Counting calories vs. eating disorder

diannethegeek wrote: »

If you think it's a problem then it likely is. If it consumes your life or negatively impacts it then it's likely to be at least verging on an ED. There are all kinds of screening tests for it online if you're curious: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/

I'll share my experience as someone who did cross the line from normal calorie counting into something like orthorexia.

It was my therapist who caught it before it got too bad. I was seeing her for depression and anxiety and we talked about my diet a lot in the process. I had been spiraling down into it so slowly that I thought what I was going through was a perfectly normal part of dieting. But it wasn't. My diet was consuming me.

My weight loss and my food choices had become all that I was thinking about. I was constantly doing the math to see how many calories I had left, what I could fit into my day, what if I had this, what if I had that instead, what if I couldn't log it, how was I going to measure it, what if something unexpected happened, if I skipped this snack then I would lose weight in X amount of time but if I ate it then I would lose it in Y amount.

It's perfectly normal to think about some of these things while dieting, but not all of the time. Social events were giving me anxiety. My first thread here was a panicky question about how to avoid weight gain at parties because there was so much food at them and the water weight fluctuations afterward were killing me.

I was pushing myself harder and harder to burn off calories while eating the bare minimum to lose the weight on a ridiculous timeline I'd set up. I didn't have the energy for my workouts and I was still doing them twice a day to break through a plateau that only existed in my head. I think I was aiming to NET something like 822 calories/day. It was awful.

I told everyone that I felt fine because I truly thought that I did.

I broke into tears in a friend's driveway because I didn't know how I was going to log the food inside when I got to the party.

I was eating at a world class burger joint and broke into tears in front of my family because I'd budgeted for the quinoa burger but they were out. I ate a portabella burger instead, even though I hate them, and wouldn't let anyone help me by sending it back.

It was my therapist who finally looked at me and said "I work with clients who have actual celiac disease who worry less about eating in a restaurant than you do." That woke me up. She wanted me to give the diet up but I wasn't ready. Instead we found some compromises (closing my diary here so I could stress less about logging, removing my timeline for weight loss, allowing fun foods back into my diet, and relaxing my rules at parties). I still lost the weight, and I hope that no one else every has to go through a similar story.