat so what was the point. What I want is to look good in my clothes, be confident and look healthy and glowing, NOT skinny!

I hope that people will not judge me too harshly, as I know some people do not understand eating disorders. But I was not simply an impressionable teen on a diet, I have been and will be fighting these demons for the rest of my life.
Im hoping to make friends here and get the support and advice I need to learn to love both my body and my food.

Thank you to anybody that has read my story. Good luck with reaching your goals and take care all........

over and out! lol

vintagedream

i still have a hard time eating over 500 cals a day. needless to say my metabolism is shot

FATGIRLFANTASY

I have been around eating disorders since I was born. My mother was a bulimic, I remember crying so hard when I would hear her in the bathroom purging. I bluntly asked her "Why do you keep doing this to us?" I didn't understand why she was doing this to not only herself but her family. Her whole life was unmanageable. When I was growing up i got picked on a lot, boys called me ugly and I didn't fit in with the girls. I was so awkwardly tall and skinny. Eventually when I got to high school I had all the boys attention, I had been through puberty and gained weight in places that most men approve of.
Life was great until.... I had a bully at my school.
She was BIG & FAT & MEAN all she ever did at school was bully me, I think she came to school to pick on me. And me with low self esteem that was daily being lowered didn't help the situation. She literally would seek me out, by the end of the school year I think she turned most of the school against me... i didn't know people could do that.

This really lowered my self esteem to a minimum.
The next year she was gone and that was fabulous, it was time for me to break into my own. In high school I stayed active in some kind of PE or areobics class so my weight was never an issue. I didn't feel pretty enough at the time.

After high school is when the trouble began, I hated school so much i decided to take 2 years off and just work my fastfood job.
My life SUCKED, i was so miserable and didn't know why, I also didn't know that I was on my way to fatsville...

I had such a seditary lifestyle, all i did was eat, work, cry and sleep.
Life had no meaning....

One day I looked up and realized how fat I was... humongus.
I lost the weight one year, gained it back the next.
I was yo-yoing all over the place...

that was 3 years ago which leads me up to now..

I had been through every diet imaginable to man, I wanted to be normal again at any cost.
I began taking ex lax about 5 months ago... It would get me smaller for about a day, and then i would eat something ridiculous... and then eat it again.. I continued taking it. I just recently stopped actually, this is my 3rd day not being on exlax and it feels amazing. I don't want to go back.

My mother actually was the one to notice i had a problem... how ironic.

Im glad to be on this website it is really helping me have some accountability

JessicaJune

I've struggled with bulimia and anorexia for 11 years....I'm 25 years old right now. I understand what you're going through and what's it's like to not only hurt yourself, but also witness a loved one close to you harm themselves with an eating disorder.
I'm here for you if you need someone to talk to or listen....I've lost alot in my life because of my illness and wouldn't wish this disease on my worst enemy.

Hug to you,

Jess

nicobby

i have been suffering with anorexia and bulimia since i was 6 years old i am not 19 and still suffering..

nicobby

i have been suffering with anorexia and bulimia since i was 6 years old i am not 19 and still suffering..

littlemili

I had anorexia when I was 12-13. It went away almost of its own accord. Actually mostly through my parents forcing me to eat. I dropped like 2 stone in under 2 months, my thing was that I refused to eat anything solid, so all I drank was soup, water, soft drinks...that was it. I covered it up with some probably fairly lame story about my throat hurting which got tested in hospital and obviously came back as untrue or at least unproven.

I was normal weight between age 14-16. Then I went to boarding school and got hideously depressed. Also there was food pre-cooked for us, 3 hot meals a day. It was a typical rich kids school (I went on a big scholarship and bursary due to being a musician) and loads, by which I mean the majority, of the girls in my boarding house has disordered eating. I just got fat because I was unhappy there. I expect I was around 150lbs when I left. I lost maybe 10lbs unintentionally in my year out before college.

If I'm honest I am in as bad a place now as I can remember. I started out here very healthily but I can see myself slipping into disordered patterns. I know that technically I am "normal" at 122 and 5'1 but I feel very obese when I look in the mirror. The more I lose the worse I feel about myself. I have to try very hard to eat 1200 calories a day, my periods are getting screwed up and my heart condition is getting a little jumpy (although nowhere near as bad as when I was 140lbs). I don't know to what extent I really am still fat and to what extent I have serious body image issues. So far I have been able to keep myself eating at least 1100 daily so I think I will be ok even though I dropped 4lbs in 4 days last week. I didn't feel ashamed about that, tbh I wish it would happen more regularly! I think I will go to the GP this week just to check-in and get myself on the records again. Better safe than sorry.

Oh also I have GAD. I believe it is very common in anorexics. Often goes undiagnosed because it is so often present and overlaps.

HoopFire5602

Copied this from a blog post I did awhile ago...I hate typing a lot.

My lowest weight was 120. I acheived this over 3 years ago after becoming an exercise bulimic. I sat on the borderline of underweight and normal before one of my supervisors stepped in and threatened me with losing my career (I'm in the NAVY and LOVE it). Unbeknownst to me he had always been watching me. If he hadn't stopped me I would have kept going.

My posion was running. I ran at all hours, sometimes 2 or 3 in the morning during work. (Not normal, I know.) I hated myself, I hated my body. I felt that no one wanted to be with me because of my body, which was absolutley wrong. Young and insecure, no doubt. There were many other things that happened during this time that fueled it along...lost the love of my life, dated a verbal/physically abusive boyfriend (Who yelled at me about eating soup and not eating out), got an std from another (after catching him sleeping with another girl), a best friend who became a stalker and would NEVER leave me alone, often peering into my windows at all hours and banging on my door at 2-3 in the morning. I contribute those events to my eventual downfall. The only way for me to kill the pain was to run. And run.
I remember the first day I ran. I ran to a soccer game. i ran as hard as I could. I almost threw up on the field before the game even began. Then I ran during the game. Then I ran home the same way I had come.

I pushed myself until it hurt, and then I pushed more. I ran races with the goal of burning calories. Some longer runs I never trained properly for and put myself at a serious risk. The only times I did stop was when I was injured. I sprained my ankle about 3 times in that time period. I started go go dancing and danced 5-6 hours a night, only fueling myself with liquor.

I started eating less during this time too. I thought I was just being healthy, but a peice of chicken a day is not healthy.

After getting a sort of 'intervention' from my upper supervisors, I realized I had to straighten myself out. I loved my job too much to lose it. it was hard not working out all the time. My mind was always screaming 'go work out'. I would use excuses like 'it's a beautiful day. why waste it?' (That was my favorite excuse) Sometimes I wanted to stab myself in the head to make it stop.

After I finally got better I gained all of my weight back plus some. I was 157 (which isn't heavy at all) But my magic number of 160 is fear inducing. I started to do damage control again and i ended up developing a blood clot in my left leg on a mission to Cambodia. it extended from my groin area to my thigh. Come to find out it was a genetic thing. But at the same time it knocked me flat on my *kitten*. then I realized that my career would be over. You can't be on blood thinners for life and stay in the military. I felt like everything was going to fall apart.

When i got home I was 147. I had lost 10lbs while in the hospital for a month. It all came right back on. I Have fought hard not to revert to my old ways...i was able to lose 10lbs the right way thanks to this site, but when I look in the mirror some days I hate what I see. Other days I'm happy with it. It's an ongoing battle to stop myself from pushing too hard to the point where I hurt myself, or the point where I am already injured and keep pushing on. But, so far so good....

halzuzu

I didnt realize I had an ED until I saw it profiled on a reality/docu-show. I used to load up on diuretics, laxitives, any type of cleansing powders/teas, fiber supplement to basically flush whatever I ate out of my system immediately. I guess this is considered a form of bulimia. Of course when I stopped taking these things not only had I screwed up my metabolism but weakened my digestive system as it had become accustomed to all the laxatives, etc. Its all fine now but I have packed on 15 pounds since I stopped. Now I am losing the weight the healthy way..with diet and execise..although, sometimes after a big meal I find myself wanting to slip back into those old habits.