Why do people get eating disorders?
I'm 15 and I've been struggling with eating issues for 3 years now and I don't even know how it all began. There is nothing appealing about starving yourself to the point that you pass out. Or shoving so much food down your throat in one sitting that you can barely move after. I was supposed to get skinny, but even at my thinnest I still felt fat. I could never lose enough weight. And with my messed up metabolism and binging issues I'm 10 lbs heavier now then when I started. I can't eat over 500 calories without feeling guilty, binging, and starving myself the next day. I've isolated myself from friends and family. I've turned down so many invites to places for the fear of what kind of food they'd serve there. I've been holding out on my life until I can get thin enough to let myself enjoy it. I'm afraid of most dessert foods, pasta, bread, and anything containing fat. I can't eat those foods without immediately feeling guilt and anxiety. I don't like who I am anymore. Nobody understands what I'm going through. I tried to tell my mom, but she didn't think I had a problem. She probably thought I was too fat to have an eating disorder. I am too fat. I'm fat and disgusting and I deserve to be as miserable as I am. I hate myself and I don't know what to do. I don't even know what my question is anymore. I just need help but no one is helping me. Nobody understands.
I'm never hungry...Is this a eating disorder?
I went through a similar thing when I was 15. There are a lot of reasons that you could feel "not hungry." Even though you don't think so, depression, and even just sadness in general, can alter your desires, personality, and perception of the world. One common symptom of depression is lack of hunger. If you have down moods and occasionally a bad body image, it might help just to have someone to talk to about it, even if it's just a friend and not a "shrink," though you shouldn't discredit the professional psychiatric community all together. It's hard to be happy all the time, and in this generation, it's hard to have a healthy body image. Both of these things can influence how hungry you feel, how happy you feel, and can give you a level of general apathy. My condition progressed throughout high school, and I was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder and put on mood stabilizers. Now I visit a psychiatrist once a week to maintain my medicine and life in general. I do NOT think that you are bipolar. I had an extreme case. But it influenced my life in ways I didn't think it could, like how hungry I felt and how much I slept. You could be depressed and just not really know it because you've always felt kind of sad, or you've been sad for so long that you think it's normal. Don't be shy about talking about your feelings with your parents, a trusted adult, or a friend, until you can figure out whether or not there is a deeper underlying problem. You don't have to have a life full of drama or car crashes or anything like that to have a hard time. Some people were built to need help.
Is there a opposite to Binge Eating Disorders?
Binge Eating disorder is not when they are upset so they eat more. Binging is just eating excessively. You don't have to be upset or sad to be labeled Binge ED. So if you don't eat when you are upset, that's normal to a point. I don't eat when I am stressed or upset because I just don't feel like eating, but I eat ok when I am not sad. It's just a stress reponse to not eat. If you don't eat even if you are hungry or you don't get hungry, that's the criteria for "Anorexia Nervosa". You need to decide if you eat normally when you are not upset. If you do, then it's fine that you don't eat when you are upset. I hate that feeling of the "knot in my stomach" when I am upset so I don't feel like eating. That's normal. If you don't eat when you are hungry, you are anorexic.
How do I stop stress eating? I’m 18 and I’ve been gaining some weight. I’ve always been a stress eater, but I used to be one of those people who could eat a lot and not gain weight.
Parts of this answer are taken from here: (Tina Huynh's answer to How could you self-cure bulimia?)I, too, know how you feel. I used to eat until my stomach was so stretched that it would hurt to stand upright. And even when I was at this point, I wanted to continue eating... and most of the time I did.Here are some steps that I took to stop my binging:I stopped dieting. I know this is difficult for someone with an eating disorder but this is a necessary step to recovery. You have to learn to declassify foods as good or bad. No food is inherently good or inherently bad. You have CHOSEN to classify those foods that way. Don't listen to yourself. Allow yourself to eat. Once your brain knows that it's allowed to eat whatever it wants, it suddenly doesn't want to eat EVERYTHING as soon as it gets a taste of "bad" food. There are no off limits food. This is really important.I dropped the all or nothing mindset. Just because you had ONE cookie doesn't mean your day is ruined and now you might as well eat another twelve. Just because you made one mistake doesn't mean your whole life is a failure. Just because you ate one all-vegetable meal doesn't mean you are a vegetarian. We have good days and we have bad days. Acknowledge the bad day, accept it as it is and move on. One small misstep will not make a difference in the long run.I celebrated all of my victories, no matter how small. Did you drink eight glasses of water today? That's a win. Did you remember to floss today? Win! Did you choose to eat broccoli instead of french fries? Major win! Celebrate. Everything.I stopped rewarding myself with food. If you've had a stressful day and you immediately walk to the fridge when you get home... STOP THAT. Go shopping instead. Get a massage. Call a friend you love talking to. Find other ways to reward yourself. Food is not the reward.If you’d like more information, check out my nutrition/dieting blog at How to Stop Dieting
Question for the men:...i'm a girl who have an eating disorder?
this is to all the men out there....i have an eatingdisorder...and when i eat sugar, i fall, i eat to much, and the next day i will starve myself........so i want to stop eating sugar all together, for i suffer from hypoglycemia in any way, so sugar makes me feel drained and tired all the time, but i am scared that when i don't eat sugar, no guy would want me... because of my disorder i'm not fat, but i always see these guys with their girlfriends eating ice cream..etc....and i won't be able to do that? would it bother you in any way? i'm just so tired of being caught up in this disorder, and sugar is like the trigger. i mean in special circumstances i'll eat it, but otherwise i don't want to anymore.....would it be oky? i know it might sound stupid, and you might think it is stupid and maybe it is but pleeeease i need advice about this...?wouldn't it bother a guy, ...and i know people will say its not that what is important, its who i am..blah blah blah...so just be honest guys...?
Is this an eating disorder? I used to have bulimic behaviors when I was sad or mad. I don’t do it anymore. However, I often think about doing it.
You should never attempt to self diagnose, nor take the opinion of faceless random strangers to assist you in such matters. If you've suffered from eating disorders in the past, I BELIEVE--on a diagnostic level--that you are always considered to have one, you're just managing it well.Feeling the need to throw up your food, whether you do it or not, is obviously abnormal. If it wasn't, you wouldn't question it. So you may want to make an appointment with a therapist and see if you can work through it. It sounds like it may be more of a conditioning problem. However, there is always the possibility its an uncommon physical problem that's making you feel that way.THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY ANYONE ONLINE CAN FIGURE OUT YOUR PERSONAL ISSUES FROM A FEW SHORT SENTENCES.Make an appointment with your doctor. If you're concerned about your health and well being, than you need to do something that might actually solve the problem so it stops plaguing you. You're in charge of making sure your mind and body are operating at the level you desire.
Why do people with eating disorders get upset when you say they're really skinny instead of being happy that they've achieved their goal of being so thin?
The way you've phrased this question goes some way towards your answer.Earing disorders are rarely about ‘being thin’. They are rarely, at root, anything to do with physical size at all. They are usually a way of managing unmanageable feelings and staying in control. Pointing out your thoughts on their bodies is like pointing out to someone with cancer who is having chemo that having a bald head really suits them.Also, the problem with an eating ‘disorder’ is that, no matter how thin you get, it will never, ever be enough. Mainly because, as stated above, ‘'feeling fat’ was never the issue in the first place.All you do by drawing attention to their body is draw attention to the thing that causes them deep distress, so when you do that, they feel completely missed and misunderstood. Think of it this way - it's like you said to them ‘hey! That self-harm is really working for you! You look great! Keep hurting yourself, it looks good on you!’It is also very difficult for people with restrictive eating disorders (the type thay result in ‘skinniness’) to make any sort of recovery in a culture that finds it acceptable to comment appraisingly on each other's bodies. They often deal with other people's envy (‘I wish I was as skinny as you’, ‘i wish I had your control’ Etc); so that means there is a lot of positive reinforcement of painful, self-harming behaviour, which feels like people think they ‘should’ harm themselves in order to be acceptable. Also they deal with a lot of envious attacks; (‘well we’re not all skinny like you, you know!!’), which provides the double whammy of feeling bad about themselves for being skinny, and also feeling anxious about being noticed as skinny.There’s also the level on which people don't want to be noticed in case someone tries to ‘ make them put on weight’. Control is key with restrictive eating disorders.In short, don't mention bodies, weight or size at all around someone who you suspect has an eating disorder of any kind. Firstly it's not kind; secondly it's not necessary and thirdly, it's just none of your business. Give them space to open up to you and ask for your help if they want to. Recovery from an eating disorder, in my experience, involves never talking about weight, body or food. In fact treatment often stalls if you try to go there.
WHENEVER I'M SAD OR UPSET I CAN'T EAT...help?
You're the same as me! When I''m sad, if I eat it makes me feel fat, which makes me even more sad. And when I'm angry and I eat, I kinda stab my plate with my fork instead of picking up the vegetables or potatoes, and I usually have some form of soy meat as the main dish, so I'll take that and like rip it to pieces before I eat it. My parents don't like watching me eat when I'm really mad and just make me eat in the kitchen instead of the dining room because they can't stand watching me mutilate my food. And I forget to eat a lot, too. I never eat breakfast on school days, not enough time in the mornings. But on weekends, breaks, or over the summer, I'm so used to it that it's kinda like... cereal? Oatmeal? What am I supposed to do with this stuff so early in the day? And then when lunch rolls around, sometimes I'll be too absorbed in the computer, or my music, or writing, or reading, to listen to my stomach growling. At school, we have nine class periods, each about 45 minutes long. My lunch is period 8, the last lunch (there are period 5, 6, 7, and 8 lunches). My friends are like rushing to the cafeteria because they're so hungry, and I'm just walking down the stairs from algebra slowly, put my stuff in my locker, then go sit at our table, because I don't think I'm hungry. Then one of my friends will come over and sit down with a tray of food and I'll just say, "crap, I didn't think I was hungry. I'm gonna grab some pizza or something." But I don't think I'm hungry until I see the food, it's kinda weird. I guess I'm lucky I'm not underweight yet, huh? If I lose 7 pounds I will be though. But what this big long answer of me blabbering on and on is supposed to be saying is that you're not the only one who eats like that.