Eating disorders, and messed-up relationships with food

We don't seem to have an eating disorders and related food problems thread, so …

I'm a compulsive eater, but never sought treatment for it. I need to. Partly for physical health reasons, partly for mental health reasons, partly just that compulsions are unpleasant things.

I guess I had a thwack from the get-a-clue mallet today. I am allergic to gluten and diabetic, and yet I ate six cookies at work today because they were there. In the full and absolute knowledge that I will feel like utter crap later.

It's partly a stim thing. Partly a poor-childhood thing. And partly a self-hatred thing.

Ugh.

 

oh man, this. i've known i have a problem for a long time but it's harder to take it seriously when it's not a tv eating disorder i guess. i compulsive eat too but you won't see anyone portrayed like that unless they're the butt of a joke. i actually had a bit of a wake up call myself recently. i had four teeth pulled and not being able to just gorge myself absolutely nauseous every time i got over stressed by a family situation, or overloaded, or had a particularly horrid trip down memory lane really messed me up.

and then i'd get even more down on myself for not being in control of my eating in the first place. like this cycle i can't break out of.

so, uh. i feel you. this sucks.

 

Whoo boy let me come sit in this thread too and hand out non-food treat items and hugs and 'I know those feels'. I've been having a difficult time staying away from old habits recently.

 

Hugs to everyone.

 

I have trouble with eating. I stress-eat, and then I'm also hungry a lot, and that combines badly, because even when I try to 'just eat when I'm hungry', I eat too much. I don't have a ton of self-control when it comes to food, and I don't always have the spoons to try to eat healthy, instead going for eating convenient.

Long story short, I'm slightly over 200 pounds and it's not a fun feeling!

 

I'm closer to 300 (active and surprisingly healthy, but mathematically still largely overweight) and struggle with anorexia, because everytime I try to lose weight I go way overboard. :V

 

I'm about 260-280, the range I've stayed in for about the last ten years. So at least I'm stable in my crazy, I guess.

 

It doesn't help that I'm also short at 5'2''. 200 wouldn't be so bad if I were taller, but I suspect the real thing that would happen if I were taller is I'd be proportionately heavier.
I've signed up for a calorie tracking website, so that will help me be more accountable, hopefully? I'm still only 22, so I probably am still a bit more 'elastic' than I'd be a decade from now.

 

I'm in that range too, @Morven :D And also, @Petra I'm 5'2" so I'm there with you too. You do whatever helps you out! I can't do the calorie tracking thing as that's one of my major ED behaviors, alas. But it is one of the things that can really help for people who can use it. It's a great tool!

 

I have a weird relationship with food. When I was a teenager I weighed 114 lbs. I was just about 5'6" then. I gained a bit of weight around around 18.

My ex actually told me I was too skinny when we started dating. I was around 16. He left bags of candy in my room to try to make me gain weight. And when I made it up to 135lbs I was suddenly too heavy. He made fun of me and said I needed to lose weight. My mom made fun cuz my clothes didn't fit right anymore.

I was miserable. So when I got sick and dropped twenty pounds I was ecstatic.


Now I am about 170 lbs and am much healthier in regards to food. I still have trouble watching my stress and binge eating though.

 

The worst thing for me? Free food, especially stuff that nobody else appears to be wanting. I grew up poor for a bunch of my childhood, and Thou Shalt Not Waste Food was a commandment. And wasting money is also not a good thing. So I can often talk myself out of irresponsible food purchases because it would be wasting money. But if it's sitting there and if nobody eats it it'll be thrown out? Then a bunch of the social things that restrain my impulses are gone.

Stuff someone brought into work and left on the counter, still there at the end of the day? Really hard to avoid. Argh.

 

@Morven Oh yeah. Very, very much. I call it something that sounds much better in Dutch, that I will attempt to translate: I have a defective stopping hand. Which means that once my hand has reached for something once, it's likely to keep going. Which is why I usually eat entire bags of crisps, and entire things of biscuits. (If I have them in the house at all)

 

Same! I have that problem so much at parties and stuff. Wasting money is bad, wasting food is bad. Ugh. Its hard.

 

*camps* lmfa i dont do the behaviors so much anymore but the thoughts every time i eat goddamn it's annoying and my appetite is messed up now i feel overly full if i eat more than one meal in a day and i still feel like i need to lose weight constantly so that's really cool and productive /sarcasm

i also had a really disturbing dream about one of my old ED friends who was having heart problems and may well be fucking dead now (he was 16, i was 17) as they say, ana wrecks ya and you may not even get skinny before you fucking die of malnutrition :^)

 

I stress eat. And I bore-eat. It's awful. I was raised having a pretty good relationship with food - no big servings, no binge eating because nobody did that in the family, and a nice active life. I cycled everywhere, and I was really health. 58 kilos at 1m65, not bad at all, and looking at pictures back then I really looked very good then. But then I started living alone. And because exercise was something I hated during gymclass I didn't do that, and growing anxieties meant I didn't leave the house very much either, and missed out on exercise there. Cue getting sick more often, and yoyo-ing enormously because I didn't know how to cook. (I love ya mama, but I really wish you had spent more time teaching me how to cook for everyday purposes, not just special purposes) Also eating like a teenager because NOW I COULD EAT EVERYTHING and somehow not gain weight? Whoops.

It was okay for the first half, because I was studying music and I went home very often, so my eating disciplines were allocated to my mother and I needn't bother too much with cooking myself. Then when I started studying art and spending more time away from home, that's really when binges started becoming more and more frequent. I had no idea what proper nutrition was, and I gained quite a bit of weight. Like 70 kilos I think. Which I managed to lose easily and it was all good. But still didn't learn how to have a GOOD relationship with food.

Then moved to the US. Boy howdy, that didn't go well. First half of the first year - hardly ate ANYTHING, went down to 56 kilos, started losing hair. Then moved out of dorm, and went back to eating/bingeing. And this being the US, with tasty foods that are FILLED with fats and sugars, I went up to 85 KILOS. Clothes didn't fit, I got rashes on my thighs walking outside, and I got sick really often because I had hardly no exercise. Met my then-husband, and we both wanted to improve our habits. I promised I would lose weight the healthy way - NOT. I hardly ate, I over-exercised (almost fainted once) but I did get myself to 58 kilos... IN THREE MONTHS. Yeah. Not really good. Reached that goal, went back to eatin'. Also relationship bad, wedding worse, comfort bingeing. Went up to 70 kilos. Got sick often. Periods killed me.

Now divorced, much better. Over the years I've slowly learnt from my mistakes and I've determined that I need an eating schedule. I count calories, but I play fast and loose with them, eating slightly below maintenance now because I want to get to 65 kilos, but no lower than that, and eating at set times in the day. I can eat anything I want, as long as the portions are not big, and that has worked SO WELL for me. I've done a lot of research into eating habits, and I can now work with what works for me. Double good thing I did for myself: I took up a gym membership and I now have a private instructor. It's expensive, yeah, but he's my reason to actually GO to the gym, and he's part of my regular human contact, which I need. Having a routine is so valuable, and having a healthy routine is even better for me. Getting fit has also brought the added benefits of being strong (you may have noticed I joke about wrestling), not getting sick so often, and my period no longer kills or incapacitates me. Plus also I don't feel so depressed anymore.

So now, not quite there yet, but going strong, with better eating habits (and while I still binge, I can control for that by not bingeing EVERY day. I also deal with cravings by addressing WHY I feel cravings and go to fix that rather than give into the cravings) and so much more fit than I have ever been.

Edited for language.

 

I am recovering from a restrictive type eating disorder (five years of doing well, no relapses). The urge still comes to restrict if I let myself get too hungry, though.

Uh sorry @Fish butt but I was a little upset that your post used the phrase 'ballooned to 85kg' because that has all kinds of nasty shaming connotations to me and also 70 - 85kg is about what I weighed at my thinnest as an adult when I was really sick and exercised like five hours a day. I'm kind of uncomfortable with non body positive language in general. Sorry.

 

@hellfirelover I'm so sorry for that! I wasn't trying to shame anyone - it was how it felt to me and my body felt really alien at that weight. :( I'll change that phrase if you want.

Edit: I edited it anyway. Also took out the 'shriveling' because that is also rather shame-y language.

 

@Fish butt thanks for replying. You don't need to edit the post! It just gave me a little case of the bad feels for a few seconds, but you clarified that it wasn't meant as a judgement and I'm happy to let it stand.

It looks like you're in a much better place with your eating and health now though, which is good. Looking after yourself can be hard.

 

ED relapses suck. Entirely and completely suck. I have a doctors appointment on Saturday, and am debating how much I want to lie to her. I don't want to lie to her. Water loading, baggy clothes (but not too baggy!) contacts instead of glasses, makeup, and a winning smile ...

I'm lying to myself. I'm in bigger trouble than I care to admit, but don't know what to do about it.

 

from 12-15 i did a lovely mix of puking and restricting in an attempt to not do the puberty thing. (yay for dysphoria!)
i got better-ish and was mostly problem free* until maybe a year ago, when i started counting calories again. the only reason i'm not throwing up rn is that i straight up cannot find a time where ppl wouldn't notice.

Spoiler: potentially triggering

...except for right now, actually. guess i know what i'm doing once i finish typing this!

*problem free= still couldn't comfortably eat in front of ppl, lmao