Eating Disorders

Post Reply New Topic

I'm not sure what I have counts as an eating disorder...
I had post traumatic stress disorder 2 years ago.
I would stop eating because I was so stressed, eating was the last thing on my mind.
I just didn't feel the need to eat.
It got so bad my body started rejecting food, and I was pretty much throwing everything back up.
It rejected water at one point.
My body's gone past that I guess, but when I get stressed I'd get really bad stomachaches and I would stop eating.
I was given tranquilisers to calm my nerves and stomach down.
I feel like I have an eating disorder but I'm not anorexic or bulimic so I tell people I have an eating problem.
Maybe it was a form of self harming whether intentional or not.

Does anyone have something similar?

Try smoking pot.

It might give you the munchies.

Ah... Looks like I'm the only one with an ED around.
That feeling when my thighs touch each other is disgusting. :/

An eating disorder involves poor body image and/or obsessional or addictive behavior around food.

You can have eating problems with other psych conditions as well. The most common is depression, many depressed people over or undereat. The difference is that they aren't doing it because of any desire to look different or obsession over food, but instead because they don't have the energy to eat or else eat to try to comfort themselves.

Certainly not the only one with an ED and on the spectrum, I've been dx with an ED since I was 15 so for the last 10 years.

Phew, I'm never the only one here.
Eating just seems to be the last thing on my mind and I'm scared to look in the mirror or go on the scales.

I have Bulimia Nervosa. I either make myself throw up, not eat at all, or eat beyond fullness (which is a lot). I was in official treatment for this disorder.

Do you have problems with body image (aka. feeling "fat" despite the truth of being thin)? I always had this problem. It was probably caused by bullies on the playground calling me "fat ret*d" (oh, how I hate that word), (It's weird that the bullies knew, but the teachers didn't have a clue.)

Back to eating disorders, if you do not have poor body image, then you might have medical anorexia. Compared to anorexia nervosa, medical anorexia seriously mean lack of food (without the problems with body image).

Warm Air

I think most people have eating disorders
In certain countries anyway or areas
I have bulimia which comes on only when I'm psychotic nowadays
It started age. 11
I was also called fat and ret*d

I have Bulimia too, although it's been a mixture of EDs over the time which I think is often pretty normal. I'm technically diagnosed as having a 'Severe and Enduring Eating disorder (SEED)' which means most of the time people don't want to touch me with a barge pole!. Eating has never been easy and the sensory problems I have mean I cannot tell when I am hungry, full or thirsty. As a child I would overeat if I had to make a decision how much to eat. If I hadn't come from a family that had structured, managed meals, snacks and times I would have had very noticeable eating problems from the start and I suspect I would have been a very restrictive, selective eater as I have been for the whole time I have been able to choose what I eat. I come from a family where fussiness is not tolerated what so ever and I developed at a young age the attitude that mealtimes were putting food into my mouth, chewing as little as possible if at all and swallowing fast. I cannot tolerate the feeling of chewed food in my mouth now, I still chew as little as possible. I'm severely bulimic but my 'binges' are considered weird in terms of what is considered typically bulimic. My binges are normally pretty much the same every day. I binge at certain times, my binges are normally the same foods, in the same order and in the same amount. When I had my AS assessment, we spent a long time teasing out what was ED behaviours and which were AS motivated food behaviours. The motivation is very rarely ED associated nor is it OCD motivated. It's mainly AS related. It's not because I think I'll gain weight magically if I change, nor is it I believe something will happen if I don't do it the same way. I don't like change, I like numbers and I like routine. I have weird issues around the sensation of food and food in my stomach. For years it was deemed as being purely ED motivated but it's become clear over the last few years it's not and it's a mixture of AS, ED, SP problems and OCD. Surprise, surprise (sarcasm) since dealing with it as such (instead of dealing with it as me being non-compliant and not wanting to be better) I have started to make progress.

My body started doing a similar thing after a bad breakup in high school. When I saw how much weight the constant vomiting made me lose, it kind of "evolved" into ED-NOS (with constant purging, but not eating enough to count as bulimia).

If you feel like you have an eating disorder, then it is definitely something you should explore, even if it started with something else.

Like someone else said, it could be depression you're experiencing? Not trying to give an armchair diagnosis at all. I went through something similar a few years back during an extremely stressful situation where I lost all appetite. It was like my body just said "no mas" and tried to shut down til the stress went away. If at all possible, please try to get help 'cause malnutrition can really do a number on you.

Not sure if you meet the diagnostic criteria for an ED, but I never felt that meeting their arbitrarily set standards was all that important for myself. I suffered with an ED for over 20 years. But since I never forced myself to throw up and was not sickly thin I don't know if my suffering would have been granted a diagnosis. I am better after a lot of my own work on myself, but I spent so many years anxiously fearful of eating around other people and panicky at the thought of gaining weight. It sounds like you could have what they call "body image issues" but not have an ED, which is extremely common and something a lot of girls/women eventually work through. Getting anxious over other things and not being able to eat as a result is different from the food/weight being central to your eating issues.