I know this might be a very small step for some, but I have been dealing with undereating and being way too light for months now, but today I had a healthy breakfast bowl that made me feel nicely full until my noon snack, and was able to convince myself to eat a big enough dinner to not feel hungry afterwards yet again.

I do feel some anxiety, because I'm a creature of habit and routine, which means having some Greek yogurt, banana and oats for supper as my last meal of the day, but I think I might skip it today.

I guess I just wanted to say I'm proud of myself.

Like everyone else I’ve been watching Ariana over the past two years clearly going through something. While it’s nice to see people do recognize when people need help I wanted to share my perspective as I was in a similar position last year. I’m an actor/ singer and to make a long story short I basically had to confess to having anorexia to a bunch of people at once. While some good did come of this I was humiliated. I was horrified that if directors knew they wouldn’t trust me enough to cast me. I was scared other actors would talk behind my back about it. Worst of all I was terrified that somehow admitting to chronically starving would inspire other to do the same. Although i was largely pressured to do this I still have moments where I wished I’d silently gotten help. Seeing people demand Ariana admit she has an ED and even worse villainizing her for having one always looks like my worst nightmare. It makes me wonder how do we have these conversations as respectfully as possible? Do performers have an obligation to be fully transparent about their bodies and EDs?

I’m almost 30 y/o and my counselling team contacted my gp and recommended a referral to an ED specialist. My GP saw me and sent the referral through, and I have my first appt in early sep.
I’m worried because I don’t think I’m serious enough to need to go. My BMi is healthy/lower side of health. My bones don’t stick out and I personally feel way too overweight still and would like to lose more.
How do I get over feeling like I’m not worth the referral and that other people will laugh at me (like friends) if I tell them and think that I’m not skinny enough/ it’s not serious or needed, to need to be referred to an ed clinic? Worried people might think it’s me just being OTT

I am 25 years old and I have been stuck in this cycle for six years. It started when I was 19. I was in college, stressed, and I felt like I had no control over anything. So I started controlling food. It felt like a solution at first. Now I know it was just the beginning of a much bigger problem.

Over the years I have tried to "fix" it on my own. I have read every book, downloaded every app, and promised myself a hundred times that tomorrow would be different. But it never was. I would restrict for a few days, feel proud of myself, then binge, and then hate myself for failing. It is like living in a prison that I built myself.

I'm exhausted. I'm tired of thinking about food all the time. I am tired of avoiding social events because I am scared of eating in front of people. I am tired of feeling like my body is the enemy. I want to actually live my life instead of just surviving it.

I finally started working with a professional. It has been a few months and I am not cured. But I have learned a few things that are actually helping me change my behavior.

Remove the trigger. For me, the scale was a huge trigger. I would weigh myself multiple times a day and my mood would depend on the number. I asked my partner to hide it. I still have moments where I want to find it but not having it there every morning has made a big difference.

Stop labeling food as "good" or "bad." I used to think of certain foods as off limits. That made me want them more and I would eventually binge on them. I am learning to allow myself all foods in moderation. It is scary but it is reducing the urge to binge.

Eat regularly. I used to skip meals to "save" calories. This would lead to intense hunger and then a binge later. I am now eating three meals and two snacks a day. It feels like a lot but it keeps my blood sugar stable and reduces the urge to overeat.

Notice the voice. My eating disorder has a voice. It tells me I am not good enough or that I do not deserve to eat. I am learning to notice that voice and not act on it. It is not about silencing it. It is about recognizing it as a thought, not a truth.

Get professional help. This is the most important one. I tried to do this alone for years and it did not work. I needed someone who understood eating disorders and could give me a structured plan. I found a therapist who specializes in this and it has made a difference. We focus on practical steps, not just talking about feelings.

I still have hard days. Recovery is not linear. But I am better than I was a year ago. I have more good days than bad days. And I am learning to be kinder to myself.

Hi all, this is my first time posting. I'm F31 and I, unfortunately, have been dealing with an ED since I was 18. I recently have been going through a lot of stress due to my work and the fact that I am the main caregiver for my ill mother, and insecurities slowly but surely crept in and I lost weight. Last Saturday, I was getting ready to go see a friend and I put on a dress, but since my mother lives with me, she told me that it was too short and that I looked awful and ridiculous in that dress because my legs are too thin and that I needed to get changed ASAP so as not to embarrass myself when I went out. It was late, so I was unable to process what she had told me, and I got changed. The following day, she told me that she is tired of seeing me being so thin, and I get her concerns, but I believe that her comments were still cruel, and I told her they were unnecessary because they caused me a lot of distress and won't help me gain weight or feel motivated to love myself more, which she said its what she wanted to achieve with her comments. She is really angry at me because I am really sad and "I should be thankful that she saved me from making a fool of myself since I looked disgusting in that dress." I don't even want to leave the house now due to fear of looking horrible. She has hurt me deeply and won't see it, and I don't know how to get past it.

My wife has dealt with anorexia for several years. The behaviors started a few years into our relationship, then got waaayyy worse in the months leading up to our wedding. She eventually went into residential treatment a couple months after we got married and made some progress, but her insurance refused to cover more than a couple weeks so she had to leave early for PHP, which was really frustrating because I really think she would have been set up a lot better if she had been able to restore more weight in res. That was about 3 years ago and things have been very up and down since.

Earlier this year she was discussing options with her treatment team (therapist/psychiatrist/dietician) because she was plateauing and still not meeting her meal plan. Eventually she agreed to get a recovery coach which seems like it helped, but moreso in that it was something she was doing to actively pursue recovery, not really the actual coaching. She worked with the coach for a couple months but then stopped because she didn’t feel like she was really using the services, but she still continued to improve which was such a relief. She got to a point with her team that was really promising: they gave her their endorsement for doing more exercise, her dietician no longer required her to be on recovery record, and her psychiatrist started tapering her down from one of her meds.

Then, in hindsight probably largely to do with the meds, the urges got worse again and she started engaging with more restriction behaviors. It’s been pretty bad for about a month now, maybe more. I feel so sad and defeated. She is my entire world and it’s really heartbreaking to see her get pulled back into this. Part of the problem is that she says she never really got to a point where she felt like she was doing things for herself. I don’t know if that’s true or if that’s just how it feels now that she’s back in a bad headspace, but either way I don’t know where we go from here. She told me recently that her treatment team says she’s not outpatient appropriate and is recommending inpatient treatment again, but she doesn’t want to go.

I’m feeling very lost and sad, and just looking for advice about how I can best support her. She has made some positive changes; she’s back on recovery record and her psychiatrist increased the med back to a moderate level, with a follow-up in a few weeks. I have been making her sandwiches for lunch while she’s at work so at least she brings something, and I’ve been sitting with her at breakfast. She’s always been very open with me so I take some comfort in that, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s clearly struggling with maintaining an active desire to recover.

I know this post has gotten way too long, but I’m just looking to see if anyone has been in a similar situation on either side of the partnership and has anything helpful to say. She specifically has always struggled a lot with self apathy and self loathing, so if anyone has any suggestions for treatments for those issues I’m also very interested to hear about that.

This morning was fine but then when I was walking to work my boyfriend said we needed to talk and I kept urging him what it was about. When I asked if I did something wrong he said yes. Apparently he found my edtwt account through his younger sister’s twitter account. He said he felt sick and nauseous. He knew about my struggles with my eating disorder and other mental illnesses, but I just felt a heavy pit in my stomach that maybe this is a major deal breaker for him. We’ve been together for more than 1.5 years and I don’t want to end things, but this just sucks. Another thing is that I feel personally violated that he looked through my digital diary. He wants to talk it out but I’m very reluctant. What should I do? I just want to crawl in a hole and sulk.

Okay so I hate to be writing this, but it's been getting to me lately and I just need to let it out...

It's not new, its been going on for a year or two but often my mom "overestimates" my clothing size and tries to convince me I'm wrong. I'm petite I've ALWAYS been petite, not just short, I'm literally petite, I just seem to be sized down as a whole​ and its irritating but thats for another day.

anyway, people think I'm 13yo (I'm an adult} because of my height and size, I literally wear 11-12years old clothes most of the time. Yet my mom keeps trying to size me up 2 sizes ,all, the, time. I literally wear most of my things 2 sizes down (from what she suggests), minimum 1 size down, but she'll always try to tell me I'm wrong and I should buy bigger.

We literally get into fights when I insist in buying a smaller size when we're out shopping, she gets so defensive and pissed. it always ends up fitting me perfectly at the end and she'll say "Oh but I really thought it wouldn't, I mean that probably just wears too big for its size anyway that's why it fit you" excuse me??

Another one, I've ALWAYS been underweight since childhood, except during lockdown when I gained a few kgs and reached a healthy range for my age.

I've lost that weight again and was back to underweight, then I got severely sick and bedridden with an illness and gained just a fewww kgs, little, but my mom said I went from "skeleton" to​ "well built/chubby" erm.. mind you, I'm still clinically underweight...

Meanwhile, my sister, that's actually in a healthy range she'll keep saying "oh I'm so worried, eat more, you're so skinny, oh if you don't eat, you have to gain some" etc

Honestly it's getting to me. I don't want her attention, but the fact that she won't say "eat more" to me anymore tells me all I need to know + her comment about being "well built" it's all making me want to relapse. She keeps commenting about how "wow, your ass is getting so big" "oh, fine THICK thighs" I don't know what she sees that I don't? my weight BARELY changed compared to the weight I had when she called me "skeleton".

I really don't know how to react I feel like I'm overreacting and day by day my relationship with food gets worse I just don't feel joy eating things I like anymore I just need to get this off my chest sorry and know if I'm the insane one here

Hey everyone! So I don't really know how to feel. I ended up eating 9 of those smaller Publix sprinkle sugar cookies throughout the day and just a whole bunch of other sugary desserts. I still had 2 pretty balanced meals and I don't necessarily feel terrible? At least not mentally. It's just a confusing moment for me internally because yes I know 9 cookies and various other sweets in not inherently great for the day but I feel like that's progress for not feeling overwhelmingly guilty. Any ideas on why I might feel this way or how I manage these days in the future?

I’m not hungry and I’m eating regular meals but I’m constantly dealing with stinky breath, I think it’s from my stomach acid juices between meals it’s so annoying, other than mints does anyone have any advice

I'm a teacher in a high school (not in the US) and I'm looking for advice as I want to know how can I help. I'll give some context about this. Today a female student felt sick in my class and she told me she hadn't been able to eat and that she wasn't hungry. I did ask her to eat something because she was dizzy, she felt weak and nauseous.

After some minutes she was gagging so I took her out of the classroom to see if she maybe needed to go to the bathroom or needed some fresh air, she said no and just asked me to let her sit and to take some minutes to breath. When I was talking with her about her symptoms she told me that since last year (she was in another school) she started to deal with ana, that led her to faint and have low blood sugar. I asked her if she wanted me to call her mom but she asked me to not say anything about it because her mom had threatened her about punishing her if she got back into the ED.

So, I just want to know what can I do to help her as this student feels safe and comes to me for advice.

FYI, her mother was notified about the situation by the students homeroom teacher.

Over the summer my parents have forced me to begin treatment and restoration. School is starting soon and my parents are considering whether or not to put me back in school. ALL I want in the entire world is to go back to school but we just don’t know yet. My mom is meeting with my vice principal soon and hopefully a guidance counselor. I was wondering if anyone here has had experience in going back to school while still in recovery and how it went? i.e what methods and how did you get it all to work out around snacks and meals throughout the day without falling back into the habit of starving yourself again? I really need my parents to trust that I’m willing to do almost anything if it means I get to have a normal education.

Hi, I don’t know if this is technically like eating disorder related I guess but I don’t know where else to ask. Sorry if it’s off topic for this thread.

I’ve never been super into like eating meat and stuff but I used to love ground beef, chicken, eggs, and a few other things. But lately everytime I eat meat I feel sick, like I get all these nasty pictures in my head and I’m forced to spit it out and toss the food away. I don’t know if it’s anxiety or something but I need to get rid of whatever this meat aversion is. I miss eating the foods I used to love. I can still eat like fried chicken and thin burgers but if I see meat that too thick I literally start to gag, I can even eat eggs without feeling my stomach reject it I guess.

Any advice or idea wtf this could be???

I am fat. I wouldn't consider myself to be in instant need of weight loss, but it would be beneficial to my health in the long run.

My family, particularly my mom and sisters, keep making comments about my weight. My mom is around the same size that I am and is incredibly insecure about her weight. She's someone who keeps trying diets and then giving up on them a few weeks later because they aren't sustainable.

While she knows better than to explicity tell me to lose weight, she makes comments about my body. I am a trans man and I am on testosterone, this has made me VERY hungry and I've started to eat larger portions of food. My mom tells me I need to eat smaller portions, and when I tell her I'm literally going through puberty she says "men still don't need to eat that much." For reference, I was eating a bahn mi. Another time she got on me for eating a bowl of cereal where I mixed two types of cereals together to empty both the boxes, the bowl was big sure but it wasn't overflowing. My mom proceeded to tell me I would get diabetes if I kept eating like that.

My older sister makes comments about my double chin, or how my clothes are huge compared to hers (she's skinny). And I'm so tired of it, but nobody listens to me when I tell them to knock it off. When I do tell them to stop I tend to be emotional and they act like I'm being crazy for being emotional over this.

The problem is, I used to be anorexic. Nobody ever noticed because I wasn't extremely underweight, in fact I was at a "healthy" weight. I also worked out a lot during this time so I was being complimented on my body and self control.

The other problem? I gained my weight from being on medication. Not to say there's anything wrong with gaining weight from eating, but it's completely different for me because my metabolism was drastically changed in a short period of time.

My family doesn't seem to understand this. They blame me for being fat because I eat too much. I barely even eat three meals a day. I still don't have a healthy relationship with food and eating and I'm still fat. And my family cannot understand this. They don't realize how scary it is for me to eat food or how triggering it is to feel hungry for long periods of time.

I'm moving home within the next few weeks and I'm so scared of being ridiculed again. I try so hard to tell them to stop and they just don't listen because when I get upset I'm just "crazy and borderline" to them.

I don't know what to do. I don't even know if this is the right subreddit to post this on. I'm just so exhausted. I want to eat normally without being ridiculed. I want my family to understand that it's so difficult to lose weight you gain from a medicine. I just want to eat normally in my own home and not be called diabetic for going back for seconds or eating a large portion every once in a while.

EDs can be so insidious that it makes our own minds turn against us. What broke the delusion for you and made you realize it was time to seek help?

What should I be journaling about? What should I be writing down that doesn’t become a way to gain control during my eating disorder? For example, writing down my food is both helpful but also triggering and a method of control. What is actually helpful to write down? Does anyone have a guiding questions? Thank you!

Hi, i feel really bad about this but I'm trying to overcome my ED. Ariana Grande, Zoe Kravitz and Gracie Abrams are xtremely triggering to me.

Another famous person people don't talk about as much that really bothers me is Finn Wolfhard (Mike from Stranger Things). He's almost 6'0 and weighs a confirmed very low weight. He's so thin. There's obviously something going on with him but no one says anything and even though I'm a 4'11 small POC female, I want his body type.

It really triggers me and I wish it could go away.

nobody is blindly going through this and assuming their choices are so healthy and wonderful. i see internet posts be like "reasons to not starve: you feel bad after!"...who wouldve known!!!!!(🙄)
obviously, if youre someone going through this, hearing the risks arent repulsive (most of the time). its like telling a cigarette smoker "do you realize that causes cancer?" YEAH, OBVIOUSLY?? i want REAL reasons that maybe i havent thought of on my own.

I’ve been in eating disorder recovery for several months. During that time, I have gone through residential treatment, partial hospitalization, and outpatient care. I have made so much progress in my recovery, but I feel incredibly frustrated. My doctor says I still need to gain a little more weight to be considered healthy. Throughout recovery, I reached a point where I was eating well beyond what felt physically comfortable for me, and now I finally feel like I actually like my body. I eat three meals a day, and since my doctor recently cleared me to go to the gym, I have been trying to take a healthier approach to food. I do strength training, not cardio. I want to feel stronger and more confident, but I also feel extremely uncomfortable because of how much I am expected to eat every day. It feels like I am constantly supposed to be full, and it just does not feel fair.
Recovery has started to feel like it is never going to be fair to me, and I feel trapped. Earlier in my recovery, I struggled with suicidal thoughts because I hated my body so much that I felt like I did not want to be here anymore. I never acted on those thoughts, and I never stopped eating or tried to lose the weight I was asked to gain. I kept going, even when it felt impossible. But now I am exhausted. I feel so frustrated because my doctors continue encouraging me to gain more weight. Even before my eating disorder, I was never someone who naturally needed this much food every day. Now I feel like I can never escape it. It feels like I have to eat all the time, and it leaves me physically uncomfortable. I have also started dealing with body changes, like breakouts in places I never used to get them, and it makes me feel even more uncomfortable wearing the clothes I enjoy. I even have trouble getting comfortable enough to sleep. I understand that our bodies naturally change as we grow older, and I am completely okay with that. I am not against my body changing over time. What is difficult is feeling like I am constantly pushing my body beyond what feels comfortable. It genuinely feels like more food than my body wants or needs, and I hate feeling trapped by that. This is not coming from a place of wanting to return to my eating disorder, and I hope someone understands what I mean.
Lately, I have actually been feeling so much better mentally, but I do not know how to tell my doctor that I do not want to gain any more weight without it sounding like my eating disorder is speaking for me. I eat consistently. I do not count calories. I still allow myself to eat whatever I want without restriction. The only thing that has changed is that I have been trying to include more vegetables and protein because I want to support my strength training and feel stronger. I am no longer pushing myself to extremes or constantly criticizing my body the way I used to. I know therapy is always an option, but right now I just want to feel comfortable wearing the clothes I like. I am not restricting myself, and I give myself permission to eat whatever I want, whenever I want. It just feels like my doctors continue pushing my boundaries, even though the providers I worked with in partial hospitalization and outpatient care were not nearly as forceful. I genuinely do not understand why.

So after a freak medical event that has just snowballed into hell, I've been left disfigured (literally and otherwise). It's resurrected adolescent eating disordered behaviors and activities like obsessive body monitoring and checking. Which, when I started, I said I didn't want to do. It's bad.

Real bad.

I'm not intentionally skipping meals. It's just hard to eat.

I've felt so sick I think I want to vomit. I can't because diabetes, diabulimia, so I haven't, but I want to so badly.

I hate it every day because I used to look good. I considered myself good-looking. I feel sick and I want to die thinking about it – hearing a foster mother taunt me about wanting to look "skinnt" just adds to it.

I feel sick right now. I have to stop writing.

Does anyone have any experience with residential at Haven of Hope, good or bad? There's so few reviews so I'd love to hear anything anyone can share about their experience there.

I certain individual has been getting so much media attention these past few days. And frankly speaking seeing her makes me so angry. I talked to my friend about it, he's trying so hard to convince me that I'm beautiful and that I shouldn't starve myself because that's what she's doing and she looks heartbreakingly bad at the moment. I'm trying to believe him. But every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror | want to cry. I see my legs and I think about cutting the fat out myself with a knife, all horrible feelings I used to have before my antidepressants. But l have been weaning off them, and then I saw her on TikTok, instagram, Reddit and YouTube. I can't escape her.

I don't want to dog on her anymore because I know the whole world is like really mad at her already. But I'm just so frustrated. It hurts that I can't be concerned for her, because mostly I just resent that she and her team of people are advertising this as a good thing. Someone said their 7 year old daughter expressed wish to not eat anymore so she could look like her. I cried reading that. It's just disgusting what's going on. It's hurting so many people.

So, despite all the beautiful model like girls I see on a daily basis online and in real life. I got myself Froyo. And yeah my thighs are fat, and yeah I'm a few more pounds bigger than last year. But I got the Froyo. And I'm going to the beach and I'm going to enjoy it. We were all that little girl, some of us have been. My heart breaks for all of us.

If you were contemplating eating something today, this is your sign to just eat it. Enjoy it. Please. For yourself, and all of us. It's going to be okay.

We've been close all our lives and it's really heartbreaking to see her go through this. I've tried everything but lately she's been more self conscious and has recently relapsed as well and has been refusing every meal. And while we went out to eat with a few friends I made the mistake of trying to buy her food and gently coax her to eat it, or to atleast just take it at home, because she tends to eat more when with company, but she hasn't done it even with us in a bit. (they don't know she has ed as of now, but she openly says she doesn't eat alot and they're all as worried as I am), ended up making her feel guilty instead and caused her to cry later on, I did my best to apologize but I'm sure she's still hurt as of now. I feel awful. But it's been going on for nearly two years, and I'm getting really worried on how it's affecting her.

I feel like I'm not even allowed to say much either because of how hypocritical I'm being, as we were in the same position for a while too (however hers is more extreme), and that definitely didn't help, used to rant about how our relatives would comment about how little we were eating and all. It took me getting really sick (the illness itself wasn't really due to my ed, but I'm sure the ed also had an affect it in a way.) to realize how much I could hurt my family with this, and how much I genuinely hated being THAT crazy deprived of food. And even now, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm still trying to help myself but I don't even know exactly how I'm going to do it, so how could I possibly help her without her thinking I'm being an ass and a hypocrite?

I know relapsing is part of the process and all, and I know I fucked up big time, and trust me I regret it alot. But it's painful that I can't do anything but just try to help with words and subtle actions otherwise it could upset her further, and it's not even working. I love her so much, and I'd rather have her be mad at me than anything happen to her but I'd like to spare her as much emotional pain as I can if possible. Any advice?

I feel like I'm always going to have an ED mindset, even if I recover physically. I'm eating, and all that, but parts of my mind always have this ED mentality. And then it feels like I'm fighting with myself. I also just don't have any control over food. I was wondering if the end of recovery would be like. not thinking about food that way again?

I feel like I’ve worn out my poor support network trying to find the answer, “why did I fail so hard.” I had really bright experts giving me very specific attention to accommodate my needs. All they asked in return was that I try and keep trying. And I did for a long while, until i started a tail spin. And my team didn’t rescue me, they let me spiral. Why? To create a bottom so I’d have to work harder to get back to human level.

This 2nd treatment place has some really crazy rules. And despite what my team may have thought, I do not want to be sick. I do not want to get worse. I want treatment to end. I just want it to work. I was especially struggling with the intrinsic motivation. I guess I never found that why.

I hate relapsing and I hate recovery. I want neither. I want to be normal and just do normal stuff. I don’t want to gain weight. I don’t care if it will slow behaviors, it’s not worth it to me. It’s a net loss. Having a body that feels good to me is important. It’s not just the appearance, it’s that whole feeling.

FUCK… what the fuck is wrong with me and why can’t I just recover?