Things no one told me pt. 2:
✿ You begin to spot other people in your classes, workplace, friend groups etc who have eating disorder behaviors.
✿ You’ll miss how hard it was to fast & restrict those first few times. Once your mind switches from thinking of restricting as a “diet” to restricting as a coping mechanism/comfort, you’re fucked.
✿ Water weight isn’t the enemy long-term. After having just one serving of progresso light chicken soup for dinner, I’ll likely wake up a little bloated and having retained water. I WOULD RATHER RETAIN WATER THAN GAIN FAT. If having that 70 calorie soup kept me from bingeing later on heaping calories of ice cream or chips, it’s better to have gained weight I can lose in any given 48 hours with water.
✿ You end up having to sell/donate/second hand a lot of your clothes. While you shrink and those large clothes stay well, large, they don’t always end up being the idealistic oversized sweater aesthetic we’re all hoping for. Most of those looks only photograph well but look like maternity potato sacks in real life. And don’t even get me started on saggy jeans…
✿ Your fat loss doesn’t always distribute well. Ladies: the butt and boobs might be the first things to go. Every body is different, and while some tumblr-famous girl’s “lazy” body might be perfectly hourglass and tiny, your DNA might just be looking at you from the sidelines going “HA. Doesn’t the hooman know it’s genetically impossible to achieve that figure with me?” “YA what a dumb fuck she’s gonna destroy her body trying 😂”
✿ Even when you’ve hyped yourself up to allow a cheat day or meal for a special occasion, it will be PHYSICALLY STRENUOUS trying to eat more than a few oz of food. Hi hello I’ve only had liquids and weed this week- so my stomach is a large strawberry at best and I’m wondering why a watermelon’s worth of food isn’t fitting. Who knew.
✿ Your alcohol tolerance drops. Fast.
✿ None of your actions or thoughts inside the eating disorder should be categorized by what OTHERS consider: good, bad, success, failure, right, wrong, ED or wannabe. So someone is having a breakdown after a 200 calorie “binge” and you think *I eat 600-800 calories a day and it’s hard to even do that…I’m a fucking failure* NO BITCH YOU’RE VALID! 2,000 calories a day is the standard adult need. You’re both restricting even less the caloric needs of a TWO YEAR OLD INFANT. If you think about it enough to consider it a problem, it’s a problem.
✿ Most people in your everyday life won’t notice your eating habits (or lack thereof) nearly as much as tumblr leads you to believe. Unless they explicitly know you have disordered eating, most humans are too engrossed in their own calories/meals to take note of anything you do. Even if you’re a minor, most parents only notice something’s wrong when a significant amount of weight has been lost.
✿ DON’T MARK YOURSELF AS A FAILURE IF PEOPLE DON’T NOTICE YOUR WEIGHT LOSS. They probably A) DO notice it but don’t want to bring it up themselves or B) Your tummy retracting 0.75 inched might be the biggest achievement in the world to you, but no one else scrutinizes your body half as much as you do to notice subtle changes.
-None of this is meant to “inspire” or “encourage” eating disorders, these were just things that I didn’t know going into my illness and hopefully it can serve as a some solid info for those of you struggling as well 🖤
tangentwithtanner
jacobvanloon
romaincrisis
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