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[hollowromance]

Hello, I'm back again, with another question, again mainly born out of just morbid curiosity.

I was wondering, if you are eating disordered, what is your relationship with numbers?

I often find myself 'blaming numbers' for the development and continuation of my ED. I’m not sure how ridiculous/rare this is, or if it even makes any sense.

Comments

[tonight_at_ten]

Hi there, definitely understand this. I'm actually incredibly bad with numbers, have failed my maths gcse 4 times - and although I have never been tested, it has been suggested that I'm dyslexic but with numbers. (luckily i write for a living)
Anyway, that said, I have a fixation with numbers - calories, obviously, but mainly the date and the time; I'm very aware that I look at clocks when they display the same hour and minute 12.12, 14.14 etc.
OCD wise, I have for many years 'completed the check list' of touching/looking at wood whilst reciting the names of those that I love.
Still function day-to-day though, this isn't going to win.

[hollowromance]

Yeah I'm pretty sure there is a dyslexic-with-numbers diagnosis (can't for the life of me think what it is off the top of my head). And well done for not letting it 'go too far'

[midoriliem]

Mathematics disorder or dyscalculia ftw!

[enriched_flour]

You are the first person I've seen talk about the time this way! I know that I get super excited whenever I have a perfect streak of seeing the same time on the clock: 10:04. I always thought I just 'get clever' for a couple days, then I forget and it goes away.

[hollowromance]

I am definitely less anal about calories nowadays too, (yay- because it's seriously the most time consuming thing working it out to the T) and I certainly identify with the working-out-which-type-is-lower-per-serving etc, and I also used to score food out of 10 (I think for a different reason to you (10 being completely safe and 1 being never not in a billion years no no no).

[raspel]

i think anyone with OCD or OCD tendencies will find their OCD blown up by the ED and vice versa - they compound each other. having irrational fears and triggers is part of an ED anyway, but i think it gets even worse when you have a background of OCD issues, because it stays with you. i was always a little odd too - thinking i had to play a certain song or someone would die, freaking out about leaving appliances on, etc. i'm still really bad about checking over and over that my doors are locked. i look crazy when i'm doing it. i feel like this obsessiveness exacerbated my ED, definitely. i was practically a certified expert at calorie counting, even though i suck at math, too

[hollowromance]

Yeah, I think you're completely right; I reckon they do feed off of one another so to speak. And no, I don't think you're being cliche when you talk about control- I know they're different issues but both EDs and OCD are about taking control of aspects of your life that you are able to do so after all. I'm glad you're better with food- I still consider myself far from recovered foodwise, but exercise has never been a massive probelm with me, other than having to run for a certain amount of time and burn a certain amount of calories, but I've never been a big exerciser

[bleed_peroxide]

When my eating habits were starting to get really bad (before I just flat-out started restricting), I used to obsessively count calories, fat, carbohydrates, all of that. Even now, I have to remind myself to not stare too hard at those numbers or else everything I eat will make me feel like I'll turn into a balloon.

I don't care about numbers either way - I'm neither fantastic nor terrible at math. But when my eating habits were so focused on the calories and such, you bet your ass I was keeping track of every single calorie, down to how many were in a mint. Nowadays, it's mainly around my weight - I have to calm myself down if it goes up an ounce or two. :|

[hollowromance]

Yep, I have to literally avoid looking at nutrional content on stuff- my mum (I'm still a baby apparenlty haha) even chucks out the packaging for certain foods because she knows it upsets me so much! I hope you soon begin to feel better around your weight, although I do emphathise- I weight myself daily but have been known to 'accidentally' skip my self-imposed weigh-ins when I think I've pput on weight or drink shit loads of water befor estepping on them so I have something to 'blame' for when I see the number has gone up. sigh.

[bleed_peroxide]

My thing that has made it easier is to simply read the ingredients verses obsessing over the numbers - 100% pure fruit juice (no added sugar) will obviously have more calories than diet Coke, but one is definitely better for you than the other.

I still gotta work on the weight thing. If I see it go up by two pounds, I wind up going on a fast before I realize it's even happening. I gotta work on not going into panic mode.

[king_josie]

I'm similar with numbers. With my ED (alternating between AN and BN) numbers were very important, and in childhood i had OCD traits that were number oriented too.

Weirdly i am not at all good at maths!

I think it's common to be like this with numbers, but your reaction to numbers (like the length of the song on your ipod) seems to me (just on the basis of what i know) to be a quite extreme case of it.

[hollowromance]

Yeah... I didn't want to be coming across as 'special snowflake' but I was thinking it was pretty extreme, despite what I know about ED sufferers/number relationships. I'm no good at maths either, and I often wonder if it's aprtly me trying to "understand" them through my ED and strict control of them.