Found out I have anorexia

[Bestcobra]

Well I found out that for about the last 4 months I've had anorexia. That's apparently when it started and I didn't even notice. I want to keep losing weight and I thought I was doing this just cause I actually want to I didn't even know it was a disorder that I could have. But I definitely have anorexia but I don't really want to stop having it until I'm at the weight I want to be...I've been eating around 5-700 calories a day and I haven't felt hungry and I've lost over 30 pounds in the last few months. Just looking for advice about what I should do cause I really don't know, I don't want to eat more than I am and gain the weight back. I already check the scales at least like 4-5 times a day even though I realize how pointless it is.

[Lana73]

Stop doing it! It's a very dangerous and unhealthy way to loose weight. I have been struggling with the weight myself all my adult life, even though I have never been overweight. I had tried taking diet pills, laxatives, you name it. i have to admit that I too weigh myself few times a day. Anorexia can do unrepairable damages to your health.

I would recommend to eat normal portions during the day and something light for dinner, like chicken salad. I am not a big fan of working out, but walking for about 40 minutes helped me to loose few pounds.

[Bestcobra]

I can't just stop =/ at least not right now, I hate how I look and I'm tired of being this way. I wish I didn't have to eat at all but that's about like telling someone to just stop being depressed. I hate every inch of my body and don't want it to be this way, having to eat at all just about makes me sick now. If I try eating more than I normally have been I just feel absolutely disgusted with myself and would rather just make myself throw up to get it out of my system. And I normally work out every day, I can't walk that much cause I have bad feet/knees.

[malign]

Not eating is serving a purpose for you, at the moment, BC, so it probably won't work to tell yourself to "just eat something".

You mention elsewhere that your father is particularly demeaning about people who have problems. Is there a reason why you have to agree with him? Maybe he thinks that the way a parent helps a child with problems is to tell them not to have them. I mean, we both know that doesn't work, but maybe he doesn't have any better ideas of what to do to help? At some point, though, you're going to have to be the one who does something.

If you want, I'll be a "freak" with you. I spent many long hours fantasizing my own death, and even checked myself into a hospital when it seemed like I might actually do it. Honestly, I'm a lot less "freaky" now than I was pretending everything was okay when it wasn't.

What you end up having to decide is whether your father's opinion is enough to kill you.

[Bestcobra]

Well see, the thing is it's not so much that his opinions would make me kill myself but that it makes me never want to be around him. And the only way for me to be around my mom is to be around him, so the more he says to me the harder it is for me to be around her and if he found out that I went to some professional for help with something like that he would say something completely demeaning to me every time I even step in the house, he already does it enough so if it got that bad I wouldn't be able to go around my mom anymore cause I wouldn't be able to stand being there at all. And seeing how she's really the only person I have to talk to in person about anything at all, I would be more than lost without her.

Me being a "freak" doesn't bother me, it's that I like being around my mother and my father makes that almost impossible for me. And I never agree with anything my father says, I never have he's racist, sexist, homophobic, and he and he won't just say things like to stop being that way or something. For example, when I was about 15 I accidentally stabbed my hand and I had a cast on my leg at the time from having an operation so I was on the couch. And one of my cousins was there sitting next to me and when I stabbed my hand it started bleeding everywhere and the first thing i told him not to do was to get my mom but NOT to say a word to my dad at all, I basically begged him not to get my dad. And the first thing he does, is he tells my dad and as soon as he walks in the room before he knows what happens all I hear is "Goddamn you're so fucking stupid I've never seen a human in my life so fucking stupid as you" That's before even knowing what happened, he just say the blood. It got a lot worse than that, but that's when I accidentally injured myself so you can assume how he gets I hope.

And thanks for understanding about the eating thing, maybe I'll be able to more when I get to be the weight that I want to be but I don't want to eat much at this point.

And if I could go alone somewhere, then I would but I don't have my license so the only way for me to get any help is to ask my mother to bring me somewhere, and if I do that she tells my dad. All of this could be solved if I just had my license...yet I'm too afraid to even get it.

[LaLa]

B., loosing weight is fine, but it should be done in a healthy way. You don't have to "eat more", but to loose weight and preserve your health, you should "eat the right things in the right amount". I don't know how and what you eat. I even can't say if you really have anorexia (even though it seems rather probable). But I know there are several good guides for rational nutrition and the best way is to follow them. As you don't feel bad because of the low amount of food, maybe it's enough for you right now, however, you need to check if you have all the essential nutrients in what you eat (vitamines, fibre, minerals, essential polyunsaturated fatty acids) and also if you have enough water - because dehydratation is often a problem of "self-made" diets.

The second problem is that after achieving your ideal weight, you'll need to eat rationally not to gain back the lost pounds - and that's the most difficult part (when also the problem with anorexia could get worse). You'll need to eat more than now, but not too much and not a junk food! So it might help to become well informed abut this problematic already now, so that you'll be able to adatp your nutrition after having the weight you'd like to have, to keep it in a healthy way.

[malign]

Well, I didn't say that not eating was serving the purpose you think it is. It's a poor way to lose weight, although you definitely will on 700 calories a day; at that kind of starvation rate you'll be metabolizing muscle mass and resetting your metabolism to the slowest possible rate, so that maintaining will be nearly impossible. And, when you're "thin enough", if ever, you'll find that you still have all the problems you're worried about, including not liking the way you look. That's why it's a disease process: it doesn't solve the problem it purports to solve. All I said was that there _is_ a problem it's helping with, now, but not the problem of too much weight. Instead, it's a way to cope with how bad you're feeling, just not a very successful one. But let's not fool ourselves that being thinner will make you feel better.

Does it help at all to realize just how unreasonable your father's comments are? You know that cutting yourself by accident had nothing to do with stupidity, and even if it did, I'm not sure how yelling obscenities at a person is supposed to cure it. But maybe just knowing that that's the response you can expect can help distance yourself from the words he says? I generally wouldn't advise someone to stay around that kind of abuse, but if you're still a minor, there are limits to what you can do. Do you know what it is that you're afraid of, in getting your driver's license?

[Bestcobra]

Yea I've actually been eating the right sort of stuff. I only really eat chicken, fish or turkey for meat cause it's the least fattening. I'll usually eat a banana every day or some other fruit and I'll eat whatever vegetables I eat with a meal later in the day. So the stuff I'm eating is healthy I don't eat junk food at all and I haven't for a while now, I don't really feel tired all the time or anything do to the way I'm eating. Cause I'll get to the point where I just don't feel like doing anything just from being depressed and definitely know the difference from just not feeling like doing anything and being physically weak. And I actually drink just as much as I always have that hasn't changed any but I don't drink anything with calories or sugar or anything like that so I don't feel like drinking less would change anything.

And that's a good point, I think I would be able to keep eating right after getting to the weight I want so I should be alright. And thanks for the input for all of this, it did actually help a bit.

[Bestcobra]

And no I'm not a minor at all, I'm 24 but the only reason I stay around my father at all is so I can talk to my mother. If I'm around her I have to be around him. And with teh weight thing it just doesn't seem like I'm starving myself at all, with the amount I'm eating I still don't really get hungry all that much and I normally eat pretty healthy stuff. And I'm hoping that being thinner would at least make me feel a bit better...anytime I see that I've lost weight I get a bit happy, more so than any other day so if I can lose a significant amount then I think it would at least make me feel better about myself than I do now, even if it's just a bit.

And yea mal I actually do realize how ridiculous his comments are which makes me feel even more dumb for caring what he says at all. Most times I just try to drown him out completely and not pay attention to anything he says, but normally anytime someone says something to me positive or negative it has a bit of an effect on me but he's been this way my whole life so the things he would say just sort of got beat into my head and made me start believing them more and more. So even if he were to tell someone else something like that and I completely disagree, he could say one thing to me and I would believe it at least for a little while. Like I said though the only reason I'm still even in this state at all is because of my mother, honestly I would feel guilty for leaving her there alone with him too. Sure it's who she married and who she stayed with, but she's told me that she thought about divorcing him a lot of times because of the way he is when me and my brother were younger but he always made money and most people around where we lived actually never made that much and back then they didn't have internet and everything to go meet people. It was either stay with him or most likely be alone with just us kids for a while so she decided to stay for us so we would have money. In a lot of ways I still think she should have left him and just raised us alone but I can also see that she was just trying to do what's best for us physically. My father never abused any of us physically, so nobody really ever thought it was that bad I guess.

I know 95% of my problems are in my head, most of it being from my past and some days I'm perfectly fine and know that none of that stuff in the past matters. Then other days I feel like everything that's been said to me is true and that I'll never amount to anything in my life, which is also my father used to tell me many many times. And honestly I'm scared to have a license cause I don't trust myself on the road, I don't have enough concentration on driving and if I ever ended up getting in a wreck and actually killing someone because of that I don't know what I would do. I don't want to put other people in danger just because of my problems.

[LaLa]

Just a little remark in the meantime: I forgot to mention proteins among the essential nutrients! I'm glad to see you haven't forgotten!

And one "hint": Fishes are also a great healthy food (not fried, of course )... Including (even mainly, they say!) the fat-ones, as you need "the good" fats, too...

[Bestcobra]

Yea I don't eat anything fried at all, and I try not to eat any sort of bread or anything like that really. Mainly just protein, fruits and vegetables. Also your post made me laugh a bit just cause you said "Fishes" cause I know it's supposed to be fish but always say fishes anyway. So thanks for that.

[LaLa]

Oh; I didn't know that about fish and fishes! (Well, you know; my English... )

But... now seriously; I've read (but not in English, so I can't share it here) that it's dangerous not to eat bread or other sacharides . There are reasons why we also need that even during a diet. Maybe you should google it - I hope it's possible to find out. I don't say you have to eat sugars, but bread and whole grain flour are also important, in an appropriate quantity...

[medlem]

How about musli, diferent kind of cornflakes mixed with dried fruits? With vanilla joghurt.. It's delicious. If you have that you don't need to have bread..

[LaLa]

BTW, I told my husband about my "fishes" and he was laughting at me and said that that's how little kids [anglophone, of course] say it or also some other people but just as "a joke"... (So yes; we did leart that at school, it's just me who forgets so much... Well, don't chat about fish very often ...)

[ladybeth]

There is a healthy way to eat, and there is a healthy way to diet and lose weight. Your doctors and therapist can help you understand this. You need to talk to a therapist and they can help you! Many people who have eating disorders have an underlying reason why they do or do not eat, and the therapist can help you work through those problems and help you find a more effective way to tell with those problems that aren't self destructive. Don't give up. The road will be hard, but it really is the best option.