Comments | ed_ucate: help with self diagnosis

eternald3lusion in ed_ucate

help with self diagnosis

Aug 05, 2012 01:40

First of all, I hope I've understood everything alright and this post is allowed to be here. If not, please let me know and I'll remove it, or please message me privately - I could really use some help.

The thing is, I've never been sure as to whether my issue is an eating disorder, or disordered eating. For the longest time, I thought that it might ( Read more... )

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teenage_hustler August 5 2012, 11:18:00 UTC

Hmmm ( ... )

eternald3lusion August 5 2012, 13:09:42 UTC

First of all - thanks for taking the time to read through all that, haha. I was afraid the length of the ramble might turn people away from actually going through and reading it...

You were able to word it much better than I could - even for myself - but that about sums it up: I just don't fit in anywhere else. I suppose I should be comforted by the fact that EDNOS isn't deemed to be as severe as other eating disorders (or, is EDNOS labelled as simply disordered eating...?), but instead, it just makes me feel all the more pathetic for letting it get to me ( ... )

teenage_hustler August 7 2012, 20:54:41 UTC

Sorry it took me a few days to reply. I'm a bit all-over-the-place at the moment. Mental health problems... they are deliriously fun sometimes. :S ( ... )

eternald3lusion September 6 2012, 04:49:10 UTC

My turn to apologize - life has been getting the better of me and somehow, a month has gone by, but...I always like to make sure to get to my replies one way or another - even if they're forgotten ( ... )

bleed_peroxide August 5 2012, 12:18:07 UTC

That does sound like EDNOS - teenage_hustler basically summed up why that is. You don't always starve yourself, you're not always practicing bulimic behaviors, you don't always binge, and you do have periods of normal eating.

For what it's worth, you sound very similar to me. I wouldn't consider what I did at thirteen to be strictly anorexic - I didn't really know the term or think about it too much at the time - but I would go sometimes days without eating much more than an banana or a bowl of cereal, doing so on purpose. My weight dropped to 130 lbs at 5'4. When I was sixteen, a family tragedy more or less reversed it, and I went through a period where I would binge - my weight ballooned to 216 lbs. A few years ago when I was 19, I got tired of being heavy, and certain things in my relationship triggered those feelings of desperately needing to restrict - I went right back to the starving, and now my weight's stabilized at 120-122 lbs. While I usually restrict, sometimes I'll have days where I can eat a normal three meals (though the process can ( ... )

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eternald3lusion August 5 2012, 13:26:07 UTC

I think I might be much the same as you. Earlier on, when I started realizing that what I was doing with myself wasn't normal but a destructive obsession, I still dug up every bit of information I could on numbers thinking it would bring me to the same results as 'everyone else': weight, bmi, calories, inches, kg....everything. In the end though, the most I could ever use them as was a very loose guideline. No matter what I read, nothing would or will ever give me a more solid answer than the mirror. I check my BMI just to compare myself to others - as terrible as that might sound - and now that I've lost a fair amount of weight, I only check the scale to make sure that I haven't gone up. I have an idea of numbers in my head for my 'ultimate goal weight' but it's just something to help me get there. If when I reach it, I don't like what I see in the mirror, I'm going to keep going and ignore all that I've ever read, just like I've always done. I don't think it's anything that I can stop myself from doing...

bleed_peroxide August 5 2012, 14:24:19 UTC

I'm not saying that it's a flawproof system by any means - simply that, for some people, it can take the edge off. Though I will have to agree that sometimes it can be very tempting to enter in your weight repeatedly and all of that. So it's not perfect.

I'll admit that I have to ignore the BMI stuff because it's too easy to sit there thinking "so if I weigh xxx, I can get below yy on the BMI" and so forth.

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eternald3lusion August 5 2012, 13:42:15 UTC

It doesn't have much to do with my post, haha, but, I appreciate the comment all the same. For one, it's just nice to be talking to someone and have someone talking to me while I'm being honest instead of pretending to be whatever I assume the person I'm talking to will deem most 'normal' so that they can't judge me otherwise ( ... )

king_josie August 5 2012, 16:44:43 UTC

I'd echo the above with ED-NOS. I think there's actually very few peoples whose eating disorder falls into a neat category.

The difference i think between "disordered eating" and an eating disorder is kinda the following:
- an ED is when you can't stop your thoughts and behaviour - you're kinda obsessed. If you've got disordered eating you can probably straighten it out and be 'normal'.
- an ED is when you're using your behaviour and thoughts to try deal with something that is deeper and more psychological - as a coping mechanism to deal with negative emotions.

bleed_peroxide August 5 2012, 19:28:13 UTC

*nod nod* I'd have to agree. I think that "disordered eating" is a symptom of a problem, and a problem all its own. But it's kind of... a danger zone, a warning area. It's more in line with "getting obsessive with your diet" than having uncontrollable thoughts or a disregard for the logistics. Plenty of people might get obsessive with losing weight or healthy eating, but not all of them will be given a push into a full-blown eating disorder. It's a very fine line.

Disordered eating can go away when you realize that you don't need to lose more weight. An eating disorder is when you might even realize on a subconscious level that you really don't have to lose more weight, but your eating disorder is much louder and you feel to your very bones that you have no choice because you're still a fat whale, no matter what the scale or what others tell you.

eternald3lusion August 6 2012, 01:17:46 UTC

I think, for a while, I fooled myself into believing it was just 'disordered eating' then because as my weight dropped and I thought I was okay with plateauing for the time being after having lost over 30lbs, it seemed like it had really just...gone away. That I was becoming 'normal.' As soon as that scale tipped beyond what could be considered water weight though, the reality of it hit me. I hadn't beat anything - it had just lulled me into a false sense of security that now, I'm paying for.

I wonder though, what life is like beyond an eating disorder, and if that's even possible for me. I know it has happened for others, but there are going to be people out there who gave in to it and learned to live with it...As much as I don't want to, at the same time, I think I'm holding myself back. I think my eating disorder has defined me more than I dare to realize.

king_josie August 7 2012, 18:00:56 UTC

If this helps at all - i consider myself to be pretty much recovered from my ED. Back when i was sick i felt like it WAS me, a huge chunk of my identity, and as a result i couldn't possibly see me being recovered as being at all realistic - it didn't seem possible. But 3 years down the line i am basically recovered, and i continue to get better and become more and more 'normal' with time - way more 'normal' than i ever thought were possible.
Whether you have the capability to be totally 'normal' or not, it's definitely worth a try - there's absolutely more to life than your ED.

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