Thread: Anorexia Truth

This post is so true. It's the best way to put it I've ever heard or read.

What most people don't know about annorexia and all eating disorders is that it's a constant struggle. No matter how many times you think that you've conquered the fight with food you can always go back. Speaking from experience..."At first we are in control. We look good; we feel good," is very true....but then we go past looking good. We don't see the ribs or collar bones that show through our clothes only the fact that we can still pinch alittle bit of fat on our stomachs. We don't notice that we've dropped 15lbs below a healthy weight in the past month....only that we are 2 or 3lbs away from our "perfect weight". Controling ones weight can be much more than just a control issue....but also a distraction from the chaos or short comings in other areas of our lives, it gives you something to focus on, a goal that you CAN reach. Everyone has their way to escape....some choose healthy outlets, other's not so much.

I also agree with the article on Anorexia. I have "recovered" and by that I mean that I am a healthy weight now. However, I still obsessively count calories every day, and I do believe that this is the one thing in my life where I feel like I am in control! I was diagnosed as a teenager when your life is spinning out of control and you think you will never be able to face adulthood and succeed, and for me, this was the one thing that made me feel powerful. But truly in the end it controls you. I feel lucky to have reclaimed my life back and with each year, it continues to get easier. I focus now more on life than on my weight, and that brings a lot more happiness!

As someone who struggled with a severe eating disorder for years, I can tell you. But first I'd like to say THANK YOU to the person who wrote the first post. It is one of the best, most honest descriptions I've read about anorexia in years. I HIGHLY recommend that if you or someone you love have an eating disorder, read the whole article.

I went through many difficult things in my life: alcoholic parents, a mother with serious bulimia and anorexia when I was an adolescent, who was also neglectful and emotionally unavailable when I was a child; losing a job that I loved just weeks after being raped (and many other things.) The last trauma was what put me over the edge at the age of 20. I was already struggling with depression, low self-esteem, and loneliness when I was raped, and my eating disorder started slowly soon after. Thankfully, after a serious and nearly successful suicide attempt on May 16, 2003, I began my long and difficult journey toward recovery.

It makes me so angry when I hear people say the anorexics are vain, selfish people, who should "just eat." If you suffer, you know it's NOT ANYWHERE NEAR THAT SIMPLE, or we'd do it! Or my favorite, that it's about "looks" and "getting attention." As surprising as it may sound to someone who doesn't have an eating disorder, and doesn't know anyone well who suffers, EATING DISORDERS ARE NOT 'ABOUT' FOOD! Food is the tool used to cope with the real problem on the inside--severe emotional pain. People with eating disorders often feel like their life is out of control, and don't know how to manage their intense emotional pain. They often never learned healthy coping skills growing up, and turn to the eating disorder to help them cope, and regain some sense of control over themselves and their bodies. As hard as it is to admit, many people with eating disorders ARE looking for attention, but NOT IN A MALICIOUS, INTENTIONAL, CONSCIOUS WAY. Please don't misunderstand me on this point. I don't believe that anyone in the midst of eating disorder is even aware of this need. The attention they seek is help. They need time. They need compassionate care and attention. They don't know how to ask for help with their voices, so they are unconsciously using their bodies to do it for them. Their ill-appearing, shrinking bodies show on the outside, the overwhelming pain and the extent of their inner distress.
If someone feels so low about themselves, and is so used to putting everyone else first, they often don't feel like they deserve to ask for help for themselves. The only way they are able to ask for what they need is by looking sick. They have extreme fear that if they gain weight, the time, care, and attention they need will go away; that people will think they're "fine" when they're anything but fine. So gaining weight is symbolic. Being sick and underweight is a way of saying "Hello! Look at me! I'm NOT o.k.!!"
I can say with some authority as a sufferer, a person now in a solid recovery for over three years, a registered nurse, and an eating disorder recovery group leader, that eating disorders are a way to cope outwardly with terrible inward pain. Although this is certainly NOT true of everyone, many sufferers have one or more of the following in common: a) growing up, they had either overbearing mothers who were enmeshed in their child's lives, or, at the opposite end and more commonly, mothers who were/are distant, neglectful, unsupportive, perfectionist/type A, emotionally unavailable mothers, who expected perfection from their child; b) history of one or more traumas and/or losses in their life (a common trauma that people with eating disorders have been through is having been molested or raped at some point before developing their eating disorder); c) they are more emotionally fragile and sensitive than "average", and some are afraid of growing up because they feel like little scared children inside, so some use food restriction to prevent the physical changes that puberty brings, d) they often are very giving, caring, intelligent, compassionate, and put others before themselves (and have been that way their entire lives). They may have been sort of forced to take care of their adult parents, and forced to grow up too fast e) sometimes they have a personal and/or family history of mental illness, (especially mothers who themselves had eating disorders) especially (in MY experience and the experience of the many sufferers I've had the privilege of knowing over the years) anxiety, depression, self-harm, borderline personality disorder, OCD, or a combination of these. Please, I don't mean to offer a "one size fits all" explanation, but rather some traits and experiences common to many who suffer.

I'd also like to say that people with eating disorders tend to be the most wonderful people I know. (see d above) Another thing that comes to mind that I've often heard from sufferers is that the eating disorder is "the only thing that makes them special, makes them feel powerful," because not everyone has the extreme amount of strength, energy, focus, willpower, and dedication it requires to deprive and punish your body day after day, and to spend hours and hours a day carrying out the behaviors, thinking about food, weight, exercise, etc. Why the heck would someone want to stay in such misery? I'll tell you. It's because, if you spend 24 hours a day focusing on what you eat, how much you eat, how much you weigh, how much you exercise, etc., it leaves NO time to feel those painful feelings, think about what you've been through, etc. It's an extremely dangerous way of coping, and for many, the thought of letting go of their disorder, and what it "does" for them, is absolutely terrifying. Even more terrifying than dying from what they can't stop doing. And it's SO hard to get out of an eating disorder, especially the longer you've struggled, because it's physically and emotionally PAINFUL. It hurts terribly to put and/or keep food in your stomach, even a small amount, after you've gone years eating next to nothing. And it's scary and troubling, to put it mildly, because suddenly all those feelings that you've stuffed down or starved away are staring you right in the face. And if you haven't learned another healthy way to cope, they smother you.

I apologize for droning on about this; it is a topic near and dear to my heart. I also apologize for jumping around a bit--I have A.D.D. not yet under control. Anyway, If you're struggling with an eating disorder, and you can't get out of it, I just need to say this: I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING THROUGH. YOU HATE THE E.D., BUT YOU'RE TERRIFIED TO LIVE WITHOUT IT, RIGHT? BUT TAKE HEART--THERE IS A WAY OUT! AND YOU ARE NOT ALONE! YOU ARE A PRECIOUS GIFT TO THIS WORLD. THE WORLD WOULD LOSE SO MUCH IF YOU GAVE IN. AT ONE TIME I THOUGHT I HAD ONLY TWO OPTIONS: STAYING IN THE E.D. BECAUSE I COULDN'T GET OUT ON MY OWN, OR SUICIDE, BECAUSE I WAS TERRIFIED TO LIVE WITHOUT "ED." BUT THERE IS A THIRD OPTION THAT I WAS TOO BLIND TO SEE, AS SICK AS I WAS: LIFE! RECOVERY! SUCH A PRECIOUS GIFT, WAITING FOR YOU! YOU HAVE SO MANY SPECIAL GIFTS. PEOPLE LOVE YOU AND WANT TO HELP! I CARE, AND MANY OTHERS CARE. I KNOW HOW SCARED AND ALONE YOU FEEL. AND I WILL NEVER LIE TO YOU--RECOVERY IS HARD. BUT LIVING WITH AN EATING DISORDER IS HARDER, I PROMISE YOU THAT. BUT THERE ISN'T ANY EASY WAY TO GET ANYWHERE TRULY WORTH GOING IN LIFE. I REMEMBER BEING WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW, TIRED AND WEARY, FEELING LIKE RECOVERY IS REALLY IMPOSSIBLE. YOU CAN'T DO IT ALONE, AND YOU SHOULDN'T. YOU DESERVE LOVE, CARE, SUPPORT, AND SOMEONE TO TAKE YOUR HAND AS YOU MAKE THE JOURNEY. IF I CAN RECOVER, YOU CAN, TOO. I KNOW IT. DON'T LET OTHERS DISCOURAGE YOU WITH STATISTICS ABOUT HOW FEW RECOVER. I HAVE DONE RESEARCH OF MY OWN THAT DISPROVES THEIR DISMAL RECOVERY RATES. YES, RECOVERY IS HARD, THE HARDEST THING I'VE EVER HAD TO DO. BUT ALSO THE MOST WONDERFUL, RICH, REWARDING, AMAZING, AND POWEFUL EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE. I AM NOT THE SAME PERSON AS I WAS, AND NEITHER WILL YOU BE. YOU DO HAVE THE STRENGTH AND COURAGE TO RECOVER; YOU JUST NEED TO USE YOUR VOICE, NOT YOUR BODY, AND ASK FOR HELP TO USE ALL THAT TIME AND ENERGY YOU PUT INTO BEING SICK, INTO YOU AND YOUR NEW LIFE IN RECOVERY. I KNOW WHAT ED IS SAYING TO YOU RIGHT NOW: EITHER "JUST ONE LAST BIG BINGE TONGIHT, AND I'LL START TO EAT NORMALLY TOMORROW," OR "I'LL START TO EAT TOMORROW, FIRST THING, BUT I'VE ALREADY RESTRICTED ALL DAY, SO I DON'T WANT TO CAVE IN NOW..." THOSE ARE LIES! THINK OF THE EATING DISORDER AS AN ABUSIVE PERSON NAMED "ED," AN EVIL LIAR WHO WANTS YOU TO DIE. DON'T LISTEN TO HIM ANY MORE!! START TODAY, RIGHT NOW. I AM HERE IF YOU NEED HELP FIGURING OUT WHERE TO START. IT'S UP TO YOU. YOU WON'T GET THE HELP YOU NEED UNLESS YOU ASK. DO IT!!!

My sister is an anorexic and in denial. She has been through several years of stress and it has heightened the disorder. She is very very ill. She has suffered much over the last few years, she lost husband and children, to divorce our father and brother to cancer, now our mother has cancer so while reading your message i know what you say is true about being unable to deal with so much. I educated myself on this disorder to enable me to deal with her. She became and still is very depressed for 6 years. She has attempted suicide a number of times, popping pills, drinking toxic cleaners, slitting wrists and after a number of times taking her to hospitals and calling 911 she stopped the attempts in that manner and started stabbing herself with shards of glass, she would position it so on the sofa and lunge her body on top of it. She would push it in her sides and leave it there, we are talking 5 inch piece of glass. She would call me and begin talking like everything was ok all the while she was sitting there with glass in her body, i could tell it was coming and she would say "I've done something, please don't get mad at me and don't call an ambulance, just let me die." Well all this time i have been her support person, i have been the one lifting her up, builder her will and she has stopped hurting herself. However the disorder is winning she is drinking heavily, has stopped calling me, wont answer door, phone, see doctor, leave her house. She is down to 67 pounds and she was a raving beauty. She has a huge heart. I know she is aware of how she has hurt me by hurting herself, she knows i love her, she loves me too but she cant end the disorder. She doesn't want to. She has no will, no courage, no strength, no self esteem. I'm losing my best friend, my sister and my faith. When people see ED sufferers as selfish, i can get why they say that but I'm also selfish to expect her to get well for me. I will always be her caring sister !!

I myself have been told I have an eating disorder. It started when I was 11 but got worse after I had my son in 2001. I have almost died mutiple times and everyday is a battle. I have a daughter who is 9 and I don't want her to be like me. I feel like no matter how hard I try it won't get better. Some days are good but most are bad and the doctors just say they don't know what to do and I'll die by the time I am 30. I lost my mother when i was young and I don't want that for my kids. But no one wants to actually help they put me on meds and send me home. I hate waking up knowing it is always on my mind. I pray someone can relate and at least pretend to care. I hope anyone struggling with anything finds help and gets better. No one needs to live alone and afraid everyday of dying.

I've been struggling with anorexia for about two years now, and it started out as just a 'diet'. I was 138 pounds [I'm 5'6''] and I just wanted to tone up. I realized the less I ate, the faster I lost. Soon after I was only eating half a Special K bar a day. I dropped twenty pounds in two weeks. I told myself to stop at about 120 but I was addicted to weight loss.

"Just five more pounds", that's what I always said. But it was never good enough. 120 became 115. 115 became 110. And soon I was 99 pounds.

I gained back weight with the help of family and friends, but every day is a struggle and I've had countless relapses. Even right now, I've begun to lose again and every relapse is a little tougher than the last to get through.

At the moment I'm looking for professional help and I hope everyone who has an eating disorder will do the same. It's a scary thing to have and I want all of us to be strong, get better, and be here for everyone who loves us.

Originally Posted by imported_womens-health

What causes the anorexia?
Well, that is complicated. It usually happens in the context of a family experience in which the person who develops the disorder is not freely able to express her feelings. So, these feelings get stuffed down and disowned. That person then turns to eating habits as a way of trying to control what she's feeling indirectly, often without being aware that's what's happening.

Thankyou for posting that! It's so close to home..
When I was little and someone close to me was really ill I was told I was too young to cry. It's effected me ever since. I can't show emotion.
2 years ago this summer I was at my worse, I was at my thinnest and I was in so much pain. I thought I was going to die.
I had to go to the hospital once and the doctors and nurses there was really rude to me when they found out I wasn't eating properly. And my family didn't want to know. It was so hard going through it on my own. The only person that listened to me was my GP. I'm slowly getting better and I'm not so much pain anymore!