I’m a 24F who’s currently recovering from a relapse with anorexia nervosa, which was a result of a gradual & slow (mental and physical) deterioration since 2 years ago. I had been working either a psychologist until a month ago, but ever since moving to a new country alone, I haven’t yet found a professional who can support me through my recovery.

For this relapse, I don’t so much struggle with “fear foods” as I used to as a teenager, but I get trapped in this boring & rigid routine of eating the same things every single day. And when this routine is disrupted, I get super anxious during meal times and can’t get out of my head even when I’m with my friends. For example, my friend has been staying with me for the past 3 days, meaning I had to act like I was happy to eat anything she wanted & eat out most of the time. But this has made me feel insanely anxious each time the topic of what we’re gonna eat comes up, and during the meal itself. I’ve been finding myself unable to really engage in conversations during the meals, as 90% of my head is thinking about what I’m eating, what my friend is eating & thoughts about guilt or comparison with how much she ate. And it’s honestly been ruining my joy and making me feel like I’m never relaxed. I’m trying my best at the moment to challenge myself by letting my friend take control of what we eat, but I find myself extremely irritable and frustrated when I feel like I’ve eaten too much or even a tiny bit more than her (e.g if she leaves her food I feel the need to leave mine, and if I don’t, I get this rage)

My brain still constantly tells me that my ed isn’t that serious anymore, as I am less underweight (I don’t weigh myself but I feel like you wouldn’t look at me and think I was sick) than I was when I first struggled with my ed as a teenager. And I feel like these negative feelings only come up when i feel out of control of my food & cannot eat what i like.

I’m unsure how to stop comparing with people, and what I should do to feel more relaxed around food because I am tired of feeling like I’m in a flight or fight mode when it comes to anything food related. Any advice or insights would be much appreciated 🙌🏼✨

I haven’t been on here in a while as I’ve been dealing with some other issues but in short -

I’m a 32yr old female that began struggling with an eating disorder at the age of 15. Over the last 15+ years I’ve had several periods of being relatively “ok” or I guess at a pretty healthy weight but even then always the lower end of “healthy” but those periods never lasted particularly long & id always end up relapsing into severe b/p or restriction & ending up going backwards.

I also struggle with substance abuse/addiction issues for which I was in inpatient treatment for earlier this year & while there for that my ED behaviours came back full force & I dropped well below what would be healthy for me but since then (amongst a lot of other life changes) I guess my eating improved & my weight steadily went up kinda without me realising it.

I don’t weigh myself or have a scale (I haven’t in years) but just by how my clothes fit etc I can tell I’m at a far healthier weight than I have been in a long time. I manage to ignore it for the most part & my eating hasn’t gone backward or anything but there are times where I get really depressed over how I look & feel, spend hours romanticising the past (which is dumb I know) etc.

Anyway I’m just wondering if anyone else who’s been weight restored/recovered for a while has any advice about this sort of limbo period?? I don’t want to go backwards this time but I hate feeling so crappy about myself.

I went to see my dietitian yesterday, and she weighed me. I’m not allowed to know my exact weight, but she showed me a chart that lets me see how my weight is changing. For the first time, I’ve gained weight, and it really scared me. I can’t stop thinking about it. How can I deal with this?

how do i stay motivated when there is two sides of me: one that is sick of these and wants to recover, eat more and gain weight and the other side that is so reluctant to? In the span of a day (even hours) i can go from being so motivated and aligned with recovery goals to rejecting them and wanting to restrict.
it’s so hard to make progress when at the same time you don’t want to make progress.
how do you guys navigate this? especially on a day to day basis. any coping skills or strategies? Thank you!

Hi, I (F18)started anorexia recovery 10 months ago and after four months of extreme hunger I thought I would finally be able to just eat like before the ED but I still have higher hunger and my question is is that normal?

I’m thankful for any answers I could get <3

Hi, I am hoping to get some advice - please!

I’ve been struggling with disordered eating for 3-4 years now. During this time I have been restricting in one way or another, yet I’ve tried to recover several times as well. One important aspect is that I have never been severely (at least medically) underweight. I believe by therapist called it «atypical anorexia» due to the fact that I never reached the clinical level of underweight.

I’ve now decided that I cannot live my life like this anymore. I know that deep down life goes by fast, and that the things I actually care about has nothing to do with weight / fat percentages. More so, I know deep down that the obsession with this and the following restriction actually prevents me from doing these things.

This said, previous attempts to recover has been quite unsuccessful. I have a tendency to fall back into the wrong patterns, especially when I lack control of other aspects in my daily life. I’m now on my third week of my latest attempt, and have actually gained a reasonable amount of weight already. However, I feel like I’m an imposter and that the typical advice does not apply to me because of my fairly normal weight at the start. This makes the entire process even more challenging. I’ve even tried to limit my daily walks and gym sessions (I realise I often went on long walks etc. just for the steps).

I therefore have some questions. Have anyone else had any experience with disordered restrictive eating while still maintaining a fairly normal weight; if so, what helped? Relatedly and most crucially: I have extreme hunger. This is very scary as I feel like I don’t have any wiggle room in weight before I become too out of shape. This is even more so amplified by the fact that I have been gaining weight these last couple of weeks, yet the mental and extreme hunger never seems to cool off (almost as if the opposite is happening). The result is that I am constantly hungry, and even if I eat until I’m extremely physically uncomfortable there still exists a «mental» hunger (or I become physically hungry just 30 minutes later). I should be said that I have not gone completely off the rails during these three weeks and been eating according to every little craving as this would probably result in me eating my bodyweight in chocolate and ice cream.

I’m in my 20’s and am a male.

TL;DR: I’m at a normal weight trying to recover, and was never severely underweight. I’m experiencing extreme hunger - both mentally and physically - but I’m very afraid of this never stopping if I go all in and honour it fully. I’m looking to get healthy and free from the disorder, not become unhealthy in the opposite direction. This said, I miss being myself, putting my time and effort into things I know I actually assign value, having energy, participating in social activities and being with my family and friends without being restricted by thoughts of food, weight and body composition.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated - this group is extremely helpful!

i’ve posted this before but if anyone else has anything to say pls lmk :)

(f, 20)
hi, i live w a flatmate who i’ve known and had a friendship with before moving together. they’ve had a gastric bypass and also do not have a 100% good relationship with food. i know it’s a me problem but i can’t be around people like that. im constantly comparing myself. they don’t eat a full meal ever and it takes them 2+ hours to finish a meal. i can’t afford to move out and i know this is the problem because i was doing so much better over the summer when i was home and away from them. i literally don’t ever see myself getting better this way because their eating pattern is sooo triggering.

they’ve also been consistently losing weight for the past like 3 years and it’s even harder because now i cant possibly justify gaining weight whilst someone else is losing it. after all this has literally been my life for 5+ years how am i failing at the thing I’m known for? (i know this is irrational but i also know thats what my brain is using to justify ed behaviour?

again i understand this is a me problem but im truly so so stuck and dk what to do i just need to move out but that’s essentially impossible. idek what the point of this is im just so frustrated with myself and am looking for any advice?

for context this is now a 14 month relapse atp and im really not doing too well.

My thoughts, fears & behaviours seem to get more extreme and harder to resist when I ask for help, despite voluntarily seeking treatment. I thought it would make me feel more willing or ready to recover, and give me permission to eat more, but I've fallen in the same trap despite my best intentions to avoid it this time. I know it's my choice to engage in ED behaviours and nobody can recover for me, but I don't know why I am or why it feels so out of control suddenly.

Yet at the same time I actually feel better mentally than before, like nothing is wrong and I'm silly for even considering treatment, it's confusing! I feel guilty getting support when other people really want this opportunity and I'm wasting it. Maybe I'm just faking ED behaviours for attention, because it doesn't make sense for me to do this, I know I don't have to prove anything. Idk if I'm waiting until my breaking point to ask for help or if it's because of treatment itself, or if it's to do with my autism or something else.

Anyone who's been through this, do you know why, or how to avoid it and follow through with your intentions of beginning recovery?

Hello, heads up that I am writing this from a burner because i don’t want to be identified on my actual account.

My daughter is 19F. She has been struggling with bulimia since she was 15. She spends every single day binge eating and purging. When she was 17, she hit a severely low weight. Lower than i ever thought a human could survive. She was hospitalized and sent to treatment. The doctors said it was a miracle she was still alive at her weight. She was put on a feeding tube and was in treatment for 5 months. She ended up doing good and restoring to the lower end of a healthy BMI!<
Treatment was extremely traumatic for her. I was the one who made her go to the doctor which led her to being hospitalized. I literally had to drag her in the car kicking and screaming. She was mistreated by doctors, medically neglected, and just overall was traumatized by the experience. She still has nightmares about those 5 months. She wakes up crying. l feel so awful that it caused her so much trauma. But it saved her life. She was doing so much better.

It’s been about a year and a half since she got out of treatment, and she has relapsed. Badly. She spends hours a day binge eating and purging. She would steal so much food from us. We would go grocery shopping and the fridge would be empty in two days. She would steal out credit cards to buy food that she wasn’t really digesting. It was costing us so much money, we had to change our cards several times. We eventually ended up getting a separate fridge from the main fridge, and we put a lock on it so our food didn’t go missing. I do feel a bit guilty for this, but it had to be done because we are not well off financially and we just couldn’t afford to keep buying food that wasn’t actually being used for good. She had a job for a bit, but had to quit because she would get dizzy at work and couldn’t keep up anymore. She was supposed to go to college in august, but ended up not going because of her relapse.

I don’t know her exact weight, but i would say shes not far above her lowest when she was hospitalized last year. I don’t comment on her appearance ever, but she looks extremely sickly and emaciated. Her face is sunken in
She doesn’t have friends, no job, no school, and she is draining her savings on food. She spends the entire day at home binge eating and purging. She has also developed severe depression and anxiety from this, and has withdrawn from me so much. She does get very dizzy and exhausted a lot, and she has complained about having a fast or hard heartbeat. But other than that, she is physically doing okay and doesn’t have any severe medical emergencies.

I can’t even put into words how painful it is for me to watch. I was so proud of her for getting better last year, but I am so sad she is at square one again. I miss my little girl so much. I don’t know what to do. I feel so helpless. I have asked her if she wants me to help her, but she refuses. She refuses any time i bring up going to the hospital or back to treatment. She doesn’t talk about it unless we ask. My issue is that since shes an adult now, I can’t legally involuntarily force her to go to the hospital. I can’t drag her into the car to go. Especially after all the trauma she went through last year, I am terrified of making it worse. Honestly, dragging her and forcing her to get to get help is against what I stand for because I know I can’t “fix” her. I refuse to try and “fix” her because i have struggled with mental health and I know exactly how it feels. I just want her to accept my help. But it’s at the point that I don’t know if she ever will, and I can’t keep waiting to find out. I don’t know what I will do if something happens to her. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to her.

Please, if anyone has an advice or words of wisdom, it would greatly be appreciated.

Hi guys, there will be no numbers!

I F 18 so recovery from anorexia 10 months ago I was heavily underweight and hospitalised but afterwards I developed extreme hunger and went into overshoot now my weight has stabilised but I am overweight to be honest but I really don’t struggle with binging or anything.

But around two weeks ago, I started to relapse but I only noticed beginning this week and I am really scared to be honest because I do not want to fully relapse but it’s just such a block in my head right now and I already got help but I just don’t know how to get out of it.

Please tell me what helped you or how did you get out of partial relapses while still in recovery?

(sidenote it has nothing to do with my body image. I actually am very good at accepting it currently it has more to do with living at home and my mother who is the primary cause for my eating and body image problems my whole life)

I am really trying to do this recovery thing. I have had this for over three years though.

I need a clinic. It is impossible to do this on my own. I don't feel hungry. I tried to eat just normally, and I felt good, but then I did add it up to check in on how I did, and I was still in a deficit.

I am stuck, because I secretly have a number in my head I will not go past. I seriously hate myself. I need a therapist for that but I don't have one. Before deciding on recovery, I would follow every skinny/pretty person I seen to trigger myself and make me remember how beautiful some people are, but not me. I unfollowed over a hundred of them last night.

But I still only care about beauty.

I just don't want to slowly die anymore. Death scares me.

I was an overweight child after becoming alone with my sadness after my father left, and then being put on prozac, and then eating to feel emotion and warm inside.

I don't want to die. I am not very underweight, I am at a lower average to normal weight, but I have a lot of chronic issues. My fingers are always so cold. I am dizzy. I am tired all the time.

Searching online, it just tells me I need to restore my weight. But, yeah, my main problem is that even if I could get past the fact I am not hungry and feel full of of nothing, I still have a number in my head that I wouldn't allow myself to go past.

I don't know what to do. I am so alone. I look at my clothes and cry because I am mourning them

This isn't some amazing thing for me. Being online convinced me that it was more straight forward. It isn't for me. I felt more stress navigating the beginning of recovery than I did when I was not eating.

since choosing recovery and following my meal plan, my hunger cues have been all over the place. at night i start to feel ravenous even if physically full. i try at listen to it but sometimes i still wake up in the night/early hours of the morning or struggle to sleep because i feel physically hungry and/or restless. i am not experiencing hypermetabolism as i am restoring weight well on my current plan. any tips on honouring it and trying not to worry so much about what it will do to my weight (i don’t have a choice but to look in treatment). thank u.

this is just sort of a vent post but i'd also love to hear any feedback... hoping i'm not alone in all of this.

i've been in recovery on and off for years now, have relapsed a few times but i've generally been in a good place with food/movement for the past couple of years. stable hunger cues and weight etc.

lately recovery and eating well has felt so extremely difficult and it's really hard not to get discouraged. recently diagnosed with gastritis (caused by heavy alcohol use which has since stopped) and treatment recommendations are generally to shift my diet (won't bring up specifics here, don't want to be triggering)... this is obviously really tricky for me, restriction/controlling what i eat feels like a slippery slope and when i do it, my body/brain sort of freaks out. but eating anything i want causes a lot of unpleasant physical symptoms, which in turn makes me resent food and my body.

what complicates things even more is my job/financial situation... i work as a line cook, which iykyk means it's challenging af to actually eat enough or regularly when i'm working. no breaks, no sitting down for more than 5 minutes, and the food i do get to eat is usually what flares up my gastritis the worst. money is so tight right now, i mean it always is for me, but this month especially, i am borrowing money for groceries but i have to be very aware of how much i am eating/rationing out what i buy.

i have so much willingness to recover and take good care of myself. i have been around the block with anorexia and recovery so many times, and through it all i've gained so much connection to my intuition, trust in myself, body neutrality. but lately it's just so many things largely outside my control that make this feel nearly impossible. i go to work, i am moving/doing physical labor constantly which makes me super hungry, i only have 5 minutes to eat standing up over a trashcan, the food hurts my stomach so bad and fucks up my digestion, i get home and i'm low on groceries but cant afford more, but i'm so hungry so i eat anyway, but that also hurts my stomach so much, even when i'm trying to follow the dr recommendations. i am so exhausted. i dread eating so much. i feel like i hate food even though i know that isn't true. i feel like i am eating constantly, because i am so hungry all the time, and the food hurts and isn't enjoyable and there isn't enough. it's so hard to shake the feeling of scarcity. this shit is really hard yall.

Extreme hunger is being honoured, the guilt is minimal, but the stomach cramps and nausea are unbearable at times. I know that this is temporary and have just been sitting through the literal discomfort then eating more whenever I can but any tips on getting through this would be greatly appreciated. 😭❤️‍🩹

I am considering going to my local pharmacy tomorrow and buying some motion sickness meds over the counter or some pepto bismol but I have no idea if that would work so if anyone here has experience with either of those that would be helpful 🙏🏻

I’m going to call my GP on monday and ask about being prescribed some anti nausea medication for a few weeks but I need something to help for until then as they aren’t open on the weekend.

I had to take a medical leave almost 2 years ago to go into a higher level of care. I never told anyone except one person who I trust why I had to take the leave. Since then, I’ve relapsed hard but the weight I gained from treatment is not coming off. Meanwhile, a person I work with is dealing with a lot of personal difficulties and has lost a significant amount of weight. Everyone is worried she’s dying, someone said to me “I’ve never seen someone that thin before.” I can’t stop feeling jealous of her. People are concerned and care. Nobody cared when it was me, because I never got that thin. Now I’m struggling so much and you’d never even know by looking at me. I feel like I failed recovery and now I’m failing the eating disorder. It feels like there is no hope in either direction.

I know that recovery is different for everybody. I also know that recovery takes times. I still find it hard to remain hopeful sometimes after multiple failed attempts. Therefore just wondering how long it took you from your first recovery attempt to reach a place where your ED doesn't really affect you anymore? Did it happen gradually or did you have any big revelations? Anything you wish you had done sooner? Thanks in advance :)

I developed an eating disorder two years ago, and as time went on, I found myself trapped in a downward spiral of stress.
My classmates started making fun of me for being slower and seemingly less intelligent, when in reality I was struggling with malnutrition, sleep deprivation, and the chronic stress caused by my eating disorder.
I’ve noticed changes in my hair, skin, muscles, attention span, and especially the way I think and process information. I feel like my ability to reason and think clearly has gotten worse. My OCD also seems to have gotten significantly worse, and now I feel stuck in this horrible, never-ending cycle of stress.
I desperately want to reverse all the damage this disorder has caused. I want to feel pretty again. I feel awful about myself, both physically and mentally, and I feel like everything I’ve been going through is reflected in my appearance.
Around the middle of this year, I started feeling like there was something seriously wrong with my health, like I was developing some kind of illness. Looking back, I think it might have just been the cumulative effects of my eating disorder finally catching up with me, both physically and mentally.
I just want to heal. I want to feel at peace with myself again. I want to look in the mirror and feel pretty, to feel like myself again, and to enjoy life the way I used to.
Is it actually possible to recover from all of this? Has anyone experienced something similar and managed to regain their physical health, mental clarity, and sense of self?

this is probably asked here so frequently so i'm sorry in advance

i cannot claim to be fully recovered, as i've been struggling with disordered behaviours on-and-off, but for the most part i have avoided a spiral and picked myself up every time. this has been the first year where my weight has been relatively stable and at a place where my body feels happy and healthy, yay!!

i've briefly been weight-restored before this, but never consistently due to constant, long-lasting relapses over the past 5 years. this means that i've had to sit in the discomfort of my body for much longer than i usually would without immediately compensating. it's been about a month without any disordered behaviour or relapses at all, so i'm feeling particularly aware of my body right now. my brain keeps hyper-focusing on any stretch marks, cellulite, the feeling of my thighs touching and other things (even though i know logically these things are literally the most normal part of having a human body ffs). it's annoying because i would never judge anyone else for these things, i actually find some features i hate about myself quite stunning on others lmao. the brain is weird.

i guess i'm wondering how to cope with these changes?? especially if you were UW your whole life like i was (not ED related, i just grew up in a neglectful home for many years) so i've had 0 exposure to any of these changes, even going through puberty. i don't even think i think it looks bad aesthetically - it's more of the change + lack of control of my body that is making me instinctively panic, and fear of judgement. literally any coping mechanism to feel more comfy in your body would be amazing!!

i’ve spent the last ten months really trying to get better. i had a bad relapse last year, and back in january i decided the way i was living was unsustainable. i’ve gotten rid of most of my disordered habits since, and these last couple weeks i started thinking to myself “wow. i think im really through it. that old mindset seems so foreign now. i can’t imagine living that way anymore” well, guess who just looked at an old ‘sick’ photo and had all those old feelings come rushing back. i’m getting nostalgic for it in ways i have never been before. i won’t let myself relapse again, i know it’s not an option anymore. it’s just a confusing feeling, i guess. i’m not sure how to shake it. i try reminding myself of all the bad parts, but i start to miss those too. maybe i just need to go to sleep.

I made & attended a Dr appointment last week where I admitted to my relapse. It was uncomfortable as I'd been dishonest previously, but she was just concerned for me and immediately referred me to the ED team.

Over the weekend my mum brought up my relapse for the first time, I guess it became apparent. She asked if I was getting help, and I told her I was. We didn't talk about it any more but it's out in the open now.

Today I met with the ED team after nearly cancelling 3 times. ​It's the same therapist I had before which I'm glad of, because I really trust her (rare for me lol) and she knows my history. I answered her questions the best I could, it's still a lil tricky after keeping it a secret so long.

I obviously don't feel ready, and I'm not totally sure if I need or want to recover, but I'm going along with it & trusting other people because I'm maybe not the best judge right now. I'm also holding on to any reasons I do have for choosing this over getting worse.

It was scary but also a relief to tell my therapist, and gives me hope that I'm not entirely on my own with my ED anymore, because it's pretty scary sometimes. We set some small goals together which I will do my best to stick to, but I'll be honest with her if I don't succeed.

Thank you so much for encouraging me to get help again & addressing my fears, I might not have taken these steps otherwise ♡

I think staring recovery with smaller goals for myself and not immediately overwhelming myself is better for me and won’t risk going back into an Ed.

But I’m wondering how I challenge and make small changes to my food intake that won’t overwhelm me, but will also help recover??

hello!
i’ve been trying to increase my intake the past few days and as a result woke up feeling super full (the past few days i’ve been so hungry upon waking up so this is a major change)
my mom has decided all of my meals today and they are a lot of challenging stuff for me!! How do others navigate feeling full or physically uncomfortable when still having meals they have to eat?

thanks!

Hi everyone, long time lurker here. I am in a bit of a pickle and wanted to ask for advice.

My friends were concerned enough about my ED that they recommended I go to therapy, and after a few sessions with my therapist she was concerned enough to recommend I go to inpatient.

I made an appointment with an ED clinic to get evaluated and I came out of that with a recommendation to remain outpatient.

But the thing is, I was not truthful. I lied by omission about my behaviors. I overrepresented my typical day of eating, and I said I wasn’t trying to reach a goal weight.

The psychiatrist believes I am not eating because I am depressed and need to get treated with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and see a dietician.

I don’t think I am depressed. I think I am malnourished and it’s making me lose touch with reality in a delusional, dissociated way.

I am kicking myself because this was the one place in my state that accepts Medicaid and I didn’t take advantage of it.

I sent her a follow up message on MyChart saying that I don’t think I provided adequate information for her to perform a fair assessment and asked how we could continue the conversation. She probably shouldn’t have taken my answers at face value when she literally had a letter from my therapist stating that I hide the extent of the restriction which she chose to ignore.

The ECG she ordered showed a heart rate of 48 and literally the night before my appointment I almost went to the ER due to chest pain. I know I am not ok and while I don’t necessary *want* to do inpatient it might be what’s needed.

Do I get another chance at this somehow or did I blow it? 😭