Hey Pandas, What Is Your Experience With Eating Disorders? (Closed)

Whilst battling COVID I ate about 2½ small bags of chips (UK, crisps) over the course of a month; I’ve had no appetite, hunger, nor could I taste anything. Lost 10% of my usual body weight. Not a diet I recommend. Five months later, for the past week, I’ve managed to eat one main meal a day and sometimes a small breakfast. Massive victory.

I started skipping 1 meal a day when I was 11, I'd sleep and use it as an excuse. my body image was going downhill and I thought it would make me slimmer and fix everything. my dad had a talk with me about it but that didn't help and it progressed to me only eating 1 meal a day, sometimes going full days without eating. I'm better now with it but if I go a day without eating it's still very easy for me slip back into that habit. I think people should be taught about Ed's because it's been 7 years since and I'm still battling it.

I still deal with mine occasionally. It’s never gone away completely but it is has less of a hold on me now. Counting calories and excessively working out ruled my life because I didn’t know how to coup with anxiety. When I did my counting and restricting I felt as if I was in control of it all. After some time in counseling I was able to find what triggered it or look for possible things that could. I know it’s something I will deal with for the rest of my life but I’m fine with it. I’m just grateful my wife stood by me the entire time. Never underestimate a great and beautiful partner.

I have struggled all my life not to be anorexic, and every extra bit of flesh or caloric intake is a victory. And also terrifying. I can't explain how horrible it was as a kid to be hungry (poor) and then have a father who also controlled food so you didn't ever have a choice but if you wanted approval (lvoe was impossible), you had to be super-super-skinny/fit.

TLDR: An eating disorder is a very prolonged suicide by way of food-control addiction.

Well it's a doozy but if you're looking for the worst part it's prolly the guilt. At least for me. When you do eat you feel guilty for it and when you don't eat you feel guilty about not eating. Like either way it feels awful. And then ofc there's the pressure from friends who know...just constantly "have you eaten" "go eat something" "this isn't ok" stuff like that...i get that they're trying to be nice and it's because they care but i hate it.

When I skipped meals for the first time in my life I skipped 2 in a row. Back then, it wasn’t a habit. Then I made my first comment about that on bored panda, I was anorexic, and I thought you would see it. However, TWENTY FIVE PEOPLE told me something along the lines of “just eat” or “it’s not quirky” and downvoted it. 2 months later, when I told the internet I stuck toothbrushes down my throat to throw up, suddenly you cared. I got help and recovered after 4 months. Recently I relapsed, but I eat too close to normal and nobody sees me exercising. They can’t help me because they don’t see it.
This time I want help, but nobody will help.

I started skipping breakfast when I was around 10 or so. Then it was breakfast and lunch, then I was skipping breakfast and lunch and taking the minimum at dinner. I've gotten better but not much better. I have currently been skipping breakfast and lunch, and mainly just having a light snack to replace these meals. Which makes it harder to get through the day. But by now I'm used to it. I'm trying to get better, though. Even though I haven't been professionally diagnosed, by now I'm positive that I am anorexic. It doesn't really affect or bother anyone around me, because nobody notices. So that's my deal. Sorry it's kinda boring to read and it's long

I started developing an eating disorder when I was around 12. I started out as bulimic but when I was admitted to hospital at 17 I was actually anorexic. My health had gotten so bad, they told my parents I would die if they took me home. I spend 5 months at a specialised clinic, gained 12kg before I was considered "healthy" and released myself as soon as I turned 18. I immediately relapsed, bulimic and underweight I somehow finished school and moved out. I started over and slowly made a recovery, did therapy, trained a lot. Ran a marathon in the city of the clinic twice. Slowly gained more weight so I'm not a kg away from being underweight. Started to enjoy life. I am now working a job I love, finishing my masters, got a dog and a fiancé. Once a year I go to a school and talk to kids about the dangers of eating disorders to raise awareness and show them there's a way out.

Im 14 F and in freshman year of highschool. ive been fighting anorexia nervosa since 7th grade it stemmed from being bullied by a group of guys calling me fat when in actuallity i was a health weight. and been in ED treatment twice. my dad thinks im doing it for attention and he's underconcerned and my mom is over concerned and forces an Ensure on me for breakfast every day. i am in the midst of a bad relapse rn and im at 92lbs right now i should be at 125lbs and gaining weight is the scariest thing for me right now im addicted to the control and it's rough pray for me please i love you all :)

When I was around 9 or 10 and (somewhat) continuing I completely eliminated the fruit food group. I already barely ate but I eliminated that food group which could have been a big problem. My parents were always telling me to eat a slice of apple or orange and occasionally I would but never often. (Like once every month or two). Even though I was so skinny you could see my ribs I saw myself as fat. So I ate less and less. But with the help of my parents and health class (I researched eating disorders and we learned about them a bit so I learned how I could help myself), I got better at eating. Still need to work on the fruit thing though.

I used to joke that I'm addicted to food. After years of eating huge packets of crisps, entire cakes. I couldn't stop. I was miserable, angry and ashamed.

I found a solution, admitted that I am addicted to food and food behaviours. I am happy and relaxed for the first time in my life now the pain of compulsive resting has left me.

Overeaters Anonymous

Wow, where to start on this one. (I’m sorry this is long! - I haven’t spoken about my Ed in a long time!)
I’m (F) now in my 40s. In 1994 I was officially diagnosed with Bulima-rexia. Which is basically a combination of Anorexia and Bulimia. I avoided eating where possible, and anything I did eat I threw up.
It started as early as 12. And pretty much my entire teen years were taken up with doctors, clinics, hospitals and dentists. My lowest weight was 6 stone 7lbs, and my highest weight was 13 and a half stone (later in life). I self harmed all the way through, and at my Eating disorder height, tried to take my own life twice.

I grew up in an emotionally unstable household, with undiagnosed autism. I thought, if I could be ‘perfect’ enough everyone would be happy and things would be settled. I was very loved by my parents*, and my childhood is actually full of happy memories full of laughter and love. But my Dad was alcohol dependant (non violent), my Nan (my father’s mother who lived with us) was emotionally unstable and mentally unstable and my Mum was just trying to hold everything together. So when the teenage years hit, sometimes she wasn’t emotionally there, because everything else was draining her and there was nothing left some days. Everything was very unstable, and I didn’t communicate the same way they did, But I could control what I ate, and I felt like it created this bubble of protection around me. It was me and my Ed, against the world. I was sad when someone popped that bubble and I still remember that feeling when it did pop today. Overwhelming sadness, abandonment and disillusion, as the world came roaring back into focus as I had to face what I thought has been my friend, but was actually the enemy.

(*NB. The thing I have learnt about parents, is that mostly they do their best. But that they have baggage too. They are human as-well, they make mistakes as well. None of their emotional stuff was my fault, I wasn’t made to feel it was my fault, I just wanted to make it better for them. )

I recovered in my 20s, married my first and last husband, and was able to fake being mentally well through out that decade.
But still binging and purging. I still felt like there were shifting sands beneath my feet, and my Ed was the only tether I had, keeping order in chaos. My weight swang between very trim and healthy to overweight and unhealthy. In late 2009, my dad was diagnosed with Lung Cancer. I was miserable in my marriage, but it would take me another year to fully admit why. My husband found someone else, I didn’t blame him. So for a while we were living a lie perpetuated by both of us.Then, late 2010, we were told my fathers cancer had spread and it was terminal. My entire world tilted.
But out of that, my father spoke the wisest words he ever said to me.

“You have one life kiddo. And you have one person who you have to look in the eye every f*****g morning and that’s you. You are lucky enough to always have a choice. It’s just sometimes making a choice, is really really hard, and can be very painful.
But you HAVE a choice.”

So I made a choice.

2011 was really the beginning of my (now) life.
I separated from my husband, more of a formality by this point. And we later divorced.
I received my autistic diagnosis at 31
I started dating my Wife at 31
My father, whom I dearly loved, died when I was 31
My mum was lost in a sea of grief, and I alongside her. Again I turned to the thing that had been my constant companion. Using the blue glass I always used to purge myself of all these uncontrollable feelings.
My wife asked me to explain as she noted the slashes on my arms, and the visits to the loo after meals.

So I did. In Feb 2012 she gave me the opportunity to shoot the glass and shatter the ritual.
On Valentine’s Day 2012, I made a promised to her and Myself, that I wouldn’t purge anymore or self harm anymore.
And a decade later I have kept that promised. It has not been an easy path, and sometimes the urge to purge or self harm has been almost crippling. But the more I have learnt about myself, the more I feel able to step aside from the pull of these things and look at what is triggering the behaviour instead. One of the bonus points of autism, for me, is I can ‘step outside’ the feeling and examine it almost in the third person.

My self image, and sometimes my happiness is still tied to my weight. Any photo of me, I can tell you what size I was.
I’m over my trigger weight at the moment (we call it covid cuddley in this house hold) so the Ed voice, is trying to escape the room I lock her in, in my head. The wailing Banshee of Ed.

Some days I hardly hear her. Other days she is right in my ear. I think now she is mainly made up of fear, shame and anxiety.
Fear of getting it wrong, shame of failing and anxious of being shunned.
I can’t change I had an eating disorder. It is woven fully into the tapestry that is my life.

But I CAN change how I treat myself.
(If you got to this point, thank you for listening x)

When I was growing up, I was “failure to thrive.” I had health problems and was “sickly” and couldn’t keep weight on. I was so skinny I was called “Olive Oyl” in high school. I graduated at 5’8” and barely 100 lbs. In my mid-20’s, I learned about some major food allergies, I started avoiding those foods. I started gaining weight and I had pretty severe body dysmorphia. My ex (who I started dating at 18) apparently didn’t approve of my weight gain (I weighed about 125 which is still low for 5’8”,) which added to my skewed view of weight. I started taking laxatives to keep weight off which gave me lifelong GI problems. I kept that going for about 15 years. He didn’t know and would send me diet ads and would hint about “when you lose the weight. Eventually I got therapy and I stopped the laxatives. I gained healthy weight (135-140.) He never stopped nagging me about it. He’d buy me clothes two sizes too small and say, you’ll fit in it eventually. Anyway I divorced him and lost 175# in loser weight.I’m 55 years old and a healthy 140. He’s with a woman who isn’t thin. I think he just tortured me.

Awful. My eating disorder started 8 years ago, 4 years ago I worked for getting better. I saw myself as fat, looking back on videos I was very unhealthy underweight. I still struggle with fall backs. When my mental health is declining my eating disorder shows back up as the first symptom - I can't even keep down normal meals sometimes, even if I am feeling good. I still have a wrong view of my bodyy, but it is getting better. Sometimes I think I can see what other people can see, when they look at me, which makes me very happy that I can finally see my real self.

I am 50 years old and finally abstinent from bulimia after 32 years. Read that again: 32 years. More than half my life. I still have a bulimic brain and I occasionally binge, but I am now, finally, able to move through the insanely intense impulse to purge. I have ruined my teeth, had a heart murmur that did resolve, gave myself a hiatal hernia, and was hospitalized for 2 months. Don’t wait to get help. Eating disorders are thieves, and liars, and assholes. Don’t let them rob one day of your life. And share your story—never be ashamed to tell people if the occasion arises. You never know whose life it may save. ❤️

I have pica, an eating disorder in which you have a craving and/or trouble controlling eating inedible objects. It first started with eating paper, but it got worse when I was in 7th grade. I was bullied by this one jerkbutt who claimed I had feelings for him and called me a stalker, just generally making my life hell. I was once told by him to kill myself when I was just trying to read the clock (Terrible vision lol). I turned to eating inedible objects as my comfort, my coping skill, my only friend.

Eventually, I started eating hard plastic, entire pencils, drinking markers, eating pebbles, pencil lead, cloth, string, and other things. I couldn't control it, it became a force that controlled me. Around that time, I told my doctor about it, and I had extremely low levels of iron. I got treated, but my eating disorder didn't go away.

I then had to go to the mental hospital for losing control of myself and being so uncontrolled. I hated myself and still got affected by pica. The school told my dad to get me tested for autism.

My psychiatrist ordered the test for autism, so I missed a school day doing long, boring tests (I had to play with toys although I was 13, I was fine with it because I didn't care. The person in charge of me asked if they could play as one of the characters I made for a skit in my head, and I said no and ignored his prompting), and I was chewing on a sticky hand.

Results came later, and I was diagnosed with ADHD, Autism, and of course, my archnemesis, pica. (Sorry, I know the test is seemly unrelated, but it is important because I couldn't have gotten help from the school without it)

Now, I've been getting help, and the thing killing me inside was finally told. With my help, I've been able to control my pica, and I've been recovering. Every day is slightly better, but I still suffer from it; thankfully I only eat paper, pencils lead (Only mechanical pencils; wooden pencils have it too thick), erasers, and of course, chew plastic.

To everyone with an eating disorder, I hope you get better, and I hope you get the help you need. People mocked me for having pica and never understood my agony, and I hope you'll find someone to help you.

I was plump as a child, and didn't grow out of it as some do. Although I ate (mostly) normally, I would literally tear the pantry apart looking for sweets. After years of being teased and shamed by other kids, I decided to lose weight by diet and exercise. I did well for awhile, but it gradually turned into anorexia. I was only eating a small amount of supper, and nothing else. I would also binge/purge a few times a week. At that point I happened to see an article in Reader's Digest, written by Cherry Boone (daughter of Pat Boone). She wrote of her struggle with both anorexia and bulimia, and I recognized myself. At about this time too, I learned that Karen Carpenter, one of my favorite singers, had died from anorexia. I got scared straight, and was able to again eat mostly normally. I stopped going to the gym, as I was seriously overdoing that as well.
For most of my adult life I've been overweight, but relatively healthy. I was able to work through most of my 30's. At that point, I started doing things that were illegal, and I think now that I hated myself so much that I tried to eat myself to death. I almost made it. I was 42 and 450 lbs. when I was arrested.
In county jail, the food was inedible. I lost about 75 lbs. in seven months.
I continued to lose weight in prison. At my lowest, I was around 320 lbs. Then Covid came. We were confined to quarters for two years. I gained at least a hundred lbs. back. After my release, I got Covid, and had a slow recovery.
Now I'm at my house. I'm about 430 lbs. now. I've started eating less, and am moving around more. I have begun to lose, and have gotten enough strength in my legs to walk again, after years of being in a wheelchair.
I hope to lose enough on my own to be able to survive bariatric surgery. I've worked through most of my issues, and no longer hate myself as I once did. Once I'm physically capable of taking care of one, I will rescue a dog. For everyone struggling with eating disorders, wherever you are in the spectrum, please know there is always hope. I should have been dead eleven years ago. Now I'm planning my life with a dog. Don't give up. There are people who have been there, and who totally get it.

(I started to write, accidentally hit "publish" and couldn't remove it. That's why there's a post with just "I".)

I had a girlfriend several years ago who was in recovery for bulimia. She wrote down everything she ate and checked in regularly with her sponsor to make sure she was eating healthy. I'm in recovery for alcoholism. My recovery includes abstinence from alcohol. Abstinence from food is not possible. It made me realize that, while recovery from alcoholism is not always easy, it is less complicated than recovery from an eating disorder. In turn, it made me more aware of other people who are in recovery or struggling with other issues.

I have been on diets since I was 9 years old. Because of this I have developed a binge-eating disorder that is made worse every time I attempted a new diet. I suffer from PCOS which is an endocrine disorder and the only help I get from medical professionals is being told to lose weight. I have been to 3 different endocrinologists and 2 asked me if I wanted bariatric surgery and the other wanted me to go on a 6 month liquid diet. I feel shame eating around people, and often hide what I eat and how much I eat.

I am a 45 y.o. F. I remember finding a plastic bag full of vomit in my teenage sister's room, 30 or so years ago, and the light bulb of imagination went off. Long story short, I have been bulimic for 30+ years, with compulsive binging in there to inspire the purge. Have been times I used vomiting several times a day, to times I used it several times a year. I was told by my M&D I was too ugly, too fat, too X to ever amount to anything... yet I was very sexualized. So, so confusing. Do not do this to your children, people. I don't think there will ever be a never for me and binge/purging. Sometimes, it is the only way to recover a little control/ stop the binge/ change the narrative. P.S. My teeth look great, but have enamel and erosion that are unusual for my age.