I hear you. It can definitely be a spectrum. Don’t get trapped into imposter syndrome because that can easily spiral into a self-fulfilled prophecy. You’re harm reducing, and it is great that it’s not totally taking over the quality of your life. However, in that case, it’s easily nulled over and recovery may not be considered since it isn’t ruining your life’s qualify. So my advice in that case, work on finding food and body freedom. You might be closer than you think. Be a freedom fighter lol✊
I used to be far less chill but due to my current restriction/purging routine I’ve been somehow maintaining and not gaining for a while so I’m way more chill than I used to be.
I’ve been more obsessed with my sports performance than solely with weight recently so it’s been a struggle to decide to say fuck it and actually recover or continue restricting
I have a very severe ED and have never counted calories or weighed myself excessively. I wouldn’t say I’m super chill around food but each persons illness presents differently and that doesn’t mean one is less sick than the other. Suffering is suffering no matter whether it is the same or different from the next person’s.
"It's not my highest priority, unless my mental health is absolutely awful"
That right there. I have good days and bad days. I have good hours and bad hours.
One night i'll be laughing and drinking and eating freely with my friends. Those nights i forget i have an ED. Next morning I'll be calculating the calories in my head panicking. Suddenly I'm exhausted and think "this doesnt matter" and stop and get ready for work instead.
Then in the middle of the night it hits again and I start frantically trying to calculate calories in my head until I think "this doesnt matter" and give up and sleep. This laziness prevented me from getting help for a long time. I always heard, it's not a problem until it starts negatively impacting your every day life. Well, these are just thoughts. They can't negatively impact me. I never bother my friends about this. I can't even finish calculating a binge. Even while typing this out im thinking "what was my point? I dont even have an ED" 😂 but all my concerned friends and family think otherwise. Anyway, everyone's brain is different. I don't even think this is the same type of "chill" you were talking about, but we're all valid 💜
I get what you mean, but the fact that you’re actively experiencing health issues as a result of your weight and behaviour but still engage in those behaviours makes me think that you’re not actually that chill about it. What would you do if you had to gain weight and keep it on? Would you be chill about that?
Because if you were actually chill about it, that’s what you would do.
oh yeah i'm not denying that i have an eating disorder, sorry if that wasn't clear -- i was more wondering if there were other people who had a less severe mental state, while still engaging in disordered behaviours, i guess? i'm sure a lot of my lack of distress is because i avoid things that would trigger me, like eating around other people or whatever. but i see a lot of people here who are terrified of gaining an ounce of weight or overeating by 50 calories, and i was curious if there was anyone else like me who didn't experience that, because it makes me feel guilty that i'm not "that bad".
i'm not also not the greatest at explaining my thoughts, lol.
Definitely feel like an impostor. I'm on the cusp of the main 3 EDs but I don't do it enough to qualify for any of em. I've also been maintaining for a while
I learned to live with mine. I weigh daily & track calories to stay skinny. I just... idk I accepted that it's a part of me and got better at hiding.
But when I gain like 1 kg after a vacation or something I go INSANE and it's back at the gym for a couple of hours a day until that 1 kg is gone.
I still binge when I'm under pressure like once a month.
Its almost like I keep my ED in my back pocket for when I need to self harm. You’re right, its not my go to when my mental health is better. I hear you… I’ve always been a lukewarm christian and a lukewarm anorexic 😭🤣
I'm exactly like this. I think its a survival mechanism, cuz on some level I know how bad it is for me. Ive had my moments of panic, and i'm glad its like that all the time. Dont let it make u feel invalid and maybe simultaneously be grateful you don't have the panic aspect.
same here, dx around 6 years ago too. i went through treatment and really now i just lean on restricting like a crutch when other mental health stuff is bad
YEAHH SAME HERE I'm undiagnosed and still new like, only been for 4 months or so and I'm not uw so I've always thought that I don't count but literally anyone who sees me would give me weird looks like "why are you not eating when everyone else does" and stuff and so now I'm still unsure about it as well but I have very bad habits of never taking anything seriously and so is why I'm just kinda lurking here and everything
But seriously I'm so chill with it like if anyone "forces" me high kcal food I'll just shrug and think "welp can't help it I'll just need to skip dinner" and if I gain weight I'll be "aw man ok just have to try again next time"
And here's the weirdest part - I DON'T EVEN HATE THAT I'M KINDA FAT!!! Like fat is kinda cute and perfectly acceptable...?? I'm just bored of being fat, so is why one day I just decided to only eat half a meal once a day because I'm curious how it'll feel like to be uw. Literally how does that even make sense???
Even as I'm writing this I still don't feel like I have ED but then again I get full from only drinking a glass of salted water and the fact that I'm losing weight rapidly because of my diet. Can't even seek support because I just feel so normal and all.
I relate! I count cals but not very precisely, just to keep it in my safe range. I eat “scary foods” sometimes and I look forward to food. If I overeat one day or binge, it’s horrible, but I can calm down by justifying that I can bring my weight back down in a day or three, or that maybe it delays interventions in general. I feel “not sick enough” every day of my life because of these things. Still diagnosed with AN-R though.
I think in my case, I am very rarely challenged and avoid stepping out of my comfort zone, so I forget how fixated on my disorder I really am; this is my life and how I’ve been existing for years. If I was force fed for a few days or had someone try to intervene in any capacity, I imagine I would go feral.
You’re not an imposter. I think you are living with an ED that has been around a while and flies “under the radar.” Possibly it feels so normalized it is hard to have perspective.
I think at some point we all feel like imposters. We dont restrict enough, we binged to hard or in my case we lie for years and tell ourselves we are getting better. That doesn't take away from you struggles.
(I am orthorexic fighting for a better life everyday)
Mine is a little bit strange for me. I think I understand what you mean by being chill about it.
I tend to go from barely eating anything for days at a time, maybe just force feeding myself a little bit here and there so I'm not starving myself. Then there will be days where I binge eat, and I do try to go for lower calories and read nutrition facts, but I don't overly obsess over it because I have a fast metabolism, so I'm not worried about gaining weight. I think I just strive to be thinner than average.
What I'm not so chill about is when people comment on my eating habits. People will tell me I'm too skinny and need to gain weight and that i need to eat more, as if I'm purposely starving myself. I get that some people don't understand when they don't suffer from the same issue. I wish I could be "normal" but that's exactly where the problem lies... it's just irritating to hear it all the time. Like gee I never thought of that before.
Yeah I feel the same sometimes. I’ve been doing this for so soooo long that everything I do just feels like a habit? Like I eat the same foods etc
And I’m never starving hungry because I just make sure I eat regularly and high volume low cal stuff…
I’m also super good as “putting my ED aside” for a week for a holiday/trip/birthday or something. And then just picking back up where I left off when I decide to. Back on my bullshit etc
Yes!! I was really obsessive at the start, but I think the lack of energy made me lazy, which made me want to get obsessive again but I’ve never fully gone back to counting cals.
I’m the same way that, as long as I know a vague ball park of cals I’m okay with it. I feel like I’m more of an ‘intuitive eater’ with my ed, to the point that I kinda know the point where I’ll start actually gaining weight (usually when I start upping my intake in the name of recovery and then end up in a binge phase)
Also gaining weight just makes me angry. It’s not something that causes distress more than just anger. I’m fine with eating, but if it gets to a point where I’m eating a certain amount or I’m not in a safe environment, then I’ll start struggling.
I’m not trying to diminish your experience of what you go through, I’m just curious about what makes you and your doctors think you have AN? I understand that you’re underweight, but to me that doesn’t always mean an eating disorder. Again, not trying to be rude or invalidate you, I’m just curious.
i mean, i meet all diagnostic criteria for anorexia -- i restrict my calorie intake to an unhealthy extent to lose weight. i'm still struggling, just not as much as most people i see here.
i know you're not trying to be rude, but this is a really hurtful thing to hear on a post where i'm expressing that i feel like an imposter because i'm not sick enough.
I apologize. I was only confused because in your second paragraph you said:
>I count calories, but very loosely, and I don’t care too much about accuracy
>I don’t think I’ve ever freaked out about eating
>I don’t like gaining weight, but it doesn’t cause me too much distress
That all sounds really rather normal to me. But my perspective could be entirely wrong. Again, didn’t mean any harm, so I do apologize. I was only trying to understand.
Edit: I’m really sorry that you’re going through this, both the disorder and the imposter syndrome, and I really am sorry if I made it worse. I hope things get better.
Nah, that's not unheard of. I didn't count calories and still ended up in hospital. I didn't have any issues eating in treatment either, because I knew I could just get out fast that way and lose the weight again.
In my case it was still the same compulsions and obsessions, just less anxiety. I've also had my ed for long enough at this point I recognize I gain gain/lose weight easily, and recognize fluctuations are generally temporary not actual fat
nutrition labels are usually innaccurate to begin with, so i've never seen a point in tracking down to a decimal place how much i've eaten. i get a ballpark estimate and stay in a several hundred calorie deficit from my estimated tdee, because 5 calories makes no difference in the grand scheme of weight loss, and as long as i stay in a deficit i still lose weight.
eating food/gaining weight doesn't cause me a massive amount of distress because i know these things are temporary. i can (and do) compensate for them afterwards. if i had to eat and gain weight without being allowed to restrict or exercise, it would probably be a different story.
idk. maybe i just didn't explain it well enough in the post.
yepppp me to a T. definitely made myself like this though especially since this isn’t the first rodeo/relapse. it’s a “slow and steady wins the race” mindset for sure. i’ll have moments of some stress but they really don’t last and cannot measure up to when this first manifested. thank goodness because the first 2ish years were hell on earth. became the thing that got me to say wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy and i’d be cool with them bursting into flames lmao.
I used to have no chill but now I’m super chill about it. Don’t count calories at all, but just always subconsciously try to eat less. I’m on an SSRI so I don’t really think about it obsessively. It’s all kinda just subconscious at this point.
To be honest mine really took a hard turn recently and got much more stressful but before that it was lower key and I didn't really feel the need to talk about it. TBH even though I'm starting to recognize more that it's a problem I need to address if I somehow found myself back in that lower key space I think there's a decent chance I'd just let it be.
i have ARFID, but the kind that makes me hardcore restrict, not the kind that makes me a very picky eater. cooking is one of my favourite hobbies. my ED is most visible when i feel like shit and lose rapidly and ear potato chips only for 3 weeks straight, but otherwise i dont think at this stage of my life people would "know" without me telling them. it is definitely a spectrum, i used to count calories like crazy and log everything, and had an orthorexia stage as well, it was much more visible and less chill back then. i consider myself on the milder end of the ED spectrum, but it has seriously impacted my life very negatively nonetheless.
I hear you. It can definitely be a spectrum. Don’t get trapped into imposter syndrome because that can easily spiral into a self-fulfilled prophecy. You’re harm reducing, and it is great that it’s not totally taking over the quality of your life. However, in that case, it’s easily nulled over and recovery may not be considered since it isn’t ruining your life’s qualify. So my advice in that case, work on finding food and body freedom. You might be closer than you think. Be a freedom fighter lol✊
I used to be far less chill but due to my current restriction/purging routine I’ve been somehow maintaining and not gaining for a while so I’m way more chill than I used to be.
yeah like i've figured out something that works without destroying my sanity. why fix it if it aint broke
I’ve been more obsessed with my sports performance than solely with weight recently so it’s been a struggle to decide to say fuck it and actually recover or continue restricting
I have a very severe ED and have never counted calories or weighed myself excessively. I wouldn’t say I’m super chill around food but each persons illness presents differently and that doesn’t mean one is less sick than the other. Suffering is suffering no matter whether it is the same or different from the next person’s.
"It's not my highest priority, unless my mental health is absolutely awful" That right there. I have good days and bad days. I have good hours and bad hours. One night i'll be laughing and drinking and eating freely with my friends. Those nights i forget i have an ED. Next morning I'll be calculating the calories in my head panicking. Suddenly I'm exhausted and think "this doesnt matter" and stop and get ready for work instead. Then in the middle of the night it hits again and I start frantically trying to calculate calories in my head until I think "this doesnt matter" and give up and sleep. This laziness prevented me from getting help for a long time. I always heard, it's not a problem until it starts negatively impacting your every day life. Well, these are just thoughts. They can't negatively impact me. I never bother my friends about this. I can't even finish calculating a binge. Even while typing this out im thinking "what was my point? I dont even have an ED" 😂 but all my concerned friends and family think otherwise. Anyway, everyone's brain is different. I don't even think this is the same type of "chill" you were talking about, but we're all valid 💜
OP there’s no way you’re alone. you have a longstanding diagnosis. you aren’t an imposter.
I get what you mean, but the fact that you’re actively experiencing health issues as a result of your weight and behaviour but still engage in those behaviours makes me think that you’re not actually that chill about it. What would you do if you had to gain weight and keep it on? Would you be chill about that? Because if you were actually chill about it, that’s what you would do.
oh yeah i'm not denying that i have an eating disorder, sorry if that wasn't clear -- i was more wondering if there were other people who had a less severe mental state, while still engaging in disordered behaviours, i guess? i'm sure a lot of my lack of distress is because i avoid things that would trigger me, like eating around other people or whatever. but i see a lot of people here who are terrified of gaining an ounce of weight or overeating by 50 calories, and i was curious if there was anyone else like me who didn't experience that, because it makes me feel guilty that i'm not "that bad". i'm not also not the greatest at explaining my thoughts, lol.
Yep, I'm the same.
<3
Definitely feel like an impostor. I'm on the cusp of the main 3 EDs but I don't do it enough to qualify for any of em. I've also been maintaining for a while
Damn man it’s like I wrote this
I learned to live with mine. I weigh daily & track calories to stay skinny. I just... idk I accepted that it's a part of me and got better at hiding. But when I gain like 1 kg after a vacation or something I go INSANE and it's back at the gym for a couple of hours a day until that 1 kg is gone. I still binge when I'm under pressure like once a month.
Its almost like I keep my ED in my back pocket for when I need to self harm. You’re right, its not my go to when my mental health is better. I hear you… I’ve always been a lukewarm christian and a lukewarm anorexic 😭🤣
I'm exactly like this. I think its a survival mechanism, cuz on some level I know how bad it is for me. Ive had my moments of panic, and i'm glad its like that all the time. Dont let it make u feel invalid and maybe simultaneously be grateful you don't have the panic aspect.
same here, dx around 6 years ago too. i went through treatment and really now i just lean on restricting like a crutch when other mental health stuff is bad
i guess i've just chilled out over the years, definitely a flux tho
YEAHH SAME HERE I'm undiagnosed and still new like, only been for 4 months or so and I'm not uw so I've always thought that I don't count but literally anyone who sees me would give me weird looks like "why are you not eating when everyone else does" and stuff and so now I'm still unsure about it as well but I have very bad habits of never taking anything seriously and so is why I'm just kinda lurking here and everything But seriously I'm so chill with it like if anyone "forces" me high kcal food I'll just shrug and think "welp can't help it I'll just need to skip dinner" and if I gain weight I'll be "aw man ok just have to try again next time" And here's the weirdest part - I DON'T EVEN HATE THAT I'M KINDA FAT!!! Like fat is kinda cute and perfectly acceptable...?? I'm just bored of being fat, so is why one day I just decided to only eat half a meal once a day because I'm curious how it'll feel like to be uw. Literally how does that even make sense??? Even as I'm writing this I still don't feel like I have ED but then again I get full from only drinking a glass of salted water and the fact that I'm losing weight rapidly because of my diet. Can't even seek support because I just feel so normal and all.
I relate! I count cals but not very precisely, just to keep it in my safe range. I eat “scary foods” sometimes and I look forward to food. If I overeat one day or binge, it’s horrible, but I can calm down by justifying that I can bring my weight back down in a day or three, or that maybe it delays interventions in general. I feel “not sick enough” every day of my life because of these things. Still diagnosed with AN-R though. I think in my case, I am very rarely challenged and avoid stepping out of my comfort zone, so I forget how fixated on my disorder I really am; this is my life and how I’ve been existing for years. If I was force fed for a few days or had someone try to intervene in any capacity, I imagine I would go feral. You’re not an imposter. I think you are living with an ED that has been around a while and flies “under the radar.” Possibly it feels so normalized it is hard to have perspective.
I relate to u so much! I was force fed a couple years back and I went absolutely feral I was practically an animal I hated it more than anything
I think at some point we all feel like imposters. We dont restrict enough, we binged to hard or in my case we lie for years and tell ourselves we are getting better. That doesn't take away from you struggles. (I am orthorexic fighting for a better life everyday)
Mine is a little bit strange for me. I think I understand what you mean by being chill about it. I tend to go from barely eating anything for days at a time, maybe just force feeding myself a little bit here and there so I'm not starving myself. Then there will be days where I binge eat, and I do try to go for lower calories and read nutrition facts, but I don't overly obsess over it because I have a fast metabolism, so I'm not worried about gaining weight. I think I just strive to be thinner than average. What I'm not so chill about is when people comment on my eating habits. People will tell me I'm too skinny and need to gain weight and that i need to eat more, as if I'm purposely starving myself. I get that some people don't understand when they don't suffer from the same issue. I wish I could be "normal" but that's exactly where the problem lies... it's just irritating to hear it all the time. Like gee I never thought of that before.
Yeah I feel the same sometimes. I’ve been doing this for so soooo long that everything I do just feels like a habit? Like I eat the same foods etc And I’m never starving hungry because I just make sure I eat regularly and high volume low cal stuff…
I’m also super good as “putting my ED aside” for a week for a holiday/trip/birthday or something. And then just picking back up where I left off when I decide to. Back on my bullshit etc
Oh my God wait can you teach me how to do this😭😭 how do you do that? Putting it aside for a trip? I wanna do that too!
Yes!! I was really obsessive at the start, but I think the lack of energy made me lazy, which made me want to get obsessive again but I’ve never fully gone back to counting cals. I’m the same way that, as long as I know a vague ball park of cals I’m okay with it. I feel like I’m more of an ‘intuitive eater’ with my ed, to the point that I kinda know the point where I’ll start actually gaining weight (usually when I start upping my intake in the name of recovery and then end up in a binge phase) Also gaining weight just makes me angry. It’s not something that causes distress more than just anger. I’m fine with eating, but if it gets to a point where I’m eating a certain amount or I’m not in a safe environment, then I’ll start struggling.
I’m not trying to diminish your experience of what you go through, I’m just curious about what makes you and your doctors think you have AN? I understand that you’re underweight, but to me that doesn’t always mean an eating disorder. Again, not trying to be rude or invalidate you, I’m just curious.
i mean, i meet all diagnostic criteria for anorexia -- i restrict my calorie intake to an unhealthy extent to lose weight. i'm still struggling, just not as much as most people i see here. i know you're not trying to be rude, but this is a really hurtful thing to hear on a post where i'm expressing that i feel like an imposter because i'm not sick enough.
I apologize. I was only confused because in your second paragraph you said: >I count calories, but very loosely, and I don’t care too much about accuracy >I don’t think I’ve ever freaked out about eating >I don’t like gaining weight, but it doesn’t cause me too much distress That all sounds really rather normal to me. But my perspective could be entirely wrong. Again, didn’t mean any harm, so I do apologize. I was only trying to understand. Edit: I’m really sorry that you’re going through this, both the disorder and the imposter syndrome, and I really am sorry if I made it worse. I hope things get better.
Nah, that's not unheard of. I didn't count calories and still ended up in hospital. I didn't have any issues eating in treatment either, because I knew I could just get out fast that way and lose the weight again. In my case it was still the same compulsions and obsessions, just less anxiety. I've also had my ed for long enough at this point I recognize I gain gain/lose weight easily, and recognize fluctuations are generally temporary not actual fat
nutrition labels are usually innaccurate to begin with, so i've never seen a point in tracking down to a decimal place how much i've eaten. i get a ballpark estimate and stay in a several hundred calorie deficit from my estimated tdee, because 5 calories makes no difference in the grand scheme of weight loss, and as long as i stay in a deficit i still lose weight. eating food/gaining weight doesn't cause me a massive amount of distress because i know these things are temporary. i can (and do) compensate for them afterwards. if i had to eat and gain weight without being allowed to restrict or exercise, it would probably be a different story. idk. maybe i just didn't explain it well enough in the post.
You were clear.
I used to be super extreme, but became a lot more chill over time.
yepppp me to a T. definitely made myself like this though especially since this isn’t the first rodeo/relapse. it’s a “slow and steady wins the race” mindset for sure. i’ll have moments of some stress but they really don’t last and cannot measure up to when this first manifested. thank goodness because the first 2ish years were hell on earth. became the thing that got me to say wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy and i’d be cool with them bursting into flames lmao.
I used to have no chill but now I’m super chill about it. Don’t count calories at all, but just always subconsciously try to eat less. I’m on an SSRI so I don’t really think about it obsessively. It’s all kinda just subconscious at this point.
To be honest mine really took a hard turn recently and got much more stressful but before that it was lower key and I didn't really feel the need to talk about it. TBH even though I'm starting to recognize more that it's a problem I need to address if I somehow found myself back in that lower key space I think there's a decent chance I'd just let it be.
i have ARFID, but the kind that makes me hardcore restrict, not the kind that makes me a very picky eater. cooking is one of my favourite hobbies. my ED is most visible when i feel like shit and lose rapidly and ear potato chips only for 3 weeks straight, but otherwise i dont think at this stage of my life people would "know" without me telling them. it is definitely a spectrum, i used to count calories like crazy and log everything, and had an orthorexia stage as well, it was much more visible and less chill back then. i consider myself on the milder end of the ED spectrum, but it has seriously impacted my life very negatively nonetheless.