r/fuckeatingdisorders

​I told my gilfriend that I had a bad relationship with food, but that I was almost recovered after going to therapy. I lied, because I wanted to be honest but didn't want to worry her.

​We are both eighteen, and still live with our parents, and my mother has fallen deeply into her ED again, and it's triggering me a lot. As much as I want ti rationalize it and ignore it, her comments are hurting me a lot.

​I want my girlfriend's support and help, but I don't know how to explain her my situation without worrying her a lot and stressing her out so much. How should I approach the conversation? I dont want to make her feel responsible for me

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hi! I've been attempting recovery after my recent relapse and I found that I'm having trouble with fully committing to it because im afraid of weight gain (duh, I know thats very common lol). however, im not afraid of it in a sense that I'd find my body less attractive - i don't really care that much, tbh. if I was stranded on an uninhabited island, i'd easily allow myself to gain weight. im more so afraid of societal consequences of weight gain.

i may have worked hard to unpack my own fatphobia but unfortunately, the rest of society had not. im scared of facing discrimination and judgement, especially financial and job discrimination. fat women tend to earn less than thin women according to some studies i found 🫠 >!(meanwhile, heavier men actually tend to earn slightly more! i hate this world we live in yall)!< idk if this is just my ED catastrophizing by equating recovery weight gain to me becoming broke and homeless immediately, i know thats not how this works. im just scared of letting go of the current privilege I hold, as sad as that sounds.

it is kind of ridiculous because I dont even get to use my "privilege" rn, my brain is too obsessed with food and too exhausted to hold a job. I just keep holding on to that fantasy that I could just maintain this weight I achieved in my current relapse by just eating my "maintenance" cals as it is a "healthy" BMI and all the fatigue and other physical symptoms will just go away. ik thats not true though, the moment I actually let myself eat I experience energy and clearness of mind I have never experienced during my relapse 😭 I wish I could have my cake and eat it too.

if you had similar struggles in recovery, what helped you overcome it and commit? any resources you could recommend to deal with this? this is pretty much the only thing holding me back from going all-in rn..

Hi all,

I’m having a real issue with finding my weigh-ins at the ED clinic really triggering. The reason for this is because my appointments are really random - sometimes it will be at 8am so I won’t really have eaten or drank yet, and sometimes it’s at 4pm after a full day of working, eating and drinking. I’ll also be wearing different clothes so sometimes my full work uniform (heavy trousers and a sweatshirt) vs leggings and a t-shirt.

This means that my weight fluctuates pretty significantly but my team don’t seem to factor that in. If I’ve ‘gained’ even 100g, they will congratulate me on having a good week even though I’ve explicitly told them that I’ve still been restricting and losing weight. I get the impression they think I’m exaggerating if I try and push back on this and say that it’s not accurate.

This makes me feel like I need to restrict even more in the day or two leading up to my appointment and even restrict fluids so that I’m not carrying any water weight to my appointments. I’ve even (embarrassingly) rushed to change clothes after work so that I always get weighed in the same thing.

Is there anyone else who has a situation like this? How can I get my team to understand that a week-by-week change with so many factors affecting my weight just isn’t a reliable indicator of how my weight and eating actually is?

My daughter was diagnosed with anorexia last year and ended up in hospital due to refeeding syndrome. Thankfully she got out and got through it. Things weren't plain sailing but we were able to manage it. Unfortunately we let her go on the two week trip with her friends recently, and she didn't eat properly. She didn't lose a huge amount of weight but she was pushing back a bit on eating when she came home but it was manageable. Then she was out with her friends a few hits after she came home, it's almost like she was a different person. She was pushing back really strongly and it got worse and worse over the course of four days to the point of screaming and shouting. Running out of the house, refusing to do anything, we asked her saying that she can't even think about making a choice to eat food. She trashed her room repeatedly. We ended up bringing her to an emergency room. Had to drag her into the car which he tried to get out of on the way. The psychiatrist thinks she has OCD alongside the ED. The voices have been getting stronger and stronger to the point of being constant negative voices. She's only 14 and they have her on benzos to try and calm her because she's so distraught. She's now started to say that she doesn't want to wake up anymore. They're talking about putting her on an SSRI. She's now got to the stage in hospital where she's refused 3 meals in a row and they're talking about a feeding tube. I'm so distraught I don't know what to do. Is there anything I can do? Are there any stories of people being this bad and recovering because right now, it looks like there's no hope. I really like the title of this sub, but I apologize if this is not the place to be asking these questions. I'm just trying to get help for my daughter and have some semblance of hope.

*apologies for title misspelling, I cannot seem to edit it.

does anyone else struggle with those around you, even those who know your history, making comments about diets and shaming their own bodies?

for context, i’ve been in recovery for about a year, but ed’s really been piping up a lot recently (might be why i’m noticing this more???) and what hasn’t helped at all is that a bunch of people around me continue to make comments about how they need >!“to lose some weight” or “get it together” or do some like crash diet or whatever!<. what’s more upsetting to me too is that these are often coming from people in a smaller body than me and so i go on a whole comparison tangent and whatnot.

how have y’all handled/coped with this? have you set boundaries with them about body talk or just coped through it or? if you’ve set boundaries, what did that conversation look like?

I’ve been in recovery for a few months now. I’ve gained a lot of the weight back, and whilst I’ve had lots of encouragement, I can’t help but feel lonely in recovery. My mood is low, I still feel tired and feel guilty that I’m eating >!even in situations where I know I could get away with skipping a snack/meal!<. I’m finding recovery super lonely tbh, as I have very few friends to talk to and those I do have can be quite busy/not fully understanding.

Anyways I apologise for the rant, it’s just that I really am having a hard time seeing how i now look, the way clothes fit, etc. I’ve had to put cling film on mirrors in order to avoid constantly checking myself, which hasn’t helped much tbh. worst of all was when my psychologist said it may not be necessary for me to continue under an ed service anymore, as maybe “eating isn’t the problem” >!which led to me making less progress than I was supposed to and ultimately continuing to be in an ED service for longer.!<

It’s just draining tbh everyday to juggle recovery with everything else and all the changes I’ve had to deal with in the past few months- any advice would be much appreciated.

I apologise for the long rant and thank anyone who took the time to read this (though I am sorry for how long this is).

I've been going to therapy primarily for different issues than a restricitve ED because I hadn't fully realized I had one up until recently. However after a period of eating slightly more my body started the extreme hunger sensations at the end of last year.

I honored it and also suffered through it in the first months, as it felt like constant fear for my life if there was not food around me etc. I got ill like 5 times and my edema hurt during every step. She tried repeteadly to find emotional reasons of my constant eating.

During the hardest times I left feeling flooded with tasks like "try to see if you eat enough legumes and fish" and she did not seem to understand my explanation why it was nonsense.

I do not blame her for not knowing about EH. In my country not knowing about EH is a systemic issue. My psychiatrist, GP, endocrinologist have not heard about it either and had varied levels of accepantance of that information.

I had to contact a well respected NGO that specialises in EDs and read their response about EH aloud to her to finally start believing me about the nature of my hunger.

But she kept diverting again to analyzing my "fear of not having food".

I started feeling better after confronting her and her accepting my criticism. But then again, during our last session where I described being uncertain about some situations being or not being hungry and how weird it seems she stated: "I know you do not have bulimia but when people have bulimia the overeat emotionally so this might be similar." (Which seemed like very incomplete and outdated information to me.) I wanted to discuss the emotional impact of the hunger, not how to recognize hunger itself. I told her sensations of hunger were a topic for my nutritionist.

When I wanted to focus on learning to accept my body she did some comparisions to other people that are "twice as big as me but found their style and look great". Instead of helping me process through the difficult emotions, she seems very action oriented despite being a psychodynamic therapist and me not needing action recomendations. And she looks for emotions where there is biology at play.

She's also provided many tips that seem helpful and has talked about fat people with respect and without judgement. I think she want to be supportive and not fatphobic. But it all feels really amateurish. For the most part, she is probably scared of my weight gain and afraid for my health as she's not experienced this before.

I contacted the NGO if I could also meet their therapist and potentially change therapists.

I do not know, the current one has been really helpful in many areas of my life but as much as I would like to move on from the topic of recovery, I am not there yet and have a lot to work on. Do you think this a correct move? Or am I overreacting?

I feel it is not my role to educate people about biology but I've had to in order to prevent harmul interventions...

I have been really unwell with an eating disorder for almost a year now and I am about to start a day patient service in two weeks. I’m really keen to recover, like genuinely excited and ready to commit fully, but currently not in a place where I’m able to manage it well on my own. My struggles are very obvious to others at this point due to how I look and how my eating habits are. I know that my colleagues are aware and have discussed this about me but they’ve never broached the subject with me out of respect, I imagine.

The issue is that I have a colleague who seems also to struggle with eating but is open in talking about it in our staff room and the rest of our colleagues rally around her giving her sympathy and support. She’s never explicitly said that she has an eating disorder but she won’t eat very much at meal times and everyone is around her encouraging her to eat and so on. She alludes to the fact that she doesn’t eat much in general pretty often.

I can’t help but feel a bit invalidated because nobody is like this towards me. I know it’s because I’m not open about my disorder and people don’t want to just assume and make me uncomfortable but it’s insanely triggering watching someone get upset about not wanting to eat their lunch and being given floods of support every lunch time while I am also struggling to eat. It’s like being inpatient but I’m at work!?

Any advice on what I can do? Is the solution to eat lunch away from the staff room and miss out on social interaction with colleagues? I don’t want to make a big deal out of it and make her feel like she can’t talk about things. I’m worried that this will be really hard to navigate when I get out of day patient and have to try and maintain my new eating habits and could lead to skipping lunch which is how this all began for me in the first place…

hello all, i have been in quasi-recovery for quite some time and am doing the best i have been, or so i thought. this morning i realized i still have a lot of food fears/control issues to work through. my sweet lovely boyfriend slept over and offered to make us pancakes and i said yes. i was nervous, actively anxious, about eating them as i watched him prepare and cook. trying not to hover and watch what was going in them as i know two fear foods (sugar and butter) are part of the mix. they were delicious, though, and as we were eating i was just focusing on him and the care he put into making these for me and trying to be present and not obsess over ingredients/calories etc. now that he’s gone and im here i feel so bad. i cant stop ruminating over having eaten them. i feel gross, my stomach feels weird and im not sure if its just in my head or what but i cant stop drinking water and i just want to flush them out of my system. i dont like feeling this way, i want to be able to enjoy a random pancake morning with my lover and not spiral. so, this is a vent, and an eye opening moment for me that i need to keep going and keep working on things. thanks for reading if you did. sending love to this community always.

First time posting, but I’ve been reading this sub for some months and finding it so helpful, thank you all.

I found out from my dietitian yesterday that I’m technically weight restored, and at my ‘set point’ I was at for several years before the an/bulimia subtype really kicked in. It’s really spun me out as it’s more than where I feel comfortable being, even if only by few kgs, and it happened without me actively trying to put on weight but rather my body just did it when I let myself eat 3 meals and snacks regularly. However because I’m still having episodes of binge/purge I’m freaking out as I don’t understand why they’re still happening when I’m weight restored.
I’m also really struggling to continue eating according to my meal plan and not restrict, as it seems that eating regularly = weight gain.
any advice would be appreciated, thank you

Hi, everyone,
First of all, if you’re in this subreddit I’m really glad you want to get better and recover, or support someone in their struggle/recovery. I’m here actually because I’m super scared my sister whom I believe is relapsing with ED, and I don’t know what to do. She used to struggle with bulimia but she had a medical condition that required surgery, and now is physically unable to do that anymore. She had gained a little weight in the last couple of years, and she was a bit self conscious, but recently got into a new relationship with someone really into fitness and stuff, and changed her entire lifestyle towards “fitness”. The thing is now she’s eating a very low calorie diet (I don’t think I should share the quantity here but it’s lower than any bad nutritionist would recommend for sedentary people that wanted to lose weight), going to the gym everyday and using weight loss medication on top of that.

Last time I saw her I got super freaked out because I had not seen them in two months and when I hugged her, I felt like there was not much there other than bones. It terrified me, she has never been this thin (even when she struggled with bulimia) and I know we’re not meant to comment on other people’s bodies, so I didn’t say anything that day. Nonetheless, I was pretty irritated as she kept on talking about how great she was feeling with her new “fitness” regime, and that’s really all she talks about now (even on social media), and keeps trying to get us (the nuclear family) to do the same she does, that she’s the healthiest she’s ever been and stuff. I have mentioned that some of the stuff she says can be really dangerous for people (like weighing every single thing you eat even if you eat the same thing everyday), and how it has even affected me as someone that has struggled with a less severe version of ED. I have also told her how I’m scared she’s relapsing, I told her how dangerously low her calorie intake is and then snapped out saying she never said she ate such number of calories (although she repeatedly told me every time she talked about it with me) and changed the number to one that is still super low, and then I found out about the weight loss injections she’s using on top of everything.

I was just going to give up on talking to her about it because she responds always with “I appreciate your worry but I’m the healthiest I have ever been”, when there’s something clearly wrong. But today I got extremely scared to the point of crying because she uploaded a photo where you can clearly see bones sticking out of her shoulders and the back of her clavicle. I’m terrified and I f*cking hate how people keep in praising her “new body” when I know there’s something very wrong going on.

What do I do? I feel I’ve tried everything, and I know I cannot convince her at the moment that what she’s doing is indeed not healthy, but I do not want to just sit around and witness her wither away. I’ve never seen her like this, and I feel so powerless.

I just wanted to let it out of my chest and, if someone has some advice I’d truly appreciate it.

Idek what to do atp. A month ago I had to miss two IOP appointments for a few mandatory meetings I COULD NOT get out of, not matter what. I had been consistent ever since and was communicating as best I could. I had been told that if I had another late cancellation or missed session for an IOP session, they would discharge me. I have not missed a session since even if that meant having to move life around.

I had accidentally double booked myself during an individual appointment with therapist supplied by the program with a medical appt, and obviously chose to go to the medical appt. I had sent an email earlier in the day explaining the situation and my apologies. I figured because I wasn’t missing an actual IOP session, it would be fine.

I didn’t see her email at 11 saying that if I missed the individual session that I could not come back, and after my med appointment she called me and told me I am being discharged. I tried to explain the miscommunication and conflict once again. I apologies and she has said “well, it’s not MY life” in the snarky way she always seemed to respond to me for things.

So now I don’t have IOP, when I freaking need it. I am seriously struggling with eating tonight and I needed the meal support. Asking for help for eating a meal makes me feel like I’m giving up on myself and that I need to just hide and lie. I’m starting to spiral and my ED is taking this as a sign to come back in.

I’m fucking angry at myself, angry at the program, angry at the damn therapist tho thinks she can talk to me like that. Am I seriously just a number?

As the title says, I am currently struggling. I am only 3 1/2 months into recovery, at the start it was a little easier since I had the support of my mom but now she genuinely couldn’t care less if I eat little or engage in ed behaviors which is really hard since I really want support and she’s not here. I have a dietician I meet with once a week and we talk about the same thing over and over again, for a brief moment I feel like my ed takes over and I’m spitting out straight lies that I am actively recovering but I’m not and I’m so alone. I’ve told my therapist how I feel but it doesn’t go far.

I guess what I’m asking is how does one recover alone? I just need some advice or tips on motivation or how to just take recovery a step further since I can feel myself actively slipping through the cracks once more.

i started recovering-ish today (woo hoo) and i feel like it should be harder. its definitely not easy and I've been crying basically all day but i was only really struggling to eat breakfast and everything else felt like it was too easy to start eating. like in the morning i was shaking ang crying before i even took a bite but by dinner i just sat down and ate like it was nothing. I'm just wondering if anyone else has felt like this or how to deal with the guilt?

also side note does anyone have any advice on lessening stomach pain, I'm struggling rn

Hello, I am 20F with AN and I am going to be starting recovery next week at an inpatient facility. I'm not going 100% willingly (yet i'm really tied of this disease and so part of me is going willingly) and i'm feeling a lot and nothing at the same time. What do you do at inpatient besides eating I guess? I mean I understand there is therapy and what not but what else is there to do? Do they offer activities outside like a museum visit or arts & crafts in residence? At home I am really struggling with boredom as i'm out of my primary home so I don't have friends right now to do things with. I’m not even really going outside as it's also very hot at the moment. I really find 0 interest in anything. I've found watching shows, listening to music, reading, etc is all very boring and tiring. How do you go about this in recovery and inpatient? Just feeling very lost so any advice, words of wisdom, even just a comment of i'm not alone would help. Thank you.

I’m so exhausted of it… every day it’s oh I’m so hungry… ok now I feel better, oh wait no I didn’t eat enough, time to eat some more, oh apparently I’m thirsty, now I’m nauseous, now I’m tired, now I need to eat again, now I think I ate enough and I’m done here, oh wait nope I‘m nauseous again time to figure out what else to eat 😩

My mother is obsessed with telling me her step count for the day, and her workouts, and how’s she’s ‘earned’ a snack or piece of cake (etc.) because of that. Or she will even ask me if she should be ‘allowed’ to have something sweet. I’m not open with my family about my food struggles, but omfg hearing her go out of her way to say these things to me hurts so much. My older sister is often the same, but I think she’s just copying my mum more than anything. I’ve tried to subtly redirect their wording or questions, but it never works. Even the few times I’ve vaguely said that it makes me feel bad, I’ve been entirely shut down. It just makes me feel like shit.

Any advice for families constantly triggering you? Or dealing with people’s food comments in general? (Context: F20 female, lives at home with parents)

I really need to focus on my studies but I find myself making mistakes and getting low grades because I can't focus. I don't know if its depression or brain fog from my ed, or a mix of both. just wondering your guys experience because this is one of my motivators to recover.

Hey this is my first time ever posting on reddit after being a silent reader for years. This is sort of a cry for any kind of support from someone who's experienced something similar at some point.

I've pretty much been consumed by my eating disorder since I was 16. I'm now turning 27 and I feel so embarrassed that I haven't been able to recover and maintain a healthy weight without restricting or binging.

I've started abusing glp1 this year and I got pretty unhealthy with it. Long story short I'm choosing to recover (even though I've had many failed attempts). I would choose to recover and suddenly experience extreme hunger for weeks before I get scared of how my body was reacting and changing to the weight gain so I would then go back to restrictive old habits. This was the cycle for 10 years.

I think coming on a decade of this life I'm over it. I'm going all in after participating in a clinical trial to medically treat anorexia. I've put on a lot of weight. I'm pretty embarrassed because people have always been used to me being smaller. I feel like I've failed myself and worried people wont like me anymore because of my size.

Anyway I think I'm looking for some success stories post extreme hunger. I would goes 2-3 days eating above maintenance (3k calories), and then one day I would suddenly get horrible binge urges and I would eat upwards of 10k calories. Then the next day my hunger would go back to normal. And this has been the case for the past month. Will these extreme hunger signals ever go away? I'm so tired of eating and feeling uncomfortable. It's getting harder and harder to look at myself in the mirror and be neutral about it.

Also Im so sad because my best friend is getting married and I got my dress custom made when I was at my lowest weight. Now I'm up at. least 10kg. this sucks haha

Can I use a glp1 to just keep the extreme hunger and food noise down so i can just eat above maintenance and slowly let my body trust that food will always be here?