to those who have struggled with eating disorders - Page 2

[applejuice]

In my younger days, I was five feet tall and I was healthy at one hundred fifteen pounds.

I am short wasted, so alittle stocky, but not fat. I have slow thyroid function. I once fasted down to ninety-three pounds. I thought I looked great. I exercised, I did not eat or drink. I felt great and I loved the clothes that I could wear. I felt I had conquered my physical self!

That was not a healthy weight, so I continued to exercise and I ate back to 115-120 pounds.

I applied for a job at a gym some time after that and was told to lose fifteen pounds and "maybe" I would be considered for a job.

I think most of the problem with women and eating disorders is our society's obsession with thinness. I was healthy. Why should I conform to some one else's idea of healthy if I already was healthy? Society rewards women who are painfully, unhealthfully thin with praise and with being held up as an ideal of beauty.

Some women can be healthy at a low weight or have slight builds. I am not one of those. I was healthy at 115.

[stayinghome]

Kathleen I know what you mean about stirring up the feelings. i would read ed recovery books to try and get new ideas or trigger myself. I always felt like such a complete loser to do that.

I was at the www.sfwed.com website yesterday and I kind of think that maybe I'm still pretty messed up. i just feel too damn old to go into therepy yet again, go through the motions of trying to find someone who gets it, and finding a nutiritionist that isn't stupid enough to talk to me about "healthy vrs. unhealthy", answer my questions about food and actually adding fuelto the fire, talking to me about portion control, and how to lose weight in a "healthy" way. Blah blah blah. The only nutiriionist that really helped me refused to talk all the bs with me.

The candy proved to be a huge problem with me- we had 15, yes 15 easter baskets sitting on the g*& dam# counter yesterday, thanks to our relatives completely going nuts on the girls. My hubby came home to me extremly upset and depressed, so it's all gone now. The kids were pissed that their stuff is now under his control, but man i was glad to see it go.

Thanks for sharing your story honeysuckle.

And applejuice, it's just that kind of comment that you recieved at that gym that triggers people into disorders. Mine was an aunt that told me I should be ashamed of myself for gaining all that weight. I was nine and heading into pubrty... She gave me a bag of exercise clothes and a tape and so it began...

[sunbaby]

hi y'all. i keep avoiding this thread. gee, do you think maybe i am trying not to look at my issues?: anyway, i am here and reading all your replys and just not able to respond for the most part, because at the moment i am reading, i have either overfed myself on junk and am trying to forget that so i dont get all depressed, or i have eaten healthfully for a day or two and trying to convince meself that i no longer have a problem.

kathleen, i really understand romanticizing the good old days, even if they werent really all that good you know, the point was that i LOOKED good.

so what really triggers you, everyone? i know heather mentioned holidays- certainly for me just the fact that candy is around makes it hard to resist, but does anyone else think it is the social element, too? i am starting to see a pattern in myself lately in which i am unhappy with how i handle a social situation (often family during holidays, and other times too), and the discomfort stays with me long after the situation is passed, and i eat to soothe. also, i feel a lot more vulnerable when i am eating well, i cry more easily and am just overall more emotionally reactive than when i am overstuffed.

[stayinghome]

sunbaby welcome here ... it is hard to acknowledge what's going on isn't it...

triggers for me restricting food (which makes weight loss hard), being around family, especially my sis in laws, any junk food in the house, numbers of any kind- weight numbers, calories, scales, ect..., holidays, eating out, and looking at photos of my old, thinner, self. I used to be (what i feel) attractive and now i am so overweight and gross. Anyway, that's my triggers...

[wonderfulmom]

Question: Do people with eating disorders notice/give extra thought to other people eating/exercising/etc. & silently tally up calories eaten, calories used, food choices, etc.?

[aguacates]

Ummm, me too.

When I was 14 I stopped eating, lost a lot of weight in a couple of months and was hospitalized. The program I was in was pretty scary and I mostly just gained enough weight to be able to go home, but didn't really change any of my thinking. I was very thin all through high school and college and then relaxed about food when I started living with my partner, and I got pregnant for the first time after we had been living together for a year. I ended up miscarrying, but gained a bunch of weight, then I became pregnant a couple of months later, gained more weight, lost that pregnancy due to a molar pregnancy, and didn't lose any weight. I got pregnant with my daughter about nine months later, and gained 60 + lbs with the pregnancy.

She is 8 months now, and I have resisted any formal measures to lose weight since she has been born because I've been scared to fall back into unhealthy patterns while I'm nursing. But it has been really hard for me to be so overweight. Almost a month ago I started trying to exercise every day. I won't restrict my eating, because that is a trigger for me to stop eating. It is really a struggle for me. And I hate the fact that I am still dealing with this. And I also feel like the way I eat now, is kind of a backlash from the years when I didn't really eat at all.

eta: In the height of my ed, I definitely used to watch other people eat and total their caloric consumption, but haven't in years.

[AnnMarie]

Originally posted by HeatherE
I used to be (what i feel) attractive and now i am so overweight and gross.

s You are NOT gross.

[WindyMoments04]

Co dependency and food addiction are my main problems.
If I could stop the food addiction, maybe I would loose weight and feel good about myself, be able to move on from this co dependent relationship and feel better about my life.

((Hugs to all))

[Momma Aimee]

bump

i dealt with this in coolege -- or didn't depends who you ask -- me or eveyone else :LOL

It's important

Aimee

[WindyMoments04]

Well my husband abandoned us this last week. So, I am out of the relationship, now I just need to deal with the food issues!

[AnnMarie]

Originally Posted by WindyMoments04

Well my husband abandoned us this last week. So, I am out of the relationship, now I just need to deal with the food issues!

s I'm so sorry. How are you doing?

[Messy Nessie]

Hi all,

I did a search for anorexia on the off chance that there might be a thread started. So sad to see that so many mamas share this struggle

I was severely anorexic all thru college, recovered a bit then fell back into it 3 years ago. When I got married and we decided to TTC, the doctor told me that I would have to gain weight in order to ovulate and become pg. So I began a horrible spiral of what I recognize now as "binge eating" which was just as bad as my starvation.

I became pg and because I was so scared of not eating enough, I ate EVERYTHING while I was pg. Now that I am 6 mos PP, I feel awful I look gross and there is not anything I can do about it because I am nursing. In a way it is a blessing b/c I can't starve myself, but when things are stressful I find myself often "forgetting" to eat and weighing myself frequently.

MY DH sorta knows about my ED. I mean, he knew about it in college, but I told him that I recovered... When I lost all theweight 3 years ago, I told him it was "healthy" b/c I was exercising... yah, right

Anyway, living with an ED is sort of like being an alcoholic, there is no "dieting". I have long since given up the idea that I could do a diet and lose weight. Once I start losing it becomes like a contest to see how far I can go. Now that I have a DD, I DO NOT want her witnessing that and having the same problems (I inherited mine from my mom).

Anyway, big hugs to all the mamas on this thread and I hope we can find a way to support each other. (BTW, as much as I LOVED Something
s Fishy, it became a BIG trigger for me, as did the ASED newsgroup and all of the books I read).

Oh and I think that book you are referring to is "Wasted" by Marya Hornbacher. When I was at my worst, I think I read that thing 1000 times or more. I practically had it memorized

[stayinghome]

Hi Nessie, I'm sorry you too have these issues. I would suggest you talk to your dh and let him know that it's still an issue for you- even if it's not a daily thing, it sounds like it still hits you during stress, I'm the same way.

I read Wasted a million times too. I'd read it to trigger myself back into it all. Also, numbers, like the scale or calories, and even the fishy website at times. Although it has also served to be very supportive for me too...

Anway, thanks for sharing your story. Mothering and ed's is something we need to aknowledge.

[sunbaby]

hi again, everyone. gosh. it is hard to read about everyone's suffering. at least it does make me feel more human. especially in the old days, i used to just feel dirty. as in, i was ashamed to go into public places because i felt as if all strangers could see through me to my disgusting food problems, as if my clothes were unclean or something, as if i looked like a 'bum'. as if i was the only one in the world with this sort of difficulty. usually i am over that now, thankfully.
i dont usually read books such as 'wasted', or even self help books on this issue, for that matter, i guess because mostly i am trying not to think about it. i did read 'best little girl in the world' over and over in high school, as well as a short fiction i found in seventeen mag, so did used to do that sort of obsessive reading, i dont really know why i stopped, guess it just got too uncomfortable? i dont know.

anyway, the main reason i am posting is to ask you guys, have you found anything that you can include in your life that seems to keep you out of the ffod issues? things have been going relatively well lately, and i know that it is largely because i am riding again. when i am with the horses, doing barn chores or whatever, i just forget to worry about it all- you know, how fat my pants make me look, how many calories i've had so far, etc. even though i can only afford the horse contact by begging and borrowing from those who actually own them, even that frustration seems to feed me and keep me from the food stuff- like it is the one thing strong enough to overshadow the food obsession (sometimes). anyone else have something like this?

[sunbaby]

windy, so sorry. please let us know how you are doing.

[witchbaby]

*pokes head in*
i haven't really talked about my ed in awhile, though i think about it. i think i've been trying to keep it under wraps since k was born, because i don't want her to suffer the same way i have.
because of my lack of time at the present moment, here's something i wrote a couple years ago in my old journal, explaining my past a bit:
http://witchbaby33.diaryland.com/answer.html
thanks for starting this thread!

[aguacates]

Wow, I resonate with so many of you, but especially Witchbaby. I could have written the post you linked to, right down to the M/C. Crazy. I totally dealth with the same issues when I miscarried my first pregnancy.

And reading Wasted and The Best Little Girl in the World, and many more. I used to read anything that was related to ED. Now I realize they are triggers, but I still feel drawn to them. I've been really trying to resist the urge to purge lately (I hate saying that). I'm struggling hard with being overweight post partrum (nine months) and the self destructive voice in my head says, " If you'd just vomit, it would all melt off." : Does it ever go away?

[witchbaby]

miss bliss: YES. i would read ed lit ALL THE TIME. it was... validating? like, "see, she's still alive." oy.
i don't know if it ever goes away. and that depresses me. i've been "okay" since k's birth, but i think about it a lot. dh often harasses me to eat and stop staring at myself in the mirror.
it's too early for me to be thinking. love to everyone.

[Dechen]

NAK so this will be short....

I'm a recovered anorexic and bulimic myself. Four and a half years! Up until my pregnancy, I was a co-leader for a local ANAD support group. Recovery is hard - the hardest thing I've ever done. It was worth the struggle 200%.

Geneen Roth is a writer who's books I think are awesome. They mostly deal with compulsive overeating, but I found them to be totally relevant in dealing with my bulimia. "Breaking Free From Emotional Eating" is one of the best books out there, IMO. It isn't a triggering kind of book, either, so feel safe to open it.

Geneen Roth's books http://www.geneenroth.com/book.html

[Gr8Dreamer]

Originally Posted by sunbaby

anyway, the main reason i am posting is to ask you guys, have you found anything that you can include in your life that seems to keep you out of the ffod issues? things have been going relatively well lately, and i know that it is largely because i am riding again. when i am with the horses, doing barn chores or whatever, i just forget to worry about it all- you know, how fat my pants make me look, how many calories i've had so far, etc. even though i can only afford the horse contact by begging and borrowing from those who actually own them, even that frustration seems to feed me and keep me from the food stuff- like it is the one thing strong enough to overshadow the food obsession (sometimes). anyone else have something like this?

Hello there Sunbaby! Totally KWYM here. I've been anorexic since about 14 and pretty hard core through college. I'd work out for 3 hours at a time, but I would strictly monitor my food intake. I ate probably less that 800 calories/day. I never got way thin until after college though.

When dh joined the National Guard and went away to basic training for 6 months, that's when I went off the deep end. (Dh has since become a Conscientious Objector and is now free from all that BS.) I kicked up my workouts to 2 3-hour workouts a day and just drank water and maybe some dry toast, a very small salad, or a smoothie. But that's if I was "good" and worked out hard enough to compensate for the "fat" I was going to be putting on my body. I'm 5' 8" tall, thickly built (meaning I just naturally have a lot of meat and flesh on my legs) and was down to 118. I thought I would look really good if I could just get down to 110. I looked like a freaking hanger in my clothes, and I was still really jealous of women who could fit into size zero pants.

Long story short, I wanted to get pregnant, and I sort of replaced my obsession with starvation/thinness with all manner of healthy eating. It worked for the most part, but I had backslides and would "forget" to eat. (I'm glad to hear that I'm not the only one who suddenly and conveniently has amnesia when it comes to eating!)

After dd's birth, I had to eat or my little girl would suffer. So I put my anorexia on hold. I still have bouts with it (like I when I was glad when I had food poisoning and lost ten pounds), but horses have helped. They've been a life-long love and a source of inspiration in many ways. My horses don't need excuses. They need me to be there for them. If I'm not healthy, I can't take care of them like they deserve.

Plus, as some of you have mentioned, I don't want dd to have to go through what I went through. I was media saturated as a kid, and I think that contributed greatly to my poor self image. Dd doesn't watch any TV and movies are limited to Discovery Channel dvds and horse videos (like National Geographic and "The Little Horse That Could."). We are as little mainstream as possible. People sometimes chastise me by saying, "You can't protect her from everything!" True, but I can protect her from a hell of a lot more by being proactive and putting a huge filter on the mainstream media culture.

P.S. Reading Reviving Ophelia helped me to see how subtle and pervasive mainstream media are in their quest to make money off the idea that "thin is beautiful."

Also, the feminist in me is screaming that it's the patriarchy trying to keep women down by having us believe we have no value if we don't look like a stick with huge breasts. I think it was this feminist rage that brought me through the worst of my ed. I didn't want men to tell me what to do.

Here are some things that would've horrified me in the past and made me slip into a full blown intense starvation/exercise regime.

1) My boobs sag and instead of being horrified, I wear them proudly (they gave me the beautiful, healthy girl I love to hug and hang with) and nurse unashamedly in public. I look people straight in the eyes and challenge them to say I shouldn't. No one's taken me up on it yet. They're lucky! :

2) I am flabby. My butt looks like bread dough. My legs are Jell-o. My belly is pudding. (Hmmm, why am I equating parts of my body with food?)

3) I don't shave. I used to think women with hairy legs and pits were disgusting. Now, I see it as a form of self-loathing and bowing down to a part of the unhealthy cultural expectation of "beauty" if they do. Why shave off a natural part of my body? It's akin to the circ issue, though circumcision is a million times more heinous than shaving. But being unshaven (for both genders) in our culture is often associated with being unclean or unkempt. I'm a mammal and I'm hairy!

4) I don't wear make-up. Animal testing and cultural expectations I'm not going to meet any more. I like myself better without it. I feel more real.

What's the difference now? The patriarchy can kiss my a**! I'm also a recovering Mormon, and getting over the fact that I had no place in that culture except as a baby maker has been especially difficult but also tremendously healing. I'm learning to really love myself. Not an easy task given what all girls grow up with.

Love to all.