fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2767 ]

[ SECRET POST #2767 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2767 ⌋

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Notes:

Work. Again. Sorry if response time is slow. :(

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I'm so bored of my life and bored with myself, and also stressed and feeling like have no control of anything. So, I've decided to start restricting counting calories again (it's been about a year). I lost 70 lbs last year, but I've gained back about 30 and I was no where near my goal (about 40 lbs shy) when I decided to stop restricting. But, at that point in time I felt confident and I felt good about life and about myself. I also felt smug about how much weight I'd lost and self-righteous about not eating much. (I usually ate about 1000 calories or less a day, plus I exercised a lot). I'm an asshole, I know, but I'd never lost weight before and it was an exhilarating, frustrating, and difficult experience to suddenly be so much thinner. People noticed me! (And wanted to talk to me.) Guys bought me drinks! (I love free drinks.) Clothes fit! (Kind of.)

It's been three days of eating minimally and I'm remembering how it feels to be hungry AND I LIKE IT. I was thinking today that I'm going to have fun starving myself, which is the stupidest thing because I know it's not fun. But, damn, I'm so bored and dissatisfied that even feeling hungry and faint is a better feeling than boredom.

Anyway, I know this isn't my personal journal, and I'm not looking for advice. No one cares about a fat girl not eating. Writing it out where I can't delete it helps me organize my feelings.

Does anyone else have food issues like this that they would like to talk about?

I'm going through some eating related issues right now as well. I've lost a little over 30 lbs. in the last few months, and I have quite a bit more to lose so I need to keep going but I've become totally obsessed with food so it's really hard. When I'm lying in bed at night trying to sleep I'm thinking about what food I'm going to eat the next day, and when I'm not busy my mind wanders onto all my favorite foods that I haven't eaten in so long. I even made a list of everything I was craving and thought "once I lose all the weight I need to I'm going to eat these things" but I know that eating those things is how I gained weight to begin with and if I want to lose the weight and keep it off I can't eat them anymore.

I don't think I'd be considered to have an eating disorder because I'm losing weight the "right" way and not starving myself but I don't know how much longer I can keep it up. There have been a handful of times in the past few months where I ate way too much or ate a ton of junk food or whatever, and then ate less than usual for the next few days to balance it out. A couple people have said that's a sign of an eating disorder but I've seen so many others say that that's just what "normal" people do when they overeat. I've known people who've been diagnosed with eating disorders and people who are considered super healthy fitness junkies, and their behavior is virtually identical, so I sometimes feel like it's just a matter of perspective on what actually constitutes an eating disorder.

I don't know, it just really confuses me.

DA

I have totally struggled with those worries as well. And eventually I realised that, when there's a self-proclaimed 'expert' on every corner giving you conflicting advice about diet and a lot of them have a vested interest in making you feel bad about yourself, then maybe the person I needed to trust was myself. And then 'normal' eating became eating whatever and however I felt was best for me at the time, with nutritional advice and portion sizes and an idea of what I've already eaten and what I was going to eat that day as helpful but not prescriptive guidelines.

But really this quote about 'normal' eating is really what put in all in perspective for me:

Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied. It is being able to choose food you like and eat it and truly get enough of it—not just stop eating because you think you should. Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food. Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good. Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way. It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful. Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more. Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life.

In short, normal eating is flexible. It varies in response to your hunger, your schedule, your proximity to food and your feelings.

From nutritionist Ellyn Sutter, found here: http://www.fatnutritionist.com/index.php/what-is-normal-eating/

In the past my weight has fluctuated up and down about 50 pounds, usually settling somewhere in the middle (which is just on the cusp between normal and overweight in my BMI chart. Obviously, my own body image and weight gain/loss narrative is different to yours. But I wanted to comment because I used to - and this was especially at my highest weight - feel completely out of control and helpless and above all deeply depressed about my situation. Because my weight had fluctuated in the past, I felt that even if I lost some weight by restricting (which I had successfully done previously), or exercising excessively, eventually I would have to stop and go back to my 'normal' eating and exercise habits and the cycle would begin again. So, you know, there seemed to be no options besides restricting unhealthily or having my weight spiral upwards and out of my control.

What changed all this was my decision to start exercising regularly, not excessively (basically trying to get my 1/2 hour in a day), and eating healthily and counting calories healthily (I used My Fitness Pal, and even though I was still trying to lose weight I never went below 1,200 and was usually more like 1,500).

And even though my weight loss has been slower in the past, it has also been steady - but most of all doing this healthily and forming healthy habits has given me confidence and reassurance and control over my life and by body - because now I know that even if I fall off the bandwagon for a bit, when I go back to my 'normal' habits everything will sort itself out because now my 'normal' habits are healthy habits that are going to lead my body to eventually settle down at a healthy, sustainable weight.

Sorry for all the TL;DR, but I wanted to say all of this because changing my lifestyle like this has given me a new lease on life. I know this might fall on deaf ears, but on the off chance it doesn't, I hope you start feeling better about yourself, OP.

I never really sought help for my issues with food specifically, but I was an undiagnosed EDNOS sufferer for a number of years in my early twenties. It was a period of intense medical issues for me (other than ED) and it was a coping mechanism for the loss of control I felt over my own body.

I had periods of restricting to 500kcal/day, which is somewhat shameful to think about now.

I'm lucky, in that I realized what I was doing to myself was very harmful and that I was losing more control than I was gaining before I did any permanent harm to myself. I began eating better and exercising more, and these days I'm at quite a healthy, normal weight and vastly improved general fitness.

...Honestly, if you think no one cares about a fat girl not eating, you're very wrong. There are so many healthier and safer ways to accomplish your goals, and you clearly have the willpower to get where you want to be. If you can't find it within yourself to realize that what you're doing is hurting you, consider this: you will never be able to keep off any weight that you lose by starving yourself past your BMR. That starvation mode only means your body will compensate by reducing your metabolic rate to insanely low levels to compensate for the caloric intake it is used to. You will gain the weight back, and more.

Talk to your doctor and come up with a safe plan for weight loss that includes light-moderate exercise. Healthy and energetic is a much better feeling than thin and exhausted, trust me.

Except "starvation mode" doesn't actually exist if you have a high enough body fat percentage. Adaptive thermogenesis will slow your metabolic rate down some, but you'll still lose weight if you're eating at a caloric deficit. It won't stop altogether, and you definitely won't gain weight. If that was true, you'd see a bunch of overweight concentration camp survivors.

I almost don't even want to dignify this with an answer, but.

Obviously I mean once said person stops eating at a deficit. FFS.

And yes, starvation mode exists regardless of body fat percentage. It's a biochemical function of glycolysis inducing the Kreb Cycle generate ketones in times of insufficient glucose intake (ie. ketosis). Insufficient calories to sustain basic metabolic requirements (which is a function of what your typical caloric intake is rather than a set value per weight/height) allow fat stores to be released, yes, but this doesn't actually result in meeting optimal glucose requirements. Gluconeogenesis just isn't energy efficient enough to provide the ATP requirement to sustain itself and to sustain all organ functioning at optimal rates. Hence why the term "starvation" even exists.

You can be as fat as you want and still be starving, and your body will react accordingly.

Well, yes, obviously you won't be functioning at an optimum rate. If you mean starving as in not having the nutrition you need, then yes. But if a fat person doesn't eat they're going to burn excess fat before they die from lack of food. In my personal experience that's what people usually mean when they talk about starvation mode ("I must eat every 3 hours or my body will go into starvation mode and I'll die!"), but that's obviously not what you're talking about.

It's really not, no. I'm talking about it in the medical sense, both metabolic changes that occur and endocrine changes that follow.

The post-game scenario - in the broadest of terms - is that as soon as the caloric deficit is decreased (ie. you stop restricting calories to 1000kcal/day) the compensation measures that the body has been taking result in disproportionate weight gain to what would normally be seen with an equal caloric intake in a person whose body had normal metabolic functioning.

Hence the term "yo-yo dieting". Only, in OP's case it's even more extreme and more damaging.

Hell, I've lived through that. It was only after I adopted changes to my exercise regime and started eating consistently that I finally started to get healthy again.

I have the opposite (and probably more common) problem of eating when I'm bored. And also when I'm stressed. And feeling hungry just makes me craaaanky.

(I just recently - like a couple days ago - decided to get serious about watching what I eat and losing some weight ~~mostly because my new work shirt looks hideous on me~~ and I'm hungry right now and I don't like it >:c)

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[ SECRET POST #2767 ]

Re: Tw: Eating disorder/food issues -- VERY TL;DR

Re: Tw: Eating disorder/food issues -- VERY TL;DR

Re: Tw: Eating disorder/food issues -- VERY TL;DR

Re: Tw: Eating disorder/food issues -- VERY TL;DR

Re: Tw: Eating disorder/food issues -- VERY TL;DR

Re: Tw: Eating disorder/food issues -- VERY TL;DR

Re: Tw: Eating disorder/food issues -- VERY TL;DR

Re: Tw: Eating disorder/food issues -- VERY TL;DR

Re: Tw: Eating disorder/food issues -- VERY TL;DR

Re: Tw: Eating disorder/food issues -- VERY TL;DR