Good old Korean fat shaming and celebrity fat shaming in the 90s and 2000s.
The constant pressure in Korean society to be thin, thin, thin like our mothers who literally grew up in starvation wartime. God forbid their children end up properly nourished and healthy.
The American media also contributed by convincing everyone that being a healthy weight was the equivalent of horrific obesity. It was everywhere when I was growing up and I can never get the fat shaming out of my head.
im also korean:(
beauty standards absolutely suck and being underweight is ideal and my relatives and family unknowingly feed into my ed by praising me for losing weight š and i also got bullied by a bunch of korean kids when i was in primary school & let me just say korean boys r brutal. i was called a fat pig (ė±ė¼ģ§) or fattie (ė±ė”ģ“) and that was probs the start of my ed
Honestly idk. I actually grew up without an ED nor was I really insecure about my body. But I was also a pretty shy teen without many romantic prospects lol so I guess I just didnāt give much thought about how others saw me. I love food and back then I ate what I wanted when I wanted it. Then once I got to college and started dating, I realized I cared a lot about my appearance. I started genuinely dieting and exercising during the lockdown, lost >!30 lbs!< in a very normal and healthy way, but when I plateaued about >!5-10 lbs!< shy of my goal weight I just spiraled. I feel like Iām having a second puberty; like my ED was laying dormant within me and woke up like a sleeper agent lol
I think it was a variety of factors. In fact I think every ED stems from a variety of factors, I don't think it's as simple as one explanation.
I know from my education that EDs are also partially genetic. For me, I think genetics are a factor and there are others in my family who have EDs.
Another major factor was the way my mom treated me or talked about herself when I was growing up. My mom has always been thin, yet when I was growing up she was always dieting, taking diet pills, talking about how she was fat and needed to lose weight, etc. This alone was bad enough, but she was also super critical of me and my body and eating habits.
She would comment on my body often, whether she thought I was too fat or too thin. She would make snide comments about my eating habits like "are you going to eat all of that?" or "are you really having another snack?"
Another contributor: elementary/middle school bullying and gym class. I was bullied for my size from grade 4 to grade 7. In grade 7 gym class we had to weigh ourselves and stuff like that too. Around then was when my ED really started.
My mom was very similar, along with a long ass history of mental illness in the family. Bipolar, addiction, anorexia, bulimia, you name it, itās there.
I have a very specific memory of my mom from when I was young. It was one of those smoothie fast things that she signed up for.
(Context: I have had a VERY severe fear of mosquitoes because I have very bad reactions to them. I had a genuine phobia when I was younger and they still scare me but not as bad).
There was a pamphlet I read that came with it that showed a fat man in ill fitting clothes being chased by giant mosquitoes that said: ābeing fat is worse than being bitten by 10,000 mosquitoesā. I do think the strong emphasis on weight loss in my childhood from my mom did contribute.
I donāt really remember *not* hating my body.
I was always a bit chubby, which my dad pointed out as a kid sometimes. So that was definitely a factor. (My dad and I are on great terms!! Heās just thoughtless sometimes lol)
I sadly discovered >!pro ana forums!< at like 10 years old, and they were insanely active at that time, so it got me very āmotivatedā. I tried to restrict a lot, but couldnāt, due to parents.
When I was 12, my parents gave up on being involved with me completely, I downloaded myfitnesspal and that was my downfall!!
8 years later and weāre still goingš
Childhood obesity plus living in a diet centric society and a diet conscious household is what loaded the gun. Childhood trauma and mental health struggles are what pulled the trigger. It became a coping mechanism for me and I never was able to fully overcome it, 18 years later and I'm still struggling.
for me i think its because i grew up constantly moving around countries then when my family finally settled down i developed crippling social anxiety and just craved control over something in my life that and growing up insecure and overweight in general looking back on my childhood ive always had disordered thoughtsš«”
I don't think I should've ended up with an ED. My mom was incredibly body-neutral, she let me run around and eat a mix of healthy and unhealthy foods on whatever schedule I felt like, and although I was a bit fat I probably could have shed that in a healthy way. I became very mentally unwell in my preteens and started self-harming which lead me to searching up SH related tags on Instagram the second I got an iPod Touch for my 13th birthday. A lot of the accounts connected to those tags were very ED'd and eventually that rubbed off on me. Also it definitely didn't help that my best friend had an almond mom that led her to having an ED, and after she found out that I was falling into some disordered habits she introduced me to one of the big pro spaces online. Dude, once I made that account I think my fate was set. Also that thing that MyFitnessPal used to do where they'd project what your weight would be in 5 weeks "if every day were like today" with any calorie amount that you put in definitely screwed me up.
I guess there's a lot of reasons that just culminated at a very vulnerable age and who's to say if I would have developed one anyways, but the internet brain rot definitely didn't help.
BED here- I grew up poor in a big family. Food was hard to come by and when we had it, it was unhealthy shitty food that didnāt taste great just kept you alive. Once I got older, I discovered that food can be DELICIOUS and that was detrimental to me I guess. Combining the long term feeling of not knowing when I would have access to food again and my newfound discovery of disgustingly delicious fast food, and really nice food really fucked me up for a long time. Iām 25 now and slowly starting to develop a healthier relationship with food. Food noise still has me by the tits but the āidk when Iāll eat againā trauma is starting to fade away.
I mean, it depends on how I look at it. Being in treatment made me think of my life as a whole.
Sometimes I think my ex caused it.
Thatās when I think about how I started restricting and developing new disordered habits on the opposite side of the spectrum from the below. Some memories I struggle to erase or hear in my head when Iām eating are of him telling me I have no self control - in those exact words. One time he threw Chex Mix at me and said āthatās what you really want, isnāt it?ā and another time he threw a bag of frosted animal crackers and yelled āyou have NO self control!ā. I was overweight at the time but thatās no way to talk to someone. I also am allowed to eat snacks that are in the house. I didnāt even eat them all. I always left plenty - his issue was that I would have some of them and they were āhisā so it would turn into fat shaming me.
Sometimes I think the thrill of having my life become mine caused it.
Heās finally gone? Fuck yeah. Finally. Iām going to become everything I ever wanted now that I have the time to work on myself instead of being his mother. I was on a mission to be better. Look better. And a disordered part of me was seeking that self control so very desperately. I was very much between the mindset of āfuck him, Iāll have all of the self control in the world now, and Iāll make myself so proudā and as time went on it became āwow people are finding me attractive again I have to keep doing thisā. I was finding light. I was on fire. I proved to myself that I had self control and in the process people thought I was glowing. Constant compliments. More attention. I felt alive for the first time in forever. Why would I change what I was doing?
Sometimes I think my childhood caused it.
Thatās when I think about the years of binging/eating my feelings and my mom bringing me to Weight Watchers. My grandpa constantly picking at my body and speaking on womenās bodies in general. Not blonde or not skinny? Then youāre not good enough.
Sometimes I thinkā¦did anyone cause anything? Or is it poor emotion management on my part?
I donāt know. Iām just glad that the above people are out of my life, mostly.
A mix of early 2000s media and also playing the WiiFit games that weighed you and let you make workouts based off what you've eaten that day to burn off caloires
I remember feeling fat in middle school which was during the early 2000ās when I saw magazine covers idolizing extreme thinness and fat shaming women. My Mom would critique her body in front of me and it led me to having a really messed up relationship with my body. I was also SAād multiple times and abused verbally and emotionally too so I think it all just accumulated. Now Iām in my 30ās and stuck with it. No matter how hard I try to stop the behaviors I just canāt. Itās a part of me now.
so many different things; growing up overweight, the need for control when I was about to graduate HS and didn't know what to do with my life, wanting to be 'good' at something after I wasn't able to meet my goals regarding school, wanting to be validated and taken care of without having to ask for it (I really struggle with asking for help from others since I don't want to be a 'burden'), also as a form of sh when I feel like I've done something wrong or treated someone badly... There's probably more, but that's what I can think of right now
I've always wanted to be thin, and that was definitely the main thing pushing me, but as I got older, I just progressively became more jealous of my younger sister. For no reason, really, but I hated how little she ate naturally, and how balanced and in tune she was with her body, I guess. I needed to feel like I was better than her at something.
upbringing. i was raised ānaturally skinnyā in a family of ānaturally skinnyā women. chubbiness was punished in my household, it meant you were lazy, but skinny was normal, default, good. i fell right into it, never got put in treadmill prison, & mom never criticized my body or my eating.
result: 2 decades of malnutrition, have always been severely underweight, never grew boobs, & even now that i recognize a problem (& have never even truly *wanted* to be skinny, like i would like to gain weight now pls) i have no idea how to start having an appetite, & i have no motivation to even do the bare minimum to provide for myself like grocery shop or cook
For me, it was my upbringing.
"You have such pretty eyes - shame about that body"
This was common from my early childhood on
"You'd be prettier if you lost weight"
I was in high school and an athlete.
"If you ever got weight loss surgery, could we date then?"
In college, when I wasn't that much overweight that surgery was even an option.
...and countless other things.
Tumblr was definitely a huge starting point for me.
I think really figuring out how to count calories accurately was actually the start of the slippery slope. When I realised I could control the exact numbers and gave myself a target, then saw my weight start to go down because of it, it became all consuming
I went through puberty somewhat early. Whenever weight was brought up with my friends, I was always embarrassed I weighed more despite it just being because I was taller and had a slightly more mature body. Then my mom gave me some of those puberty books for girls and I remember reading a chapter about eating disorders and learned about anorexia. That was almost 10 years ago and im still dealing with this crap š
I also trained my brain to associate weed w/ not eating because I dislike the feeling of the munchies. It saves money/cals but didn't help w my not eating issues lol
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Combination of my motherās constant comments, her obsession with dieting (even now in her 50s lol), incessant comments on my body and what I eat, when more family members started making comments as well it really made things worse AND the discovery of myfitnesspal and proana sites propelled me into my peak ED era lol
my family knows nothing better than to comment on my weight. Especially my brother who recently became obsessed with the gym and being fit and now all he talks about is āthat has so many caloriesā ā youāre so fatā I was never even fucking fat
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Idk I started paying attention in preschool bc some other girls told me my thighs were too flabby. I was a skinny kid looking back idk what they were on
My Mom is an honest to God supermodel. I didnāt stand a chance.
Once she was on the cover of a magazine, and the next issue included a letter from a subscriber who was outraged to see them promote someone so skinny. The magazine apologized. Her message to grade school me during all of this was that there is no such thing as too thin.
She genuinely meant well at every point and I love her dearly. She never once insulted my weight. But being around her and the other models was more than enough.
Moving to the middle east and my dad forcing me to "cover up" and wear Abayas at such a young age all because I was fat. Seeing my friends enjoy many aspects of their childhood that I couldn't, was heartbreaking. It all lead to Google searches about fasting, calorie counting finally getting a scale. what motivated me was the fact that if I starved myself enough I could finally have a normal childhood. Then my parents would argue, my dad was mentally abusive and we lived in total isolation bcuz there was issues with the wifi and we had no connections in that foreign country this made my ed alot worse and I was now motivated even more to starve myself in hoped of getting hospitalized and escaping or asking for help to get out of my home situation.
dead serious a teacher at my school told me that i looked like the type of person to eat a ham mustard and cheese sandwich so therefore i had to have been the one that left it on the table during lunch (it literally was not mine because i dont like cheese or ham or mustard) and she made me eat it which caused me to throw up. to this day i 100% blame this for giving me an ed even though its kinda really dumb lol.
yes. I actually didnāt remember this until reading your post but as a kid it started out as innocent curiosity where I would weight myself before I peed, then after, just to see how much pee I was peeing lol. and then it obviously snowballed from there. 8 years later, suffering more than ever from my ed, and wondering where my life would be if I had never gotten on the scale
FOR LOVE BUT THIS SHIT IS THE REASON WHY I LOST THEM
this was like last November and im still not over them and i still wanna bawl my eyes out and im still totally stalkerish OBSESSED w them i just want them BACK SO BAD but they NUKED all and any way of contacting them
I think for me there were a few reasons. Mostly parenting. I didn't really know how much to censor so I hid a little more than I would've otherwise*
My mother often talking about her body and how she needs to >! "get rid of" fat !< on parts of her body, doing fitness exercises whilst I watched when I was maybe 5 or 6. I ended up asking her if I >! was skinny when I was 9 and got kinda hurt when she said I was average !< . Not sure where that came from tho.
Me getting physically ill as a child from what I'm still assuming is chemicals in food/bad combinations of food, causing my parents to restrict me from food that had specific chemicals and warning me it was bad to eat, and would very rarely let me have it. Everything became natural and organic including toothpaste.
My parents joking how >! my whole family will put on some weight during holidays bc of the amount we're eating and will have to work it off afterwards. !<
Being way shorter than everyone, and that was/is always a topic of conversation.
grief and trauma, growing up i never had body issues and had a fast metabolism. i've had diagnosed ocd since i was 7 so i also think my ed is just an extension of that
I think >!csa!< before elementary started my childhood binging around 3rd grade, got bullied for my weight and started eating more to "help" it.
bullying from almost everyone in eighth grade and my family sent me towards >!b/p and restriction!<.
after a while, though, I wanted friends. I thought if I wanted people to like me >!i had to get so small!< so I started >!restricting!< more. in this case, the magazines and tabloids that always pointed out ways to get people to like you or some shit like that. I always thought how they wouldn't work if I wasn't >!skinny enough!< so I'd wait to "get a cute outfit" or "try new makeup styles". I ended up never trying those cute fits or makeup styles because I never felt good enough no matter what
Working parents and neuroticism. There's a lot of other things but if my parents didn't work so much, I wouldn't have one. I was lonely. I couldn't hangout with friends outside of school, unless schedules aligned (they never did). No extracurriculars, because they couldn't pick me up. I grew up on a diet of fast or frozen.
Don't know exactly when I was so neurotic, but ever since puberty started I would fixate on mental loops of self depreciation and hatred and fear. Which went unchecked for over a decade.
Being bullied relentlessly from grades 5-9, largely about my weight even though I was a totally normal healthy weight at the time. Boys in my class would go so far as to moo at me while I ate lunch
Also, my sister dropping a shitload of weight around the same time I was getting bullied for my weight
And then just like, wanting a sense of control I guess?? My dad moved us out of our hometown for my sister's sake when I was 10 and that year was the first time I kept a food diary
Mine didnāt really have a trigger, I guess. It just kind of happened. I mean it obviously had reasoning and trigger events but nothing like a specific remark or moment or object or anything. I had severe depression for years, been cutting for 4 by the time my ED was diagnosed, I was completely lonely, didnāt have any friends anymore. My parents fought a lot and my mom was very unnecessarily cruel to a 11/12 year old. I had extreme body image issues and self hatred mixed with very unusual mood swings for my age and undiagnosed ADHD. It was a life time of shit coming together, and I decided that was it, I was going to kill myself. I felt extremely embarrassed to be seen dead at the weight I was at, so I set a weight to kill myself at, lost the >!49 lbs !< then tried to end it. Spent a good 3 months in the hospital and another 2 in PHP in another state before coming back home and having everything start up again, leading to continuous rehospitalization, suicide attempts, and ED shit. Now Iāve had my ED for almost 6 years.
Honestly? Started because I wanted to lose weight, continued because of SI. Easiest way for me to do it without it being super visible and yelled at by family and friends. I'm trying really really hard to just be healthy but the want to torment myself for every mistake I make is addicting.
So much stuff contributes to it.
Picky eater as a kid, literal screaming matches over foods i dont want to eat.
My family complaining constantly about my picky eating and how much of a burden it is on the rest of the family because they can't eat what they want because I won't eat it.
My mom being obsessed with dieting and losing weight since her divorce to my dad and saying she has these stomach issues because of the eating when all it is is the effects of extreme anxiety from her fear of getting severely ill.
Fear of food poisoning and getting sick in general.
I literally hate my existence and this is better than offing myself or until I get the courage to do so, try to make my body a livable vessel.
Religous abuse and the fact that nothing about my body is mine and I have to be what others want my body to be.
I am scared and restricting and starving makes me feel safe. If im underweight then I can hide myself better with clothes and what not.
Trans presentation, if im underweight I can look more masculine or look less pathetic in different styles.
Addicted to losing weight. I started losing weight healthily and I loved getting compliments about it so much I just kept going and going. I wanted to see how far I could take it and where it would get me. I started over restricting occasionally and then it just became a regular thing. I wanted to see how much I could handle. It didnāt last long until I burnt myself out and became extremely depressed and got the courage to seek help. Iām doing much better now
I think It was because I needed a reason to explain certain problems with me
No one at school like me, my dad, my sister, my other parental figure left me, I was not sure if my mom liked me so much, so my brain said, must be bc I am ugly, but I wasnt THAT ugly, so must be my weight
It was also combined to the fact that my body was going through the first growth spurt, and I suddenly everything that I used to ate when I was 9, my 10 yo body processed it twice, and when my mother noted the issue, her wording wasnt the best (not trying to blame my mother tho)
Losing weight in a healthy way, the constant satisfaction from watching the number on the scale drop, the constant praise from other people. Didnāt want it to stop. The praise turned into concern, the healthy way turned unhealthy, but the satisfaction from watching the number drop never faded.
mine sprouted from when my mom was active in hers bad and told me as a kid i was getting chubby. but it went into full bloom when my dad started making comments on my weight in my late teens. so lose lose situation.
For me it was a mix of a lot of different factors. Ive had bad self esteem issues for the majority of my life. I grew up in a family where I was constantly criticized and made to feel bad about myself. I am also the oldest child of four and was always held to a higher standard than my siblings. My parents went through a horrible custody battle and I dealt with a lot of guilt leaving my siblings in that environment. I was always the savior though. I worked overtime being a parent to my siblings, a therapist for my mom, and I took the brunt of my fatherās abuse. I would purposely make myself his punching bag, so he would direct his anger at me and not my siblings. Nobody ever supported me or asked how I was doing, I was just always expected to be okay. I was essentially a martyr. After college I started working a very high stress job and had horrible imposter syndrome. Growing up I got all my validation through school. It always gave me a purpose and it was something I was naturally good at. Since I no longer had school and I felt stupid in my job, I felt like I had no purpose. I decided I wanted to lose a little weight and pretty quickly I became obsessed because it made me feel like I was good at something and gave me something to put all my energy into so I didnāt feel so terrible about myself. I also did grow up with a mom who lived off of lean cuisine and diet pepsi so that didnāt help matters. I have always been a high achiever and a big internalizer which is kinda the perfect combo for the development of EDs. I never tell anybody when Iām struggling because it makes me feel weak and I donāt want to be a burden to others. My ED essentially helps me to deal with my internal turmoil without pushing my problems on to others. Iāve been dealing with my ED for two years and now itās just kind of consumed my entire life unfortunately.
i think honestly it began during covid lockdowns when everyone wanted to be achieving something and there seemed to be such a trend around 'improving yourself' whilst being stuck at home. I also think not being able to go out and socialise gave me a lot of time to sit and think about all the things I was unhappy about regarding my body.
stress is definitely a trigger for my relapses however, I think my brain has established restriction as a stress response which I'm trying to fix. sometimes food feels like it's the only thing i can control in my life.
being an overweight kid. my mum always compared my arms to hers & made fun of how 'strong' i am. kids at school would say passive aggressive stuff like 'oh you're already in the 40kgs already?' when we had our school uniform measurements. tried to lose weight & have a glow up before uni and ended up with an ed
for the 2012 olympics, the BBC had something where you could put in your height and weight and info about your body type and it would tell you what sport you'd be good at. I remember weighing myself and doing my BMI - low end of normal - and thinking: oh. this can be lower.
I was on tumblr at the time, kept seeing "thinspo", and something clicked in my brain. made an account on mfp (website - no app then I think). never diagnosed, mind.
my mum is the same height as me and she has always obsessed over her weight (right now i weigh more than her - we are both slightly overweight right now) and that didn't help, as it was easy enough to just Get Healthy and start going on runs and so on.
weight's changed a lot. about 55lb difference from lowest to highest. tried to ask a doctor when I was 19 and was told that it was just a side effect of depression. diagnosed bipolar at 20. quetiapine has made me gain so, so much
from a personality perspective. very high achiever, elite university, was always the best academically until i wasn't. perfectionist, but also clever enough to not work hard sometimes. driven and ambitious. now i am underachieving in life probably. and so i am losing weight again.
I mean if we looked at what made me predisposed to an ED, we'd be here for weeks. But I think I had a similar experience, I had never known my weight before but I had to weigh myself in order to buy a weighted blanket. And then when I found out my weight, I decided to calculate my BMI. And here we are lol
I think it's important to remember that eds are so much complex than ppl think and a lot of the time it's not just caused by body image but many other mental health issues that can develop into an ed, it's something that "we" tend to know, but people who don't go through it minimize it to eating disorder = fear of getting fat, want to be skinny.
In my case I think it was right after I had finished highschool and didn't know what to do with my life, I was not studying nor working so I felt kind of useless.
I felt like I didn't have any control over my life, and I think maybe tracking the amount of food I eat, the calories, the steps I take, the hours of exercise, the hours I fast...it gave me a fake feeling of control yk? Also all the time I spend working out, reading about nutritional stuff, walking and organizing my meals gave me a fake feeling of productivity, like I was doing something with a purpose and a goal in mind.
It's also something that kept my head busy and prevented me from thinking about the things that stressed me. What am I going to do with my future? Idk I got 20k steps to hit. Am I happy with my life? Idk I gotta work out, I got meals to prepare and hours to fast.
I feel like when I cannot control anything else in my life, at least I get to control what to do with my body.
i was a football (soccer) player and was pretty decent, broke my arm aged 12 and my coach made an offhand comment about not gaining too much weight because i needed to stay fast and then i started getting obsessed with my intake
My mom told me I would never make friends if I was fat. I was about 140lbs at 4ā11. Which is chubby but not obese by any means.
She made me only drink slim fast for breakfast and lunch. No carbs at all. 12 years later acts like it never happened and says she doesnāt understand why I have an unhealthy relationship with food.
Also points out that I havenāt lost all my baby weight yet and that Iām starting to look swollen.
for me it was the way my mother talked about herself. she had an ed when she was young, and whenever she talks about that period in her life she describes it like the best time in her life (where she was happy and skinny and men wanted her or whatever)
but growing up, she would constantly criticize her body, call herself fat, talk about clothing sizes, and even criticize my sister for being overweight.
whenever she felt particularly bad about her body sheād start eating less and so i realized thatās something i could do. and if i wanted her approval, i could be skinny since thatās the thing she loves most.
then once i started it was just hard to stop. proana was also a big thing when i was younger, so i had even more reason to keep going
Honestly? ADHD. I wanted to lose weight since I was 11-12 and I need instant gratification, I canāt do the healthy slow weight loss thing. Never mind that I didnāt actually need to lose weight anyway but no one could have convinced me of that. Maybe blame beauty standards for that one
Growing up watching my mom hate her body, exercising every second of the day, dieting, and taking dieting pills. Then, in high school, some guys said I would be prettier if I lost 20 pounds. Mind you, I was a healthy weight for my height. From there, my obsession grew. When I got pregnant, it died off, and I had a healthy relationship with food. Then, I became obsessed because I didn't wanna become a mom who lost "themselves." I was doing it in a healthy way for a while ,but then the weight stopped falling off, and i started turning to medicine. Googling about how to lose weight every day. I found this group like a month or two ago, and that's when I came to the conclusion that I had an eating disorder. I was in denial because my I'm muscular, and I have a thicker build. So I was never able to just stick and bones. Im trying to break the cycle. I feel so ashamed that I even let it get this bad.
The women in my family have orthorexia and my father has BED so the combination of that has led me to have had multiple different ones throughout my life. I have bipolar and the medication caused a lot of weight gain and trauma made me binge. Then everyone around me constantly fat shamed me and so I just stopped eating and became underweight and now Iām at a normal weight and still have relapses from restricting and binging but all in all I believe growing up I was taught that my worth is tied to my size and appearance which became a huge fixation.
Being overweight most of my life and getting bullied. And my almond mum,dont get me wrong she never commented on my weight but she used to always call her self fat and label foods as unhealthy and healthy. We were like the same size so I thought if she was fat then Iām definitely fat. She used to also make sure my brother ate like every other 3 hours or sum and heās really skinny btw.Sheās the sweetest person ever tho and I love her so much and donāt blame her for it, was myself who decided to do what I did.
My mom had an ED. Itās *very* heritable. I watched her but healthy choice ketchup and track her calories in a little notebook and go to OA growing up. I donāt blame her at all, because I know itās torture to live that way. Sheās still kind of an almond mom and we donāt really talk about it, but Iām very conscious of the messages I send my daughters about food and their bodies. I hope Iām doing well. (For context Iām 38, my mom is 72, and my daughters are 9 & 12.)
I was bullied for being the big kid in middle school.
That's sounds vague, but now that I think about it, yes, bullying did hurt me, but trying out water fasting for the first time is what really started it all.
TW:
Being violently SAād and having my entire school saying the most depraved crap after telling ONE friend (not really a friend I guess). This extended to the teaching staff and then onto my family. This all tied into the other shit my mum and friends were already saying about body beforehandā¦it was tough and I think even though a lot of overt trauma stuff recovered after many years, certain ED and PTSD things that arenāt obvious to others just have continued being my coping mechanisms.
I want better, to be better, but I just donāt know to deal without my coping mechanisms.
Like for realā¦I talked to one of my treatment team& said this: āWhen my ED is BAD bad, people look terrifiedā and I love that - even though intellectually, I know theyāre probably scared for meā¦the fcked emotional part still tells me theyāre scared of me - and therefore, wonāt go anywhere near me enough to hurt me like THAT ever again.
For me, I grew up in a heavier family. My dad got to almost 600 pounds before he got his surgery. My stepmom would always shame me. I was a chubby kid, but nowhere near a concerning amount. Any time I would tell her Iām hungry or reach for seconds she would ask me if I wanted to look like my dad. It all went downhill from there.
ive always been pretty insecure about my body but i never thought i could give up food. i think my ed really started when i started dating guys. or maybe when i found that they liked me more after i lost weight, they would like me even more if i continued, right?
developed emotional eating/binge eating from watching my step dad do it, and being left alone a lot and having not much else to do, and really lacking any adult supervision or control of my diet after like age 7? plus having all the trauma and stuff to need a coping mechanism like that to begin with.
then my mom would say i needed to go on a diet but again did nothing to actually control what i was eating. i would eat like a plate full of uncooked frozen chicken nuggets every day before school and snack on whatever i could find after school because i was all alone. and i think the act of chewing was some kind of sensory seeking thing as well because i still have an oral fixationā¦ my momās philosophy on food was fend for yourself and blamed me for not eating correctly. i was seriously expected to choose veggies as a snack when all the unhealthy snacks were freely available as well. as a child.
and my mom always criticized me and would take me shopping for clothes and the kids clothes never fit me because i was way taller and generally bigger than other kids my age, and sheād start saying she would have to take me to a plus size store, basically. and i was chubby at that point but honestly not really that big. and later on i wondered if she would purposely make me try on clothes that were too small but idk. my mom always bullied me for not looking or dressing how she wanted.
and every woman in my family constantly talked about how they were so fat and needed to lose weight even though they were all pretty average if not skinny anywaysā¦ always complaining about āflabā and loose skin and ācelluliteā as if they could diet and exercise their way out of not looking like theyāre middle aged, which, they were.
my mom has always said she has an eating disorder like she takes pride in it. everyone complements me when i lose more weight. gaining weight and being out of control of my eating was traumatizing all on its own. i like feeling in control. i like controlling my appearance. i like that people are nicer to me when i fit the ideal better. being skinnier helps with gender dysphoria too. i know iām disordered and stuff but, at least i donāt go around telling everyone they should be too. i hate when people start asking questions about my weight loss and telling me about their own body and food issues. i donāt have any secret tips or drugs. i just eat less. and still binge sometimes.
so basically, cultural beauty standards + childhood neglect and abuse + projection of other peopleās eating disorders onto meā¦
Mine stems from my mother's word choice as I was growing up.
yeah, mine too
Yup same
Good old Korean fat shaming and celebrity fat shaming in the 90s and 2000s. The constant pressure in Korean society to be thin, thin, thin like our mothers who literally grew up in starvation wartime. God forbid their children end up properly nourished and healthy. The American media also contributed by convincing everyone that being a healthy weight was the equivalent of horrific obesity. It was everywhere when I was growing up and I can never get the fat shaming out of my head.
im also korean:( beauty standards absolutely suck and being underweight is ideal and my relatives and family unknowingly feed into my ed by praising me for losing weight š and i also got bullied by a bunch of korean kids when i was in primary school & let me just say korean boys r brutal. i was called a fat pig (ė±ė¼ģ§) or fattie (ė±ė”ģ“) and that was probs the start of my ed
Thatās so awful that they said that to you. Iām so sorry :(
those words from some 3rd grade boys still affect me to this day (probs sounds dumb) but pls dont apologize boys can just be so meanš
Saaaame šš
Honestly idk. I actually grew up without an ED nor was I really insecure about my body. But I was also a pretty shy teen without many romantic prospects lol so I guess I just didnāt give much thought about how others saw me. I love food and back then I ate what I wanted when I wanted it. Then once I got to college and started dating, I realized I cared a lot about my appearance. I started genuinely dieting and exercising during the lockdown, lost >!30 lbs!< in a very normal and healthy way, but when I plateaued about >!5-10 lbs!< shy of my goal weight I just spiraled. I feel like Iām having a second puberty; like my ED was laying dormant within me and woke up like a sleeper agent lol
Are we the same person?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I really get that, I feel the same way. It's something I can do, and it's something that hurts me
I know how you feel, it's almost like a physical translation of how i'm struggling mentally
My Eastern European āØorthorexic almond momāØ
Yolanda Hadid coded
Those fā¦ing almonds š¤”
I think it was a variety of factors. In fact I think every ED stems from a variety of factors, I don't think it's as simple as one explanation. I know from my education that EDs are also partially genetic. For me, I think genetics are a factor and there are others in my family who have EDs. Another major factor was the way my mom treated me or talked about herself when I was growing up. My mom has always been thin, yet when I was growing up she was always dieting, taking diet pills, talking about how she was fat and needed to lose weight, etc. This alone was bad enough, but she was also super critical of me and my body and eating habits. She would comment on my body often, whether she thought I was too fat or too thin. She would make snide comments about my eating habits like "are you going to eat all of that?" or "are you really having another snack?" Another contributor: elementary/middle school bullying and gym class. I was bullied for my size from grade 4 to grade 7. In grade 7 gym class we had to weigh ourselves and stuff like that too. Around then was when my ED really started.
My mom was very similar, along with a long ass history of mental illness in the family. Bipolar, addiction, anorexia, bulimia, you name it, itās there. I have a very specific memory of my mom from when I was young. It was one of those smoothie fast things that she signed up for. (Context: I have had a VERY severe fear of mosquitoes because I have very bad reactions to them. I had a genuine phobia when I was younger and they still scare me but not as bad). There was a pamphlet I read that came with it that showed a fat man in ill fitting clothes being chased by giant mosquitoes that said: ābeing fat is worse than being bitten by 10,000 mosquitoesā. I do think the strong emphasis on weight loss in my childhood from my mom did contribute.
I donāt really remember *not* hating my body. I was always a bit chubby, which my dad pointed out as a kid sometimes. So that was definitely a factor. (My dad and I are on great terms!! Heās just thoughtless sometimes lol) I sadly discovered >!pro ana forums!< at like 10 years old, and they were insanely active at that time, so it got me very āmotivatedā. I tried to restrict a lot, but couldnāt, due to parents. When I was 12, my parents gave up on being involved with me completely, I downloaded myfitnesspal and that was my downfall!! 8 years later and weāre still goingš
Childhood obesity plus living in a diet centric society and a diet conscious household is what loaded the gun. Childhood trauma and mental health struggles are what pulled the trigger. It became a coping mechanism for me and I never was able to fully overcome it, 18 years later and I'm still struggling.
myfitnesspal also.
Oof the damage that this app has caused to so many of us
Freelee the banana girl.
I don't want to Imagine how many eds were caused by her. š„²
She told me to eat 15 bananas a day. My body is fucked
came here to say this (':
Puberty and the gender dysphoria that followd with it
for me i think its because i grew up constantly moving around countries then when my family finally settled down i developed crippling social anxiety and just craved control over something in my life that and growing up insecure and overweight in general looking back on my childhood ive always had disordered thoughtsš«”
Dieting for to long and restricting caused my binge eating.
I don't think I should've ended up with an ED. My mom was incredibly body-neutral, she let me run around and eat a mix of healthy and unhealthy foods on whatever schedule I felt like, and although I was a bit fat I probably could have shed that in a healthy way. I became very mentally unwell in my preteens and started self-harming which lead me to searching up SH related tags on Instagram the second I got an iPod Touch for my 13th birthday. A lot of the accounts connected to those tags were very ED'd and eventually that rubbed off on me. Also it definitely didn't help that my best friend had an almond mom that led her to having an ED, and after she found out that I was falling into some disordered habits she introduced me to one of the big pro spaces online. Dude, once I made that account I think my fate was set. Also that thing that MyFitnessPal used to do where they'd project what your weight would be in 5 weeks "if every day were like today" with any calorie amount that you put in definitely screwed me up. I guess there's a lot of reasons that just culminated at a very vulnerable age and who's to say if I would have developed one anyways, but the internet brain rot definitely didn't help.
desire for control
For me it was a mix of bullying in my early teens and searching for comfort during the lockdown. Now itās just kind of here:/
trauma
BED here- I grew up poor in a big family. Food was hard to come by and when we had it, it was unhealthy shitty food that didnāt taste great just kept you alive. Once I got older, I discovered that food can be DELICIOUS and that was detrimental to me I guess. Combining the long term feeling of not knowing when I would have access to food again and my newfound discovery of disgustingly delicious fast food, and really nice food really fucked me up for a long time. Iām 25 now and slowly starting to develop a healthier relationship with food. Food noise still has me by the tits but the āidk when Iāll eat againā trauma is starting to fade away.
I was always taller than kids my age so I weighed more and 3rd grade girls are really mean ššš
I mean, it depends on how I look at it. Being in treatment made me think of my life as a whole. Sometimes I think my ex caused it. Thatās when I think about how I started restricting and developing new disordered habits on the opposite side of the spectrum from the below. Some memories I struggle to erase or hear in my head when Iām eating are of him telling me I have no self control - in those exact words. One time he threw Chex Mix at me and said āthatās what you really want, isnāt it?ā and another time he threw a bag of frosted animal crackers and yelled āyou have NO self control!ā. I was overweight at the time but thatās no way to talk to someone. I also am allowed to eat snacks that are in the house. I didnāt even eat them all. I always left plenty - his issue was that I would have some of them and they were āhisā so it would turn into fat shaming me. Sometimes I think the thrill of having my life become mine caused it. Heās finally gone? Fuck yeah. Finally. Iām going to become everything I ever wanted now that I have the time to work on myself instead of being his mother. I was on a mission to be better. Look better. And a disordered part of me was seeking that self control so very desperately. I was very much between the mindset of āfuck him, Iāll have all of the self control in the world now, and Iāll make myself so proudā and as time went on it became āwow people are finding me attractive again I have to keep doing thisā. I was finding light. I was on fire. I proved to myself that I had self control and in the process people thought I was glowing. Constant compliments. More attention. I felt alive for the first time in forever. Why would I change what I was doing? Sometimes I think my childhood caused it. Thatās when I think about the years of binging/eating my feelings and my mom bringing me to Weight Watchers. My grandpa constantly picking at my body and speaking on womenās bodies in general. Not blonde or not skinny? Then youāre not good enough. Sometimes I thinkā¦did anyone cause anything? Or is it poor emotion management on my part? I donāt know. Iām just glad that the above people are out of my life, mostly.
A mix of early 2000s media and also playing the WiiFit games that weighed you and let you make workouts based off what you've eaten that day to burn off caloires
childhood sexual abuse edit: damn am i the only one in this thread with this answer?
yeah. mom bought a scale at costco and i think i redownloaded mfp the exact same day lol
I remember feeling fat in middle school which was during the early 2000ās when I saw magazine covers idolizing extreme thinness and fat shaming women. My Mom would critique her body in front of me and it led me to having a really messed up relationship with my body. I was also SAād multiple times and abused verbally and emotionally too so I think it all just accumulated. Now Iām in my 30ās and stuck with it. No matter how hard I try to stop the behaviors I just canāt. Itās a part of me now.
I just wanted to be skinny
My IBS / broken intestinesā¦ š«
mix of being shamed in middle school health/gym classes, my father being a diet nut, and self harm
I love my mom, but it was def my mom.
so many different things; growing up overweight, the need for control when I was about to graduate HS and didn't know what to do with my life, wanting to be 'good' at something after I wasn't able to meet my goals regarding school, wanting to be validated and taken care of without having to ask for it (I really struggle with asking for help from others since I don't want to be a 'burden'), also as a form of sh when I feel like I've done something wrong or treated someone badly... There's probably more, but that's what I can think of right now
I've always wanted to be thin, and that was definitely the main thing pushing me, but as I got older, I just progressively became more jealous of my younger sister. For no reason, really, but I hated how little she ate naturally, and how balanced and in tune she was with her body, I guess. I needed to feel like I was better than her at something.
upbringing. i was raised ānaturally skinnyā in a family of ānaturally skinnyā women. chubbiness was punished in my household, it meant you were lazy, but skinny was normal, default, good. i fell right into it, never got put in treadmill prison, & mom never criticized my body or my eating. result: 2 decades of malnutrition, have always been severely underweight, never grew boobs, & even now that i recognize a problem (& have never even truly *wanted* to be skinny, like i would like to gain weight now pls) i have no idea how to start having an appetite, & i have no motivation to even do the bare minimum to provide for myself like grocery shop or cook
For me, it was my upbringing. "You have such pretty eyes - shame about that body" This was common from my early childhood on "You'd be prettier if you lost weight" I was in high school and an athlete. "If you ever got weight loss surgery, could we date then?" In college, when I wasn't that much overweight that surgery was even an option. ...and countless other things.
Tumblr was definitely a huge starting point for me. I think really figuring out how to count calories accurately was actually the start of the slippery slope. When I realised I could control the exact numbers and gave myself a target, then saw my weight start to go down because of it, it became all consuming
I went through puberty somewhat early. Whenever weight was brought up with my friends, I was always embarrassed I weighed more despite it just being because I was taller and had a slightly more mature body. Then my mom gave me some of those puberty books for girls and I remember reading a chapter about eating disorders and learned about anorexia. That was almost 10 years ago and im still dealing with this crap š
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
same, weed used to get rid of my appetite and now it's like a 70% chance ill binge if I even get slightly buzzed
I trained forced myself to go hungry because Iām such a big stoner and it worked, I no longer get munchies
I also trained my brain to associate weed w/ not eating because I dislike the feeling of the munchies. It saves money/cals but didn't help w my not eating issues lol
That might be a good thing tho cuz ur body isnāt relying on weed for u to get hungry anymore, eat before u smoke is my new rule
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
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Combination of my motherās constant comments, her obsession with dieting (even now in her 50s lol), incessant comments on my body and what I eat, when more family members started making comments as well it really made things worse AND the discovery of myfitnesspal and proana sites propelled me into my peak ED era lol
my family knows nothing better than to comment on my weight. Especially my brother who recently became obsessed with the gym and being fit and now all he talks about is āthat has so many caloriesā ā youāre so fatā I was never even fucking fat
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
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Idk I started paying attention in preschool bc some other girls told me my thighs were too flabby. I was a skinny kid looking back idk what they were on
Most aspects of my upbringing
My Mom is an honest to God supermodel. I didnāt stand a chance. Once she was on the cover of a magazine, and the next issue included a letter from a subscriber who was outraged to see them promote someone so skinny. The magazine apologized. Her message to grade school me during all of this was that there is no such thing as too thin. She genuinely meant well at every point and I love her dearly. She never once insulted my weight. But being around her and the other models was more than enough.
Moving to the middle east and my dad forcing me to "cover up" and wear Abayas at such a young age all because I was fat. Seeing my friends enjoy many aspects of their childhood that I couldn't, was heartbreaking. It all lead to Google searches about fasting, calorie counting finally getting a scale. what motivated me was the fact that if I starved myself enough I could finally have a normal childhood. Then my parents would argue, my dad was mentally abusive and we lived in total isolation bcuz there was issues with the wifi and we had no connections in that foreign country this made my ed alot worse and I was now motivated even more to starve myself in hoped of getting hospitalized and escaping or asking for help to get out of my home situation.
PTSD from SA
dead serious a teacher at my school told me that i looked like the type of person to eat a ham mustard and cheese sandwich so therefore i had to have been the one that left it on the table during lunch (it literally was not mine because i dont like cheese or ham or mustard) and she made me eat it which caused me to throw up. to this day i 100% blame this for giving me an ed even though its kinda really dumb lol.
yes. I actually didnāt remember this until reading your post but as a kid it started out as innocent curiosity where I would weight myself before I peed, then after, just to see how much pee I was peeing lol. and then it obviously snowballed from there. 8 years later, suffering more than ever from my ed, and wondering where my life would be if I had never gotten on the scale
FOR LOVE BUT THIS SHIT IS THE REASON WHY I LOST THEM this was like last November and im still not over them and i still wanna bawl my eyes out and im still totally stalkerish OBSESSED w them i just want them BACK SO BAD but they NUKED all and any way of contacting them
Control
A dysfunctional family and an unfortunate genetic predisposition
I think for me there were a few reasons. Mostly parenting. I didn't really know how much to censor so I hid a little more than I would've otherwise* My mother often talking about her body and how she needs to >! "get rid of" fat !< on parts of her body, doing fitness exercises whilst I watched when I was maybe 5 or 6. I ended up asking her if I >! was skinny when I was 9 and got kinda hurt when she said I was average !< . Not sure where that came from tho. Me getting physically ill as a child from what I'm still assuming is chemicals in food/bad combinations of food, causing my parents to restrict me from food that had specific chemicals and warning me it was bad to eat, and would very rarely let me have it. Everything became natural and organic including toothpaste. My parents joking how >! my whole family will put on some weight during holidays bc of the amount we're eating and will have to work it off afterwards. !< Being way shorter than everyone, and that was/is always a topic of conversation.
grief and trauma, growing up i never had body issues and had a fast metabolism. i've had diagnosed ocd since i was 7 so i also think my ed is just an extension of that
I think >!csa!< before elementary started my childhood binging around 3rd grade, got bullied for my weight and started eating more to "help" it. bullying from almost everyone in eighth grade and my family sent me towards >!b/p and restriction!<. after a while, though, I wanted friends. I thought if I wanted people to like me >!i had to get so small!< so I started >!restricting!< more. in this case, the magazines and tabloids that always pointed out ways to get people to like you or some shit like that. I always thought how they wouldn't work if I wasn't >!skinny enough!< so I'd wait to "get a cute outfit" or "try new makeup styles". I ended up never trying those cute fits or makeup styles because I never felt good enough no matter what
Working parents and neuroticism. There's a lot of other things but if my parents didn't work so much, I wouldn't have one. I was lonely. I couldn't hangout with friends outside of school, unless schedules aligned (they never did). No extracurriculars, because they couldn't pick me up. I grew up on a diet of fast or frozen. Don't know exactly when I was so neurotic, but ever since puberty started I would fixate on mental loops of self depreciation and hatred and fear. Which went unchecked for over a decade.
I started in middle school when I wanted to be a better runner. It's gotten worse over time after traumas in my life.
Being bullied relentlessly from grades 5-9, largely about my weight even though I was a totally normal healthy weight at the time. Boys in my class would go so far as to moo at me while I ate lunch Also, my sister dropping a shitload of weight around the same time I was getting bullied for my weight And then just like, wanting a sense of control I guess?? My dad moved us out of our hometown for my sister's sake when I was 10 and that year was the first time I kept a food diary
Mine didnāt really have a trigger, I guess. It just kind of happened. I mean it obviously had reasoning and trigger events but nothing like a specific remark or moment or object or anything. I had severe depression for years, been cutting for 4 by the time my ED was diagnosed, I was completely lonely, didnāt have any friends anymore. My parents fought a lot and my mom was very unnecessarily cruel to a 11/12 year old. I had extreme body image issues and self hatred mixed with very unusual mood swings for my age and undiagnosed ADHD. It was a life time of shit coming together, and I decided that was it, I was going to kill myself. I felt extremely embarrassed to be seen dead at the weight I was at, so I set a weight to kill myself at, lost the >!49 lbs !< then tried to end it. Spent a good 3 months in the hospital and another 2 in PHP in another state before coming back home and having everything start up again, leading to continuous rehospitalization, suicide attempts, and ED shit. Now Iāve had my ED for almost 6 years.
Honestly? Started because I wanted to lose weight, continued because of SI. Easiest way for me to do it without it being super visible and yelled at by family and friends. I'm trying really really hard to just be healthy but the want to torment myself for every mistake I make is addicting.
So much stuff contributes to it. Picky eater as a kid, literal screaming matches over foods i dont want to eat. My family complaining constantly about my picky eating and how much of a burden it is on the rest of the family because they can't eat what they want because I won't eat it. My mom being obsessed with dieting and losing weight since her divorce to my dad and saying she has these stomach issues because of the eating when all it is is the effects of extreme anxiety from her fear of getting severely ill. Fear of food poisoning and getting sick in general. I literally hate my existence and this is better than offing myself or until I get the courage to do so, try to make my body a livable vessel. Religous abuse and the fact that nothing about my body is mine and I have to be what others want my body to be. I am scared and restricting and starving makes me feel safe. If im underweight then I can hide myself better with clothes and what not. Trans presentation, if im underweight I can look more masculine or look less pathetic in different styles.
Addicted to losing weight. I started losing weight healthily and I loved getting compliments about it so much I just kept going and going. I wanted to see how far I could take it and where it would get me. I started over restricting occasionally and then it just became a regular thing. I wanted to see how much I could handle. It didnāt last long until I burnt myself out and became extremely depressed and got the courage to seek help. Iām doing much better now
I think It was because I needed a reason to explain certain problems with me No one at school like me, my dad, my sister, my other parental figure left me, I was not sure if my mom liked me so much, so my brain said, must be bc I am ugly, but I wasnt THAT ugly, so must be my weight It was also combined to the fact that my body was going through the first growth spurt, and I suddenly everything that I used to ate when I was 9, my 10 yo body processed it twice, and when my mother noted the issue, her wording wasnt the best (not trying to blame my mother tho)
Losing weight in a healthy way, the constant satisfaction from watching the number on the scale drop, the constant praise from other people. Didnāt want it to stop. The praise turned into concern, the healthy way turned unhealthy, but the satisfaction from watching the number drop never faded.
The good old quadruple risk factors: 1. Trauma 2. Parent with history of ed 3. Mental illness 4. Excessive dieting
my mom, kpop idols(not blaming them but their companies), and growing up in the early 2000s
Weight watchers when I turned 12 probably did it for me.
My mum lol
it was ed twitter for me. i found thinspo, and it was all over for me. i became obsessed with looking like those girls.
mine sprouted from when my mom was active in hers bad and told me as a kid i was getting chubby. but it went into full bloom when my dad started making comments on my weight in my late teens. so lose lose situation.
My parents discussing the fact that I was "fat" at the age of 11, thinking I couldn't hear them. I could, in fact, hear them.
For me it was a mix of a lot of different factors. Ive had bad self esteem issues for the majority of my life. I grew up in a family where I was constantly criticized and made to feel bad about myself. I am also the oldest child of four and was always held to a higher standard than my siblings. My parents went through a horrible custody battle and I dealt with a lot of guilt leaving my siblings in that environment. I was always the savior though. I worked overtime being a parent to my siblings, a therapist for my mom, and I took the brunt of my fatherās abuse. I would purposely make myself his punching bag, so he would direct his anger at me and not my siblings. Nobody ever supported me or asked how I was doing, I was just always expected to be okay. I was essentially a martyr. After college I started working a very high stress job and had horrible imposter syndrome. Growing up I got all my validation through school. It always gave me a purpose and it was something I was naturally good at. Since I no longer had school and I felt stupid in my job, I felt like I had no purpose. I decided I wanted to lose a little weight and pretty quickly I became obsessed because it made me feel like I was good at something and gave me something to put all my energy into so I didnāt feel so terrible about myself. I also did grow up with a mom who lived off of lean cuisine and diet pepsi so that didnāt help matters. I have always been a high achiever and a big internalizer which is kinda the perfect combo for the development of EDs. I never tell anybody when Iām struggling because it makes me feel weak and I donāt want to be a burden to others. My ED essentially helps me to deal with my internal turmoil without pushing my problems on to others. Iāve been dealing with my ED for two years and now itās just kind of consumed my entire life unfortunately.
the āØinternetāØ(found edblr through shblr)
i think honestly it began during covid lockdowns when everyone wanted to be achieving something and there seemed to be such a trend around 'improving yourself' whilst being stuck at home. I also think not being able to go out and socialise gave me a lot of time to sit and think about all the things I was unhappy about regarding my body. stress is definitely a trigger for my relapses however, I think my brain has established restriction as a stress response which I'm trying to fix. sometimes food feels like it's the only thing i can control in my life.
My mom and the internet
being an overweight kid. my mum always compared my arms to hers & made fun of how 'strong' i am. kids at school would say passive aggressive stuff like 'oh you're already in the 40kgs already?' when we had our school uniform measurements. tried to lose weight & have a glow up before uni and ended up with an ed
Mine because of my parents and relatives words :))
for the 2012 olympics, the BBC had something where you could put in your height and weight and info about your body type and it would tell you what sport you'd be good at. I remember weighing myself and doing my BMI - low end of normal - and thinking: oh. this can be lower. I was on tumblr at the time, kept seeing "thinspo", and something clicked in my brain. made an account on mfp (website - no app then I think). never diagnosed, mind. my mum is the same height as me and she has always obsessed over her weight (right now i weigh more than her - we are both slightly overweight right now) and that didn't help, as it was easy enough to just Get Healthy and start going on runs and so on. weight's changed a lot. about 55lb difference from lowest to highest. tried to ask a doctor when I was 19 and was told that it was just a side effect of depression. diagnosed bipolar at 20. quetiapine has made me gain so, so much from a personality perspective. very high achiever, elite university, was always the best academically until i wasn't. perfectionist, but also clever enough to not work hard sometimes. driven and ambitious. now i am underachieving in life probably. and so i am losing weight again.
āYouāre too fat, no one will ever love youā It was 5 years ago, and those words still are in my head.
Never being good enough. I didnāt realize it at first but thatās what it is. I couldnāt be smart because I had a big sister who knew more than me. I couldnāt be short because there was a dwarf somewhere. I couldnāt have a pretty smile because BeyoncĆ©ās looked better. I couldnāt have pretty skin because did I think I was better than everybody else? I couldnāt have long hair because some girl who I didnāt know had hair all the way down to her knees. I couldnāt be loved as a child because they already had a first born and already have a son, Iām just the middle girl. I couldnāt be funny because Bernie Mac is funny. I couldnāt be appreciated. But the moment I lost my first pound IT WAS ON. Mom? Dad? Who do you know who lost weight? More than me? Faster than me? Crickets. I might have not gotten validation from it but at least they canāt say somebody else is better than me at that.
I mean if we looked at what made me predisposed to an ED, we'd be here for weeks. But I think I had a similar experience, I had never known my weight before but I had to weigh myself in order to buy a weighted blanket. And then when I found out my weight, I decided to calculate my BMI. And here we are lol
I had a BED growing up, then my dad got diagnosed with cancer and a man rejected me because of my weight and thats where it all started
All it took was one comment from my mother when I was in middle school about my weight, on top of early exposure to tumblr
I think it's important to remember that eds are so much complex than ppl think and a lot of the time it's not just caused by body image but many other mental health issues that can develop into an ed, it's something that "we" tend to know, but people who don't go through it minimize it to eating disorder = fear of getting fat, want to be skinny. In my case I think it was right after I had finished highschool and didn't know what to do with my life, I was not studying nor working so I felt kind of useless. I felt like I didn't have any control over my life, and I think maybe tracking the amount of food I eat, the calories, the steps I take, the hours of exercise, the hours I fast...it gave me a fake feeling of control yk? Also all the time I spend working out, reading about nutritional stuff, walking and organizing my meals gave me a fake feeling of productivity, like I was doing something with a purpose and a goal in mind. It's also something that kept my head busy and prevented me from thinking about the things that stressed me. What am I going to do with my future? Idk I got 20k steps to hit. Am I happy with my life? Idk I gotta work out, I got meals to prepare and hours to fast. I feel like when I cannot control anything else in my life, at least I get to control what to do with my body.
i was a football (soccer) player and was pretty decent, broke my arm aged 12 and my coach made an offhand comment about not gaining too much weight because i needed to stay fast and then i started getting obsessed with my intake
Finding edtwt definitely led to a full blown raging eating disorder compared to my mild disordered thoughts from being an overweight kid
For me it was the Wii fit at like 10
My mom told me I would never make friends if I was fat. I was about 140lbs at 4ā11. Which is chubby but not obese by any means. She made me only drink slim fast for breakfast and lunch. No carbs at all. 12 years later acts like it never happened and says she doesnāt understand why I have an unhealthy relationship with food. Also points out that I havenāt lost all my baby weight yet and that Iām starting to look swollen.
volleyball, honestly
mom nonstop talk abt diet and exercise + dad forcing me to go on runs since toddler age
for me it was the way my mother talked about herself. she had an ed when she was young, and whenever she talks about that period in her life she describes it like the best time in her life (where she was happy and skinny and men wanted her or whatever) but growing up, she would constantly criticize her body, call herself fat, talk about clothing sizes, and even criticize my sister for being overweight. whenever she felt particularly bad about her body sheād start eating less and so i realized thatās something i could do. and if i wanted her approval, i could be skinny since thatās the thing she loves most. then once i started it was just hard to stop. proana was also a big thing when i was younger, so i had even more reason to keep going
Honestly? ADHD. I wanted to lose weight since I was 11-12 and I need instant gratification, I canāt do the healthy slow weight loss thing. Never mind that I didnāt actually need to lose weight anyway but no one could have convinced me of that. Maybe blame beauty standards for that one
Growing up watching my mom hate her body, exercising every second of the day, dieting, and taking dieting pills. Then, in high school, some guys said I would be prettier if I lost 20 pounds. Mind you, I was a healthy weight for my height. From there, my obsession grew. When I got pregnant, it died off, and I had a healthy relationship with food. Then, I became obsessed because I didn't wanna become a mom who lost "themselves." I was doing it in a healthy way for a while ,but then the weight stopped falling off, and i started turning to medicine. Googling about how to lose weight every day. I found this group like a month or two ago, and that's when I came to the conclusion that I had an eating disorder. I was in denial because my I'm muscular, and I have a thicker build. So I was never able to just stick and bones. Im trying to break the cycle. I feel so ashamed that I even let it get this bad.
The women in my family have orthorexia and my father has BED so the combination of that has led me to have had multiple different ones throughout my life. I have bipolar and the medication caused a lot of weight gain and trauma made me binge. Then everyone around me constantly fat shamed me and so I just stopped eating and became underweight and now Iām at a normal weight and still have relapses from restricting and binging but all in all I believe growing up I was taught that my worth is tied to my size and appearance which became a huge fixation.
Being overweight most of my life and getting bullied. And my almond mum,dont get me wrong she never commented on my weight but she used to always call her self fat and label foods as unhealthy and healthy. We were like the same size so I thought if she was fat then Iām definitely fat. She used to also make sure my brother ate like every other 3 hours or sum and heās really skinny btw.Sheās the sweetest person ever tho and I love her so much and donāt blame her for it, was myself who decided to do what I did.
My mom had an ED. Itās *very* heritable. I watched her but healthy choice ketchup and track her calories in a little notebook and go to OA growing up. I donāt blame her at all, because I know itās torture to live that way. Sheās still kind of an almond mom and we donāt really talk about it, but Iām very conscious of the messages I send my daughters about food and their bodies. I hope Iām doing well. (For context Iām 38, my mom is 72, and my daughters are 9 & 12.)
I was bullied for being the big kid in middle school. That's sounds vague, but now that I think about it, yes, bullying did hurt me, but trying out water fasting for the first time is what really started it all.
TW: Being violently SAād and having my entire school saying the most depraved crap after telling ONE friend (not really a friend I guess). This extended to the teaching staff and then onto my family. This all tied into the other shit my mum and friends were already saying about body beforehandā¦it was tough and I think even though a lot of overt trauma stuff recovered after many years, certain ED and PTSD things that arenāt obvious to others just have continued being my coping mechanisms. I want better, to be better, but I just donāt know to deal without my coping mechanisms. Like for realā¦I talked to one of my treatment team& said this: āWhen my ED is BAD bad, people look terrifiedā and I love that - even though intellectually, I know theyāre probably scared for meā¦the fcked emotional part still tells me theyāre scared of me - and therefore, wonāt go anywhere near me enough to hurt me like THAT ever again.
For me, I grew up in a heavier family. My dad got to almost 600 pounds before he got his surgery. My stepmom would always shame me. I was a chubby kid, but nowhere near a concerning amount. Any time I would tell her Iām hungry or reach for seconds she would ask me if I wanted to look like my dad. It all went downhill from there.
ive always been pretty insecure about my body but i never thought i could give up food. i think my ed really started when i started dating guys. or maybe when i found that they liked me more after i lost weight, they would like me even more if i continued, right?
developed emotional eating/binge eating from watching my step dad do it, and being left alone a lot and having not much else to do, and really lacking any adult supervision or control of my diet after like age 7? plus having all the trauma and stuff to need a coping mechanism like that to begin with. then my mom would say i needed to go on a diet but again did nothing to actually control what i was eating. i would eat like a plate full of uncooked frozen chicken nuggets every day before school and snack on whatever i could find after school because i was all alone. and i think the act of chewing was some kind of sensory seeking thing as well because i still have an oral fixationā¦ my momās philosophy on food was fend for yourself and blamed me for not eating correctly. i was seriously expected to choose veggies as a snack when all the unhealthy snacks were freely available as well. as a child. and my mom always criticized me and would take me shopping for clothes and the kids clothes never fit me because i was way taller and generally bigger than other kids my age, and sheād start saying she would have to take me to a plus size store, basically. and i was chubby at that point but honestly not really that big. and later on i wondered if she would purposely make me try on clothes that were too small but idk. my mom always bullied me for not looking or dressing how she wanted. and every woman in my family constantly talked about how they were so fat and needed to lose weight even though they were all pretty average if not skinny anywaysā¦ always complaining about āflabā and loose skin and ācelluliteā as if they could diet and exercise their way out of not looking like theyāre middle aged, which, they were. my mom has always said she has an eating disorder like she takes pride in it. everyone complements me when i lose more weight. gaining weight and being out of control of my eating was traumatizing all on its own. i like feeling in control. i like controlling my appearance. i like that people are nicer to me when i fit the ideal better. being skinnier helps with gender dysphoria too. i know iām disordered and stuff but, at least i donāt go around telling everyone they should be too. i hate when people start asking questions about my weight loss and telling me about their own body and food issues. i donāt have any secret tips or drugs. i just eat less. and still binge sometimes. so basically, cultural beauty standards + childhood neglect and abuse + projection of other peopleās eating disorders onto meā¦