Do I have an eating disorder? Please help

am a 21 year old female, I am 5'3 and weigh around 103-104lb (7 stone 5-6lb).

I used to be just under 10 stone a few years ago and crash dieted to lose the weight. I wanted to be 9 stone, then 8 and a half, then 8, then I was happy bouncing between 7.10-7.12 for a few months. But recently it has dropped, I was fine at 7 and a half, but as it's gone down I've wanted it to stay down. I weigh myself everyday before eating/drinking. If my weight is at 7.5 I'm not too bad, but jf it js at 7.6 I panic that I'm getting fat and will keep gaining. I try not to eat until my evening meal, which I always make sure I havr, though sometimes end up snacking before if I start to feel too hungry. I have 2 cups of tea a day with 2 sugars in each to try and suppress my hunger. I also worry that when I start eating, I won't stop. Sometimes I will have a big takeaway, medium pizza all to myself, cobtinue eating it even if it hurts, and then half an hour after, continue eating. I never make myself sick/take laxitives and wouldn't, but I sometimes try not to eat all day in case I lose control and keep eating and eating. I have anxiety/depression/ocd ossues anyway and I'm worried I may have some sort of eating disorder too.

Sorry if this is a lot of jumble, but any advice would be much appreciated, thanks.

Hi - there's no jumble here at all. Well done for admitting that there are some unusual behaviours around food.

The first thing to realise are that eating disorders are not diets gone wrong. A person can go on a diet, struggle to keep up their dieting/extreme dieting, but go back to eating "normally" without any serious psychological consequences.

Lots of people don't like their bodies and that also doesn't make them have an eating disorder.

That said, there are some important things to factor in, such as how much of an impact on your daily life are your behaviours having; are there any physiological implications? What would you feel like if you were to stop and start eating 3 meals a day?

I'm not a medical professional, but I've had a lot of therapy, been both an outpatient and inpatient for my eating disorder, and as I've suffered with this atrocity for 15 years I firmly hold the belief that I am an expert in my own field.

I'm coming to the end of outpatient treatment, and I'm hoping this will be the last.

It's great that you're not vomiting or taking laxatives. 

1) Neither make you lose weight. You just lose fluid, so when you weigh yourself you will see the scales go down. It's actually water, not mass.

2) Eating breakfast makes you lose weight. (Accordingly to my dietician and all major cereal research).

3) Eating 3 meals a day, reflecting balanced nutrients (carbs, protein, fat, vitamins) keeps your weight low and also helps to moderate your moods. When you skip meals you probably experience terrible mood swings, which also feeds into the anxiety. Regular meals actually help to stabilise this.

Since I've been on a 3 meal a day diet my weight has gone down actually (probably a result of the lack of bingeing I had before), and has now stabilised...although I'm still under what I should be.

4) The reason you binge is because your body is starved of an essential ingredient for living. Carbohydrates.

What happens when you hold your breath ? You can't. Eventually you systems kick in and recover to try and get oxygen pumping quickly and you become out of breath.

It's the same with carbs. You starve your body from energy and it will find the quickest and fastest way to get its energy. This means high energy foods, such as chips, chocolate, bread, crisps and so on.

There is a common misconception that bingeing in anorexia is a weakness and that anorexics don't binge. That's complete rubbish. Bingeing happens all the time, and learning to control the bingeing helps in your recovery, but you have to introduce regular meals. It took me ages to trust my dietician, but as soon as I increased the number of meals, I ended up stopping the binges.

It has taken me years, but then I only confronted the binge eating aspect last year...maybe I'd have caught on quicker if I'd tackled this sooner.

5) BMIs are a load of rubbish. I always measured my BMI as a way of success, and the 17.5 became an achievement, and then I set a new hurdle and so on.

BMIs do not factor in bone mass, muscle mass and so on.

I was recently told that healthy for me would be 20 + not 18.5 + because I am a white Westerner. The introduction of 18.5 as the lower range was there to reflect the growing Asian population, but for my ethnicity, healthy for my body type was a BMI of 20.

Judging your own illness on BMI is also an error, because eating disorders are psychological with physiological symptoms (which can become life threatening...eating disorders have the highest mortality rates of all mental illnesses).

Therefore your BMI could be "healthy" but psychologically you could be on the verge of suicide.

You mentioned you were worried about losing control; I would definitely see if eating little and often mitigates against that, and spot whether you are craving salt or sugar as well.

A good meal plan can really help you out. I really need to plan everything including potential challenges (like if I'm going out, I know I'm more liable to binge after getting drunk; how will I manage this).

A food and mood diary can help you spot what's going wrong and work through the issues to resolve them. You might start to recognise patterns along the way!

I'd start with that. You may already be having treatment for anxiety and depression so it's worth discussing some of these thoughts with your therapist, but if not I would suggest getting a referral to a therapist especially with the additional concerns.

The Big White Wall is a service which is 24/7 and free in a lot of areas and is a great source of support.

Remember there is a lot of information and help available on the b-eat website (eating disorder charity).

Hope that helps. Feel free to PM if you have any other queries.

 

Thank you for replying.

I've been in therapy for quite a few years for anxiety/depression. I recently vaguely mentioned my worrys and he tried to claim they were normal. They want to start me on medication but I'm terrified about the side effects in case I gain weight.

I think about having 3 meals a day but even when trying this, I still feel compelled to snack. Because of the anxiety I rarely leave my house, which means the food is always right there and playing on my mind. I also worry having 3 meals a day as it just seems like so much food. I keep note of everything I eat and drink on a daily basis and have done for a couple of years, and whenever I look back at it I feel guilt for what/how much is there. It plays on my mind all of the time and causes me so much stress and worry, I just don't know if I'm over thinking or if there is an issue here. Thanks

I understand your concerns and I'm glad to hear you're receiving help already.

I'm not one to advise on antidepressants, as I'm not really a fan, they work for some people but you also need to make adjustments elsewhere and I think they can be a bit of a cop-out.

One of the things my dietician has often said when I'm having set backs or really struggling is what would I say to my daughter (if I had one) or my cousin's children?

As it happens they are 4, and 6 and both were eating more than me at Christmas. It was an eye opener. You shouldn't use it as a comparison, but it can be there to put things in perspective. Like, when a 4 yr old wants seconds on pudding at christmas...that's fairly normal!

(And thinking back, I did at that age).

Actually conceptualising 3 meals a day is the barrier I'm having now. But why not call it eating 3 times a day.

Meals can seem a bit daunting, especially dinner. I find things like porridge and soup a great starting point and you can portion these out really well.

Someone on here suggested adding things to my soup as I progress, which i thought was a really good idea. The 3 x a day + snacks every so often means you can mitigate against binges. Yoghurt raisins are great snacks, as are bananas or even breakfast bars.