Bulimia is bulimia is bulimia?

[icanseenow]

We all know that a lot of people go through times of bulimia, overeating and anorexia in turns and that the lines between eating disorders blur a lot of the times. However, I suddenly find myself thinking "am I really bulimic at all?" since learning that I've got a metabolic disorder and can't lose weight normally/quickly/hardly at all

Comments

[bleed_peroxide]

If I happen to eat something that I consider "bad" (which is a damn lot of stuff) or feel like I ate too much of anything that isn't a low-calorie vegetable, I will make myself throw up in addition to going to the gym. I can't be bulimic because I don't binge; I can't be anorexic because I still weight just enough to get my period and be on the border of "healthy" and "underweight"

Sick as it sounds, it is a huge relief to hear someone else is the same way. I know that my eating habits are unhealthy, to say the least. (Having never gone to therapist for this, I have no "official" problems.) I don't binge, and I'm on the cusp of "healthy" and "underweight" for my height and frame. I end up popping these vile pills that end up making me sick if I eat something "sinful". (I'm not a Christian but adopt that lexicon towards food, for some reason.) It's borderline starving with purging, but I'm still healthy with weight and such - what would that even be? :|

[rifumi]

The categories and the diagnostic criteria are currently a mess - more people probably fall into the "not otherwise specified" category than the two specified ones. They're about to be revised, though.

[sepiacoloredsky]

Thank god they're going to specify more eating disorders, redefine some of the criteria for anorexia, and add a subthreshold category to each disorder. That would take a lot of people out of the EDNOS category. I hate how vague the term EDNOS currently is. It can mean anything - a anorexic with a 17.6 BMI, a binge eater, a bulimic who b/p once a week, etc.

[icanseenow]

I wish they were broadening up the two categories of bulimia and anorexia, too.

[stacey1981]

To actually answer your headline bulimia is bulimia is bulimia I've been both normal weight bulimic and binge/purge anorexic and they are in fact different beasts. When you are vastly underweight there is a huge cognitive change that takes place so treating all bulimics the same is not going to yield much results. And yes professionally you get treated much faster with binge/purge anorexia than bulimia but my life was more in danger when I had binge/purge anorexia hence I needed faster treatment

[icanseenow]

Do you mean the underweight one is different because of the state the body is in when it's underweight or because of the starvation? I mean, the starvation already starts much earlier, of course, so I'm a bit confused.

[stacey1981]

When you are underweight and starving it is different from having weight on you and starving. Yes so I'm saying being underweight causes cognitive changes lots of irrational thoughts. You can see it with people in IP treatment. When I was starving myself at a normal weight it was totally different than when I got emaciated and starved myself. With anorexia they usually don't work on heavy cognitive stuff until they are able to rationalize. My mind was so impacted from being vastly underweight that I could not speak for a time that is not likely to happen from normal weight starvation. When you brain totally runs of places to find nourishment because there are not fat stores to run basic function that creates a whole different ballgame. I know what I'm saying might annoy people because I'm basically saying weight matters when analyzing sickness but weight is not the only factor to take into account. I think they should do a list of risk factors and assess treatment from there with weight being one of them. You could have an

[ex_lovedisc]

When I first started purging REGULARLY, it was because I would eat ANYTHING at all. Even if it was one bite, I had to get it out. At that point in my life, had I been to a doctor, I assume (if I were thin enough), they would have diagnosed me as anorexic because I wasn't eating hardly at all. But I weighed 135. For my height and body type... I wasn't even under-weight. But the people who knew me could tell that I had lost a significant amount of weight (about 50 pounds), and I LOOKED unhealthy. Really, really unhealthy

[icanseenow]

What you wrote is definitley relevant, that's what I was thinking of when I posted.

It angers me greatly to hear what you say. Starvation and malnutrition is not something that only starts happening when you're underweight. You can be overweight and die from starvation.

I know what you mean about looking unhealthy. When I was restricting my food to a starvation level I got so weak and tired and just looked horrible and liveless. I think most people attributed it to my depression, not so much my eating disorder.

But that's not how it works. I'm out of control and helpless and hopeless, but no one seems to care because I'm doing this to myself, because I'm fat and disgusting This makes me so very sad because it's unfair and horrible, and also because I know how it must feel. To have people think it can't be a "disease" that needs help since being fat and eating too much is clearly just being "lazy" in society's mindset

[king_josie]

You bring up some good points here. Too many people seem to fall into the gaps between diagnoses.

I had a thing about 3 years ago where there was a disagreement over my ED diagnosis. My BMI was still in the "healthy" range but due to meeting all the other diagnostic criteria plus having a large frame size plus showing obvious signs of malnutrition i was diagnosed with anorexia. But then other doctors disagreed on the basis of my BMI.

It all seems a bit illogical really.