Unhealthy relationship with food...

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2006
Unhealthy relationship with food...
6
Thu, 01-12-2006 - 5:28pm

I'm hoping someone can identify with what I'm going through.

Growing up, I was a "healthy" kid...not chubby, but definitely not skinny either. When I was about 10, though, I grew a lot very quickly and lost quite a bit of weight. Suddenly everyone was like, "Wow, you look great!" especially my gymnastics coach, and the attention felt so good that I wanted to lose more weight. Well, I'm sure you all know what happened...I ended up with anorexia. I was never treated for it because my parents thought it was "just a phase," but I was very underweight for my age and height and I counted fat grams religiously. I would avoid foods I thought were "bad." Through all this I was still doing gymnastics (which was a big part of the problem) for hours at a time several days a week, and pretty soon I started looking really crappy. That's when my family started making fun of me and calling me names, hoping that I would wise up and start eating. It took quitting gymnastics to do it, but I literally woke up one day about a year and a half later and thought to myself, "WHY am I doing this? Screw it--I'm just going to eat." So I did, and even though it took a while to get my normal eating habits back, I got back up to a healthy weight.

Even though I haven't really starved myself since then, I have this fear of gaining weight. I've always been thin, and I want to stay that way. Ever since I was about 14, I've had trouble with my stomach, and my doctors finally discovered that I have IBS. But for a long time, I couldn't eat a lot because I was afraid it would make me sick, so I was underweight until I turned 20 or so (I'm 25 now). But being afraid to eat meant that I was very thin, so I didn't really feel like I needed to watch what I ate because I just didn't eat much anyway. I was so glad when I got the problem under control and I could actually eat normally again. Last year, though, I had sort of a "slip up," I guess you'd say, and I started counting calories. I was under some stress at the time, and I guess that's why I did it, I don't know. But for about a year now I've been watching what I eat and counting calories, and it's starting to drive me crazy. I eat fat-free everything now, and avoid stuff with too much sugar. I don't eat a lot of the foods I used to really enjoy, like pizza or ice cream. When I do, I have to "plan" for it--for example, I won't eat hardly anything the whole day so that I won't feel guilty when I do eat the "bad" foods. It's really difficult, because sometimes my friends will just call me up and ask if I want to go out to eat, and of course if I've eaten much that day at all I won't go. I'm also preoccupied with food a lot...I'll plan out what I'm going to eat for the entire day, and I'll fantasize about food a lot. This is something that I did when I was anorexic--I thought about food *constantly*--so it worries me a little that I do this. It also prevents me from enjoying my life because I'm so hung up on food all the time! When I go to class, I'm always antsy because I'm thinking about it and not what I'm supposed to be studying. I know that this is not healthy and I would really, really like it to stop. Unfortunately, being a grad student I can't afford to go to a psychologist or anything, so I'm on my own. On the one hand, I know that I recovered from eating issues once and logic says I can do it again. But I worry that I'm doomed to have issues with eating for the rest of my life, since it seems like they keep popping back up every time I get stressed.

PS. I was diagnosed with and treated for Generalized Anxiety Disorder about 6 years ago, a condition that I've had ever since I can remember, so I get stressed A LOT!

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-06-2005
Thu, 01-12-2006 - 10:13pm

Hi, and welcome --


It sounds like you do have a pretty unhealthy relationship with food!

 

 

~Diana~

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2006
Fri, 01-13-2006 - 12:25pm

Thanks for understanding! It's really weird for me actually discussing this...my whole life, it's never been something I've talked about because I don't want people to think I'm crazy like they did when I was younger and anorexic.

My anxiety is, for the most part, under control now. I was on medication for about 4 years and it helped tremendously. I'm still prone to obsessive/irrational thoughts sometimes, though, and I get stressed a lot more easily than people normally do. My school does not offer insurance and I'm living on a VERY strict budget (you know, the whole poor-grad-student thing!), but I'm almost done so hopefully in the fall I will have a job with insurance and that would be grand.

I guess I just need some moral support in the meantime from people who have been through this...it feels so good to finally be able to talk about this and admit what's happening, because I know if I told anyone else they would think I was a complete nutter (like I said, it's happened before!).

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-06-2005
Fri, 01-13-2006 - 2:41pm

(((hugs))) Yes I know the poor-grad-student thing well.

 

 

~Diana~

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2006
Fri, 01-13-2006 - 4:15pm

I'm working on my master's in education. It's a one-year accelerated program, so it's been hectic!

I went to a different, larger school for my bachelor's which gave all students free access to a really nice university health service. They have a teaching hospital, so it's huge. That's where I was first diagnosed with my anxiety disorder, and that psychiatrist seriously saved my life--I doubt I would've been able to finish college otherwise. The school I go to now is a lot smaller and they barely have an infirmary for cuts and scrapes, let alone anything else.

I'm just afraid that I'm going to be obsessing about food all during class this coming semester...

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Fri, 01-13-2006 - 9:19pm

Hi,

Sorry I am just now jumping into this conversation. I can definitely relate to the fear of gaining weight and not really having money to go see a therapist of some sort. There are som e really good and effective group meetings like www.overeatersanonymous.org, www.eatingdisordersanonymous.org, and www.celebraterecovery.com. All of them are free and you should be able to search the sites for meetings in your area.

I had and to some degree still have stomach problems as well. Every doctor I went to told me it's IBS. In the meantime I have learned that IBS is simply a term for stomach issues that doctors don't really have an explantion for. And typically it has to do with your gut being messed up and you can take natural supplements to heal your gut. You might want to go to www.mercola.com and do a search on 'his' site for 'IBS'. You will be amazed at the answers you find. He (Dr. Mercola) also has his entire nutrion plan on his site. Following his guidelines has helped me tremenduously with my gut and other health issues.

I hope you will keep posting and that you will find healing both emotionally and physically. :)

Love & hugs, Kristina


“It helps to resign as the controller of your fate. All that energy we expend to keep things running right is not what keeps things running right.” ANNE LAMOTT



The opinions I have expressed here are from my own experience and are not intended as medical advice or to take the place of your own physician's advice.


Love & hugs, Kristina

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2006
Sat, 01-14-2006 - 9:06pm

Thanks to both of you who've responded for being so supportive--you all have no idea how much this means!

The thing with the IBS...I read somewhere that it's just a sort of "catch all" diagnosis for any stomach problem the doctor can't find a physical cause for, too. Do you reckon there's any chance it could be MY fault, though? Because I know I wasn't doing my body--or my stomach--any favors when I was starving myself, and then for about six years in my teens I was afraid to eat because of my anxiety-induced stomach problems, so I'm wondering if maybe I didn't mess myself up. :-(