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Eating disorders article
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ah
I didnt answer Therese question
med doc
Originally posted by LyraOK:
Hi, I'm very new to all this, so please forgive me any lack of running knowledge.
Have been trying to kick my eating disorder, but finding it hard to let go of my weight obsession (my bmi's 18.1 - so fairly normal, but always fear that I am but a missed run or a doughnut away from morbid obesity). As an attempt to turn this into something healthier (know I can't go on as I have been), I am focusing on running to maintain a healthy body rather than a thin one.
I do feel at risk of substituting an eating disorder for running, or the latter becoming an integral part of the former. Does anyone have any advice?
Hx
I had an ED & was in hospital when i was 16 - have been out of treatment & at a stable weight for about 5 years now.
Running was definitely part of my ED at the time - another sort of self-harm. I had to give up running for a year or so just to prove to myself that i could, and get over fear of missed run = instantly fat.
After that, i think running has been a positive part of my recovery - it definitely helped my body image & attitude to food. Club running also helped me put it in a more 'normal' context - i was able to see how people who took running seriously but with a healthy attitude to it behaved, i'd got a reason to listen to people who said i was training too hard, and the social side was good too. However, i really did need the break from running so i could get some perspective back.
i do think there's a very real danger of just substituting (or adding) running for food issues.
on the other hand, [moderate] excercise does have positive effects on mental health. i suspect you are going to have to negotiate this with your doc, particularly as you are likely to find it difficult to eat enough to get back to a healthy weight and to fuel running. if you do decide to keep running, do you think it would help to have a schedule or weekly 'mileage allowance' as a sort of 'ceiling' that you shouldn't run more than while you are still recovering? i think you might need to try quite hard to put in adequate rest days and not overdo it, but OTOH then the disadvantage of a schedule is that it could be very hard for you to miss a day if you really should through injury etc. also, you'll need extra fuel when you run - again, this is something you really need to talk to doc about.
Sorry i can't be more definite, & this is only based on my own experience.
Well done for starting to make changes.
Don't feel so alone in this shit since reading through this thread. Good to hear that so many of you have faced up to the challenge of an ED and overcome it. Well done to you all, you are an inspiration.
Therese, how are you doing? You've come through so much recently by the sound of things and i have huge admiration for you! Keep going, you're not alone.
There is a connection with ED / running / intense exercise that usually carries over into (those suffering it) work and home lives.
I think they're obsessions that naturally form and knowing that small changes can have massive impacts to hard work done doesn't help.
People who exercise intensively have endless procedures and rituals:
(the time you exercise, the order of putting on gear, the specific clothes to wear on a certain type if run),
routines:
(can't eat a particular food the day before a particular distance, must eat this at that time) and
habits:
(have half a gluco drink before, then half after, but not if lifting weights etc ) The average non-exercising person simply doesn't have this. A curry and 3 pints on a Saturday isn't quite the same thing...
It all contributes to seemingly odd behaviour, that in appears negative, but is fully intended to be positive.
But the point is you HAVE to be obsessive to a point in order to "train" - and these little things are all part of that. Simply being able to push yourself hard means that you have this inbuilt reaction or inclination to obsess, I think.
Waffle over...
:-)
for now...
Well - I guess we all have some thing or another. I bet there's a whole lot more you wouldn't believe!
I had a few thoughts about your fear. The thing is no one here or anywhere else will be able to tell you what'll happen to your body while you're in hospital (literal exploding does seem a bit far fetched). But what might happen - and this is what I'd be going for - is that you might change the way that you feel about it. So, your body might stay exactly the same - but right now, you're unhappy with that. What you want to go and learn is not how to be both extraordinarily thin/ 'eating normally' (secretly that's what we envisage when we think of getting better, right?) but not feeling the way that you feel that currently makes it so important to be thin. From an internal perspective 'being' thin and 'feeling' thin are not really all that related - I bet everyone here would still feel fundamentally 'fat' at six stone. So it's not being fat - it's feeling fat that you want to get over. In that sense, then, wondering what'll happen to your body when you're there is missing the point.
With regard to running fitness, you'll be back in no time. What's a few weeks off if it's going to make for a lifetime of healthy running, without being in the grip of an ED?
All easier said than lived. But I reckon the first steps to living it is saying it.
Good luck with absolutely everything, keep us posted. Will be thinking of you.
Lyra xx
going into hospital was one of the hardest things i've ever done, & i didn't have much choice.
Something i've realised more & more is that there's my 'body image', which can instantly gain 10 stone from one choc bar if i let it, and there's what my body's actually like, where the one choc bar doesn't make any difference at all. I still weigh the same as when I came out of hospital, but my body image is a lot more positive - it might help if you can bear in mind when you are in hospital just how different your perceptions can be from reality. I remember thinking just before i went into hospital that i was so fat everyone must think i'm pregnant - but in a photo from then i can see now how ill i looked.
remeber you aren't just doing this so you'll be better in a few weeks - you are doing this so when you are an old lady you can look back on your life and think it was worth it, rather than seeing endless piles of calorie notebooks - in that context, a few weeks out is not much of a price to pay. You will get out. You will run again, if you want to - stronger & faster than before. It'll take some doing, but it can happen.
Also, don't be scared of 'exploding' there - it's almost what you are there for, and it is a lot better to be able to express how you feel when you are somewhere physicaly safe & just have to work on getting better, than a few years down the line when work, family, etc etc etc get inthe way.
On other ED boards I've been on, there's a rule about 'no numbers' - don't post weights, calories, BMI, whatever, and i think it's a good one, because the numbers aren't important, how you feel is.
do you mean you didnt take up the bed in the hospital, or that it wasnt available??
go to the hospital. please.
how else are you going to get better
Please, therese, do go there.
Lxxx
Do you think you could find a way to stop playing what if with yourself? - it's just such a no win game. What if you are the fattest there? Well, you'd feel bad, which isn't such an alien experience. What if you gain weight without learning to feel ok about that? Well, you'd feel bad, and hey, guess what - you can already conduct a whole life with such feelings, so it's not really such a huge leap. What if doesn't tell you anything useful.
One last thought about going to the hospital. I probably shouldn't say this, but if the whole thing doesn't work, you can go back to having an eating disorder any time you like, get thin, feel dreadful, whatever you like. But right now there is a chance you could experiment with a different way - why not risk it just for a few weeks? The very worst that could happen is that you will feel bad for a while. And you're used to that anyway. You haven't got your family round you and everything is up in the air anyway? Why not take a stable space for a few weeks while you figure out the rest of your stuff? Please go to the hospital Therese - if only to give it a trial, and to have a place to stay while everything is messed up at home.
as for 'deserving' a bed - you've seen what the waiting lists etc are like, do you really think they'd be offering you a bed if they didn't think you needed it? the docs there will have seen lots of people with ED's, & if they say you need a bed, that's coming off the back of an awful lot of experience & i wouldn't be inclined to argue.
'cycling' - i'm not going to pretend that it doesn't happen, and after you get out of hospital things are likely to be tough for a bit - but while you are in there you will be able to learn ways to cope with those feelings. if you don't get help, you are going to carry on having an ED, with all the screwing-up of your body that entails.
If you do get help, then you have a chance to get away from all this crap. in hospital you'll have a 'safe place' to work with your feelings & food issues, and learn how to maintain a _stable_ weight and more positive body image. if you stay out, stuff really, really isn't going to get better. maybe you'll keep ticking over feeling like shit for a few years until someothing pushes you over the edge, maybe your weight will crash sooner and you'll wind up sectioned on a medical hospital ward for refeeding (belive me, you don't want that).
you've got a chance now to stop this. to stop hating yourself. to stop the pain. it really can work. please take it.
you're so not alone in the eating disorders battle. i first started to have problems with it when i was 14 (am 27 now), but it has been much worse over the last four years. i tend to fluctuate between periods of anorexia, with some bulimic behaviour (i throw up foods i don't regard as 'safe', but i don't binge as such). my doctor gave me a prescription for prozac and some suggestions for counselling, can't say i found her that helpful, but i know she did what she could for the symptoms i was presenting. i haven't taken the prozac, but i will if i don't feel that i am coping with things.
do feel that my running has helped enormously. i have to eat sensibly and respect what my body is telling me in order to keep running. in short, sounds silly, but i feel that i have made friends with my body now.
it definitely helps to talk about it, i started to do so pretty reluctantly when my boyfriend made me realise that what i was doing to myself was not healthy. this forum has been very helpful, i hope you will find it so too. feel free to email me if you want to.
good luck with it all!
Lx
(remembers it being a huge deal when i ate my first ice-cream)