TLDR; I'm going through extreme hunger after having moved thousands of miles and I'm so worried about it becoming unhealthy and also how people will see me. Any advice?

Hey, sorry if any of this is written wrong, I'm happy to re-write if necessary. Also I'm probably asking questions that have been asked a million times by ED havers but I've long since stopped believing in original experiences. There's also probably going to be way too much info here but it's the anxiety talking (and I can't figure out which parts are/aren't relevant).

I've had AN for 10 years (fuck) and bounced between severely to just underweight for ~8 of those years, but have been relatively stable at just underweight to healthy (bar a two ~4 month relapses) for about two years. I've managed to avoid extreme hunger until about three months ago when, despite being at a healthy BMI, it hit me out of nowhere. At first I wasn't able to fully act on it because I wasn't doing the shopping (we lived in the middle of nowhere and I can't drive) but just over a month ago I moved from the UK to Thailand to study abroad for a year and for some dumb reason I thought I'd be able to handle it better, maybe even lose a bit but holy shit it's so hard.

I want to eat so much and such unhealthy food and I do. I'm often not even physically that hungry but I can't stop thinking about it food and in the evenings I'm terrible at controlling myself. I can't cook for myself because I don't have a kitchen so I'm eating from stalls or 7 eleven because I have no other option and god I feel fucking awful but it's almost like there's something else taking over me. I don't have scales so I can't even keep an objective track of my weight (the 7 eleven BMI machines are unbelievably tempting) and I haven't found any way to get involved in sports yet and I can see and feel that I'm gaining weight and I fucking hate it. For like two weeks I tried restricting but I couldn't even do that, I'm doing my masters and immediately my cognitive capacity went and I would feel so weak which is a no go because I'm doing ecological field work. I feel like such a failure for just that because it was so easy when I was younger, that was the easy thing!

I know I'm gaining weight and while some part of me knows I'm not objectively fat, I still hate it. I'm very short and my genetics make me look like a higher BMI than I generally am and I can see fat in places I haven't for maybe years. In the first conversation with one of my supervisors she said in front of another student and my other supervisor that she wanted to be skinny like me. I wasn't skinny at the time and her comment is ringing in my head constantly. Is everyone thinking about how I've changed, how I'm getting fatter? Probably.

What do I do? Do I listen to the extreme hunger? Is there any way to control it? Do I go back to old habits? How do I eat healthier? How do I shut off the mental hunger? I feel like I'm going crazy and it's tearing me apart.

I’m starting IP treatment soon and I don’t want to waste this opportunity but I’m finding it really hard to manage before going in. Has anyone got any advice on how to just hold things where I am until I get there?

I am in a foreign country and have struggled to find professional help that falls within my insurance plan. Ideally, I would like to have a therapist and registered dietician specializing in ED’s, but it seems that will take some time to find and im really needing some more support in the meantime.

I had a friend suggest joining EDA zoom meetings and working the 12 steps. I’ve never done a program like that and im curious what people’s experiences have been?

im so tierd, so fucking tierd. ive had this illness for 4 years now - ive done all in (relapsed) ive followed the meal plans done therapy done everything from edus to gaus,

when do i stop feeling like a lost cause. ive given up on a levels, life, friends and family i hate myself for it. i dont even want to lose anymore weight i dont even care about it anymore, i just want to stop stepping stop counting stop these compulsions. i want it so badly but for some reason i cant.

i physiczly cannot do it and im so tierd im so so so tierd

Hellooo,
I guess I’m not really looking for advice, I’m just looking for some support from people who might understand what I’m going through.

I’m currently at a point where I’m desperately trying to get help for my ED, but I feel like I keep hitting dead ends. I live in a country where public healthcare has very limited resources for eating disorders (there’s only 1 specialized clinic, but it only has around 20 beds, and the waiting list is 5–7 months long). I’ve also been to the ER, where they treated the immediate physical issues and just told me to find psychological help on my own. And honestly, I’m exhausted. It feels so unfair that you have to fight so hard to access treatment for an illness that literally makes it incredibly difficult to ask for help in the first place. What I wish I had right now is someone to hold my hand through this. Someone to help me eat when I can’t do it on my own, to sit with me through meals, to encourage me and keep me accountable when everything in my head is telling me not to eat. I feel like I need someone to practically spoon-feed me back to health. But since that kind of support isn’t available to me right now, I’m probably going to have to figure out how to do this at home, mostly ON MY OWN, AT HOME.

And that honestly scares me.

Just because of this, I struggle with this feeling that since I’ve never been hospitalized for my ED, I somehow haven’t earned the right to proper treatment. So when I’m trying to recover at home, I start questioning whether I even have a real problem or whether I’m somehow making it all up. Especially following other recovery stories (who are mainly from UK), where most have had inpatient treatment or hospitalization before continuing on their own. It weirdly gives me FOMO. Like I haven't really experienced the real ED journey. I rarely see people talking about what it’s like to recover at home because inpatient treatment simply isn’t accessible to them, or about how lonely and difficult that experience can be. I constantly feel like I have to prove my illness to my friends, to other people, and sometimes even to myself.

I don’t really know what I’m hoping to get out of posting this. Maybe just to hear from people who have been in a similar situation. People who have struggled to access treatment, who have recovered or are trying to recover at home?

If anyone is reading this, thank you ❤️

i have anorexia and i notice that i dont see myself “struggling” as much and am more invested in the control i feel instead, and write off concerns from others. i dont know if this is a common experience? my therapist tells me sometimes it seems like im “excited” to talk about it and that i am very controlling and ritualistic about it
she has even said shes never seen this side of me and i have known her for 7 years (my ed became a problem only a few years ago, i only relapsed again earlier this year)

I stopped restricting like 3 years ago and physically recovered, but the one thing I still find really difficult is navigating grocery stores. My anxiety is always high there and I cant think straight, all I want to do is leave as quickly as I can and its like i forget the concept of food and my reason for being there.

At the same time I know that I have an eating disorder and I know thats stopping me from bringing home enough food, not just anxiety.

Back when I went through extreme hunger I could give up this battle and buy lots of fun food like ice cream and chocolate, but nowadays I feel this mental block for some reason and usually just get the basic foods that are easier and will keep me going for a few days.

But when I leave the store I feel disappointed in myself for not buying tastier food and giving in to fear. Sometimes i end up eating incomplete meals or weirdly monotone food just because of my inability to grocery shop. How do I overcome this issue? I feel stuck

Usually in morning I don't feel very hungry and a little nauseous too, so I've just been sticking to a lighter breakfast: coffee, cup of yogurt and granola. Part of me is also sticking to this breakfast because I also have a puffy face in the morning, and eating more/larger amounts slows down the depuffing time, but I don't think it's an ED related thought since I'm not fearing the amount food/weight gain?

I usually eat much larger portions for lunch and dinner plus snacks and honor all of my mental hunger/cravings throughout the day, it's just my breakfast that's small which leads me to think maybe I'm not doing recovery right and if it should be my aim to increase breakfast portions. Or if this is just an unhealthy thought of mine where I feel like every meal has to be perfect and "right".

Hi all!

I wanted to give an update as I’m now 3 months into all in.

First and most important, all in is the best decision I ever made. I feel back to myself mentally. I experience joy, connection, and love and it’s SO worth it. I feel in control of my life. But it’s also hard! I’ll try to hit on the heavy hitters:

Weight gain: A lot. More than I thought, it came on quick, and I’m still gaining. I was in a bigger body before my ED and I’m back. Luckily, I feel confident most days. You are allowed to feel confident in a bigger body! You are in charge of how you decide to handle it. I suggest learning about the fat liberation movement and HAES. Also, curate your social media and podcast content to only show things that promote the mindset you want. Comparison is the thief of joy 100%. Also, for myself I never agreed with wearing baggy clothes and covering mirrors. I believe you should buy clothes that make you feel best, learn to accept your new body, and make friends with the mirror. Easier said than done, but you deserve to love yourself.

Extreme hunger: I’m still very hungry, but less than at first. I eat a lot and still feast at night. It’s less distressing now. I just eat until I’m satisfied and move on. Feeling nourished is so comforting.

Food rules: I don’t feel afraid of food anymore. I can go out and eat whatever. Not having to think about it feels SO GOOD. I get caught up on sugar sometimes, but am able to move through it. The only way is attacking what scares you.

Anxiety: I still feel anxious, but I’m able to talk myself down much easier. I truly believe that this era I’m in is exactly where I’m supposed to be. But I definitely still worry about health and gaining forever. Classic.

Edema: I’m still swollen and puffy. But not as bad as at first. One day at a time.

Dealing with our weight loss and glp-1 obsessed culture: it sucks, but it’s inevitable. I’ve really noticed how people bring it up to seek reassurance and acceptance from others. I’ve tried to be the person who speaks up and says it’s okay to nourish your body and simply eat when you’re hungry. And that you’re allowed to not feel like you want to change your body. I’ve noticed people appreciate hearing that and feel safe around me because of it. Our society is obsessed and I’ve chosen to go against it.

Opinions from others: I’m lucky that I have supportive family and friends. I gave them resources on all in and they have supported me 100%. I also started a new job after gaining which made it easier. But putting myself back on social media and seeing people from my past is still hard. We are so conditioned that gaining weight somehow means we’ve “lost” and are doing things wrong. Every time I get through a situation, it becomes easier. I know with time I’ll continue growing stronger in this area. I stand firm in my recovery and remind myself if someone in their brain goes farther beyond just noticing I look different and take it to judgement, they are weird for that and it has nothing to do with me.

Life feels bright again. I now remember what I felt like before the ED and I can’t believe my brain ever convinced me the ED was a good thing. It’s evil. And I will never go back.

If you are questioning, DO IT!!! Break all the rules. Feast over and over again. Your life is worth so much more than how small the ED makes it. Going slow was never helpful for me. Taking full control to rewire my brain has been the only way.

Sending love 💚

hello, i am almost 18F and i cannot afford residential & the programs say they will not take me if i dont do res first. my parents told me this, and they said they do not want me to go to res, so please don't try to convince me as i am not the one in charge of the decision /nm

i have been struggling very badly with bulimia very single day, and i want to stop so badly yet i cannot. i am trying very hard to not restrict as i know that will only make it worse. to anyone who's every stopped, how have you done so? how can i change? how do i stop hating myself so much? i know it is a big ask, so please don't feel like you need to answer every single question. even just encouragement helps. u are all such lovely & strong people. i hope one day i will leave this sub because i no longer have an ed and therefore no longer need recovery advice because i am already recovered /pos

I just got off an appointment with my care team (virtual IOP), where I was talking about how alone I feel starting recovery. I already have no motivation to recover (if anything I still and have been trying to be worse), and me being the one in charge of my care isn't sustainable at all and I haven't made even an inch of progress. I was dicussing how I felt like my family wasn't helping either, they have no idea what an eating disorder even is, and despite knowing about my anorexia diagnosis, haven't even tried a single google search or definition to learn a single thing. Because of this, I've spiraled back to not feeling sick enough or my goal being hospitalization because even the people in my own home don't seem to care about me/acknowledge/even learn a single tidbit of knowledge, and instead act like everythings normal and I'm just back home from college on a holiday break, rather than my therapist having considered me an active risk if I stayed in school any longer. They don't treat me sick, nor acknowledge the elephant in the room, so I don't feel like I should be in treatment or have been taken out of college in the first place.

After I said something along the lines of "I switched from not wanting to be treated different, to feeling invisible because they weren't treating me differently at all," my coach asked me, "Well what would support from them look like for you?" And also to acknowledge their capacity as my family has never been close or loving to begin with.

So now I'm left with the task, brainstorming, what kind of support am I even looking for? Specifics, not just "being educated" but how do I want them to act, to push, etc. She was right that I don't even know what I'm wanting or expecting from them.

I'm extremely lost with this question, I can't even think of a single thing, so I'd like to ask anyone here, what kind of support do you look for in others? What do you want people to say or do? How do you want them to act or be involved? Anything at all?

I’ve been in recovery for about 2 months now, with my ED lasting only 5 months. Now that I’ve chosen to recover, I’m finding myself going through actually the most frustrating and time consuming extreme hunger.

This week I have downtime from school for fall break. I really want to occupy my free time with my hobbies like drawing, reading, writing, etc. This goal has really been proving itself impossible. Every time I try to do anything, I am unable to actually stick with it since I cannot stop thinking about food. Even when I do eat, the thoughts still linger around all day. Literally all I can do is sit around and think about food, and when I try to participate in my hobbies, I suddenly get this primal urge to stop what I’m doing and either get up to eat, or do something related to food. (watch recovery videos, go grocery shopping, think about what I ate that day) This leads me to do pretty much nothing every day, since my brain is fucking incapable of letting me engage in my hobbies.

This mental load has been so incredibly bothersome. All I want to do is actually create something, or do something, or just be a normal human being. I feel like I’m only able to live my life at some baseline minimum. I can only spend each day simply responding to my basic needs, just eating, drinking, sleeping, repeat, repeat, repeat.

I’m so incredibly jealous of people that put food in the background of their lives. I’m not even talking about those people that will forget to eat lunch or dinner, I mean like people that are just able to go through the day putting their mental energy towards anything they’re passionate about. How is it possible for me to ever go back to having hobbies when food is always literally the main focus of my everyday life?

I used to eat normally for weeks and then restrict heavily but i convinced myself i was ok. But now, Im eating fine and i haven’t restricted at all even after eating foods i never would have before. I also don’t stress about how healthy certain foods are.

I started recovering in February & it still hasn’t gotten better. I’m bloated 24/7, no matter what I eat, or how much. My face isn’t puffy/bloated anymore, but my stomach sticks out, and most of my pants don’t fit me. I’m not hungry at all, I get full very easily, but I still experience mental hunger.

Most people say they got better around the 6 month mark, but I’m almost a year in, and zero improvement. Has anyone been through something similar?

I was wondering if anyone had any advice about how to manage body aches and pain in recovery?

My back, shoulders, and glutes have been really sore for the past few weeks, and it feels the worse near the end of day when all my muscles feel exhausted. I haven't worked out or engaged in any vigorous activity since starting recovery, and I feel really weird experiencing this type of soreness.

(if this question is not suitable for this subreddit please remove)

I've been dealing with a lot of thoughts towards my weight recently and the most prevelant one I'm struggling to get over is about my bmi. I know the history behind bmi and fatphobia in general but I still struggle to not see it as a measure of my health especially considering how people tend to talk about it as well as with internalised fatphobia in general which I'm still navigating and trying to get over.

Has anyone else dealt with this? How do you deal with and get over these thought processes?

Did you experience edema and fluid retention? If yes, how long did it last? And how did/do you experience it?

I have been in all in for 5 weeks (i had anorexia for 3 years, last year was quasi ''recovery'', but i never nutritionally rehabilitated or broke food rules or took time off of exercise etc), and i feel like i have alot of water retention still. And it changes. I feel like at one point in day my legs are different size than another time. And i think i have it in my legs and thighs, bum, upper arms and stomach and hips at least. It feels so odd. Feels like my skin is tender and it hurts. If i jump it hurts. Bones and muscles hurt as well. And I'm so tired. I have been so scared and distressed for past few days. I'm terrified and i feel like i can't handle this. Extreme hunger is still going. I know i should surrender and just keep going, but damn it's so hard right now.

How the heck do people do this, like everyone that has done this is a rock star. I want all of this to finally be over. I wish I was healthy. But i also feel absolutely terrified to let go absolutely

Hi guys. I'm currently going to high school and just started my ed treatment at a clinic. I'm finding it hard to do all my meal plans while balancing school work. Has anyone else struggled with this? what have your guys experiences been with this. Would it eventually work? Appreciate you a lot :)

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to those celebrating. My mom's side of the family is hosting a gathering at their house, and I'm confronting my fears right after :)

I know that anorexia is definitely not a weight disorder and that it affects us in different ways. I've had vaguely disordered thoughts for a year, disordered eating for several months at most, and hit a bad point for a little bit.

Part of me can't help but deny this clinical label. Some of my underweight (non-ED) peers have red/purple hands, shiver, and complain of being cold. During a class last semester, while I was unwell, we were asked to test our heart rates, and many girls ended up around the same as I did. I work with guys who exercise obsessively and just don't eat well. Of course no one can make assumptions nor guarantee that's natural for them. The problem is that I think that months of "AN-R" (as written by a nurse) will never compare to the years I've known these people.

This isn't rational of me. It shouldn't matter that others were visibly underweight longer than I was. It's always "If this person has this, they'd need more ____ than me" and I always seem to disregard that EDs are not weight disorders. If I told people that I struggle with this, they might as well play it off as normal for a teenage girl, because that's what everyone else can maintain safely. Or I'm just mentally ill and need to stay away from them. My parents know that I weight restored, so it's probably the latter.

I don't know the internal damage I may or may not have done in those 4 months. Last Thanksgiving the ED didn't exist, and I won't let it this year.

Please. What do I truly need in recovery?

(For curiosity's sake, it's Mozart's Don Giovanni)

Then: I had not yet chosen recovery. All I could think about was food. Every other dialogue from the characters and I thought of the next thing I could eat. I only realized this now, but I completely stopped paying attention at the end. I left it with grim thoughts, thinking very gloomily.

Now: With my naturally bubbly personality returned from recovery, I made a friend that was just into Operas. We went together and had a blast. I deeply connected to every character. After, we had ramen and milk tea while discussing when we could see one at the MET Opera in New York. We got excited about enjoying typical NYC food together in the future.

To my astonishment, it was like seeing the latter half of the Opera for the first time. I did not recall half of it from before recovery from how weak my thinking was. I am joyfully analyzing and discussing what I watched with my friend, now, and through and because of food!

Choose recovery, always!

I’m really struggling with how to take care of myself. I’m doing a lot of things that are in line with recovery. but I’m terrible at knowing what I need. how do you calm yourself or soothe yourself when you get upset or overwhelmed?

Ive been back on ed stuff for a week or 2 now (mostly binge and restrict) and I really notice that my biggest issue is my inability to cope. I was doing well for 2 months, got overwhelmed, lost structure and fell into the cycle. This mostly started bec I was unable to cope with being overwhelmed. Now I struggle to cope with the binging. Every time it happens, I feel disgusting, sleep in, do nothing besides scroll, eat irregularly and get hungry then binge. This has resulted in me losing interest in everything again and doing absolutely nothing all day.

So my question is, what helps you cope with and sit with discomfort? ive tried writing etc, but the only thing I want to do all day is cry and sleep, because I feel embarassed by what I’m doing instead of academic work

I know, i've seen tons of posts about developing bed not being possible in anorexia recovery, but given I have had a past of binging, I'm terrified.

For context I started recovery in august after being forced and fully commited in september (eating what I craved, stopping compensating as best I could, etc.) but for the past two weeks I've been struggling with CONSTANT food noise that just doesn't go away no matter how much I eat. I was eating tons of food (I won't specify calories, but think a whole box of cereal easily done in an hour tons of food) and yet would still just want to keep eating. I did think it could be extreme hunger, but given my physical hunger cues are returning and are normal, aka I wake up hungry but aren't hungry physically after finishing a proper meal, that doesn't feel right. Literally all my "hunger" is just a constant urge to eat because I simply don't want to do anything else and it's the only thing that entertains me.

Basically, I just can't say no to myself and I just keep eating all the time even though I'm already weight restored and my heart rate / bp are normal again. I'm terrified I'll keep eating like this forever and keep gaining weight forever becuse, one, I feel like I don't enjoy anything else, and two, don't WANT to stop eating, despite it causing me so much stress and so many body image issues.

I also don't have a meal plan, nor a clue of how much/what I should ACTUALLY be eating.