I was diagnosed with Anorexia when I was 11 years. I would not eat and was 4' 8", weighing in at 40 lbs. When I was 15 or 16 years old I had a brief stint with ipecac, even though I never had the massive binges of a Bulimic, but the ipecac almost killed me because that stuff is actually a poison. I would eat half a quart of ice cream and panic, but I could not force myself to puke without something like ipecac. I also did the laxatives for years longer. At 20 I nearly killed myself with an overdose of diet pills. I took them so I would not eat. I spent years weighing myself several times a day, with no remission in symptoms or anorexic behaviours.
At 23, I was 4' 11" 90 lbs, married, and pregnant. BTW, my mother was 4' 11" too by the time she was grown, but has since shrunk and my father was 5' 3". So I didn't stunt my growth. I come from a short family. I'm also proud to say my son was born very healthy, made 9s on the Apgar. Both my sons did, even though there were times as they got older that my thinness scared them. I just would not eat more often than not, but I was off the diet pills, laxatives, etc. After my second time of almost dying, I just went with not eating, living on cappuccinos and alike.
Anyway, yes, I was sexually abused by my father, came from a controlling family background, bad marriage as an adult, divorce, etc etc. I also have the Dx of depression and PTSD. The usual stuff, but I've had a lot of therapy and changed a lot of things in my life, esp. after my first divorce. I took control of my life without relying on any crutches (like counting calories, weighing) or anything else. I put the numbers aside, basically taking everything I was taught in therapy and alike and putting it into practice. Doing it myself, instead of someone else doing it for me. I also successfully raised two sons by myself, without help from their father. So I had a lot to giving me the drive to live and survive too.
I am now 44 years old and I woke up, maybe three or four years ago (around 40 y.o.), one day and realized I had not weighed myself in ages, without panicking due to not knowing. I was tempted, but didn't weigh. I went in for a physical, weighed in at 100 lbs (still 4' 11"), my blood work was normal (something it had not been in years)- cholesterol normal, b.p. low normal, but normal, all the numbers were in normal range. My doctor said, "You look good. How are you doing it?" I just am. I really don't know how I did it, but it wasn't Holy Unction, prayer, divine intervention or anything like that. I did it myself.
I took control of my life, refusing to let anyone else do it for me. I have control over everything concerning my body and life, including what I eat or not eat. I eat chocolate. I still carry the Dx of depression and PTSD, but my eating disorder isn't as much of a concern to my physician. I still have moments where I look in the mirror and feel like I look fat, sometimes I even "feel fat", but it isn't a constant thing and I have control- not the eating disorder, the depression, or even another human. I eat almost everything except meat (lifelong [lactose] vegetarian). I drink milk, eat cheese, yogurt, nuts, beans, rice, the typical vegetarian diet, with sweets occasionally. I eat like a normal human being.
I'll be 45 y.o. in May with two grown sons and no, the pictures on your website did not trigger anything in me, except sadness and empathy for these women. They don't have to die though. They can live normal, fulfilling lives, but they have to work at getting better. It doesn't happen overnight, there are some ups and downs, but I really believe the key is taking control of your own life, every aspect of it, thinking for yourself, and making choices for yourself. Of course, the first step is overcoming the fear of food and getting fat, but it can be done. For the last few years, I've been between 95 and 105 lbs at every dr.'s visit.
So people can recover from Anorexia. It is possible, but I think it also depends on the type of eating disorder they have. I think mine was related to the depression, PTSD, etc and actually not the typical eating disorder. Once my depression was alleviated and the PTSD well on its way to being treated, I think my eating disorder naturally followed. However, it doesn't matter how long one has suffered with it, I truly believe once they gain the desire to overcome it and take charge, they can do it, but they have to get serious about therapy, medication, if necessary, treatment, and putting it into practice.
Anyway, that's my story, albeit condensed, and I want to thank you for making a website that shows the horrors, even deadly horrors of eating disorders. I only hope it helps someone and not causes more problems.
Mriana
Link to photo: http://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/eating-disorder-specialist-new-dawn.html
My name is Emma. I'm 30 years old from Christchurch, New Zealand.
I have had anorexia, bulimia and serious self harm since I was 11 years old 19 horrible years.
I can never remember ever being happy. I grew up with a very abusive father and an extremely sick mother in and out of hospital. I also have an older brother who was a bully and treated me like a slave.
With my mum being so sick I had to run the household from a young age. Also, my father had very high expectations of me to succeed in everything: school, music and sport. I would get up at 5am and not stop until bed at 9.30.
I developed very early, being flung into puberty age 9. Primary school was good. I was popular, extremely bright. My teachers loved me.
But the summer between primary and intermediate something changed. I became the kid everyone picked on, for being bright and ugly, though only 11, I suffered from terrible painful acne and had big breasts and hips. I was sent to the deputy principal for him to teach me alternative subjects. He sexually abused me for those two years. It was then, at 11, I began cutting. I had no idea what I was doing it just felt good.
Also, I began skipping breakfast and throwing away my lunch. If I couldn't be pretty I wanted to be skinny (although I was 5'4" and 102lbs) and I hoped I would lose my breasts, which in my mind caused the sexual abuse. I did tell my parents about the abuse but my dad told me to "stop fucking lying, you'll wreck that man’s life." At this age I started viciously hating myself, wrote my parents off.
By 13, my extracurricular activities were: Hockey (4 teams), athletics, cross country, cricket, volleyball, touch rugby, flute, choir, orchestra. So I was doing 5-7 hours of exercise.
By age 14, I was cutting daily. My anorexia fueled up. I added 2 hours of running before school; faked breakfast by shaking toast crumbs onto a plate. I gave my lunch to girls in my class. My PE teacher caught on when she found me passed out in the changing rooms. Soon I was fainting on a regular basis. I was sent to guidance; they set up a hospital admission for me as my weight dropped to 76lbs and my cutting was no longer secret. But my parents refused consent as they considered themselves perfect and I was not going to ruin their reputation. They said I was anorexic and self harming to make them look bad.
At 16 I agreed to go to the youth section of the psych hospital. By then I was abusing laxatives and diet pills, and my cuts constantly needed stitching. But once again my parents decided imprisonment at home was a better option. I was tormented and overdosed on sleeping pills and anti depressants had my first of 100s of public- medical hospital admissions. My heart was affected.
At the same time somehow I was a hockey and athletics rep and A student.
At 17, my last year of high school, I was so depressed, all I could focus on was self harm and my ED which had evolved to bulimia. I would cut class to binge and purge then cut and burn. I had begun to experiment with burning myself with acid.
At 18, I ran away to another city where I spiraled out of control. I inflicted third-degree burns that needed grafting; took massive overdoses. The first I woke from a coma in intensive care with a tube down my throat. I was committed to the psych hospital and all year I was either in intensive care or in the psych hospital. I was transferred to a private hospital that specialised in eating disorders and Borderline (diagnosed at 15). I hated it and was there for a year.
After 2 1/2 years in hospital I was sent home to my parents, seen as a failure soon to die.
Now 21, I fell into a bad crowd and was back to anorexia. 88 lbs, I spent 4 hours at the gym then spent the rest of my time drinking and smoking weed. I was raped three times. Then one night I was involved in arson. I was sentenced to 2 1/2 years prison. I served 7 months.
Trying to cut this short, since then I have been in and out of the medical and psych hospitals. Anorexia, Bulimia, self harm and suicide is all my mind could contain. I should have been dead at least 50 times over. Doctors have told me I should be dead, they wish I was dead, and I was a waste of time, space and money.
At 30, sitting here, I am scarred completely, both arms and legs. I've had 24 skin grafts, I have severed many tendons, I have faced amputation 4 times. I cannot have anymore surgery as my left arm is all scar tissue inside and out; it is weak and doesn’t function well. I have had bone and vessels and muscle cut out of my leg and arm due to being burnt. I have brain damage, as I have had 7 cardiac arrests and 3 respiratory arrests. My heart is damaged; it could stop at anytime. Bulimia has robbed me of my bowel: 3 years ago it stopped working. The pain was horrific. They operated; my bowel is black and decayed all due to my 100-a-day laxative addiction. I have capped teeth.
I have been told I'm one of the worst cases of self harm in the world by my British psychologist and American psychiatrist.
My arm after surgery after I’d severed 3 tendons.
My leg after more grafting.
I feel like I have just been regurgitating facts and I'm not baring my emotion. My life has been wasted. I started self harming to cope. I thought I controlled it...I could stop when I wanted to...same with ED, but it's just not true.
I live an isolated life, I have been banned from hospitals. They've had enough. I have tried, I really have, but what’s the point when no one cares and no one will ever love me because I'm deformed.
All I ever wanted was love. I just don't know how to 'get a life.' I don't know how to make friends. I hate justifying my existence.
I should have a job like a normal person, but I’m so tired from all the meds and the depression, the hopelessness. Currently, I weigh 108lbs. I've started restricting and purging again. I wish my parents had just bought a trophy and not conceived me. I was discharged from mental health two months ago deemed ‘incurable’.
A pic of my tattoo of mental health awareness ribbon.
Since I feel I have been relatively emotionless, I have added a couple of my poems from a book I had published this year:
"Writer. I'm a writer by profession. A submission should be judged, not only on how meaty it is, but by how well it is phrased, and if it is marketable.
This is what I live with. This is what I've been raised to do. I freelance and am an English major who aspires to become an English professor. What I do doesn't directly put me in the public eye. But I have to "score" my submissions in terms of how effective they are; how much money I (might) make off of them. That is not to say that writing is not fulfilling and that it is not fun. I wouldn't do it if I got no enjoyment out of it. And, at the end of the day, if I do get a rejection letter, I try again. And again. And again. Like any performer, you need thick skin. It isn't easy to write, and it's harder to put your piece, your "baby", in the hands of professionals, who might not always be as skilled as you are, but who have more clout.
If you can find it in yourself to keep submitting, even if it means bypassing professional outlets, you just might be heard. I didn't always have that luxury. I don't tell others that one of the first fictional stories I remember reading concerned the dangers of overeating. Or that the first short story that ever left an impact on me was about how people have no ownership over their bodies in a superficial society.
But I do tell them that I have Crohn's Disease, that I have been living with it since I was seven, that I almost had to experience childhood wearing a colostomy bag, and that I experienced almost ten years of remission, only to experience another flare up at seventeen, suspiciously around the time that I started "dieting". And by "dieting", I mean learning to live on a steady diet of close to nothing.. I couldn't control my fate as a budding writer. I wished I didn't have to write at all. So I preoccupied myself with calories, carbs, and fitness. When I wasn't working out, I was cooking. And when I wasn't cooking, I was sleeping. I would dream that I was sleeping in a bed of chocolate. My dreams were the one place where I could eat as much as I pleased and not gain a single ounce.
The only happiness was in my dreams. My mother, frustrated at my refusal to eat more than 800 calories a day, miss a workout, or take fewer than 20 laxatives at a sitting, took me to an eating disorder clinic. I given the label "EDNOS", and shoved away as though I had become degenerate.
I spared no calorie, and gained every ounce back. I forced myself to love my body. It was either that or the clinic. And the clinic was not an option.
I paid a price for my disordered eating anyway. In January 2010, I had one third of my large intestine removed. Surgeons said that the piece had begun falling apart inside my body.. I had to take a medical leave for my second semester of college. As a result, I will graduate later than most of my peers. I have missed out on most of the hallmarks of a typical adolescence, such as dating, and searching for a job, because that meant I might have to eat ice cream.
I have told this story before, and I usually frame it in a happier tone. I frame it differently here, not for pity or to see if I can make someone cry. I do it to show that eating disorders and exercise addiction have real consequences. If you are suffering or know someone who is suffering from an eating disorder, get help today. Mistreat your body and it may mistreat you."
Olivia's NEDA (National Eating Disorders Association) Symbol Tattoo
“Hi my name is Olivia, I'm 16 almost 17, and last year about October is when my eating disorder began.
It's not that anyone ever called me fat or made fun of me, it's just that I personally couldn't stand looking in the mirror. So, I began just by doing some squats, push-ups, jumping-jacks and walks each day and cutting out junk food.
Progressively, each day I got more and more obsessed; I would make myself do more exercise than the day before and eat less than the day before. I eventually got down to consuming absolutely nothing except for water; this was about right after Christmas.
By the time I had gotten down to eating nothing, I slowly decreased my exercise, because I had no energy whatsoever. When I couldn't exercise due to lack of energy, I would sit in my dark room for days; in fear that I would gain weight by just sitting down all day. Although I wasn't eating anything, I started taking laxatives.
I got to the point where I tried to head to my first block class before the school bell would ring, due to the fact that I was walking rather slow at this point and did not want to be trampled by other students. I could literally feel my heart slowly dying with every step I took.
At night before I would go to bed, I would always have the feeling that "hey, you are most likely going to die tonight if you don't eat something, even something little." I would tell myself this, but I could not bring myself to eat anything. It was scary to me how even though I knew I could die, I would rather die than be fat.
I distinctly remember one night where I went to sleep and locked my bedroom door and I was awoken to my mom banging at the door to unlock it, and keep it unlocked. So I got up in anger and unlocked the door. After I had gotten up, I couldn't go back to sleep. I still find it crazy how I had such a lack of energy that I could not even sleep. I remember while trying to go back to sleep, my mom coming in periodically just to make sure I was still breathing.
I was very distant from everyone around me. All of my friends stopped talking to me and my family just gave up on trying to get me to eat. One day towards the end of February, while at school, I got a slip that said that I was getting checked out so I proceeded to the office, where I saw my parents. So when we got in the car, my parents told me that we were going to the pediatrician. When we got there, my pediatrician of 16 years didn't recognize me. He said I was extremely emaciated and dehydrated and told my parents that he would get me set up at a hospital nearby where I could get fluids through an IV.
So my doctor called and told us to go to this psychiatric center called Brentwood, nearby where I was supposedly supposed to get mental and medical help. Well, I had heard of Brentwood before; I had never heard that they had medical help, and that they basically only treated kids with homicidal thoughts. I begged my dad and told him that this wasn't a good place, but he took me because my pediatrician thought that they did have medical attention.
When we got there, they did an assessment and then my dad began to get worried because he realized I was right. So, my dad told the people that we would just get help elsewhere. But, apparently the PECed me Physician Emergency Certificate, which held me there against my parents or my own will for 48 hours. I was so shocked and scared.
When I was there for that night, I could tell that they had no idea how to treat eating disorders. When dinner time came, which was the first food I had eaten since Christmas, I ate as much as possible, but my stomach didn't know what food was anymore. When I was eating I felt shooting pain in my stomach. Not to mention, they literally only gave me about 10 minutes to eat, then they told me to bring my tray up to see what I had eaten. I had eaten only about half of it and they yelled at me.
Then, before I was about to go to bed they called for everyone to line up at the medicine counter, and they handed us all the same type of pills. I asked what the hell are these for? The rude nurse said one is for depression and one is a sleeping pill. They specifically told my parents they would not drug me without their consent, but did anyway.
So here I was, dehydrated in this hellish place being drugged against my will, surrounded by a bunch of kids who were there for stabbing someone or having thoughts of killing someone.
In the morning they gave me an EKG and it came back abnormal. Thank god for that EKG, because it got me transferred out of there, to the ER of a much better actual hospital where I received medical help, IV and fluids for about 4 days. Once, I had gotten discharged, my doctor at the hospital advised my parents to take me to a hospital in Dallas, Children's Medical Center, where they had a unit that specializes in eating disorders. My dad said that we could do it on our own and declined.
The day after I got out, I was back to not eating again and my same old routines. I had thought about the hospital in Dallas and had started to want to really go. I told my dad and begged him to take me there. He was so shocked that I would want to go, but he didn't really want me to go; but, he said he would try to get me there.
So one weekend, we headed for Dallas and the hospital, when we got there they did an assessment and some other things; I was happy I thought I was finally going to be admitted into this unit. Well, I wasn't that day, and was devastated. Apparently our insurance wouldn't cover it at the time and on top of that, the doctors there said that my heart was on the verge of failing, and that before I could join the unit and start eating on my own that I would have to go to a cardiologist and receive fluids to my heart, I was so pissed off. I just wanted to be in the unit and get help.
So, we drove back to Bossier City, LA and had to receive help there for my heart. My parents had gotten the stuff with the insurance company straightened out and within a week we were finally back at the hospital. I was excited to be around kids that were going through the same thing as me. When I walked in I was kind of scared; most of the kids had feeding tubes attached to their noses. I found out that if they missed a few meals, that they would get the tube. I was determined to not get the tube and get out as fast as possible.
I was inpatient for about a month and partial patient which was where I would come from 7AM-5PM for a little over a month. I had been admitted on March 16 and had been discharged on May 17th.
I had met so many awesome people; the kids there were so motivating. We all got over our struggles together. Since then, I have been doing well, with little to no slip-ups. I'm happy; making all A's and I'm currently in 6 school clubs. I also got a job at a local pizza place. I have gone from being 68 pounds to a much healthier weight. I have also gotten a tattoo of the NEDA symbol to remind me of my journey every day, not that I could ever forget it.”
"I am 15 and from London. I thought I'd share my story with you just because I've never shared it with anyone.
I've had anorexia/bulimia for 2 years. It all started simply because of a special k diet, and once I realised this, I was so alarmed by how easily I fell into the cruel world I'm now stuck in.
I was overweight (185lbs at 5'2) and decided I'd go on the diet just for fun with a friend to lose a few pounds. I lost 7lbs in 2 weeks and I was ecstatic. So when my friend had finished she just simply continued on with normal eating, whereas I carried on. It was nothing severe at first, just watching what I ate, everything healthy.
Then by spring 2009 I was eating around 1200 calories and becoming obsessed with exercise. It stayed like that for a few months, until around May I was eating 1000 calories a day with 3 solid hours of exercise. I thought there was nothing wrong with me. I remember not letting myself sleep until I'd done exactly 180 minutes of jogging on the spot, the exact same spot in my room with my ipod on. I'd create playlists that would add up to this time and just jog and jog and jog.
"Me before at about 140lbs (after around 45lbs weightloss)"
Over the summer holidays, it became worse. I was out all the time and eating on the go or not at all, you could say. I went back to school in September and everyone was staring at me and asking me if I was okay but I couldn't understand why. I wasn't underweight, just the change was so quick. I still thought I was fine.
By October I was eating around 500 calories a day, still with my exercise, and then mid-way through October I got ill with a stomach bug. I was so happy. It was just a quick fix for losing weight. I didn't even need my appetite suppressants. I lost 10lbs in a week.
When I went back to school, my form tutor took me to the side and had a talk with me. She knew what was going on. She had dealt with it in her previous schools. I didn't know what to do. I screamed and cried for hours in her classroom about the fact someone knew about my secret. It's something you never want anyone to find out ever. So she urged me to go to the doctors and I did.
It had now taken me 18 months to accept I had a problem. I had my appointment the first day of the October half term, and I was so scared that I began eating up to 8000 calories a day and just throwing it all back up again. Even after the appointment, it carried on all week. I just couldn't stop.
Then I found laxatives. I started off just taking the recommended dose of 2 and would only take them after binges. I lost all the weight I gained from the binging and purging then went back to my restricting in November. I now weighed about 100lbs at 5'4.
I got referred to Maudsley Eating Disorders Clinic in London in November, but my appointment wasn't until December. So I did all I could to lose as much weight as possible between that time. I was taking about 20 laxatives a day and eating around 200 calories a day. I felt physically dead but I was euphoric about the weight just falling off of me. I'd cling onto my own collar bones obsessively and measure my wrists constantly to make sure they were still small enough. Anyone would think I would want to be heavier for my first weighing, but I just felt I needed to deserve the treatment so I had to be as skinny as possible. By the time I'd gone there, I'd lost a further 10-20lbs and I was emaciated. I still thought I was fat.
"Picture of my stomach after the 8000 calorie binge that lead to me attempting suicide"
I continued losing weight even attending appointments and I was about a pound away from being hospitalised. Then at Christmas I just got so hungry I started eating everything I could see for about 2 weeks. I hated myself for it and attempted suicide twice and self-harmed constantly.
3 months later, and my weight is stable, but I am not. I now weigh 120lbs at 5'4, but my relapses are all too regular.
I think I’m writing this just to show people that it is so much easier to fall into an eating disorder than to get back out again. I was expecting all my psychologists just to wave a magic wand and I'd be able to eat again, but it's far from that. I wouldn't wish an eating disorder on my worst enemy, so it pains me to hear people around me talking about how much they want to be thin. It's not worth it.
Even though I know eating disorders aren't solely around wanting to be thin and fit in a size 0, there's so much more to them, but that's how it starts. Losing weight won’t make your life better. I thought it would mine and it's done completely the opposite.
"Current [picture] of me"
So if this does get published, I urge anyone reading this who thinks that being thin is the answer to please re-think it, and try and live as happy a life as you can. I can't comment on recovery yet, as I'm still far from being able to call myself recovered, but I'll let you know how it goes.
“After reading the stories that have been shared I decided I would give it a go. When it comes to talking about ED I've never been very truthful in fear that I won't be taken seriously or no one will listen. So this is my first attempt of telling the truth.
My name is Tessa. I'm 16, diagnosed with bulimia nervosa. At the moment I would say it's turned to EDNOS.
I guess I'll start with a brief history. My parents divorced when I was 3, I live with my mother and visit my dad on weekends. I have a brother who is 7 years older and a step sister who is my best friend. My mom was sick for most of my childhood and I was always known as the good kid who kept to myself and did what I was suppose to while my brother went through a really tough time in high school.
When I was younger my dad was physically abusive but only towards my brother. My brother was only abused when I got hurt by accident, which of course I felt terrible about. I believed it was all my fault, if I had just been more careful or held in the tears a bit longer maybe my brother wouldn't have been hurt. The physical abuse continued until my dad married my step-mom. There was little abuse in those first couple of years. Now he is verbally abusive which I have been a victim of.
I've always been a picky eater but there were foods that I had previously enjoyed being crossed off the list of foods I would eat. Everyone believed it was just because I was picky nothing more, in a month or two I'd probably be eating those foods again but I didn't. At 13, after my mom told me I look liked I'd gained weight and should go to the gym, I began obsessively exercising. Of course my mother approved of this and was glad I was getting exercise.
I believe it didn't turn into a full-blown eating disorder until I was 14, beginning high school with no friends. I found friends to sit with at lunch but still skipped lunch everyday. I began to count calories, weighing myself daily, hiding food, and I purged for the first time. I lost some weight but not much.
I didn't get into laxatives and diet pills until last year. This past year has definitely been one hell of a year for me. In late January I attempted suicide with a small overdose that, obviously, wasn't fatal. I met my best friend, Chelsea, who also has an eating disorder. We have been through so much together.
My mother found out about my eating disorder the first week of summer break. She read my journal and found all my diet pills and laxatives. She took me to our GP who referred me to an ED specialist who he works with. I was then referred to the outpatient clinic in my town, the same one Chelsea started going to in May.
My summer was filled with so many appointments yet it managed to be one of the best summers ever. At the time I was binging and purging 10+ times a day. I had been doing that since March although back then it was probably just 5 times a day.
The binging and purging continued until September when Chelsea attempted suicide. I was absolutely devastated, I couldn't get the memory of finding out she overdosed, racing over to her house, telling her parents, and seeing her lying in the hospital bed. I visited her everyday while she was in hospital but it was like the memory was on replay in my mind. I didn't eat for 2 weeks and then started to eat a couple of vegetables at dinner. I fell behind in school and I am still struggling with the work I missed.
Now I continue to restrict and abuse laxatives. I've convinced my mom that I eat everything and that I haven't abused laxatives or purged in months. I left the outpatient clinic in early December and faced threats of hospitalization. Now that I am supposedly eating alright the threats have stopped but I am losing weight rapidly and I fear being forced into inpatient.
I know my story is far from over and there is still so much to come along with so much that I didn't write. I just hope that this year is better for me. I can't imagine being recovered or even really attempting it, not now at least. But I know my time will come and when it does I will try to tell the truth and not the lies I've been telling myself and everyone around me.
If you read this thank you for taking the time too.”
Tessa, thanks so much for sharing your story. I dearly hope the truth comes out soon...before it's too late.
"As I type this, my roommate is eating what appears to be a really delicious slice of pizza. I’ve just finished painting my nails – a compulsive habit I tend to engage in while avoiding food. While I was painting my nails, I was getting more and more angry. Why, WHY, couldn’t I enjoy a piece of pizza? At what point did things change so drastically that I can’t eat one piece of pizza without throwing it up? What has happened to me? These are a few of the many questions that have popped up over the past 18 months.
Shape magazine has a “Success Stories” section. I always wanted to be one of those stories. I would scour the Shape website looking for more and more success stories. After all, if they could do it – so could I!! Now my story would read more as a warning, rather than a success.
Teenage years – on and off disordered eating. Nothing, in my mind, neither dramatic nor serious. I did end up in the ER with a Mallory-Weiss Tear when I was 19. I maintained an average weight and was really active in high school. Then I went to college, gained a lot of weight and never lost it.
Three years and one messy breakup after I graduated college, I’m at my heaviest weight ever. I am 5’4” and weighed 235 lbs. I bought a house on my own and decided something had to change. I would eat 1,000 calories per day and I’d start exercising. Nothing specific triggered this. I had owned my house for about two months and was on my own for the first time in my life. I could control every single thing that entered my home. No junk food around means no mindless eating, etc. So, I started my “diet.”
I lost 25 lbs in four weeks. The next month, I lost 20 lbs. After that, my caloric limit dwindled slowly. It started at 1,000, and then went to 800, then to 600, then to 300. Eventually I started fasting. By November I had lost 75 lbs. People started worrying and I was sent to a therapist. My therapist was an idiot. I was diagnosed as bulimic, and was giving me a treatment plan as such. At this point, I was fasting for three or so days, eating a bowl of cereal, and purging it. His brilliant solution was for me to “eat more”. Hell no. I quit treatment in February and had lost 20 more lbs.
I bounced along, calling in sick to work all the time because I felt like I was going to die. While seeing my therapist, I figured “if I’m going to be treated as a bulimic, I might as well F**KING EAT!” I started binging and purging 4-6 times per day for weeks, then starving myself in between. I lost more weight, although it slowed down.
Enter the side effects. Constant bruising, dry skin, lanugo on my face, exhausted, purging involuntarily, soul-crushing depression, anxiety, constantly dizzy, passing out in the shower (scary when you live alone) and the overwhelming self-hatred that eating disorders require to thrive.
I snapped in October. I had “binged” (3 oz steak and 2 cookies), purged and snapped. The next thing I knew, two hours had passed and I had thoroughly cut the hell out of my arms and legs. I don’t think I was trying to kill myself, but I also don’t think I would have cared if I died.
After the dust settled, I had moved back in with my parents and weighed about 125 lbs. I stayed there for three weeks. I got a psychiatrist and a new therapist (both of whom are wonderful). That was almost three months ago.
Me today: I take 60 mg of Prozac per day. My weight is about 114. That being said, my set weight is 130, so according to my doctors, I’m about 15 lbs underweight. According to my friends and family, I look “sick.”
Treatment is alright. I’m making good progress in therapy, but am still engaging in eating disordered behavior. I’m purging less, although still 4-5 times per week. I stopped abusing laxatives, which is great for me. I’ve stopped over-exercising, and am eating twice per day, every day.
This is the rub: I weighed myself a few days ago and discovered I’ve gained 4 lbs in the past three months. Consequently, I’m fasting for the next three days. Why is it, after everything that has happened over the past year and a half that it is my first reaction? I logically know this isn’t what I should be doing, but I am not willing to change my behavior.
Now that all of that has been said – I’m still going to fight. I will pick the pieces up after this set back is over, and I will fight. I cannot live like this forever. It’s either get better or die. I don’t necessarily want to live, but I owe it to myself and my family to try as hard as I can.
"I have been looking at your website for the past month in hopes that I could share my story (or at least the not-so-painfully-personal parts) with someone.
I had anorexia-nervosa, bulimia-nervosa, and anorexia-athletica-nervosa for almost three years. I suffered amenorrhea, thinning hair, skin problems, a swollen face and bloating. I had a very bad experience one night at around 3 am that led me to attempt a change. I was alone and had to force myself to get better.
My supposed 'friends' from 'pro-ana' sites were angry and felt I was weak. They told me that I was not 'embracing' the life-style...What they don't tell you when you start this sort of thing is that IT is actually starting YOU. I wasn't embracing it? I wasn't embracing this 'glamorous' lifestyle? This life-style of retching until your teeth begin to decay and your throat is sore and swollen, of using laxatives that induce uncomfortable bloating and disgusting diarrhea? No, at this point I was NOT embracing the lifestyle...IT was embracing ME!
After seemingly endless months of effort, I managed to 'recover' as much as one can from this disease. And I have been doing fairly good, really, I have. I healthily gained back the weight I'd lost, and doubled my calcium intake in hopes of improving bone density.
Unfortunately, I have been experiencing symptoms again as of late: distorted body image, the signs of food obsession, and severe weight loss. I am certain that this has been brought on by two major things.
Although the disorder subsided and nearly disappeared for the past two years, the depression and pathetic self-loathing that accompanied it, unfortunately, didn't. I was put on a generic form of the anti-depressant Prozac over the summer. I experienced nearly-sleepless nights where I would get in maybe two-three hours of fragmented sleep, and rarely sound or heavy. When I was fortunate enough to get deeper, meaningful sleep, I suffered terrible nightmares, to the extent of being called 'night terrors', which I'd had as a child, but had not had to endure since puberty.
Accompanied with these sleepless nights that would drag on for hours and push me to the near brink of insanity, I also lost my appetite, and with it, the weight came pouring off. The medicine seemed to be doing a decent job of elevating my mood, to some extent, but I still needed a higher prescription. (It should be taken into account that I am in NO WAY blaming the medicine or the company that makes it for what is happening to me. I am merely stating that it is having an effect on my body, which is, in turn, having a negative effect on my mind, which affects my body, so on-so forth). Anyway, I was bumped from 20mg, to 40mg, to 60mg per day. Around the same time, a close friend of mine was put in the hospital for an attempted suicide; he spent four days in the hospital and they prescribed him 20mg daily. It startled me how little he was on, or how much I was on.
He, although not someone who has suffered an eating disorder, spoke of having similar symptoms: lack of sleep, nightmares, and a lack of appetite. He told me that he had begun to feel hungry one day and realized that he had not eaten since three days prior. He had absolutely NO appetite.
Now, the effects of this on a 'normal' person would not necessarily have severe consequences, however, I have found that it began to ignite something within me that had, fortunately, laid dormant for the past few years...something that I hated, and that, obviously, equally hated me.
I also started my third semester at college after the summer and am partaking in a state-funded program that requires me to attend the school as a full time student. The immense stress that I have placed on myself to achieve A's, which I feel I absolutely MUST do, simply because I have no other job at this time and am aware of mothers that have many children, work full time, and attend the same college that I do, making the grade! This immense pressure, along with the medication has spurred me into the beginning phases of relapsing. I have been realizing that as of late, I am experiencing symptoms of my disorder, a disorder that I had thought I had conquered.
My symptoms: a preoccupation with food, a distorted body image, calorie counting, the management of food intake, and the fact that, although I have not been using the aid of laxatives, I have been eating such amounts of vegetation that I am having to use the lavatory several times a day.
I recently went on vacation for Thanksgiving and that is where I fear the last straw was obtained. I have five younger cousins that I adore. Their ages ranging from nine to seventeen. (Relevant: I wear pin-up style make up: red lipstick and Dita/Bernie Dexter style eyeliner...I dress relatively conservative, especially around family).After Thanksgiving, I attended a Christmas party where my cousins were. Two of them, ages 12 and 14 came up to me and, mid-conversation, confessed that their parents told them that they did not want them to "dress or look like me...ever" EVER...That word rang in my ears like a bomb.
I am by no means rich, by NO means, I shop at Goodwill and Gordman's, but the people in attendance at this party could be considered so. After hearing my cousins tell me this, I was walking through the party hall and felt as if everyone was staring down at me. I have never felt entirely comfortable around these people (customers of my beloved aunt and uncle's upscale furniture store that specializes in rare and one-of-a-kind antiquities). I have always felt that they somehow knew, somehow could just SEE it on me that I was not part of their group, not ONE of them; as if they could somehow see my cheap clothes, see that my life was not rich, or beautiful, or wonderful, that I lived in a low-class Podunk town in mid-America.
I felt like I did in high school, at the height of my eating disorder. The truth is that these things: rich, beautiful, wonderful, high-class, all combine and equate to one unattainable word to me: THIN.
The irony is the disgusting lengths that I used to go through to try and achieve this word, this word that would somehow give me hope, life, a boyfriend, happiness...content...Instead it took any part, any small, infinitesimal, tiny, little part of any of those things that I had...and robbed me of it...of life.
Today, I am sitting here, typing this at...12:08 a.m. the night that has followed an intensely stressful day of finals, complete with a panic attack, shaking, hyperventilating, and vomiting.
I am telling you this not to gross you out, or to induce sympathy or pity, or even respect just for sharing. I am not an open person (only six people know of my problem-if that many), and, although this is painful to write, it is not entirely too difficult.
I am telling you this because I am looking, agonizingly searching, for someone, ANYone who will listen to me and give me even the slightest bit of support.
I am telling you this because, over these past few months, I have been experiencing a downward spiral into hell, into the thing that keeps me from consuming and, simultaneously, consumes me.
I am telling you this because this last week has been a massive trigger, hell, maybe these past two years, and I am sure that I cannot sustain going through what I went through the first time...
Quite frankly...I'd rather die.
I hated my life then, during the height of it all...No, actually, I can't even remember feeling even that much. I was a shell of my former self, emotionless. Even if I could have maintained feelings, I couldn't have hated my life...I had no life to hate.
I was literally ALREADY dead, I was simply waiting for the physical end, until it nearly came and I fought to bring myself out from the depths.
However, I now fear that I am falling again. All in all...
I am telling you this, unfortunately, not because I want to, or even because I HAVE to...But because...I.am.desperate.
I am desperate.
I have lost more weight over these past few months than I did when I was trying to...The worst part is that I am afraid of gaining it back.
I do not, DO NOT want to fall back into this again. I CAN'T, CANNOT be dragged down into this again. I fear I won't survive it.
Again, I am not looking for sympathy, apathy, or pity...Just a friend.
Thank you, your devoted thrice-daily reader, Jac"
(((Jac))) Thank you so much for granting me the privilege of sharing your story.
Holly Huber's beautiful and moving tribute to Pollack "Polly" Ann Williams, who was featured in the HBO documentary Thin.
Polly suffered from anorexia nervosa for many years, and was only 33 when she died in February 2008 from an overdose of sleeping pills, a suicide that her sister, Bebe Reed, said was "a direct result of her internal battle with the eating disorder. She said she could not fight the fight any longer."
The Cheeky Girls, Monica (left) & Gabriela Irimia, in the throes of anorexia in 2003
'Don't believe celebrities who say they are naturally skinny yet look so thin that their bones stick out,' she says firmly. 'They're lying.' (Monica Irimia)
"By 2004, Monica weighed just 6st 9lb and Gabriela 7st 2lb. "
"The twins also developed a fine down all over their bodies [lanugo] and their skin took on yellowish tinge...their yellow-tinged skin could have indicated kidney or liver problems or simply general unhealthiness."
"As the Cheeky Girls, the twins toured the world but remember nothing about the countries where they performed.
'Our brains were not functioning properly - we always felt dizzy,' says Monica. 'We felt barely alive yet somehow, like machines, got through the touring.'"
Twenty-five years have passed since Karen Carpenter's death at the age of 32. I saw Karen perform in Las Vegas with her brother in the late '70s and at that time she looked deathly ill.
Karen's autopsy revealed that she had suffered cardiac arrest due to complications from anorexia nervosa.
Two other findings of the autopsy were that she also suffered from cachexia and emetine cardiotoxicity, which is indicative of abuse by Karen of syrup of ipecac. Syrup of ipecac causes one to vomit if poison has been accidentally swallowed. Syrup of ipecac is dangerous and nothing to play with.
Karen's death brought the dangers of eating disorders onto the front pages of newspapers and magazine covers around the world.
From People magazine:
"Starved to a Tragic Death
A Sweet Surface Hid a Troubled Soul in the Late Karen Carpenter, a Victim of Anorexia Nervosa
by: Eric Levin February 21, 1983
Iced tea was the hardest drink she consumed, and the only needles she used were for needlepoint. Her weirdest stash was a collection of Mickey Mouse memorabilia. The flagrant comet tail of self-indulgence so familiar in plummeting stars like Elvis Presley and John Belushi did not mark Karen Carpenter's life--or her death of heart failure on February 4 at the age of 32. Yet for all the soothing middle-of-the-road appeal she and her composer-arranger brother, Richard, 37, brought to 41 Carpenters records--which have sold 80 million copies and won three Grammy Awards--she had led a long, lonely struggle against another form of self-destruction, anorexia nervosa.
She collapsed at about 9 a.m. in the wardrobe closet of the room her parents have always kept for her at the family home in suburban Downey, Ca., about 30 minutes from Los Angeles. Downey firemen entered the closet to find Karen slumped nude on the floor, her nightgown draping her body. She had apparently just begun to dress for the day. At the request of the rescue workers, Karen's grief-stricken mother, Agnes, was escorted from the room by husband, Harold.
The rescuers at first detected a faint pulse in Karen's neck that made them think, says paramedic Bob Gillis, that "she had a good chance to survive." But then she went into cardiac arrest. Racing over from his house a few minutes away, Richard Carpenter arrived just before the paramedics carried his sister out to the ambulance. Despite continuous efforts to resuscitate her, Karen was pronounced dead at Downey Community Hospital at 9:51 a.m.
Karen's Certificate of Death
A wave of grief spread among those who had known her. "She was a magical person with a magical voice," says Burt Bacharach, who in 1963 had written the song which became the Carpenters' first hit, Close to You. Adds Paul Williams, author of their second gold smash, We've Only Just Begun: "Karen and Richard's music brought the American family together during a period when there was very little else it could share." Williams' apparent reference to the turbulent Vietnam and Watergate eras was apt. The Carpenters were at their zenith in 1973, when then President RIchard Nixon introduced the duo to a glittering White House audience as "young America at its very best."
In the aftershock, friends wondered if Karen had tried too hard to live up to that description, had perhaps died trying. Hers was the "good girl's" disease--a compulsive urge to control weight, primarily among female hyperachievers, that leads to such extremes as self-induced vomiting and taking huge doses of laxatives. An autopsy revealed no immediate explanation for her heart failure. But after a long bout with anorexia, says Dr. Joel Yager of UCLA's Eating Disorders Clinic, "the most common cause of death is low serum potassium, which can cause an irregularity in the heartbeat." Karen had spent almost all of 1982 in New York undergoing treatment, and had lifted her weight from a gaunt 85 to 108 pounds--very near normal for her frame and height, 5'4". But, as anorexia expert Dr. Raymond Vath of Seattle points out, doctors learned only two months ago that the greatest strain is put on an anorectic's heart when lost weight is regained.
Paul Bloch, the Carpenter family's PR man, downplays the anorexia connection. "Karen was a vibrant and energetic person," he insists. Concurs Gil Friesen, president of A&M Records, the Carpenters' label, "Karen was the girl next door, always up even when she was down." typical signs of anorectics, says Dr. Yager. "It's common for them to be sweet," he says. "Many keep their emotions inside. They take care of other people, but they don't take care of themselves. "Karen's condition was alarmingly obvious. A co-worker who had seen her early last year said she resembled "a living skull." Added another, "She appeared to be a tormented and unhappy woman."
Indeed, as far back as 1971, when the Carpenters were soaring on their early hits, Karen was "psychotic about her weight," an acquaintance recalls. "She had a classic pear-shaped figure--she was chubby, and she was very self-conscious about it." Tom Burris, the real estate developer whom Karen married in 1980 and from whom she was separated last year, says she was suffering from anorexia "for about nine years." The term, though, was not widely known in 1975, when Karen slipped frighteningly from her performing weight of 110 to a shadowy 90 pounds. It took two months of bed rest at home to recuperate from physical and nervous exhaustion brought on by some 250 days a year of arduous touring. "It was sickening," she told PEOPLE after getting back on her feet the next year. "Suddenly it wasn't fun anymore."
Though much had changed in her life by 1981, Karen was still taking a vengeful attitude toward her weight. Distraught, she reached out to Pat Boone's daughter, Cherry Boone O'Neill, who was finishing a book about her own anorexia, Starving for Attention. They spoke once in person, then three times on the telephone.
"She didn't sound panicked, but she felt that she really needed some help," recalls Cherry, now 28. "Karen was having particular problems with laxatives. She could not believe she could ever get to a point where she was not dependent on them." O'Neill, who herself had often taken laxatives by the box to "drop 10-15 pounds overnight," urged her friend to "get away from the pressures of L.A. and show business and concentrate on her own life and survival." She told Cherry: "I'm going to do it. I'll get well--it's just so damn hard."
Like Cherry, Karen was raised in an unusually close-knit family. The children of a printer and a homemaker, Karen and Richard moved with their parents from New Haven, CT to Downey in 1963. "Karen grew up in a very tight, parentally dominated world," says a longtime friend. "Her parents are very nice people, but they controlled her early life and continued to try and do so over the years." One incident from early in Karen and Richard's career may be typical. Agnes Carpenter called her offspring at their Cincinnati motel to scold them for not having signed autographs backstage following a show in Hershey, Pa. after a fan wrote to complain. Dutifully, the youngsters called the fan and apologized.
Anorexics, notes Cherry, are usually the children of authoritative parents. "Such a person," she says, "does not rebel."
Richard was the first to take up music, inspired by his "Three B's--the Beatles, Beach Boys and Burt Bacharach." A sports fan, Karen was handed a glockenspiel in the high school marching band and figured it out. Wielding chopsticks on bar stools, she eventually taught herself percussion well enough to tap along with Dave Brubeck's rhythmically challenging album, Time Further Out. The duo won a Hollywood Bowl Battle of the Bands, and after three years of scrounging for work were signed by A&M co-sounder Herb Alpert.
"It was interesting the way they made records," a close colleague observes. "Richard laid out all the basic tracks, and then Karen would come in and sing. He was a tyrant in the studio. She would spend a lot of time on her vocals, and was always hard on herself." An ex-employee of A&M agrees: "It always seemed as if she were under Richard's thumb."
Barry Manilow observes that Karen clearly "adored" Richard. "She couldn't speak highly enough of him. To her he was a genius." Yet it was clearly Karen's voice that made the Carpenters click. "I'm sure she felt she had to measure up, that the whole act kind of hinged on her," Cherry O'Neill says. "That's an awful lot of pressure for one individual."
Karen's apparent solution, suggests Cherry, was classic: "When you start denying yourself food, and begin feeling you have control over a life that has been pretty much controlled for you, it's exhilarating. The anorectic feels that while she may not be able to control anything else, she will, by God, control every morsel that goes in her mouth."
Karen's anorectic episodes in the '70's seems to have waxed and waned, and in 1976, after her two-month recuperation at home, she made a stab at independence from her parents by moving into her own large apartment in a Century City condo. In 1980 her mother urged Karen to attend a dinner at the chic Ma Maison restaurant that Karen wanted to skip, and there she met Tom Burris, a 39-year-old divorce with an 18-year-old son. Two months later they were engaged.
Although Burris insists "We always got along, always cared about each other," they soon grew apart. "Karen was dealing with her anorexia and her career, I was dealing with my real estate problems," he explains. "I feel totally guilty, like I'd like to reverse everything. I tried to work with her. I got her in touch with a doctor, but she wouldn't admit she had an eating problem. We both tried, but we just couldn't work it out."
Later Karen reached out to the physician who treated Cherry O'Neill, Dr. Vath of Seattle. "She wanted a quick fix," he recalls. "She told me she had all these contracts and just had to get well. But I said, 'No, Karen, we don't know how to treat this rapidly. It would take a minimum of a year, probably three, to get you well. Finally she agreed to a course of treatment in a New York hospital, where she took two-hour treatments every day for nearly a year. But even there, as Dionne Warwick discovered, Karen's weight rose faster than her spirits. "She had gone through a lot of depression and sadness," said Warwick. "When a marriage breaks up, it's a devastating thing."
Last December Karen returned to L.A. O'Neill was concerned: "Putting yourself in the same environment where the problems first developed without totally recovering can cause setbacks." But by most accounts Karen was suffused with new energy. She was planning to record an album this spring. "Karen was getting along great," insists her longtime hairdresser, Arthur Johns, who gave her a perm before New Year's and says she intended to come back to have her hair streaked bronze. "She had started writing songs for the first time. She wasn't the type of person to mop the floor with her tears." Clearly, Karen Carpenter intended to conquer despair. "I have," she told Warwick just two weeks before her death, "a lot of living left to do." "
The following is an excellent video chronicling her life and struggle with eating disorders
This site deals with the stark reality and deadly consequences of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and other eating disorders, pro ana, self-harm/injury, suicide, and depression
When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep...not screaming, like the passengers in his car......(from "Deep Thoughts" by Jack Handey)
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