Heyy, so I've been struggling with bulimia for years, and today, for the first time, I finally found the courage to make an appointment with a doctor.
I've been having pain around my heart/chest area, and my body has been feeling really weak lately, so I knew I couldn't keep ignoring my health anymore.

This was a huge step for me because I've never actually opened up to a medical professional about my eating disorder before. I was already extremely nervous and vulnerable going into the appointment.
I'm really close to my sister, so I asked her to come with me for emotional support because I knew how difficult this was going to be for me.

Well, the appointment was honestly awful.

The doctor was pretty dismissive and rushed through everything, which already made me feel uncomfortable. But what really shocked me was what she said at the end.

She literally looked at me and said something along the lines of: "You're ugly, all hunched over like that. You should be more like your sister. Look at her, she's beautiful." Like... what???

I was genuinely speechless. This was the first time I had ever met this woman, and the first time I'd ever been brave enough to talk to a professional about my bulimia.

And here's the thing that's really messing with my head right now.

I've honestly never really been insecure about my face or whether I'm pretty. Of course I have body image issues because of my eating disorder, but I've never particularly questioned my facial attractiveness. I've actually always been complimented on my looks, and people have told me I'm beautiful my whole life. So being called ugly was never really something I expected, especially not from a doctor.

But now I can't stop thinking about it. Like, what if everyone has been lying to me this whole time? What if people were just being nice and I'm actually ugly? What if I've had a completely wrong perception of myself all along? I know it sounds ridiculous to let one random woman's opinion affect me this much, especially when I've received so many compliments throughout my life. But for some reason, hearing it from a medical professional, in such a vulnerable moment, has genuinely made me question everything. And the worst part is that I wasn't even there to talk about my appearance. I was there because I'm scared about my health.

Maybe she thought comparing me to my sister and insulting my appearance would somehow motivate me to get better? I genuinely don't know. But I'm sorry, how is that an appropriate thing to say to anyone, let alone someone struggling with an eating disorder?

And just to be clear, I absolutely adore my sister. She's one of my biggest sources of support, and none of this has anything to do with jealousy or resentment towards her. It's about the fact that a medical professional thought it was okay to put me down and compare my appearance to someone else's during such a vulnerable moment.

I'm honestly so upset because it took me years to finally ask for help, and this is how my first experience went. I know I still need medical help, and I'm not going to give up on getting better because of one doctor, but right now I just feel really hurt, confused and discouraged.

I don't even know what I'm expecting from posting this. I guess I just needed to vent to people who might understand how difficult it is to seek help for an eating disorder in the first place.

Has anyone else experienced something like this with a medical professional? Am I overreacting for being so affected by this?

I’ve been in recovery from Anorexia for about 20 years. I have had occasional relapses and my weight hovers on the low side of healthy.
I went to a well visit with blood test earlier this week. Today I got a call saying my test showed I’m pre-diabetic. She started telling me to lose weight and exercise. I told her there must be another reason for the number - I gave her my height and weight and explained that I regularly do intensive, strength building exercise. She asked me if it was genetic (no). Then she went back onto the diet speech, telling me not to eat bread, rice, sugar, potatoes and on and on…felt like the food rules I spent so long trying to silence.
I know this is silly but I’ve been very stressed lately and the last thing I needed was someone calling me in the middle of my work day to diet-shame me.
I don’t even know what I can eat anymore so I just want to give up and stop eating altogether.
Thanks for reading…just a hard day I guess.

I just got off an appointment with my care team (virtual IOP), where I was talking about how alone I feel starting recovery. I already have no motivation to recover (if anything I still and have been trying to be worse), and me being the one in charge of my care isn't sustainable at all and I haven't made even an inch of progress. I was dicussing how I felt like my family wasn't helping either, they have no idea what an eating disorder even is, and despite knowing about my anorexia diagnosis, haven't even tried a single google search or definition to learn a single thing. Because of this, I've spiraled back to not feeling sick enough or my goal being hospitalization because even the people in my own home don't seem to care about me/acknowledge/even learn a single tidbit of knowledge, and instead act like everythings normal and I'm just back home from college on a holiday break, rather than my therapist having considered me an active risk if I stayed in school any longer. They don't treat me sick, nor acknowledge the elephant in the room, so I don't feel like I should be in treatment or have been taken out of college in the first place.

After I said something along the lines of "I switched from not wanting to be treated different, to feeling invisible because they weren't treating me differently at all," my coach asked me, "Well what would support from them look like for you?" And also to acknowledge their capacity as my family has never been close or loving to begin with.

So now I'm left with the task, brainstorming, what kind of support am I even looking for? Specifics, not just "being educated" but how do I want them to act, to push, etc. She was right that I don't even know what I'm wanting or expecting from them.

I'm extremely lost with this question, I can't even think of a single thing, so I'd like to ask anyone here, what kind of support do you look for in others? What do you want people to say or do? How do you want them to act or be involved? Anything at all?

I started a cut during late may with the main goal of getting down to a low bodyfat percentage

it took me nearly 4 months of working out everyday (2 rest days a week) and following a diet that hit all my macros and left me in a moderate deficit. I gave myself only 2-3 cheat meals a month.

I ended up getting super worried about food and calories and basically developed an eating disorder and food anxiety and it worked, I got the abs I had always wanted but ended up becoming too obsessed with becoming even more lean.

One day in mid september I was super fed up with all these restrictions and went on a 3 week binge eating spree, stopped going to the gym and stopped walking, after that I gained back a good amount of bodyfat and could no longer see the abs that I had worked so hard to achieve.

Now I am feeling super discouraged, like I wasted so much time building something only for it to be lost so quickly and I don’t even feel like I want to put in the effort to build it all back because its just daunting and so exhausting to count calories and do all that work again.

But at the same time I can’t look at myself in the mirror without feeling sad anymore, I keep thinking about how much regret I had wishing I could just go back in time and go tell myself to go into a maintenance instead of binge eating.

This has taken over my entire life and I spend every day in turmoil about what to do next, I am super self conscious about my body but I no longer feel the drive or motivation to go back in the gym or keep my good habits.

Has anyone experienced anything like this? How did you bounce back?

it's just 4 pm rn where i live and i already hit 800 fucking calories.

I was anorexic in high school, I was on the bordline of being underweight for my height from severe calorie cutting, carb cutting and just straight up not eating till dinner.

I got to college and from being around friends I stopped those habits not really out of recovery more so how hard it is in social setting i find.

Ive gained the weight back and now im fighting the urges to continue my ed habits and go through moments where I feel really sucky about my image and think about skipping meals and carb cutting again.

How do I get a healthy relationship with food and myself image. Also how do i go about losing weight in a healthy manner where my first gut instinct isnt to starve myself

Hello everyone!

I have had this friend for about three years now. Recently I asked my friend to go out. We went out and thrifted and after I suggested we get brunch she said yes excitedly. We go to brunch and she orders a lot of food and she said that wants to share.
It’s not food that I typically like but she said she would pay and I said yes because it was enough for us to share and I didn’t want to be rude because she said she’d pay. however when the food gets to the table she looked at me and said go ahead eat. I’m eating and I finish my portion and she hasn’t touched hers and told me to finish the plates. Mind this was A LOT of food and I knew I couldn’t eat it all, I told her I couldn’t finish her have and she should have some. She said I’m not hungry and I looked at her and said ohh okk. I didn’t think much of it except she was staring at me while eating not saying anything while I ate. I thought it was weird at the time until recently. I let my friend move in with me and she always offers to cook. I have a total of three roommates, she always cooks for us every day. However noticed again she’ll watch us eat and then sneakily throw her food away or pretend to eat. However she’s now starting to have outbursts at dinner and it’s becoming overwhelming. Today we all had soup that she made, she had one slurp got quiet and angry and had an outburst of anger and said she had to leave. She came back and I left her bowl of soup thinking she still might want it and she said snarikly “sorry guys I have a fuckin ED” and walked away. It was extremely uncomfortable, and I didn’t know what to say. I don’t know how to deal with this especially as her friend but the ED is starting to make things awkward on the household. How do you deal with this situation?

Note: she said she goes to therapy for it ( I don’t know how true this and she voluntarily gave this info out, but tells her therapist she’s just simply not hungry)

TW: Swearing & Guilt

14M (my birthday was yesterday!!!)

Am I supposed to feel bad for eating?

I feel so bad for eating dinner now, I mean I always say I'll start tomorrow but then tomorrow dinner looks so good and I eat it and then I say I'll start tomorrow and then tomorrow the same thing happens and it's just really annoying and I'm a bit of a bitch so.. anyway sorry for whining on here, bye internet!

Hello, I'm here looking for advice/perspectives. I have been working with a therapist and dietician for a few months for anorexia and ARFID and have come to a point where I feel like the treatment/advocacy fatigue itself is worse than the ED.

I'm so burnt out and I'm identifying that the treatment isn't trauma informed and neurodiversity affirming in the ways I need, but every time I bring it up I leave feeling more exhausted and doubtful. They say that this is hard work and it's going to be tiring and distressing. I know that, but not like this. I've been in different forms of treatment mental and physical for over 20yrs consistently. I know "lots of people don't like their dieticians", but I don't even feel enough trust or safety to even productively work with mine and she keeps making inaccurate assumptions and putting labor back onto me. Misunderstandings every single appointment. Willingness is not the issue, everyone else in my life understands that. It's hard because I like *her* but I don't feel like I'm *healing*.

How much is treatment itself supposed to be burning me out? I'm at my capacity and I'm scared I'm not going to be ABLE to continue treatment unless it adapts, but maybe it's "supposed to be like this"? That doesn't make anything more bearable or possible though. It just leaves me feeling more demoralized. If anyone has ideas or support or experience here I'd appreciate it, thank you!

My parents and everyone tells me I look sick but I dont see it all the time. Skme days I do, some I dont. How do I know they aren't lying? I wanna get better but im just scared alot. How do I get over the body dystopia