Confused

Basically a place to discuss my ED struggles. I'm currently trying to recover (with some hiccups along the way). I haven't deleted my old posts so there's a lot of self-hatred, eating disorder talk and depression in here.

[edo-vivendum]

Hot take but if someone "wants to have an eating disorder" then they probably already have one (and don't realize their symptoms without extremely low weight are enough reason for them to get help).

At the very least they have a disordered relationship with food and body.

[ilovedirt]

when I make a soup I cut all the vegetables into hearts it takes me longer but it makes the soup taste better

[fourthsanctuary]

EVERY time i make soup i think abt this post and i finally buckled down and did it

[ilovedirt]

oh man it gets me EVERY time

[mirazeth]

Small heart shaped cookie cutter make it go faster

[ilovedirt]

noooo nonono noooo could you imagine individually slicing and then cookie-cutting several cups worth of quarter-sized veg? My friend. Let me enlighten you: you carvea the carrot, you slicea da carrot. It requires a sharp knife, a steady hand, a little practice and a food. In the instance of the heart shaped carrots, shave the sides off the carrot to make the bottom "point" and then cut a V into the leftover round edge like this -

:)

[i-might-be-vanny]

Hey Op Can I Use This As A Local Delicacy In The World I Am Building

[ilovedirt]

Hey yeah I don't see why not it's just heart shaped veggie in broth it is for everyone not just me I love you

[borderlinepdfeels]

[flkana]

i hate ana representation online because it’s only with GIRLS that are UNDERWEIGHT. like those girls must’ve had an ED for a long time to get that thin, why not show how to spot it BEFORE it gets that bad? like i get away with all ed stuff because im big, and people just assume im on a diet. on a diet where i starve 5/7 days a week and eat under 970 cal a week, of which most are liquid cal

i never knew i would get so bad

now i can’t eat anything without thinking i’m gonna gain, even if it’s diet food i just can’t, cant stomach it

also don’t forget all the people out there struggling with ED thinking they don’t have it because they don’t fit the “ideal” weight of someone who has an ED.

[relapses-after-relapses]

Feel a relapse coming

It's been 2 fucking years and I'm still dealing with this bullshit.

I'm now trapped at my parents house for the foreseeable future and it's hell. My parents are controlling as shit, I can't leave the house without them knowing and I can't eat outside of mealtimes, and then I have to deal with my mum eating like 2 bites and saying she's full (I'm not joking, I think she eats on average like 700-1000 calories a day and I'm not exaggerating).

My friend is also trying to lose weight and she's invited me on walks with her to "keep her accountable". And of course my little disordered monkey brain sees this as an opportunity to burn calories (and also get out of the house which is a bonus). So I've been not only exercising every day before bed but also going on these 40+ minute walks with my friend and I feel like I'm this close to starting using exercise as a purge method again.

And because this disorder is competitive as hell I always feel like I have to be better and eat less and exercise more and fucking hell it's exhausting.

I've also redownloaded my calorie tracking app, but so far I've been keeping within "normal" calorie amounts (like 1500 cals). But with all of this bullshit and with university starting soon I can absolutely see myself relapsing and I'm not even mad about it, which is the worst part.

"I may lose my mind buT aT LeAsT iLL DiE sKinNy" - my brain at all times now

[gaycism]

I mean Jesus fucking Christ this is not right

[mrevaunit42]

My friend told me the best example to explain the vast difference between a million and a billion

"A million seconds ago was last week. A billion seconds ago we were still dealing with the Soviet union."

[relapses-after-relapses]

An eating disorder memoir?

So I don't know what's gotten into me but I decided I wanted to write a sort of memoir about how being around my mum and her food rules + the pressures of society to be thin really fueled my eating disorder. I want to really go over my experiences as a small child witnessing my mum go on diets, try out weight loss products and complain about how fat she was, made me spend my whole life obsessing over being thin. I may also add a part about how my eating disorder evolved and how I recovered.

So my question is, would anybody be interested in reading something like that or is that too niche? I realise it would be a lot of me, me, me, so people won't relate to everything I'm saying, but I find that a lot of people have mums that are also weight and diet obsessed, so maybe reading about my experiences could bring some comfort? Idk let me know

(I also don't fully know how to go into my eating disorder without being super triggering - like, I want to talk about it and how miserable I was, and part of that is because of how little food I was eating and all the behaviours I was engaging in, but how much description of these behaviours is too much?)

Anywho let me know if I'm just being a narcissist lol

[relapses-after-relapses]

If I have to listen to my mum rant one more time about how fat she is and how big her stomach is, when we have the same body type and look almost identical,,, I will freak

[relapses-after-relapses]

It's not all at once. Each day, it gets a little easier. Each day, you get out of bed and life seems a little better. In the beginning, all you can think about is how much you want to go back to that familiar feeling of an empty stomach, to the control it gave you. Then, a few days go by where you don't think about it that much. Then, a few weeks, a few months. It still happens sometimes, when you're stressed or overwhelmed, you still get the urge to skip a meal, to make yourself throw up, but those days are far in-between now. Most days, you don't really think about calories anymore. You think about tastes, experiences, the joy of life. Now, you share a slice of cake with your friends and don't think about how many push ups you need to do after. You enter a cafe on a whim and get a hot chocolate just because you felt like it, and don't get the urge to fast the rest of the day.

It's not all at once. It takes a while, rewiring your brain. You have to force yourself sometimes. Every day, you need to choose recovery, until you realise one day that it's become second nature.

It's not all at once. Some days will be hard. Others, not so much. You'll despair and cry and think "what's the point?". But when you look back to where you started, you'll see how far you've come.

What I wish I could tell my younger self

[sunbvrnt]

if you think someone looks pretty today, tell them. if you think someone is doing a good job, tell them. if someone made you smile today, tell them. if someone did something amazing, tell them. if someone made your day 100x better, tell them. if you love or appreciate someone, tell them. it always feels good to be acknowledged :-)

[relapses-after-relapses]

I feel like Tumblr can read my mind

This is such a random thought but it's happened more than once. Sometimes I'm feeling really low and come onto Tumblr to wallow in my own misery and like, 9 out of 10 times that happens, my dash is completely free of eating disorder/depression stuff.

And then, when I'm feeling better, the sad stuff comes back on my dash but by then it doesn't affect me anymore, it actually ends up helping me because I realise how shitty it was to have an eating disorder.

So in a weird way I feel like Tumblr is looking out for me lol

[a-bright-ray-of-sunshine]

Shout-out to all the lovely people who aren't feeling okay right now but continue to wake up every day and refuse to give up—I'm so incredibly proud 💛

[podencos]

I’m not even being funny lol. We are not conditioned to thrive in the world we’re currently being made to live in

[sunlitsuggestions]

your friends love you, you are not a burden, you don’t weigh them down, they chose you

[relapses-after-relapses]

Big ramble and possibly rant ahead:

I'm overweight and suffered from a restrictive eating disorder. During that period, I got down to the "healthy" portion of the BMI scale. I never reached underweight.

Many people like to say that because I was never underweight, I "didn't really suffer from anorexia, it must've been something else". My eating disorder was very much restrictive-based. Some would call it "atypical anorexia", I suppose, but I find that term dismissive and alienating. I would restrict my calories/fast for a long time and eventually binge a few times a month -> anorexics binge too, despite a lot of people thinking the opposite.

I was never formerly diagnosed because of this dismissal of people like me that don't "look the part". A lot of health professionals tell people suffering from eating disorders to come back later once they've lost more weight (which is a whole other topic I won't get into right now).

The main reason why I never "lost enough weight" to be classed as anorexic was because after ~6 months of suffering, I had had enough and decided to recover. This does not make my experience any less valid, and it's honestly sickening to see some people dismiss eating disorder sufferers because they didn't have it for "long enough". We should be encouraging people to recover, not turning them away and dismissing them because they don't fit some random made up parameters.

We need to STOP invalidating people's experiences. It doesn't matter if you don't look "sick enough", or if you haven't been suffering for a long time. You are suffering now, and you need help now.

I hope this makes someone feel better, because honestly my biggest insecurity was telling people I had an eating disorder and immediately getting hit with the "but you're not skinny". Even now, because I'm overweight, I get people giving me unwanted diet advice, recommending intermittent fasting to me (thanks, the last time I did that I almost died, but go ahead), etc. We need to erase the mental image associated with eating disorders because it's so detrimental to people that don't fit the mould (and guess what, most people don't).

Thanks for coming to my TED talk lol

[oldalmonds]

psa

-ice cream is delicious and can’t hurt you -exercise is good for your body but muscles need to rest -feeling hungry is a sign that you need food, like a car running out of gas -you will have to recover eventually -things taste better when u are not guilty about them -curves look great in bikinis -people are attracted to healthy looking bodies -life is about being happy, not perfecting your body -squishy soft bodies > angular dying bony bodies -i have to learn to love my body at some point -nutella mug cake with ice cream -having fun with my friends and not worrying about calories -calories are basically a social construct and they don’t matter -eat real food that comes from the earth, not diet shit -travel wherever i want and try new foods no matter how “fattening” i think they are -you can have a skinny body and not be healthy -your body tells you when to start and stop eating, not someone on the internet who pulls numbers out of their ass and pretends it’s a diet -the brain needs 500 calories to function every day -the idea that being skinny is good is mostly so companies can make money off diet pills -seeing bones that aren’t meant to be seen isn’t pretty. if you love bones that much, become a fucking paleontologist. you have skin and flesh for a reason -life is more than numbers and i’m shit at math anyways

[embracingwild]

things to remember:

- there is nothing shameful about being hungry (even when your mind tells you you “shouldn’t” be) - there is nothing shameful about listening to your body (even if it feels like you are doing something wrong) - do not compare what your body needs to what other people are eating, they are not you - you always have permission to eat more