Young Calorie Counters

I've had a very strange relationship with dieting and food for a few years now. Over the summer I suffered from a mild eating disorder. I only lost about ten pounds, but for me, considering I didn't need to lose it and was extremely anemic, it was bad.

I've pretty much always had bad body image. I've never been "in shape" choosing arts instead of sports when I was younger. When I went to high school, I withdrew into myself, and became very depressed. I believed at the time that the only way to fix my depression and my life was to starve myself. I love food and cooking of all sorts, so this was incredibly bad for my mental health, and made me hate myself even more. Because I'm a perfectionist, every time I broke my diet (which was more often than not, given that my idea of a healthy diet for a "skinny girl" who had "self-control" was no breakfast, a yogurt for lunch, and strawberries with Wasa bread for dinner-500 calories), I frieked, and my depression became even more severe.    

I'm a yo-yo eater. I never stick to one "eating plan" for long, but when I eat full out with no restriction, it can be alot because after my ED, I got so used to the unrestricted "binge" feeling of "eat this now because you won't let yourself tomorrow" that I let that follow me into my attempts to eat normally and have a healthy relationship with food. Even so, even when I eat WAY more calories than I know I need, even though I'm eating more in general even than my pre-ED days, I haven't gained weight. WHAT? Hpw is this possible, is my metabolism ^%$#ed up?(I don't think so, the ED didn't last that long.) I weighed 115-120 before the problems, dropped to slightly below 110 during, and came back up to the same place even though noe, like I said, I'm in binge mode a lot more. I don't understand, do you?

Another issue of mine: I'm 5'5.5", and last week I weighed 116 pounds. The bmi says it's all good, my doctors tell me I'm fine, and could even stand to gain, my friends insist I'm "superskinny"-but I don't believe it. Part of that is my ED thoughts, but truly, when I look in the mirror, I don't see a healthy but slender girl, I see one who  could seriously drop a few pounds VERY well. My weight qualifies me for all the "skinny girl" societal ideas, but I don't see that when I look into the mirror. Is is because I'm not in shape-so my body is not toned? Or am I just crazy? My body perception changes daily and hourly, ranging from "hell-yeah I'm rocking this body", to being disgusted at what I see in the mirror.

Any advice or thoughts for my screwedup-confused thinking.

see a therapist or counsellor and stop trying to loose weight.

The first thing that came to my mind was,"That sounds like me..."

I wish I could give you advice, but I don't think I can. I still am very often depressed and unhappy with myself. I want to gain, I want to lose, I want to die, I want to live... I look great, I'm terribly ugly.

For now, I'm trying to get my thoughts aligned and put together better. Mom says I'll be happy with myself if I set goals and achieve them, but I am not happy with gaining weight. I try to maintain, but I am compelled to lose for no reason other than I am terribly unhappy with myself.

I don't know if a therapist would help or not, but I need to do something. (Sorry about this post. It doesn't help much, does it...)

i can comment on both of these!

 even post-ed, and eating a good number of calories a day, i still fear that food is going to go away. i feel that i must eat it now, because i won't be allowed to eat it another day. i also get really anxious if i am waiting for food; for some reasons i fear that it will never come.

self reassurance is really the only think that will get past that. reassurance that 'i don't have to eat this now, because i'm not hungry and i can eat it tomorrow, or eat it with my next meal' or 'don't worry, food is comming.' but you have to be honest with yourself, you have to keep eating otherwise the fear is a real fear...

as for body fat perceptions, i think to some extent everyone feels fat even the facts will tell them they're not, and people will say they're not. i'm underweight, i fit into size 3 jeans (at 5"7) and i STILL have to constantly remind myself that with statistics like that i am NOT fat. i also remind myself that everyone has fat on them, fat is necessary for my body and will always be there.

in both cases...mind over matter i think. 

Thank you both for your really helpful commments. I am seeing a therapist, but this is something that may take years to get over for me. Just knowing that other people fell the same way helps me. a lot.

Also, a note: I'm trying to keep myself from losing or gaining, because I don't know quite what's best for me now...

everyone feels fat sometimes, so you are not alone on that front at all. i understand you feel its got bad and stuff but on the scale of things it is sufficiently early to catch it now and move on because, even though it feels like it would be realyl hard( because at every stage in an ed you think you are feeling the worst you could possibly feel), it can always be worse. even when i hadnt lost weight at the beginning of mine , i felt like i wanted to die every day but if i could have looked forward in time to when i would be in hospital with a tube in my stomachfor 7 months i would have stopped right there and then. plus if you think about ti logically, when you lose weight , the moe you lose, the harder it will be to gain again later beause you are adjusting to your body every time you lose more weight andthe more you get used to being lighter, when the time comes to gain, (because it will eventually no matter how much you put it off), it is impossible to even begin to imagine being any heavier than you are at that time. so DO SOMETHING NOW! i urge you to just enjoy life because i missed out on so much and it makes me so upset when i come across people trying to do anything like that. its an actuall madness and it ruins, and often ends lives.

as for the screwed up metabolism, i had that after being in hospital, but i say make the most of it! only dont do what i did and get into the habit of only eating crisps and **** junk food jsut because you know how many calories they have. use the oppurtunity to eat nutritious food but at the same time make the most of being able to eat lots and still maintain. when i left hospital i was 50 kg and despite eating more than 3000calories on most days i dropped to 40 kg! f*cking ridiculous! but encouraging at the same time becuase i know i can eat and not gain. friends find it very annoying aswell because i eat aboutdouble what they do, muaha. anyway yeah hope it all goes well, get out of it while the trap is still loose. you will be dead before youre thin enough no matter what your head says. 

 good luck. x

I'm 5'5 and I used to weigh 119 pounds about 10 years ago. For a 5'5 person, it doesn't hurt to be anywhere from 111-140. . . In my opinion. Now I'm sure doctors, friends, and family would prefer you to be in the higher end of that range. You may even feel better if you were because holding onto the 116 pounds sounds like something you aren't too sure about.

119 was very skinny for me at 5'5. I looked better and felt better near 130-135. However, I did not realize it then! It took me adding on 50 pounds more to really appreciate that I wasn't "fat" at all (like I felt!) I was actually very skinny at 119.

I think you are on the right track in your thinking that it may just be a toning thing. A barely even noticeble flab of belly can seem like a whale of a difference when a person has never experienced what it is like to be overweight. Your body image issues may turn around a bit if you worked to tone those parts because it is far better in this instance to realize that many people that were 116 once are now 216 and would give their right arm just to be down to 150!

Don't be afraid to gain some weight, when you start toning, you will a little bit from muscle. . . but that is a good thing!

You definitely don't need to lose weight. Trying to lose weight would probably make your ED even worse. You should work on developing good habits, like healthy eating and exercise. If you're unhappy with your appearance, seriously evaluate if you really think you could use a little improvement, or if its just stemming from your warped sense of body image. Even at my lightest weight I was still unhappy with myself. Looking back, having gained some weight and some perspective, I see that I should have been happy with myself and that I looked great but instead all I focused on were the flaws I could find or make up in my mind.

i have that same thing. i think i just need to do a lot of toning.

here's my theory. if i toned and replace a bit of fat with muscle i will actually become smaller yet stay the same weight. because a pound of fat is much smaller than a pound of muscle.

it's just hard because winter time isn't the best time of my life. not enough activity.