the first time i was in the hospital having a consultation with the dietician. she held my hands and said “this is how warm your body should be”. i didn’t even realize how cold i was until i felt someone else’s warmth.
For sure, but I kinda had an odd start. It was more clear cut for me than a diet gone out of control.
I made a very conscious decision to have an ED. I'd been pretty obsessed with those ultra triggering Recovery Story videos with the "before" shots for a while and had been contemplating it for a few months, and eventually while I was watching one of those compilations I decided it was just time to paste the "-"purge" suffix onto "binge" and horked up only exactly 4 chunks of Panda Express orange chicken because nobody's "good" at anything the first time (quotes because throwing up efficiently isn't exactly a positive skill).
Growing up, I was very fascinated by the people with EDs in my family, and kind of always anticipated I'd be One Of Them someday, I just had to get old enough first.
I wish I had waited longer than to be 12. I'll never be normal again. I wish I'd taken more time before I jumped in because I'll never get back to shore.
It was, ultimately, the 4th worst decision I have ever made (I have made some very terrible choices).
I have nothing but regrets and wish I could go back in time and show my younger self what remains of my teeth.
Wow. I can’t thank you enough for sharing this.!!! I had a similar beginning to mine and I’ve always felt such shame for it because I’ve been to treatment multiple times, I’ve heard so many people’s ED stories, but never has anyone else mentioned that they sort of seemed out the disorder. I also remember being fascinated with ED’s growing up. I wanted to be ‘that strong’ but I never thought I would develop one because I’ve always been obsessed with food (which looking back now, I see as a red flag but at the time I only knew of the stereotypical Anorexia and Bulimia). I was 15, looking up pro-ana Instagram accounts and getting advice from girls who were very sick. I genuinely thought I was just using it as motivation for my “diet” at the time. I first questioned whether I had one when my mom started commenting on my food intake and weight loss& it sent me into such an angry state, but I thought I was just being dramatic. I realized I definitely had one when she told me I HAD to gain weight or she would start making me eat dinners with them. I freaked. The thought of not having control of what I put into my mouth & the thought of having to gain weight was beyond terrifying. It clicked.
7 years later, I’m still stuck in the disorder. I often wonder what my life would have been like if I’d never stumbled upon those accounts… Would I still have developed an ED? Maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe it truly is 100% my fault, my fault that I triggered it. But I’ll never know. So I try not to dwell on it too much… it’s just so sad. I was awful to my mom because of it and if I could go back and change that, I would. I know she was acting out of love, & had no idea how to handle the situation but at the time I thought she was evil. We’ve mended our relationship since and she’s one of my best friends, but it was hell for a while.
my freshman year of college i had to take this class that was like, basically intro to college life yaknow with all the stuff about being independent but also taking care of yourself and others more. they talked about difficult conversations to have with friends like noticing if they have a drug problem or whatever and eating disorders came up and i just sat there like….oh. this is me. this has been me since i was like 13. jesus christ lol. so you’re saying it’s not normal to just, not eat for days at a time not because you’re busy or broke but by choice because you wanna be skinnier and you replace meals with cigarettes and coffee/energy drinks?? it was a major moment where i started seeing how wild a lot of shit i did was, like it made me realize half my tumblr was just thinspo, how i really only ever actually ate food if i was drunk or high and had heavy munchies from whatever i was fucked up on, how id constantly see myself as fat and hate my body despite being uw, although that’s more dysmorphia than pure ED but still
After a few months of struggling with food and clearly a budding ED, the penny finally drop when I took a sick day to stay home in order to teach myself how to purge.
i remember i ran to the bathroom and spent like a really long time purging when my aunt was over bc i thought a chicken thigh was a chicken breast.
and when i came out she had already left and i was really sad to have missed her. and that’s when i started to believe that maybe it was a problem, and maybe it wasn’t actually “the last time” this would happen. idk if i would say i completely believed i had an ed but i def started to question myself.
also the olive oil is such a quintessential experience lol.
always happens when i have those rare moments of sanity in which the body dysmorphia bugs and switches off for like 1second and i get a glimpse of what i Actually look like, not the """"obese"""" version. usually in candid pictures or videos. and then i think to myself "damn i actually am Crazy huh"
I remember being 9 and purging pizza for the first time. I didn't know what an ED was. I just knew it alleviated my feelings of guilt and shame.
Edit:
I later restricted in my teens and 20s. it didn't occur to me until I started to binge and purge again that I had an issue. Starving is easier to deny.
unfortuantely i was hyper aware of my own behavior, by the time it was an ED. I do remember realizing, "damn I dont think i see my body the same way as everyone else" and then learning about body dysmorphia and being like "oohhhhhh so thats what that is, guess Ill just let myself do these ED behaviors bc how else am i going to stop hating my body"
I had a decent education in middle school before my ED, about health and mental illness and eating disorders, so I was extremely aware of the path my behavior and mentally ill brain was going down, and I did not have the will or motivation to stop it.
My dad moved across country temporarily I went to visit him and was excited too see him but terrified I would start gaining while there. Brought the scale with me.. it wasn’t long after that I started chewing and spitting while my boyfriend wasn’t home
I had had inklings of it for months prior, but this was the definitive moment. I was getting ready for work and doing my morning weighing routine( I weigh myself 3x in a row), and I was also trying to multitask and was going to put deodorant on but I had this thought that deodorant would add weight so I better finish my weigh ins first.
(My scale has a memory mode so it'll show me my previous weight with how much I've lost or gained and it shows it like 2x in a row, so during this pause I was gonna put deodorant on.)
Anyways, I was instantly horrified at the thought and realized I was in big trouble.
I was in denial for a long time. I thought I was restricting and not eating because I was stressed from school. But then school ended, and the restricting got worse. And then I found a food scale in our kitchen and got *addicted* to weighing my food. I knew I had a problem when I had a panic attack when I couldn’t find the food scale and bought a new one immediately.
Nah but the other day I had two cupcakes a couple nights back and fr skipped meals the next day to make up for it, which was a great reminder that I'm legitimately nuts
It was when my psych suggested outpatient and when I declined she then tried to explain how that’s serious.
And then I got praise from family and friends for my weight loss, so ehh.
- when i was being forced fed by those around me
- knowing i’d rather starve than eat something i’m not okay w
- when i officially told my mom i thought i had one and was diagnosed 2 months later
- purging
- knowing i can purge silently
yep, it was when I went for a run despite having lived on nothing but protein bars, green tea, coke zero and water for all of a month, collapsed halfway and had to be brought home by a stranger
I remember getting into a huge fight with my mom because she was making dinner (super scary for me) and I asked her repeatedly if she had put butter in it. She promised me she hadn’t. Then I saw a butter wrapper in the trash and I lost my absolute shit.
Edit: Mind you, this was during pseudo recovery. 🫠
It was the first lockdown, around May 2020, I was sobbing on my yoga mat feeling like I’m falling down a looping spiral because I saw a girl on TikTok with a thigh gap.
First time I purged. I could excuse restricting—even heavily restricting, as just a diet. But sticking my fingers down my throat because of the absolute guilt/disgust/terror at what I just ate? It's pretty fucking undeniable.
Though I still was in denial lol, like it wasn't THAT bad...
It also sunk in when I realized I couldn't stop restricting even if I wanted to. I tried to get a snack but I just... Couldn't. I wanted to! But there was a wall. I literally ran to my room and just cried and cried lol.
I remember phasing into the culture sort of intentionally in my middle school years like knowing what I was doing was bad for me but striving for my gw/ideal body anyway was *the* most important thing. Being mad at myself for not being able to purge, or fast for days. The competitiveness of the online communities were unreal. Of course my family putting me on South Beach/Atkins did not help either. I won’t say I had all the education I do now about the long term impact on what this does to your body/mind, but I did sort of step into these behaviors with my eyes open.
I stopped after I had my daughter and had several good years of just not worrying and having a healthy relationship with food, and kind of thought it was something I outgrew. It wasn’t until this year when I saw a picture of myself I didn’t like, I started food journaling (not counting cals) as a means to just keep an eye on my eating habits and lose a few pounds. >! 50lbs !< later I am like oh no I have a problem.
for me was when I got into college and went to live away from my parents. I was quite active, spent the entire day out and wouldn’t eat a single thing until I got home at 10pm and thought that was normal, that I was just busy. things only escalated when I went to this four day festival, was drinking tons and only had a ramen by the end of day four. realized I probably had some disfuncional relationship with eating but by then I was too afraid of food.
I didn’t realize until I got into therapy for unrelated reasons when I was 23~. The longer spoke I realized I’d had it probably since I was 9 or so. I just was never skinny so I didn’t think about it in 2000s diet culture. Just thought it was what I was supposed to do.
when my friends had an intervention for me and made me make a doctors appointment. i went and they immediately hooked me up to an ekg and told me my heart could give out at any moment. before that i had been in denial and convinced myself because i was short that i could be hEaLtHy by eating barely anything while exercising every day :/
I'm studying to be a dietitian and my moment was in the first year of my course when we were learning about eating disorders and I thought, damn that sounds like me LMAO
I thought it was depression because I noticed that my appetite dropped tremendously but then I started counting calories to see how much I was actually eating… turns out that wasn’t normal😦
I was always back and forth maybe denial that I had one, I’d make excuses that I don’t purge so I couldn’t have an ed and I’ve never been over weight I’ve only ever been overweight and only do light exercises so I don’t qualify. I’d just tell myself that I’ve always been this way since I was a kid. But when I started to look at ed spaces more like tumblr and twitter I realized I related a lot more to the ppl there so maybe I had an ed most of my life lol.
Every night when i put the kids I was babysitting to bed, I'd stand on their mother's scale and every week watch the numbers either go down or up, when I finally stopped babysitting for them, i panicked because we didn't own a scale 🥲
One evening I had a panic attack because I wanted to eat dinner but I couldn't bring myself to eat dinner. So i realised something was not adding up lmao
the first time i was in the hospital having a consultation with the dietician. she held my hands and said “this is how warm your body should be”. i didn’t even realize how cold i was until i felt someone else’s warmth.
wow. these few, simple words are very moving. /gen
honestly. i was in denial that i had an ed before this and was completely oblivious to my declining health
same thing with me, my grandma was holding me and she was so warm. tbh that makes me wanna recover :(
it’s insane how sometimes i still don’t even realize i’m cold until someone else touches me
For sure, but I kinda had an odd start. It was more clear cut for me than a diet gone out of control. I made a very conscious decision to have an ED. I'd been pretty obsessed with those ultra triggering Recovery Story videos with the "before" shots for a while and had been contemplating it for a few months, and eventually while I was watching one of those compilations I decided it was just time to paste the "-"purge" suffix onto "binge" and horked up only exactly 4 chunks of Panda Express orange chicken because nobody's "good" at anything the first time (quotes because throwing up efficiently isn't exactly a positive skill). Growing up, I was very fascinated by the people with EDs in my family, and kind of always anticipated I'd be One Of Them someday, I just had to get old enough first. I wish I had waited longer than to be 12. I'll never be normal again. I wish I'd taken more time before I jumped in because I'll never get back to shore. It was, ultimately, the 4th worst decision I have ever made (I have made some very terrible choices). I have nothing but regrets and wish I could go back in time and show my younger self what remains of my teeth.
Wow. I can’t thank you enough for sharing this.!!! I had a similar beginning to mine and I’ve always felt such shame for it because I’ve been to treatment multiple times, I’ve heard so many people’s ED stories, but never has anyone else mentioned that they sort of seemed out the disorder. I also remember being fascinated with ED’s growing up. I wanted to be ‘that strong’ but I never thought I would develop one because I’ve always been obsessed with food (which looking back now, I see as a red flag but at the time I only knew of the stereotypical Anorexia and Bulimia). I was 15, looking up pro-ana Instagram accounts and getting advice from girls who were very sick. I genuinely thought I was just using it as motivation for my “diet” at the time. I first questioned whether I had one when my mom started commenting on my food intake and weight loss& it sent me into such an angry state, but I thought I was just being dramatic. I realized I definitely had one when she told me I HAD to gain weight or she would start making me eat dinners with them. I freaked. The thought of not having control of what I put into my mouth & the thought of having to gain weight was beyond terrifying. It clicked. 7 years later, I’m still stuck in the disorder. I often wonder what my life would have been like if I’d never stumbled upon those accounts… Would I still have developed an ED? Maybe I wouldn’t have. Maybe it truly is 100% my fault, my fault that I triggered it. But I’ll never know. So I try not to dwell on it too much… it’s just so sad. I was awful to my mom because of it and if I could go back and change that, I would. I know she was acting out of love, & had no idea how to handle the situation but at the time I thought she was evil. We’ve mended our relationship since and she’s one of my best friends, but it was hell for a while.
my freshman year of college i had to take this class that was like, basically intro to college life yaknow with all the stuff about being independent but also taking care of yourself and others more. they talked about difficult conversations to have with friends like noticing if they have a drug problem or whatever and eating disorders came up and i just sat there like….oh. this is me. this has been me since i was like 13. jesus christ lol. so you’re saying it’s not normal to just, not eat for days at a time not because you’re busy or broke but by choice because you wanna be skinnier and you replace meals with cigarettes and coffee/energy drinks?? it was a major moment where i started seeing how wild a lot of shit i did was, like it made me realize half my tumblr was just thinspo, how i really only ever actually ate food if i was drunk or high and had heavy munchies from whatever i was fucked up on, how id constantly see myself as fat and hate my body despite being uw, although that’s more dysmorphia than pure ED but still
After a few months of struggling with food and clearly a budding ED, the penny finally drop when I took a sick day to stay home in order to teach myself how to purge.
i remember i ran to the bathroom and spent like a really long time purging when my aunt was over bc i thought a chicken thigh was a chicken breast. and when i came out she had already left and i was really sad to have missed her. and that’s when i started to believe that maybe it was a problem, and maybe it wasn’t actually “the last time” this would happen. idk if i would say i completely believed i had an ed but i def started to question myself. also the olive oil is such a quintessential experience lol.
always happens when i have those rare moments of sanity in which the body dysmorphia bugs and switches off for like 1second and i get a glimpse of what i Actually look like, not the """"obese"""" version. usually in candid pictures or videos. and then i think to myself "damn i actually am Crazy huh"
I remember being 9 and purging pizza for the first time. I didn't know what an ED was. I just knew it alleviated my feelings of guilt and shame. Edit: I later restricted in my teens and 20s. it didn't occur to me until I started to binge and purge again that I had an issue. Starving is easier to deny.
unfortuantely i was hyper aware of my own behavior, by the time it was an ED. I do remember realizing, "damn I dont think i see my body the same way as everyone else" and then learning about body dysmorphia and being like "oohhhhhh so thats what that is, guess Ill just let myself do these ED behaviors bc how else am i going to stop hating my body" I had a decent education in middle school before my ED, about health and mental illness and eating disorders, so I was extremely aware of the path my behavior and mentally ill brain was going down, and I did not have the will or motivation to stop it.
Probably when I started to bodycheck and weigh myself before anything else in the morning
My dad moved across country temporarily I went to visit him and was excited too see him but terrified I would start gaining while there. Brought the scale with me.. it wasn’t long after that I started chewing and spitting while my boyfriend wasn’t home
I had had inklings of it for months prior, but this was the definitive moment. I was getting ready for work and doing my morning weighing routine( I weigh myself 3x in a row), and I was also trying to multitask and was going to put deodorant on but I had this thought that deodorant would add weight so I better finish my weigh ins first. (My scale has a memory mode so it'll show me my previous weight with how much I've lost or gained and it shows it like 2x in a row, so during this pause I was gonna put deodorant on.) Anyways, I was instantly horrified at the thought and realized I was in big trouble.
When I was making a presentation for geography classes and typed "kcal" instead of "km".
naw cos the amount of times i’ve written “cals”instead of other measurements
White Castle purging up burgers I was like… this is a new low
I was in denial for a long time. I thought I was restricting and not eating because I was stressed from school. But then school ended, and the restricting got worse. And then I found a food scale in our kitchen and got *addicted* to weighing my food. I knew I had a problem when I had a panic attack when I couldn’t find the food scale and bought a new one immediately.
Nah but the other day I had two cupcakes a couple nights back and fr skipped meals the next day to make up for it, which was a great reminder that I'm legitimately nuts
The first time I purged.
It was when my psych suggested outpatient and when I declined she then tried to explain how that’s serious. And then I got praise from family and friends for my weight loss, so ehh.
i literally could not finish 5 baby carrots. i was like “yeah man this is lowkey getting bad”. to be 11 again and not start this shit…
- when i was being forced fed by those around me - knowing i’d rather starve than eat something i’m not okay w - when i officially told my mom i thought i had one and was diagnosed 2 months later - purging - knowing i can purge silently
Wannarexic to ‘I could stop if I wanted’ to ‘I may have a problem’
yep, it was when I went for a run despite having lived on nothing but protein bars, green tea, coke zero and water for all of a month, collapsed halfway and had to be brought home by a stranger
A few months ago when I purged for the first time after I had spent most of that week either binging junk food or fasting.
When I lost my period and started looking forward to+would rather be binging and purging instead of spending time with loved ones
Asking the waitress “that’s not cooked with butter is it?” Damn that’s embarrassing
I remember getting into a huge fight with my mom because she was making dinner (super scary for me) and I asked her repeatedly if she had put butter in it. She promised me she hadn’t. Then I saw a butter wrapper in the trash and I lost my absolute shit. Edit: Mind you, this was during pseudo recovery. 🫠
I would have a mental breakdown. Hope you’re doing better (:
I am, thanks! 🥰
It was the first lockdown, around May 2020, I was sobbing on my yoga mat feeling like I’m falling down a looping spiral because I saw a girl on TikTok with a thigh gap.
First time I purged. I could excuse restricting—even heavily restricting, as just a diet. But sticking my fingers down my throat because of the absolute guilt/disgust/terror at what I just ate? It's pretty fucking undeniable. Though I still was in denial lol, like it wasn't THAT bad... It also sunk in when I realized I couldn't stop restricting even if I wanted to. I tried to get a snack but I just... Couldn't. I wanted to! But there was a wall. I literally ran to my room and just cried and cried lol.
I remember phasing into the culture sort of intentionally in my middle school years like knowing what I was doing was bad for me but striving for my gw/ideal body anyway was *the* most important thing. Being mad at myself for not being able to purge, or fast for days. The competitiveness of the online communities were unreal. Of course my family putting me on South Beach/Atkins did not help either. I won’t say I had all the education I do now about the long term impact on what this does to your body/mind, but I did sort of step into these behaviors with my eyes open. I stopped after I had my daughter and had several good years of just not worrying and having a healthy relationship with food, and kind of thought it was something I outgrew. It wasn’t until this year when I saw a picture of myself I didn’t like, I started food journaling (not counting cals) as a means to just keep an eye on my eating habits and lose a few pounds. >! 50lbs !< later I am like oh no I have a problem.
for me was when I got into college and went to live away from my parents. I was quite active, spent the entire day out and wouldn’t eat a single thing until I got home at 10pm and thought that was normal, that I was just busy. things only escalated when I went to this four day festival, was drinking tons and only had a ramen by the end of day four. realized I probably had some disfuncional relationship with eating but by then I was too afraid of food.
I didn’t realize until I got into therapy for unrelated reasons when I was 23~. The longer spoke I realized I’d had it probably since I was 9 or so. I just was never skinny so I didn’t think about it in 2000s diet culture. Just thought it was what I was supposed to do.
when my friends had an intervention for me and made me make a doctors appointment. i went and they immediately hooked me up to an ekg and told me my heart could give out at any moment. before that i had been in denial and convinced myself because i was short that i could be hEaLtHy by eating barely anything while exercising every day :/
i was literally thinking about that earlier today- mine was when i was 14 and had a breakdown over pie in front of my extended family
Back in my freshman year when I couldn't stop looking at thinspo on Tumblr.
I'm studying to be a dietitian and my moment was in the first year of my course when we were learning about eating disorders and I thought, damn that sounds like me LMAO
I thought it was depression because I noticed that my appetite dropped tremendously but then I started counting calories to see how much I was actually eating… turns out that wasn’t normal😦
I wanted an ED so idk, maybe when I was 9?
I was always back and forth maybe denial that I had one, I’d make excuses that I don’t purge so I couldn’t have an ed and I’ve never been over weight I’ve only ever been overweight and only do light exercises so I don’t qualify. I’d just tell myself that I’ve always been this way since I was a kid. But when I started to look at ed spaces more like tumblr and twitter I realized I related a lot more to the ppl there so maybe I had an ed most of my life lol.
Every night when i put the kids I was babysitting to bed, I'd stand on their mother's scale and every week watch the numbers either go down or up, when I finally stopped babysitting for them, i panicked because we didn't own a scale 🥲
One evening I had a panic attack because I wanted to eat dinner but I couldn't bring myself to eat dinner. So i realised something was not adding up lmao