New and lost

Hi, my name is Cee and I am 22 years old, 159 cm tall and 60 kg.

For the last 3 months I've been avoiding meals or sticking to a restrictive diet. I've struggled with my weight since the age of 10 and have lost 24 kg in the past 3 years. The bad thing is that I am now obsessed with my body and the consequences obesity left in me. I am having issues with the way I perceive myself and the image of my body. Over the holidays I slept more that 12 hours to avoid eating breakfast and lunch and would only have all brans for tea and breast chicken for dinner. 

I feel I am going crazy. I have extremely painful and bad days where I see myself as this huge cow and my clothes do not fit me at all. Other days I see myself as normal and happy with what I see. Lately, I've been having bad days.

I don't care much about the weight, but I'm worried about my behavior and the way my mind goes off. I don't want to spend the rest of my life skipping meals or coming up with excuses as to why I can't eat.

I've done almost everything except vomiting. I've gone days without food, I've used laxatives, but I mostly hide food or skip meals or restrict the type of food I'll eat. My mom pointed all of this out a month ago and she is helping me (she is a psychologist) but I feel she doesn't get it. I don't see the wrong. The part that really scares me is that I get aggressive when someone points this out and I used to be very good natured. I go from calm to aggressiveness in an instant. I can't believe I didn't see this the last 4 months... but now it's coming together and I feel completely lost and lonely. I don't know what's wrong or how to proceed. All I want is to be calm again and happy. I don't want to keep on fighting with myself or getting tangled up with my thoughts. It's a drain. 

Hello Cee, I really felt for you whilst reading your post.

I should probably introduce myself; my name's Sarah, I am 16 years old, 160cm tall and 54 kg.

I know there's quite an age gap, but for three years I too was experiencing the same symptoms your going through; skipping meals or 'fasting' for usually as long as 3 days, and then eating lots of food in a short space of time as a result. I would find myself overwhelmed with an intense anger because of the slightest thing and would arrange to meet up with multiple different people during the day in order to avoid eating. My average day consisted of thinking about food and calories, planning my next meal, or way to skip it, and analysing to the tee my daily weight fluctuations, as I was weighing myself every morning.

However, the reason I'm writing to you is because I've just begun recovery for Bulimia Nervosa, although i never vomited either, or took laxatives (only really because I couldn't gain access to some) and for Body Dimorphic Disorder, which involves seeing a phycologist and a nutritionist weekly, as well as keeping a daily food diary, whilst trying to eat three meals a day with two snacks, with at least 1200+ calories.

I found, and still find, the idea of eating normally without gaining weight strange, although I've actually lost weight from eating regularly, but I would not be able to go back to how I was living. 

I can only encourage you to talk to someone, your mum would be the obvious one as you said, alert them to how your feeling and get them to help you put some sort of regular eating plan back into place. I don't know what category you would fall under in terms of disordered eating, but I would definitely recommend reading "Getting better bit(e) by bit(e)" as it addresses the issues of skipping meals and laxative use and things very well, although the binge eating and vomiting may not apply to you, the sections on assertiveness and self-esteem and regular eating plans are just a god-send. Its available from your local library too, which saves a couple of pounds, seeing as we are in the midst of a credit crunch.

I hope this reply was even slightly useful to you, and I wish you the very best of luck tackling this nuisance.

The first step to recovery is addressing the problem; your on the right track! =)