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ED Nourishment Accountability Thread

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Kintsugi

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So, not clear on how to give this a prefix, maybe because I’m on mobile? But this is an ED thread.

Anyway, I clicked on this forum to open my own ED thread, but I saw I was in such robust company just on the first page of this forum I decided to take a slightly different tact and invite others to use this as a space for their own struggles as well.

I mentioned in a recent post that I feel I’ve gone fullblown ED with my under eating habit, which, like a symptomatic diamond, was formed under the extreme pressure of working and going to graduate school full time but has now evolved into something far more self-imposed while I’m taking a break from academia.

Last night I tested my sugar for fun with a coworker’s meter. F*ck. It was 152, after not eating for over 5 hours, and before that I hadn’t eaten in... 20 hours? And before that, maybe 24 hours? And all of these meals are fairly feeble, although admittedly carb-y, but Jesus.

So basically my liver is like, YOU’RE STARVING! And it’s dumping sugar into my body like mad. Which is frustrating and alarming; I usually struggle with hypoglycemia. So I sort of panicked.

I contacted my mother, with whom I have an increasingly positive relationship. She is a medical professional specializing in diabetes and nutrition, and like I said, I have a better and better relationship with her all the time these days. So I tell her everything—heightened symptoms, anxiety, my med situation is jacked, I was eating normally, my clothes started fitting better instead of hanging off me as if from a hanger, and I freaked out and started restricting the f*ck out of my food. Everything. I tell her my symptoms being out of control and my med situation being so expensive and slow moving and unhelpful is making me feel out of control. I tell her I think I’m restricting as a means of having control over myself. This is pretty old hat to me. I had pretty bad anorexia about ten years ago, and my eating tends to become highly disordered in little spurts, but this is pretty f*cking chronic at this point: I’ve been under eating for over a full year. Once, last fall, I forgot to eat for over two days. Did not even notice.

And my mother says this thing that really struck me. It never ceases to amaze me when she gets something right about my mental health, because she so often views my psychological illness as a personal attack on her, and by god she’s often the first person to applaud the way I look after a bad stomach virus or anything else that causes me to be forever tinier. But she said, “The control is in the choice and the portion.”

Well, there’s THAT little nugget. It resonated with me. Maybe it will resonate with others dealing with this.

Anyway, here’s a thread for charting your accountability re: nutritional nurishment. I can’t keep f*cking over my body and expect it to just run smoothly. I’m not feeding myself and now my body is in rebellion. I should have known better? The sugar reading was a wake up call. I know it’s not super high, but it’s abnormally high for the circumstance, and it’s DEFINITELY abnormally high for me.

What am I going to do about it? What I always do, Pinkie: try to take over the world! I mean, my diet. I’m going to take over my diet.

First thing’s first. I need to be eating small meals. High fiber. High protein. Low carb. I don’t want to gain weight? Control the sugars, Simon, and the fats. Greek yogurt is my friend. Bananas with peanut butter. Salads with chicken. Vegetarian sandwiches on whole grain toast. I make a world class whole grain pasta salad that deserves to be called salad, y’know—tomatoes and spinach and red onions, olives, artichokes, bell peppers, roasted peppers.

All right, enough planning. There’s an egg burrito calling my name.

I hope others will join me. I am accountable to my body. It needs me right now. And I will always need it. So it’s time to be my own good friend and show some damn hospitality.
 
I want to join in but don't know if I'm going to be able to keep it up. I've had a recent upsurge of food issues I haven't seen since I was a teenager. A scary week of stress-induced restricted eating followed by struggling to readjust leading to overeating, then getting so sick I wasn't able to eat for a week and ended up getting diagnosed with IBS. I've almost certainly had that since I was a child, but never like this.

Most of the time I live off easy, carb heavy foods- pizza, pasta, chips, chocolate. Even reasonable ready meals are near impossible to find because I'm veggie (small town, poor resources), and I never feel like I have the energy to cook anything proper after work. I also get bouts of fatigue and the only way I know to keep going through then is to eat chocoate/cake/sweets, which I don't even like doing but if I don't I can't function. This week, after the IBS scare I've done really well planning, preparing and cooking proper meals- lots of veg and pulses, proper dressings and sides, the whole deal. But I've a history of sticking with it for a week or two then going back to eating rubbish again.

My history with food is really complicated- I have medical records that trace the issues back to when I was 11 months old. Lots of stuff when I was little later became a control thing combined with serious food phobias that I'll probably never be fully over. Anyway, I'm kind of scared of focussing on it too much because if I put pressure on myself I'm setting myself up to get disappointed. At the same time I need to focus on it because I can't keep doing what I'm doing.
 
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I want to join in but don't know if I'm going to be able to keep it up.
Oh, snap... This was my exact thought on reading this thread.

Sigh. I don't think I have a full-blown eating disorder. I'm a normal, healthy weight. But I've always had a weird relationship to food. I definitely undereat a lot of the time, just from lack of appetite/ stress. I have some guilt issues around food, especially re eating meat. Can't really do it. I also express a LOT of self-neglect and non-self-care via food (not eating, or not eating healthily, or not eating delicious food).

I've always been a good eater when yummy food is available - I do love food. But I rarely fix a proper meal for myself. I think for much of the time I just *ignore* food and pretend it doesn't even exist. I think this also ties in with dissociation.

I do a lot of accidental/ unintentional intermittent fasting. I also regularly do intentional extended fasting, tho that's a different thing - it's actually a positive experience, unlike the self-neglect of forgetting to eat.

I think guilt re eating is something I struggle with quite a lot. That I don't feel I "deserve" to be using those resources/ calories for nourishing myself? It doesn't make much sense to me... it's certainly not rational... And I do end up eating... so not sure what that vague guilt feeling is about.

I'd like to *try* and be more aware/ mindful about nourishing myself. Tho I doubt I will get it right. It will probably be very hit and miss. But maybe a bit more hit and a bit less miss than it is now?

Thanks for starting the thread! :)
 
Hi Simon! Sorry to here. this. Good to see you around again. Have you had a history of ED's in the past or is this all new territory for you? Diabetes with any type of ED is particularly bad news.

One thing I learnt in the past is to be really careful of the word choice if you still need to "control" what you are eating. For example suitable food for diabetes or IBS etc. Anything that the ED can use for its own energy fueling it will.

I am presently in a relapse after 7 years of total recovery that I thought could not be budged. Can't believe I am here and seriously disappointed in myself.

Keep fighting. ED's lie that they can help coping but they don't in the end. Trying to tell myself this too.
 
I do a lot of accidental/ unintentional intermittent fasting.
This is me, too. It used to be a joke... ha ha, I’m accidentally doing Ramadan... it feels less funny looking at the glucometer reading.

That I don't feel I "deserve" to be using those resources/ calories for nourishing myself? It doesn't make much sense to me... it's certainly not rational... And I do end up eating... so not sure what that vague guilt feeling is about.
For some reason, the more food choices I have, the fuller my refrigerator and pockets, the less deserving I feel of food. When I’m absolutely broke, and all I have is rice and cabbage? I’ll scarf down anything that comes my way happily. It’s almost like I have to have a certain amount of suffering, and when I’m not meeting my quota, I find a way to deliver. I, too, often end up eating anyway, and it always has a weird self-harm and spite vibe to it. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’ll even eat angrily, like somehow eating when I feel I don’t deserve to eat is an exercise in punishing myself further. It’s really perplexing.

Thanks for starting the thread! :)
Thanks for joining!

Good to see you around again.
You as well, dear Abstract!

Have you had a history of ED's in the past or is this all new territory for you?
Yes, I was pretty severely anorexic for maybe 2-3 years as a teen. Often all I ate was two chocolate chip cookies in a day. It was a long recovery.

Anything that the ED can use for its own energy fueling it will.
I worry about this. I seem to always be food obsessed somehow. Like no matter how I frame food and eating, it’s some sort of obsession. But I didn’t obsess over the past year, while I was not eating due to stress and a very unforgiving schedule. I felt set free by how little I cared about food and eating. It was liberating. And then the dress sizes dropped. The compliments rolled in, literally even as I was trying to explain my weight loss was very unhealthy. People would talk over me to say how lovely and slender I was, how fit. I wasn’t fit. I was drinking constantly and never eating.

Anyway, my “liberation” from food is becoming a new prison. I apparently can’t just make myself stop undereating at this point. Something within me rejects the idea of eating normally again. I’m finding some kind of power in this little trick of mine—look how little I care about food. I barely eat at all! Watch me go...

But I’m okay with obsessing a little if it means getting my liver under control. Really. It’s more important to me to have my sugars straight than it is to stop feeding the beast, as it were?

Can't believe I am here and seriously disappointed in myself.
This is me, too. I feel very let down. I feel like I’m too old for this crap.

Anorexia, in my experience, always wants one more thing. Five more pounds. One more dress size. Just for today, let’s not eat. Tomorrow you can.

I can’t give into that. And I have been. I’ve been ignoring my reckless diet because, because, oh, I’m so close to a 6, and then a size 4, and then...
 
I’ll be a sporadic member if that’s okay.
Normally I’m quite an unproblematic eater but when things go to shit I struggle. I find it really hard to eat and I’d rather starve myself into that empty-headed nonchalance I get when not eating.

So, today I’m borderline struggling. I’ll make you guys a promise to eat within the next hour. Call me out on my bs if I don’t! ;)
 
EC2CCF71-4105-4510-97FD-33D9F5899538.jpegAnd here it is! Campus cuisine.
 
One of my victories this year has been eating almost every day. Still, my body is wrecked.

:whistling: You know you’ve been doing badly when you delay swallowing a multivitamin because you’re having an orgasm in your mouth as your body is swoooooooning over all the vital nutrients in it, flooding your mouth with saliva, and the nasty tasting thing is the best. tasting. thing. ever. :facepalm: Seriously, though, I love these things.

Sadly, starvation is so much a part of my history I don’t lose weight-weight during initial periods of starvation. I get fat. Because my body goes after my organs, and starts lysing everything it can free up to store as fat, and fat soluble nutrients. So the fat layer grows, and the edema starts, and the muscle tone flags, and colours fade, and libido crashes, and lethargy drags, and badness. If I’m actually getting thinner? My bones are breaking as I bump into shit, because osteoporosis, and I only have an homage to where muscles used to be. That’s where I’ve been for most of the past 2 years. Kind of hovering between “puffy” and “glass girl”. It’s frustrating as f*ck, because it makes me sooo prone to injury. I screwed up a basic roll in aikido a few weeks ago and dislocated 2 vertebrae in my neck. But I didn’t break them! Yay! Internal decap freaks me the f*ck out. My foot? That I broke. But there are lots of little bones in your feet. You can still walk.

I hate this so hard.

I was doing good 2 years ago, before I got sick.

(I wasnt doing that good, but I was reclaiming my fitness, bit by bit, and years ahead of where I am now.)

My trauma history makes taking my ED seriously reeeeally hard. Because, in my head, that’s what’s “bad” looks like. I’m not THAT bad, so I’m fine! I’m not fine. I haven’t been fine for a long time. But you were fine 2 years ago! Um. No. Not really. Just more fine than now. Up your standards, bitch.

I’m in my 30s. I’m in that place where I feel like whatever I can build my body into NOW is what I’m going to be stuck with / working with for the rest of my life. If I do it right? I can maaaaaaybe pull 15 prime years. Or I can be a wreck. My mission is to hit my 40s sexy, svelte, & healthy as f*ck.

Lofty goals for someone just trying to eat every day, and to cross the street without busting 3 ribs. :cautious::shifty:

:sneaky: f*ck it. Go hard or go home, right? Right.

That means dealing with gaining weight, by putting on muscle and storing even more fat, until my metabolism decides to turn on, again. That means graduated levels of excercise (the universe just laughed at me and autocorrected that to “excessive” :facepalm: ) & increasing my diet to meet it, so I’m building myself tight from the inside out. It means fiendish levels of control.

:sneaky: I can do control.

It’s the patience I suck at.

And the not wanting to die thing. That, too. But that means I can control freak that shit, and plan for it and around it.

Cheers.
 
I'll tag onto this too :)
3+ year history of restricted eating in patches, some extensive.

I'm working with a dietician now, which is really helping, though I'm aware not everyone can have that access.
She is so kind, and never talks down to me.
She also puts the majority of the control (at this stage) in my hands, with regards to what I eat.

Something that she's asked me to work on following our last appointment, is adding in small meals throughout the day.
She said they just need to be "mug sized", which seems to have resonated quite well with me.
I like to fill my mug with some coconut yoghurt and a few nuts and some fresh fruit. Or maybe a mug of soup.
Just to re-teach the digestive system what it's like to have food at regular intervals after so long without.
It put up quite a protest at first; the food went right through me (which tbh at the time I was quite pleased about .. ?), along with pain and then bloating, gas etc.

But I'm pleased to say that I'm past that stage now.
One change that I've noticed in my body over the last week, is that my hair is falling out much much less when I brush it!
I used to be left with a handful of hair, but now there are just one or two that come out.

As one of my daily mugs I'll often have a fortisip. Liquid food, basically. Chocolate flavour and it doesn't taste half bad. It's convenient and it doesn't feel like I'm actually "eating" when I'm sipping through a straw.
Plus if you're a calorie counter (I've never been one), they're apparently not very high, but they give your body vital minerals and nutrients.

Anorexia, in my experience, always wants one more thing.
This is so true.
It was a rude awakening earlier this year when I reached a goal weight I'd been aiming for for so long, and the elation lasted for probably 0.5 seconds and was swiftly replaced with a new goal.
I hate anorexia. I really really hate it.
 
I'm writing this but I'm actually not sure I'll post this.

The thing is. I feel like I need, even want, my ED to take over now. I can't deal with anything, so it's actually easier to be preoccupied with food and weight and feeling empty in my body istead of my head.

BUT I hope to be starting therapy soon, in a couple of months at least (there's a waiting list). And if I get too disordered with my eating again, that will complicate therapy. They wont do trauma therapy if you're not strong enough. And I've managed not to self harm. Not to let my suicidal thoughts take over. An ED is not THAT much of a problem unless you're underweight. And that won't take much for me, to be underweight.

So, I'm struggling. I want to be better, get better, work on myself. But right now, I'm on my own and only have what I know works for me right now.

I'm just going to hang out here, I'm not sure yet, but I promise I won't go all negative. I'm just going to read if thats okay, trying to get healthy thoughts again.

Because of course, when I'm not sure if I do or do not want to eat... I'm not gonna eat.
 
But I didn’t obsess over the past year, while I was not eating due to stress and a very unforgiving schedule. I felt set free by how little I cared about food and eating. It was liberating. And then the dress sizes dropped. The compliments rolled in, literally even as I was trying to explain my weight loss was very unhealthy. People would talk over me to say how lovely and slender I was, how fit. I wasn’t fit. I was drinking constantly and never eating

This. I have this too. Right now I'm in a weight loss spiral, and I know it's due to stress and my body panicking, I know it is so unhealthy, but my anxiety is so high I just can't stomach food. But the compliments are coming fast: I've lost about ten pounds and am at the weight where clothes just look really good on me again.

I'm trying not to worry. I always stabilize back up to my healthy weight where clothes don't look quite so good on me. But it's hard to see the weight loss as a bad thing when people act so jealous.
 
I’ll be a sporadic member if that’s okay.
I am a sporadic member of all things. Welcome.

I’m in that place where I feel like whatever I can build my body into NOW is what I’m going to be stuck with / working with for the rest of my life.
I’ve been obsessed with this idea for a few years, if you remember. Leading up to 26 in the summer of my German soldier (I couldn’t help myself :woot:), I was extremely obsessed with the idea that I was training my body Forever.

I think that’s why the sugar reading rattled me, even though it wasn’t THAT high. My ex used to say that I had very fixed ideas about certain facts I felt comfortable about, that I felt like I knew, and if I was wrong or someone wouldn’t agree with that fact, I became disproportionately distressed. I thought I had a handle on myself enough to know where I was at. The reading contradicted what I thought I knew—facts I feel safe with. I’m hypoglycemic. That’s what I knew.

But now I’ve been shown that I’m not training my body well Forever. I can’t abide by having sugar levels I don’t trust. And it doesn’t escape me that I’d be working on my core more if I gave more of a shit about my body. I substitute sex for exercise. It’s treated me well. But this not eating crap isn’t doing anything but destroying my metabolism.

I'm aware not everyone can have that access.
I’m lucky. I have All the Access to these resources through my mother. She’s a nutritionist, her close colleague is a dietitian. They are good to me in this struggle.

She also puts the majority of the control (at this stage) in my hands, with regards to what I eat.
Yeah, I realized yesterday I need to put this try-not-to-carb-load thing on the back burner, else I just freeze up when I’m thinking about what I should eat.


she's asked me to work on following our last appointment, is adding in small meals throughout the day.
This is what I need most re: tackling sugar dumping. I just need my body to stop panicking. Oh no, no food for 20 hours: initiate sugar rush! Code ED! :meh:

She said they just need to be "mug sized", which seems to have resonated quite well with me.
I love this. Resonates with me 100%. I’m also rather aesthetically taken by miniature things in general but especially dishes. I found a dish set recently where all of the components are small. The bowls hold maybe a cup, maybe 1 1/4c. I must have them. And somehow eating out of those (they were in a house I worked in) seems manageable.

Because of course, when I'm not sure if I do or do not want to eat... I'm not gonna eat.
Right, exactly. Yesterday was a swift lesson in how I can’t micromanage yet. I won’t eat if I’m not seeing an immediate good option.

it's hard to see the weight loss as a bad thing when people act so jealous.
Absolutely, and it’s frustrating for me, because I’m pretty open about the fact that I used to have a serious disorder.
 
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