Anorexia Nervosa is ruining my life

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I've had “anorexic tendencies” and Body Dysmorphia for years which have developed into full blown Anorexia Nervosa over the last few months. I restrict my food intake and record the number of calories I consume every day. I get extremely panicky and suicidal if I eat over a certain number of calories. I can’t seem to stop reading “proana” sites for tips to help me lose more weight and curb cravings etc and I hate myself for doing this. Yesterday I bought a digital kitchen scale so I can weigh my food and work out the number of calories I'm having more accurately. I take full body photos of myself and store them in a folder on my computer labelled “Fat” and I name them things like “thunder thighs” and “disgusting” and look at them and then want to kill myself. And this stuff is all so, so addictive. I can't stop.

I think about food all the time – it is dominating my life. I weigh about 39kg and my BMI is 16.8. I know this is underweight and yet I cannot see it. I look in the mirror and feel horrified at how fat I am. I want to get to an even lower weight and I'm trying to even though I know this is stupid and will seriously put my health at risk.

I see the mental health team regularly for my depression and have had an eating disorder assessment and was referred to a dietician. This made me worse because they gave me a meal plan and said it might make me gain weight and I freaked out and started restricting more. Those sessions have ended now and the dietician is going to recommend to my care coordinator that I get some therapy but this won't start until at least March, probably later.

I see a therapist every two weeks who I arranged to see outside of the mental health team (because they're useless). She’s great and I have told her a bit about my eating problems but I can’t bring myself to tell her the extent of my problem (the “proana” sites, the photos, the food scales etc) and she's not a specialist in eating disorders. She does her best but her support is not enough.

I don’t know what to do. I am badly struggling and need help. I can’t wait until March. This thing is destroying me.

I don’t really know why I'm posting this. I think maybe I just wanted to admit to some of the things I've been doing that I can’t tell anyone offline. I can't even tell my boyfriend some of this stuff and I usually tell him everything. But if anyone has any advice, it would be much appreciated. But please don't be harsh. I am extremely fragile at the moment. Honestly, I am at my breaking point.

I am so, so hungry right now but have already had too much today and am scared I will kill myself if I eat again. But I so badly need to. I feel like I've gone insane.

I remember when I first went to nursing school. One of the sessions we had was at a psychiatric center which, itself, was a huge mansion complete with old paintings and furniture. We were introduced to some of the clients. One girl there, about 16 years old, had anorexia nervosa. I'd never heard of it at the time. I do remember she hated food and was very skinny.

It took me a long time to grasp that concept. I grew up dirt poor - no shoes, no socks on my feet. Father didn't work and there was no food in the house. As children we did a lot of starving. I myself was nothing but a bag of skin and bones. Us kids did everything possible to get our hands on food. We never stole though because my father was abusive and would've beaten us.

When I learned about anorexia, I was confused. How could someone purposefully starve themselves? I would've given my eyeteeth for a morsel of food, for leftover scraps from a table. The idea that someone would starve themselves, and maybe even make themselves throw up, was foreign to me. I just didn't get it.

I see it now for what it is - a mental illness. Being grossly underweight is detrimental to a person's health and well being. I also understand how someone can look at their body and think its hideous ala BDD. My heart goes out to these people and hope they receive the help necessary to get them on the track to self-appreciation.

You posted in The Haven and asked for no harshness. Maybe you needed to try talking this way first, before telling anyone else.

I'm glad you did. And it sounds that at least one person, the outside therapist , you almost trust.

When you're ready, tell her, tell someone, if they don't help tell someone else how afraid you are. And I believe someone will listen, will help.

Meanwhile, you should post more if it helps you to keep trying to turn this around. You ARE worth it.

:/

Last edited by Sherry221B on 17 Jan 2014, 5:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Thank you so much for the responses.

redrobin62 - I am glad you now understand that Anorexia Nervosa is a mental illness. It is not helpful for someone going through this to hear that there are people starving in the world due to poverty.

Waterfalls - your comment is really supportive. Thank you.

Sherry221B - I honestly don't know if you are trying to help me with your comment but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are. I believe some of your information is wrong though. I believe, when starving, that normally the body will burn fat first, then muscle. I'm not 100% sure but this seems more logical to me. And what you said here doesn't make sense to me:

Why would burning muscle create more fat? If the muscle goes, the fat will stay the same until it too gets burned. And if, as you say here, I am losing muscle, then I am losing mass from my body, which will result in me being lighter and appearing smaller. And this doesn't make sense either:



Starving may be dangerous and extremely unhealthy but it is certainly an effective weight loss tool.

But whatever. I don't really want to get into the ins and outs of the physical effects of starvation. I already know the impact this illness is having on me physically -- I'm experiencing it. I just wanted to vent and get some support for something that is having a devastating impact on my life. I appreciate you trying though.

Like they say 'Problem solving is 99% motivation and 1% doing'. Well... actually nobody says that and I just made it up. Really its kind of stupid. I mean at that rate of motivation you would blow right past the problem and would be 7 or 8 problems down the road before you could bring it to a halt. I am going to have to go back to the drawing board on that one and work on the ratio mixture.

Seriously though, if you step back and see the big picture, one thing you notice is that you are aware of the problem, which may not seem like much of a step, but in fact is a step in the right direction. Try not to be discouraged by failures. In fact expect them. You can fail many times and keep on going, but you only have to succeed once to get this area (diet/health) back on a even keel.

I dont know if that helps you. My sister had anorexia for a long time in her life, (since she was a teenie, now she is 38). The one thing I can tell about her treatment of anorexia, that you only beat it by accepting logic. The therapy that she did, did not lead to her being able to "feel" otherwise, but simply leaded to her understanding that the way she feels is simply wrong. She simply knows now, that whyever, when she looks in the mirror, she does not see herself as she truly looks.Its just like a kind of hateful racism, that goes against your own body, so because of you being full of hate against it, the moment you look at it, you see stuff that is not really there. Just like someone being full of hate against black people, automatically thinking of their face impressions of negative ones and so on.

So as example the doctor she worked with, did photographs of her, where you could only see the "shadow-silhouette". Then she was shown photographs of models and celebrities and she should choose the ones, that she thinks that they would look really fine and whose figure she would like to have. Actually, when comparing their silhouette with those of her own, she realized by measurement, that actually she was far more skinny then them as well that she had far less weight, so by logic there was no other possibility, then that she was skinnier. Whyever, when she looked at herself in the mirror, or at photographs, it did not look like that to her, so she looked far more fat then she really was.

She actually still has eating disorder, so weigth and food are still a part of her daily life, but actually she has accepted that she cannot trust her eyes and feelings toward that topic, but that she must go for logic and statistic. So if someone with the same size as her, looks great according to her, and she has a similar weight, then she accepts now by logic, that she must be looking similar, even when she is not able to see it that way.

So the key element of fighting disorder, seems to be, to accept that their is an racistic a**hole in your brain, that hates your body, and lies to you about it.


And I agree with the poster before. Failures are natural and a change does not come within a moment. When you actually now have 7 bad days a week, that your eating disorder dominates you, then reducing that to 6 days, means not to fail 6 days a week, but to have won a step against it. And if it falls back one time to 7 days a week again, then you still have managed to fight against it 1 day a week for a certain time.

Even when actually having rather normal weight again (which is still totally skinny), she had in times of hard stress (her boyfriend separating in an awful way, her best friend dying of cancer, ...) sometimes returns to old habbits for some weeks. That does not mean that you need to waste your engergy about you failing to succeed, but simply that you need to stand up again, and start walking away from old habbits again.

When the body lacks nutrition it will first consume fat (it is why it is there for in the first place) and then muscle mass and finally organ tissue (starts with redundant and non-vital organs like kidneys, spleen, etc) to keep your brain and heart alive.

The thing with fat and muscle is, it takes a lot of time and energy for muscle tissue to re-build and it only increases in size with exercise and high protein diets (what weightlifters do). In contrast, the human body builds up fat very,very fast and fat has the ability to expand in size almost indefinitely...as long as the skin can hold it and expand to accommodate it. You also never really 'lose fat' ... fat cells remain where they are, they just get drained of their content (Muscle on the other hand does get 'eaten up' by the body) and it is why starving is not an effective weight loss method.. you will regain the weight in the form of fat very quickly once you start eating again. This is why daily exercise is the best weight loss method...it forces the body to consume the fat inside the fat cells and keeps said fat cells drained.

Hence, as a 'weight loss' tool, starving is useless. You're losing weight because you lose muscle mass not the fat which is... well, the reason you feel that you look fat.

When you reach the point of muscle mass being consumed and then begin eating again, the body will first replenish its fat content. It takes months if not a year or more of good nutrition and exercise for muscle to return to normal but fat will accumulate within a week. This is one of the biggest problems people with anorexia face when recovering. Even if they start to eat a little more and more at a slow pace, they will see and feel their body fill back up..with fat. They touch their bodies and not feel muscle but soft fatty tissue. It is why strict exercise regimes/therapy is recommended as they recover (recovery of muscle mass).

While this is not particularly helpful to how you feel I hope it does help you understand the situation...and hopefully avoid the recovery difficulties.

^ I do not agree with a lot of what is in the post above mine but I refuse to get into it. I did not start this thread for a discussion on starvation. I just wanted a little support and compassion while I am going through a devastating experience.

But thank you to the people who have responded.

Dantac - I appreciate you trying to inform me.

Schneekugel - thank you so much for telling me about your sister and for your supportive comment.

Toy_Soldier - thank you for your supportive comment. It is good to be prepared for a difficult process as I try to get help and put this right. I don't want to be unrealistic and think everything will miraculously change on its own.

Moonranch I think people are just saying your physical body will act to conserve energy in order to survive, even if your mind isn't sure you want that. And I doubt the long term matters to you right now, I know when I feel disparate it's all I can do to try to make it through the hour, the day. Just try to think about what will help right now, if you can, tune out as much of the rest as you can.

I'm sorry I didn't see your last post, Moonranch. I am used to being misunderstood, it hurts, and I wasn't trying to be condescending, I wanted you to know that I only posted because I feel for you, it's hard not being understood. I hope you will still share your worries with real people who may be able to help.

It's okay -- there is no need to apologise. You haven't done anything to upset me. Thank you for being so nice to me. I truly appreciate it.

..and you have it 1000%. I just don't know how else/what else I can do besides that.

Thank you very much.

and take very small bits very small of food. and calculate your food meals so you dont think ur killing yourself otherwise you need medical attention (psychiatric).

if you eat regularly you wont be killing yourself. if you are very hungry you can eat. your body is needing the food.

just eat regularly the meals you gone take and small bits of food. calm down.

calculate your dinner breakfast and such. and eat regularly . have a schedule.

im not a doctor or a expert.

It's getting worse. I have lost more weight even though I am terrified by the effects this is having on my body. I got discharged from the mental health team on Monday despite the fact my mental health has deteriorated over the last few months. I used that service for over a year and they just abandoned me. I didn't get any preparation or anything, it was just, "bye. Good luck for the future!" And my support worker told me that I am choosing not to get better through choosing not to eat... she knows I have been diagnosed with an eating disorder. I can't believe someone working in the mental health field thinks having an eating disorder is a choice. I am in shock right now. I don't know how to get help.