Dieting/Mental Health Help

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RivonWorth
RivonWorth Posts: 2 Member
in Motivation and Support
Possible TW

Dieting has always been a tricky street for me. I used to suffer from anorexia in middle school into high school. Whenever I think about dieting or start to diet my anxorexia brain kicks in and convinces me to just stop eating entirely since "thats what dieting feels like anyway". I've relapsed a bunch because of this. Anorexia isn't healthy, just look up the effects; and starving yourself makes your body store every bit of fat from food you do eat incase you go into another starvation period. I'm 320 lbs and exersize alone doesn't help me loose weight- Do you have any advice to get out of this unhealthy mindset of dieting?

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  • tinkerbellang83
    tinkerbellang83 Posts: 9,130 Member
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    Do you have a treatment team? If you do it would be best to consult with them before trying to tackle weight loss. MyFitnessPal can be a trigger for some people.

    If you don't look into some of the resources here: https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625071-Eating-Disorder-Resources

    I appreciate you want to lose weight and find a healthy way to do so, but Eating Disorders don't tend to go away, you just treat them, there is always a risk they will morph from one into another too.
  • gearhead426hemi
    gearhead426hemi Posts: 919 Member
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    Just my 2 cents but I say start off with small changes with eating and fitness. Meal prepping is a great way to start off making sure that you are staying focused. Find physical things that you enjoy to do like Walking, hiking, biking, kayaking just about anything that feels more like having fun than a workout. Seek out local groups and try new things to keep it interesting. Always remember that the majority of people struggle from time to time and you will have good days and bad days. Take them all in stride and just focus on the end goal. Best of luck! :)
  • GeminiLady159
    GeminiLady159 Posts: 120 Member
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    A therapist may be able to help you reframe from “dieting” to health promotion, and help address some of the negative associations from your past getting in your way. Maybe look unto approaches like CBT or EMDR.
  • rhinoballet
    rhinoballet Posts: 29 Member
    edited February 2020
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    I'm new to MFP, but have a history of disordered eating. It's been years since I actively struggled with unhealthy patterns, but I do find myself skipping meals now that I'm tracking and recently had a thought of purging cross my mind after overeating. (no intention, just more of a "hey remember that thing I used to do all the time" kind of thing). I went ahead and reached out to a counselor and am going to proactively set up a support system so that I have someone to lean on to help keep me in check.

    One thing that helped me escape the cycle initially way back then was getting mental health help for other underlying issues - mine was a history of traumatic events. One factor in my eating patterns was a desire to exert control over something; having traumatic things happen in my childhood that I had no control over led me to feel a great sense of accomplishment in having control over my eating. So my best advice is to address mental health on a general level and when that's going pretty well, then turn the focus to achieving a healthy weight in a healthy way.

    Sending hugs! It's not an easy fight, but it's totally one you can win!

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