Introduce yourself to the 7 Cups Eating Disorder Community!

Hi all,

I've always had issues with food. I can remember being little and sneaking candy. But things really got bad when my mom married my step dad. He worked construction, and I was about 8 years old. My mom would make my dinner plate for me and I was ok with how things were in my home (other than the candy), but when my now dad started eating with us she would always make suck a big deal of how much he ate. She showered him with food an attention. He also didn't have a good concept of how much a little girl my age at 8 could eat, so he would over fill my plate and then I had to eat it all. It became a daily ritual at dinner where I would eat until I felt I was going to die and it continued like this for years. I started sneaking food and becoming obsessed. As a latchkey kid I would stuff myself with as much as possible before one of my parents got home. Later in college I began throwing up afterwards, but that is not a frequent pattern for me. I'm trying to be more mindful of my eating and intentional and have made some good progress to date. Now I've discovered 7cups and I am looking forward to continuing my journey and learning. Thank you for reading.

Hellomelloo, my name is Kira.

I don't even know anymore, to be blunt. I've never gotten far into ana/mia because my parents are quick to see, but it's been coming back after it had gotten really bad for a couple of days. What scares me is that I can't tell them, because they've specifically said that they'd get mad if I relapsed, because "I'm smarter than that." But what scares me more is that I'm planning a fast when my mom, the parent who notices a lot more, goes away for a few days on a business trip. I don't know if that's what I want or not, but I feel like a failure if I can't complete at least one fast. Not to mention, school is getting back in soon, and I'm afraid my friends will notice that I'm not eating lunch. Bottom line, I'm afraid of a lot of things, mainly the future.

hi!! uh my name is beth and im new to this whole "getting help" thing so be patient :) anyway i found out that i had an eating disorder about like 4 or 5 months ago i just started skipping meals and not eating lunch or dinner or even breakfast. no one really knows about it except my friend and i kinda regret telling her although its nice to have someone know about it. i have a weird thing with reactions and talking to people, like i trust my parents 100% but i cant talk to them and get help. it really sucks, having this thing but i got used to it after awhile. i also have social anxiety and depression so uh yeah. others have it worse but my life kinda sucks too. i kinda want to focus on the parts of me that arent hating myself so heres some facts about me :)

--i dont like using capital letters

--my favourite colour is yellow

--i say mum instead of mom because i can

--i say bloody hell quite alot so im trying to cut down on that

--same thing with lmao

--i really really really realllllllyyyyyyy love succulents a whole lot so ahsdghas

--keyboard smash is my mood all day everyday skdhfhshdd

--literally its the perfect reaction to everything

--"im pregnant" jhgdfjhdgfj

--"im going to stop smoking" sdjfhsjhjsd

--"i got a girlfriend" jhdgjhdsfg

--"grandma died" sdjgfsjdfh

--okay sorry im done lmao

--oops

--i like eating dry spaghetti noodles

--i also like eating dry cereal

--i hate cereal with milk

--i dont like chocolate

--i dont like pizza

--im just a tad bit obsessed with supernatural (the show)

--^^ im extremely obsessed with it lmao

--i dont have anymore facts

--was this entertaining?

--i hope so :)
well yeah that was my fact thingy i hope you enjoy the nice things about me, im sorry if i offended anyone with the chocolate thing i just,,,, but yeah i loooooooooove you whoever is reading this and have a good day try to eat some today :) <<<<3

Hi all,

So first off I'm very unsure if I even have an eating disorder but here's my story. I used to eat I guess "normally" but for the past 6 months or so just seeing some foods make me scared and sick, I've always had a major fear of gaining weight as well. I work and go to college so I'm always busy and usually with that I know I'm not eating or eating enough somedays but it's like I can't stop, when I do eat I'm always bloated and I feel guilty. I don't know how to help myself and I'm scared..

Hi, my name is Mariona,
English is not my first language so I may make some mistakes.
I am 18 and I've been struggling with an eating disorder for almost 4 years by now. I was just an ordinary girl [edited by Anomalia to remove weight specifics] but my grandmother didn't think so. She called me fat all the time and told me some bad stuff about my appearance. I tried not to pay attention but, eventually, something in my mind changed. I started eating less and less. I couldn't look at the food, I hated it. My mum was trying to talk to me about all this but I didn't listen. I liked to know that I could control everything. I didn't think I had an eating disorder because I didn't vomit. I thought that what I did was a healthy lifestyle. By the way, I ate only apples most of the time. A trip to Turkey made me think that something was wrong. We went there in summer. The temperature was about 35C but I was freezing. My body was shaking. I couldn't even swim because the sea was too cold. My weight was [edited]. I didn't have my periods for almost a year. I couldn't seat on a chair because it was painful. My heart was racing sometimes. I felt dizzy most of the time. I still thought that I was fat but I decided to change something. I started eating not only apples but tomatos and cucumbers. I gradually added other food. I was crying while eating that. I wanted to vomit so much but I knew that it would ruin my teeth and I would have to go to the doctor. I have a phobia of doctors and it kind of helped me not to loose my health at all. But soon my anorexia turned into bulimia. My mum was happy that I started eating. She didn't know that I felt much worse. I'm still struggling with bulimia and I'm tired of all this. When I was anorexic I was happy when I had nothing in my stomach or when I saw I lost some weight. Now I am afraid to check my weight. It must be something about [edited]. I hate myself for eating all this but I can't stop. I started vomiting from time to time but it happens really rare. I live in a small town where there are no specialists to help me. I am trying to deal with it on my own but it's really hard. I can't look in the mirror because I can't stand seeing myself there. I can't eat like normal people. I either eat a lot or nothing at all. I can't eat in front of people because I feel ashamed. I didn't go to my prom because I would be surrounded by people eating and I would be the only one sitting with an empty plate. I live in Russia and people with ED are not accepted here(if it's the right word). I can't tell anyone that I have it. I am tired of coming up with new stories why I can't eat this or that or why I don't eat at all. I am entering a university this year and I really want to change something. I want to overcome all this. I am happy I found the place where there are people like me.

So every one here have the same problem (almost) and everyone is expressing how they feel but I don't get it, like what is the good in it?

Its hard to bring out and even if i did what will happen is just that i talked!

I would really want to understand from people who tried to talk about thier problems, does it really help?

Because I've been talking to listeners and they ended up telling that they are not experts and they don't know what to say!

Then why they are listeners?

Hi,

im cecilia, I have a twin sister who had an ed for a year and she always talked about how fat and ugly she was but we looked the same so I decided she was right and I started over exercising and purging and starving so my mum kinda found out that I started to develop an ed, I didn't admit to myself that I had one until the other day when I went to an ed appointment to see if I'd have to go into a day program for anorexic kids and they diagnosed me with severe anorexia nevosa, severe depression and anxiety, and pretty bad ptsd from my best friend committing suicide and leaving me the note. I don't know if this app is gonna help at all but I rlly hope it does cus right now my life is going to shit and I don't even wanna have to suffer loving it anymore

hello

Im not diagnosed with any ED but I feel I may have one. Ive been purging for about a year and a half, purging regularly for about 8 months. I currently have 10 cavities from it and want to stop. I hate purging a lot and yesterday I ate three bites of cereal then I chugged water and tried to purge it and it came up red and then I ended up vomitting and couldnt control it so basically there was red vomit on my feet, legs, hair, and all over my bathroom floor and Im pretty concerned and grossed out and want to stop but not sure how to go about it ? Ive also been fasting on and off for a little over a year and I havent lost much weight. I hate obsessing over calories, I spent a half hour earlier today trying to find out how many cals were in a multi vitamin and just yeah, I hate this and want to stop but feel too fat to stop, ect so uh yea

Hi I'm new here, thankyou all in advance

So I've had BED since being a teenager, im clinically v.overweight, I'm now in my mid thirties, id say its probably been worst from ages 13-18 and then again after reaching 30, but I'm ready to try again!! Thankyou

Hello, I'm Meredith! I'm not diagnosed with an eating disorder, I only have gotten a "disordered eating" diagnosis slapped on when I was in a general psych hospital in 2015.

But basically my little backstory is since 4th/5th grade I felt I was fat and had the irrational thought that if I was thin, everyone would like me, I'd have more friends, and I'd be happier. Flash forward to 8th grade, and for the whole year I was restricting, occasionally counting calories, and obsessively look at ED Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. My parents never really caught on since I went from overweight to just a healthy weight. My parents knew I was struggling with depression and self harm, but had no clue of my eating and everything related to that. The summer before 9th grade I had joined color guard, which is a part of marching band, and our practices lasted from 8am-8pm and were VERY physically demanding and I knew in order to not pass out and raise suspicion I needed to eat more. Because of this my eating habits got a lot better and because of the physical aftivity so did my mood, but the week before school started my parents found out about a past suicide attempt (had been a month or so prior) and had me hospitalized in a psych hospital. The food was absolute crap in this place so my eating began to deteriorate again. Over the next 6 months I got hospitalized 3 more times and that's when I began to talk about my eating and of course, I was put on a meal plan, had to supplement with ensure, etc. My fourth admission was when things went to absolute crap and I stopped eating alogether. Of course, me being the dummy I am, I assumed they'd just let this slide, but of course not. After a certain amount of time I was tubed and had to get fed the disgusting brown liquid food until I began to eat again. Even at this point I was at a healthy weight. Because of this and my couple of psych admissions, they started to look at residential treatment for me, even though I wasn't diagnosed with an eating disorder and I didn't really need that level of care. Long story short I never went to one, and ended up gaining loads of weight in the next year due to me taking Lithium for my depression and also binging on sweet foods like a madman. That was 2015 and flash to 2016 around summertime and I had started purging occasionally, nothing really that serious. After 3 more hospitalizations for psych here I am with my depression mainly under control, but my eating starting to deteriorate again as I'm starting to restrict, count calories, and look at ED social media again. I'm planning on talking to my therapist about it tonight and we'll see how it goes trom there!

I stilll feel massivrly invalid in my eating because I am clinically overweight and my eating has only started getting worse these past few weeks and I don't obsessively exercise or check my weight (mainly because I don't have a scale but you get the point). I'm not sure if I want to start shifting to a more 'recovery focused' way of thinking but I teel it's time for me to start talking openly about it.

Take care everyone <3