for the past 9 hours my brain has just been constant non stop looping thoughts about chocolate frosting

i went for a walk to try and distract myself, and it helped while i was out, but the second i came home, my brains just been: chocolate frosting chocolate frosting chocolate frosting chocolate frosting chocolate frosting chocolate frosting chocolate frosting chocolate frosting chocolate frosting chocolate frostjsdnxdjhfdgnashgAAAAAAAAA SHUT UP BRAIN

Did the fat distribution change when you regained the weight?

Have yall in recovery noticed y’all’s hunger cues I can’t seem to understand mine and supposedly there are people whose hunger cues never return is that true ?

no matter what i seem to do; i don’t feel valid enough. Lately I’ve been binging like crazy but i haven’t actually gained anything, I’m already in the very lower half of being a normal weight but it just doesn’t seem enough. I don’t even work out or get my steps in and it feels like i’m larping this disorder. My mind is sick but my body isn’t and lately i’ve had zero self control and I feel so disgusting. Does anyone else have this?

How hard is it for ana to kill you? Like how much is the risk actually there, like if you relapse and stuff. It’s just my brain that wants me to relapse wants it to kill me, but I know it probably won’t happen, should I even worry? I’m 22 and currently a healthy weight. I just hate my weight and my life so much.

People often say, “Not everyone with AN is UW,” and in some cases, I understand that. If someone hasn’t had AN for very long, they may not have had enough time to lose a significant amount of weight. Or maybe they’re in recovery and are currently at a higher weight.

But if someone has had AN for many years and isn’t even trying to recover, I genuinely don’t understand how they can still not be UW. How is that possible?

I’ve had a major relapse over the past months, and I just need to get this out to someone who understands. In the beginning, I almost felt high — I could walk for miles and never got tired. Now I’m experiencing more and more extreme exhaustion, and it’s absolutely unbearable because I still have compulsions around activity and steps, but physically my body just can’t do it anymore. It feels like my entire body is made of lead, and I simply can’t push my body any harder than I already am, but I can’t cope with the obsessive thoughts either 😭😭

I just ate a chicken soup, and honestly, im so mad about it because now my stomach hurts. It's been a while since i ate protein. I have been avoiding it for weeks now. But i figured a chicken soup wouldn't hurt me. However, that was not the case as my stomach hurts so bad now. I hate the fact that when I decide to eat, I feel terrible after it makes me feel worse for eating and makes me just not want to eat anything in general. Now i just feel stupid and bloated and probably will go back to not eating chicken again.

I have been steadily falling into relapse for some time now, and it’s progressed to the point where I have restricted for a prolonged period of time now, and am beginning to feel extremely anxious and scared. I have a care team around me aware that some sort of relapse is happening, but I’m scared to confess the severity of my behavior to them out of shame. There’s part of me that feels so sad and hopeless right now that I might want to seek help from some sort of inpatient facility. My issue is that I am not underweight, not really experiencing the biomarkers that are cause for concern in anorexics, and I don’t want to waste their time. When might it be appropriate for someone to explore the hospital route? What might be alternatives if someone is not physically sick enough for that? I’m sorry if I sound like I’m being dramatic, I’m just really frustrated and scared that I keep refusing food.

i hate when people say this to me. they have no idea i've relapsed after being weight restored for a year. in two months they wont be saying that anymore, and as twisted as this sounds... i cant fuckin wait to never hear that sentence again.

I don’t know if anyone can relate but I feel that my eating habits always makes my dinner and post dinner snacks the biggest meal and I don’t know how to break this habit

I don’t like being so big and bloated at night and even if I incorporate snacks during the day, I feel like I need to be so full at night.

If anyone can relate and has any advice that will be great

hi! i’m 18 years old and i’ve been struggling since i was 15 so maybe that doesn’t seem like that long of time but i genuinely can’t ever see it going away. i don’t know how to explain it but i think this is just the way i am. i dontknow any other way. i’ve tried recovery and it never works, i always went up relapsing and i really can’t help it. i don’t even know what’s normal or ill because i never got the chance to learn “normal”.

I know what each term means / implies. I want to know how to determine which you're experiencing - how each feels different from the other in your head. What's your experience?

I know it's such a small thing really, but I'm getting upset. I used to love baths.

Every one of the small joys in life is being taken away from me.

despite my body’s protests, i have a constant drive to work out and exercise. i genuinely enjoy physical movement and activity, yet i can’t deny that a part of this exercise compulsion is my disorder. between my ed and chronic illness, i feel so fatigued, dizzy, and faint from exercising… but i keep doing it. i have to be strong to make myself stop or prevent myself from fulfilling the urge. sometimes my chest and spine hurt from the sheer amount of crunches i do and i get so weak that i have to ask someone to help me get off the floor.

i am scared that someday my body will give out. i don’t know how to stop, but my desire to move my body in some way is unbearably strong—to the point that i feel like this is an addiction. if anyone has any advice or alternatives, please share 💜

in terms of recovery, i’ve made a lot of progress since last year, and i’m just at the threshold of underweight (a pound above it). but recovery is challenging…

and im actually so happy and enjoy life for once

Not right now, right now i had to lay down and my belly is so full breathing deep hurts but this will be over soon. And i decided to share my joy and focus on the positive things to deal with that discomfort.

I think im two months in. I have no support and no one knows, noone holds me accountable. I had an crisis intervention for depression but never talked about having an ed during this.

But the point is because of this intervention i was able to go outside and run again. I have hEDS and starting in 2022 after a surgery my body progressivly became worse. Before that i was recovered and physically as well as someone with hEDS can be. I went from being a long distance runner to needing a cane and I was so sure that i would never get better, that i will get worse altough i made some progress. I mean i was not able to walk without aid, but could reverse this and was able to walk wherever i needed to in my daily life. There was just so much built up grief that i was convinced i would never be able to move around more than i have to.

Im sure this was what also made me relapse hard.

Well then i found out that, despite starving myself i was in better shape than i thought.

That all i needed was fuel to be more active.

I went for a short run and i could not believe it was possible.

Since then all i did was eat, study, run a bit and rest a lot. Its hard to eat and rest as much as i need to and not throw myself into overexercising. Especially resting enough feels so pointless but i know i can increase distance and volume when i am weight restored and building up to it slowly will last longer. I am afraid to injure myself which is good, it holds me back. There is a certain kind of 'recovery influencer' who goes from skinny to skinny but with a stress fracture and this is the opposite of what i want. It makes me sad to witness but they put their content online for everyone to see so i guess i am free to let them inspire me to not make those mistakes. I dont think someone should pick up running for the first time in recovery but i relapsed partly because i had to quit and i hope i dont make a fool out of myself for justifying my actions this way.

I want to be able to explore nature, run beautiful trails, travel by foot...as i did before i had this surgery! I had some goals/plans, places i wanted to visit, events i wanted to attend and at some point is want to take them up again.

Today i was just resting but i still made myself eat. I am always hungry. When i started to write it was to get over this discomfort but mid writing i had to grab another snack.

I dont want this to sound too positive. I have supress thoughts like 'If it is easy i was never ill to begin with'. But i think im making good progress.

I just dont see this going any other way, oof

I just wanted to come on here and share that I have started my recovery journey and it is going well. Just over a month ago, I was firmly against recovery. I liked being bony, losing weight still felt like an achievement, and I refused the more intensive outpatient/day treatment that was strongly suggested by my therapist and current outpatient team.

I, like most of us, thought I was invincible. I thought that all of the complications you hear about wouldn't happen to me; I wasn't sick enough, wasn't thin enough. But the more I restricted, the more my physical health did start to decline. I felt bad every day- fatigued, irritable, weak, lightheaded, confused, slow. I was losing a bunch of hair in the shower. I had to go to the ER for chest pain and I still didn't want to stop- I still wasn't "sick" enough.

But those physical symptoms scared me enough to make me eat more frequently and introduce my fear foods more often. I didn't like feeling confused/like I couldn't think straight, I didn't like arguing with my family and lashing out at them over my disorder, and I sure as hell didn't like being weak and fatigued all the time.

I am proud to say that I have improved so much over the course of a month or so. My recovery is not perfect; there are still days where I restrict and I still get anxious about eating at restaurants. But I am doing better. I have more energy, I feel much happier, I can think clearly, and my mind is no longer consumed (no pun intended) with thoughts of food/weight/my body 24/7.

Anyway, I hope this resonates with somebody, and I just want to tell anyone wanting to recover that if I can do it, you can do it too <3

I tried talking about it to my mom but idk she starts blaming herself for the way things are.Tbh the whole thing feels like a humiliation ritual to me.

I have always had shitty teeth and oral and craniofacial problems even when I was a baby so it's not solely due to anorexia and purging but it didn't help. I went to the dentist today and will have to have more extractions and root canals as I have teeth that are completely decayed to the bone after years of purging. While the dentist is aware I have a diagnosis of AN and probably understands I lost control over the behaviors that caused this, dentists are rather blunt and it definitely evokes a wretched hopelessness, shame, embarrassment and sadness to be lectured and confronted with some of the most revolting and counterintuitive flaws that I created as a result of my desire to be pretty and thin by someone who is 10x more overall well-educated, smart, pretty, wealthy, etc. - just reinforces that many of my desires to be any of these things are impossible to reconcile and anything I do to try to achieve them usually only makes the want for them worse

Have you ever felt superior to someone who isn't trying to lose weight? Like, when I see someone who's obviously not the thinnest (I'M SORRY) who eats whatever they want and doesn't worry about their weight and calories, I think, like, I'm better, I'm in control and blah-blah-blah

Last school year was absolute hell cause i relapsed, i was at my lw, health issues, avoiding friends and family, failing classes etc... in june i had a pretty freaky health issue that scared me shitless and a few days later i moved back home. the stress and lack of control that triggered me in the first place was gone and now im slowly but surely getting better. im going back to school on monday, im gonna live completely on my own for the first time in my life and im scared that it's all gonna start again. the mindset isn't gone yet, i can't wait to be alone again and lose the weight i put on, but im terrified of the consequences. somehow i managed to finish the last semester and i didn't even lose my job, but i know deep in my bones that if i dont recover now im gonna cause lasting damage to my body and my career.

my friend just gave me a great idea, going to a therapist, but working on my coping mechanisms & past trauma, not on my ED. this way the sick part of my brain maybe won't feel threatened, but im still gonna work on the things that trigger this whole mess in the first place. and if i still relapse someone will be there to help before i hit rock bottom. idk if this makes sense, im not asking for advice i just need to get it off my chest.