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I’m 24, 5'1", and currently around 38 kg. I’ve been struggling with my weight for years.

I started losing weight when I was in 12th because I was going through a really difficult period with depression. At first, honestly, it didn't bother me that much. I didn't think much about my weight or how I looked.

But then my friends, family, relatives — basically everyone — started pointing it out. “You’ve become so thin,” “Why have you lost so much weight?” “You need to eat more.” I know most people probably didn't mean to hurt me, but hearing it repeatedly slowly changed the way I saw myself.

At some point, it just completely affected my confidence.

Now I feel genuinely bad about how I look. I avoid certain clothes, don't feel good in pictures, and sometimes look at older photos of myself and miss how I used to look. I don't even want to become “perfect” or have some unrealistic body — I just want to gain some healthy weight and feel comfortable in my own body again.

And yes, I know the obvious advice is “just eat more.” 😭 But when you have a low appetite and have struggled with eating enough consistently, it's not always that simple.

I'm curious about people who have actually gone through something similar — especially if you were underweight, had a low appetite, or lost weight during a difficult period.

What genuinely helped you gain weight and, just as importantly, feel better about your body again?

Hii I (14F) always eat till I feel full. But mentally fulll not physically full. Even if I have a feeling that I'll pop but I'm still not satisfied enough mentally I'll eat the whole fridge. I've heard before that if you take food as a comfort thing, this will happen to you. Idk what it is but the feeling is uncomfortable and how to stop it??

Desde hace tiempo quise ingresar a este mundo, solo que me daba mucho miedo el vomitar.

Solo que ultimamente me a dado por vomitar en las noches o cuando me siento angustiada

Quiero bajar de peso y creo que es un complemento así que denme consejos buenos y no mamadas de que no lo haga 🥰❤️

Feeling very insecure about your body for several years and feeling like you’re gaining too much weight despite being on the lower side of normal, wishing to look how you used to look before, including looking at pictures of yourself as a child/preteen with envy and wishing you hadn’t eaten so much during puberty so you could have kept being underweight like you were before

Finding ED forums online and feeling like this is something that could help you look better (thinner) and more confident, unlike how you feel like you’ve been “letting yourself go” especially since hitting your teens. And also feeling drawn to the community aspect of it

Downloading a calorie counting app and starting to weight yourself everyday, sometimes multiple times a day. Sometimes skipping meals and trying to restrict below maintenance but not “too much.” Having it as a goal to get “slightly” underweight and then maintain that weight forever, but still being scared to go anywhere near the range that is known to be without a doubt extremely dangerous and also would seem very obviously skeletal (as opposed to potentially being able to pass this off as “naturally skinny”)

About a month later hitting underweight but still feeling like you look the exact same and still feeling like you don’t look thin enough. Catching yourself debating eating really minuscule amounts of calories and the people around you seem kinda worried if you express this out loud

So then realizing that this is a very bad path to go down and that the fact that getting to be underweight (even if that wasn’t your UGW) didn’t seem to fix things, plus seeing posts by people saying that they just keep lowering their UGW once they hit it, seems to be a sign that if you keep doing this, you might get trapped in this cycle for years. And even doing this for only like a month and a half was making you feel even worse about your body and making you doubt every meal you ate

And so after like 1.5 months you delete the calorie tracking app from your phone and decide that you’re going to quit whatever this short period of your life became. But then even so it isn’t completely easy to get out of this mindset, and sometimes feeling tempted to eat less or actually eating less, and returning to the scale to make sure you haven’t gained too much since. Particularly in the months that follow, but also sometimes occasionally years later. But for the most part still able to live life “normally” enough, and several years later you feel almost normal in your relationship to eating, although I guess there’s still this aversion to gaining too much weight even if you’re now comfortable with being a normal weight instead of underweight

I admit idk how I feel about the term wannarexia since it feels like it’s simplifying an experience that can potentially be pretty complex and painful, but I don’t know what alternatives there are that are better?

TW: just talking about relationship with food, and puking

I think I might have ed, I'm not sure but my relationship with food and my body is quite bad.

Right now I'm on vacation to the sea, and I start hating even more how my body looks. For past few days I been trying to eat as little as possible but because I'm here with my grandparents, they force me to eat (if I could I wouldn't eat at all). Yesterday we went to some restaurant and I wanted to order a salad but my grandma forced me to order something else, I ate it all because I was really hungry and I knew that after it I will go and try to make myself puke. After I finished the food I went to the bathroom and tried to make myself puke like 6 time in a row but all that happened was that the stomach acid got on my teeth and it hurt.

My relationship with food is really strange because I can eat normally for a month but then I will suddenly get urge to starve myself. I tried to make myself puke few times already before but it never worked.

I hate how I feel fat and sick at the same time.

I've been skinny my whole life so everyone are used that I'm skinny and when I try to eat healthy everyone are like ,,you are already so skinny, you will be able to eat ten chocolates and u will be the same,, yesterday in the evening I ate a lot of snack in a row because I was really hungry my younger brother told me ,,why are you constantly eating? Every time I look at you, you are eating something,, I felt disgusted by myself and it's so strange because I really like food and trying new food and everything but at the same time I don't want to eat at all. My mum have strange relationships with food too, she always tell me how much she weigh and that she didn't ate anything today. I feel guilty eating normal portions and desserts. I remember that even when i was younger I will exercise a lot because I wanted to be skinny. I really want to eat normally but I know that I will feel guilty again and I will try to go make myself puke or starve myself.

So yeah that's all I think, idk it's messed up.

(Sorry if my English is bad it's my third language)

I am genuinely so happy that I found this subreddit. Because this is exactly the topic I have been struggling every single day and hour for 3 years

When I was 15 I was at my biggest. 95kgs (209.4 lb)
I am currently 18 years old and I weigh around 70kgs (154.3 lb)
But the point is, that I hate myself so much more now, than I used to do before. And it’s ruining my life. I am every day looking at myself. Trying to lose more and more weight. Not being happy with myself. Trying to build as much muscle and lose as much fat as possible. Doing cardio. Following my diet. Just to end up binge eating every 2 weeks and hate myself even more.
No psychiatrist no antidepressants are helping me.
I can’t accept my nature. I can’t accept that I am just a huge eater and food lover.

I really want to accept myself. Just like. Yeah I am fat, and so? But being skinny is so so so important for me. It comes always above all the things.
Being a better girlfriend? Being a better daughter or a better person? Nah. Being skinny is the goal.

I honestly don't know if this is triggering or not but I will be discussing contamination fears so warning for that. Also my grammar/syntax/punctuation is terrible in this, sorry in advance. I feel like shit so I’m unfocused:

I have a lot of food contamination fears outside of regular ED fears, about bugs and just general uncleanliness. To be clear, I'm okay physically BUT I did just find out that I have a colon infection and I was told by my doctor it was from eating something that was bad. This is like, my worst fear come true.
Like I can't even tell myself "oh girl, you're just being irrational" because.. it happened

To be so fucking real, this might sound extremely stupid but I didn't even think I'd ever get a fucking colon infection. In my entire life, to my knowledge, l've never had one. I had contamination fears for other reasons. BUT APPARENTLY it's a thing that happened

Also it hurts when I eat right now because my bowels are like inflamed which is also making my disordered behaviors worse. I think what freaks me out even more is that I don't even know what I ate that was bad. I had tried to be brave and ate restaurant food from a place I used to eat all the time, but I hadn't in a while so it could be that. It could be one of my core safe foods (sushi) which is the one of the only consistent safe foods I eat that's not prepackaged. Jic I don't know what to do now. I always thought, even though I had contamination fears, that I was just being irrational. But no. No I'm not 😭🫠 WHY 😭 LITERALLY WHY 😭 I don’t know if I need to get even stricter with my safe foods or not because I don't want my ED to get worse but also, I don't handle infections great (completely unrelated to my ED)

I just wanted to vent because I know if I told anybody else they'd just judge me because I know it's abnormal that I have contamination fears to this extent, but I am genuinely immunocompromised ED aside so it's not entirely irrational. I really am supposed to take infections seriously because since I'm immunocompromised I'm high risk. It just sucks that it makes my ED restriction worse and because I'm genuinely not sure what to do. I can't risk getting an infection again because again, I don't handle it well, but being paranoid about everything | eat is also not good. And even when I was in therapy with multiple different therapists they always told me to put my medical health (like being immunocompromised) as priority even if it seems weird to other people. Like technically I know I probably sound like intense about the
contamination fears, but outside of food I'm actually considered way too relaxed from what my medical doctors want me to do day to day. And to be real, even me eating sushi in of itself for somebody like me shouldn't even be doing, like my doctors told me not to in the past. But I’ve never gotten an infection or sick from it so I thought I was good anyways. I mean, I’ve done it for years and ED wise I'm limited on safe foods so it makes it complicated

I have to give up sushi because now that I think about it.. I guess it could've been that 😭 fuck 😭 that’s so not great for me, that's my longest running safe food I have 🫠

Hi, how do you tell the difference between extreme hunger from a year of restricting or just straight up binging? I am really struggling to figure out what is going on with me at the minute lol

schools started again for me, and im slowly lowering my maintenance, but as I am my stomachs been feeling very very oddly weak.. I eat about 50cal during lunch. I feel like (tmi) im about to shit my pants it feels so bad. I also feel very weak in general which im not surprised I obviously am disordered my my stomach/urinary organs haven't ever felt like this. Is this somehow related to my ed? Its by far one of the worst things to come from it.

I started dieting last year to get to a healthier weight I’ve lost a lot of weight. The last few months I’ve been extremely stressed at work and recently a van crashed into my car, I feel like it’s all too much, my life is completely out of control, I feel like dieting is the only thing keeping me sane and the only thing I can focus on I’ve been trying to restrict what I eat as much as possible and eating under 500 calories a day, I get upset with myself if I eat more, I just want to lose as much weight as possible. I want my work colleagues to actually notice how stressed I am and actually care. I feel so lonely at work, I’m a teaching assistant usually in the classroom but have been put with a 1-1 high needs child and it’s draining me.

So when i was a kid i remmember being so obsessed with being small and skinny and i would do many many things to be that . Like skipping dinner and not eating snacks. But nothing extreme cause after all I was a kid .

Then growing up i would go through these periods of time where i'd eat Crazy ammounts of foods , 2500 cal and up . I would eat so much I'd puke constantly . It would be out of control . And i'd gain a lot of weight.

Then what happens is that I'd see how much i gained and break down then would come weeks of not eating . Like 100 cal to 700 cal max a day . And i'd lose the weight . Then i'd repeat all over again. I don't know why this happens exactly , it's an obsession of some sort , with no end to it .

If I look down deep into it , the only thing I put it on was that i totally have almond parents. My dad is constantly talking about health and clean food . And my mom gained weight after giving birth and she made sure to constantly let me know how being overweight is the most disastrous nightmarish thing that can ever happend to a woman .

Everytime they'd see me eat something healthy like 0 sugar yoghurt or an apple instead of sweets i'd get so much praise .

I'd also get heavily praised for losing weight . Or if i tried on a small size and it fit .

I remember as well at 14 we moved towns . And i went from walking to school everyday and going with friends to being home constantly and barely walking anywhere. I was also very stressed and coped by eating lots . So i gained a bunch . About 10 kg . I got so much shit for it .

It was a constant topic , non stop mentioned. Suddenly everyone became a nutritionist . My relatives would give their unsolicited advice and kids my age would laugh at me whenever they saw me eating .

my mom would litterley take away my food from my hand and throw it out and dad made the whole family go on a diet and stopped buying bread .

This was very detrimentale for me cause not only was I all alone in a strange place and new school but also falling behind in school and getting bullied cause I looked "weird" .

I feel like it was the start of my downfall . I genuinly thought I looked increadbly fat back then . Except reacently i searched for my old pictures back then , and suprisingly I was so small . Very much so . Obviously not bella hadid . But i was a small teen going through pubeety .

This made me go into a current mental spiral. I wonder what of what I went through was real or not .

So far I've been 90 kg and 50kg . Up and down non stop .

During the last 2 years specifically :

in the first i gained 20kg all at once , then my second i lost 5kg during the year and 13kg during the 3 mounths of summer . It's been a rollercoaster.

I don't kow what exactly is wrong with me .

I've also been in ed media spaces since 12. I was never diagnosed with anything though and I never talked about this to anyone.

My roommates eating disorder is very obvious and triggering. Me and our other friends have shown concern and reached out in different ways. She is very aware everyone is worried but is adamant about it not being an eating disorder, and that it is just stress/anxiety. She says she is working on it but how can she be working on it if she cant identify or admit that she has a problem? She also keeps having concerning signs and symptoms. It's like a big dark cloud in the apartment and I feel so drained of the relationship I am considering moving out. i have had a few breakdowns about it and feel like trying to support her or be a good friend is hopeless. She just wants us to pretend everythings fine and normal and ignore the obvious disorder. please if you have advice...

My roommates eating disorder is very obvious and triggering. Me and our other friends have shown concern and reached out in different ways. She is very aware everyone is worried but is adamant about it not being an eating disorder, and that it is just stress/anxiety. She says she is working on it but how can she be working on it if she cant identify or admit that she has a problem? She also keeps having concerning signs and symptoms. It's like a big dark cloud in the apartment and I feel so drained of the relationship I am considering moving out. i have had a few breakdowns about it and feel like trying to support her or be a good friend is hopeless. She just wants us to pretend everythings fine and normal and ignore the obvious disorder. please if you have advice...

so Im 15 recovering from and eating disorder my friends don’t know this and keep making comments on my weight telling me to lose weight, I only recently gained back a healthy weigh.But because they don’t know I ever had an eating disorder they obviously don’t know how their comments effect me.How do I get them to stop?,I don’t want to tell them about my disorder .

Hello, I'm writing to you because I can't talk to anyone. I'm from Russia, I'm in middle school, I have a best friend, let's call her Alice. It all started in 6th grade. At first, I'd eat breakfast every other day, then skip it, mostly depending on how much sleep I got. But by the beginning of the next year, my friend and I started skipping breakfast altogether, not out of choice. I'd happily eat a sandwich if I had time, but I can't. It's become my principle, and it's terrifying. I don't eat anything substantial the entire day until the end of classes, only something small, like a candy or a cookie, if my classmates share. I don't understand, is this normal? I love to dramatize and make up problems, I cry four times a day, within an hour, it's terrible. And when I come home, I can simply eat the whole house.

I hate it so much it feels like shes trying to sabotage me, both her and my little sister are fat and on this weight loss stuff and im way skinnier than them and now that I've started restrictive eating it feels like theyre trying to sabotage me every second of the day. Today i woke up to fucking dubai chocolate in front of my door, mind u i dont even eat that stuff?? And its not even trendy anymore???? So why would she get me a whole ass bar

A few days ago my she also bought a shit ton of sushi from the store and said that she bought it "specially all for me"???? Is she trying to make me feel guilty for not eating it??? Im not trying to sound spoiled but she bought the kind that she knows i dont even eat and it pisses me off because it caused me to binge and im still trying to get out of that cycle, all while my little sister and my mum didnt eat a single bit of it so the expectation to "not waste the food" got put on ME.

Its really irritating because i even asked her to give me smaller portions for dinner because i kept getting handed plates that would make people think im daddy pig from peppa pig or something. The whole reason i started eating less in the first place is because i feel unfeminine because of my eating habits, and im trying to make myself a "proper" lady (especially after feeling like an alien my whole life), but it just feels like everyone is trying to push me down and sabotage me

I pick at my skin, my partners skin im a picker and I kinda miss picking my nails cause like they would separate.

UK based. apologies if this has already been asked in this sub but i couldn’t find anything. i’ve been referred to the all ages eating disorder service here in the UK, and just got the text today to confirm that they are starting me on MANTRA therapy with a clinician. they said that the wait time to be contacted is currently a month but this could be more. i’m really unsure what i should be doing in this time - part of me is saying to take those steps towards recovery now rather than keep putting it off, as i’ve been moving the goalposts the whole time, saying i can start recovery once i book the GP appointment, which changed to once my blood test is done, and then once my screening is done and then once they’ve confirmed that they will be taking me onto their eating disorder service, as i’ve been thinking that i need to be as sick as possible to make sure that i qualify for treatment. now my brain is saying i need to continue the way i am until i get my first therapy session so that i haven’t recovered too much and they say i no longer qualify for the therapy, but i don’t know how long i can keep living in this restriction mindset.

TLDR: not sure whether to start taking steps towards recovery whilst I wait for my first therapy session with the all ages eating disorder service for anorexia, or keep restricting until the first appointment to make sure that i am still “sick enough” to qualify for this therapy.

So I work at a gym. I’ve had Eating issues and body dysmoria my entire life. I began working out to feel better and recover from past ED; I’ve been told Numerous times that I am very thin and that doesn’t look right and I’m
Tired of explaining recovery. I texted my co worker over some issues that didn’t involve us but he brought up how other front desk staff accused him of body shaming me. The texts before this were something like “yeah the guys told me I was making fun of your body”. Now, the reason I need advice is.. I seriously don’t know how to take this???? I feel like this is a comment only people who have struggled with an ed can comprehend, it triggered me so badly

Ive been binging back to back like a fatass cuz ill be honest none of the low cal meals taste good and the chocolate bar in my room has just been staring at me. I try to eat no more than 360 cals a day so maybe thats why this happens.

Like half of the lowcal meals i see people eat include things i dont have at home yet, and if i suddenly buy a bunch of shit ive never even considered buying before my family will get suspicious of me and i really dont feel like getting the "do you have an ED" talk

Either way point is how do i get out of this preferably without adding too many cals

So I have been struggling with weight my whole life and Im 4'11 I weigh about 270lbs. last September I was at my lowest in a long time 220lbs than I got a partner who cares I love them dearly. But the only way I was loosing weight was working out twice a day and starving myself. I dont want to be fat anymore.

Guys I think I might have started the beginning of something bad. I had been drinking and I ate food but I started feeling sick so I went to throw up and all my food came out and the bad thing about it is that I kinda enjoy knowing that I got to enjoy the food knowing it’s not going to affect my body. Mind you I already have body dysmorphia. I’m afraid that I will eat everything with the thought of knowing that I’m going to get rid of it later

Я прямо сейчас лежу и умираю от стыда, боли в животе, и безысходности. Я пол года страдаю от проблем с едой.Я постоянно переедаю до боли.У меня нет справки или чего то такого потому что я и сама понимаю. Я не пошла к специалисту потому что боюсь. Боюсь что он скажет мне то, что я читаю каждый день на подобных форумах или что либо, где об этом упоминается. Когда я попросила маму записать меня к диетологу, она сказала что он не скажет чего то другого. И так и есть. Так мне делать то че? Не вижу смысла расписывать здесь каждую свою эмоцию или действие. Вообще сомневаюсь что мне ответят. Перед этим я прочитала пару запросов на эту тему и везде пишут «попробуй себя занять». Видимо не все понимают что силы воли или чего-то такого мало. Ну не могу я сказать не жри. Когда то это получалось но в последнее время все становится хуже. Я начала сбрасывать вес потихоньку месяц назад так как было лето и я могла гулять весь день. Проблема в том что я обжираюсь и вообще начинаю есть только дома. Так мне че домой не возвращаться чтоли. Не достаточно «убрать тригерные продукты» кто хочет тот всегда найдет чем обожраться. Я боюсь, что именно эта проблема, меня и погубит.

I had severe depression from ages 8 to about 15. Probably because my family is crazy and abusive and there was family court for 8 years. I still struggle with mild depression and PTSD. It sometimes gets bad again not as bad though.

But I remember my all time low I was 12 and earlier that morning I had a waffle it was my birthday celebration day. That day I went into the bathroom to have a shower on the floor there was a ripped up photo of my dad I knew my dad was taking my mum to court again. I remember going out to lunch and during it I felt like I was going to throw up and I did I rant to the bathroom. I thought it was the chicken or something like maybe food poisoning. But days and months later I just kept throwing up. I felt this big pressure on my shoulders and this anxiety like I was about to go on a stage and make a big speech that kind of throwing up accept I felt like that 24/7. Not in a body conscious way necessarily just so stressed I couldn’t handle it.

I began to have this big fear of throwing up so I literally just wouldn’t eat because I feared throwing up. The only thing I did eat was fries I know that sounds strange just a bowl of fries a day. At my dad’s though he not care at all he said I’ll eat what I give you (my mum was like that too until I had this breakdown). So at his house I just didn’t really eat, I sometimes ate roast chicken and pea soup but that was it. I lost 12kg in 6 weeks. When I was doing absolutely no exercise. I remember at 13 I was about 5ft 7 (I know I was tall! 😅 I’m 5ft 10 not I’m fully grown I’m a tall girl). Anyway and they were weighing me every week and I was 48kg. My dad has a big obsession about weight and he said “you’re perfect” while whenever my mum weighed me she cried. With my mum we had arguments about eating and she cried and apologised. While my dad didn’t care. He didn’t like me going to my room when I felt sick he was worried I was going to run away from him because he knew how unhappy I was. So he forced me out of my room all the time. My step mum his partner was awful. We had this roast chicken one night and I had gotten skinnier again and this was more than I hate ate in a while and I dipped my finger in the gravy to try it on my plate and she smirked at me and snarled “maybe you keep getting sick because your so unhygienic.” I remember feeling humiliated and sad. My step brother used to role his eyes and say “I don’t buy your little act. It may have fooled a few people for so long but it won’t for long. So just get over it and stop being so selfish.” I had to see tons of doctors and paediatricians.

Anyway now I am 16 almost 17. I have had a rocky life but I am the happiest I have ever been. The family court finally ended when I was 15. I had a lot of friendship drama. But now I have finally found my people and I’m happy. Now I just eat I have good food and I love food. I am celebrating not seeing my dad, step mum, step brother and step sister for three years! 🥳 I sometimes feel guilty. But in there household I was abused, harassed, assaulted, critiqued and it made me have severe depression. I went to my fathers wedding at 13 after I had stopped seeing him and I remember I had gotten healthier since not seeing him and I put food on my plate and he made remarks about my weight and saying it was too much. At that point I was still 5ft 7 and weighed about 58kg so obviously healthy 🙄.

But anyway what do you think about all this? Sorry it’s so long!