What if I'm becoming anorexic?

[heatherchamblee 0]

i think the same thing is happening to me as well. i just had an adjustment and it is a tight one. i just had it thursday and i can see it coming on. i have had the same thing going on since thursday and cant even do solid food. i dont want to let my doctor know because i have had my band for 2 years and have not had any more than a 10lb weight fluctuation. i had a really hard time getting this past fill even done. but like you now i have a REALLY good restriction i don't care. i have about 3 years of behind to live off i can live off of 400 calories a day. at least for now. i want results from this thing and i have seen none so far. so you are not the only one.

I had to Google "anorexic" because I didn't even know how to spell it...clearly it has never been part of my normal vocabulary like fat, obese, overweight, etc.

I was banded on Feb. 1, 2008 and to date I have lost 45 lbs. It hasn't been too terribly hard, but now that I have really good restriction I BARELY eat. Barely. I'm not even hungry. I think about food and I think about the foods that I can't eat, but then I think about the 45 lbs. I have lost and I don't want those foods...or really any food for that matter. I fear that I've created a monster by losing weight and feeling better. Just this past week I was able to put on a pair of jeans that I haven't worn in three years. They aren't even in style anymore but I kept them because I knew that one day I would be able to wear them again...so I cried like a little girl when they slipped on and buttoned up with no effort, pulling or squeezing.

I digress....I have started to not want to eat because I want to lose more weight and I know that's not the right way to do it so I eat a little here and there throughout the day. I'm not ususally hungry at all in the morning and my band feels really tight, I have Soup for lunch, maybe a 100 calorie popcorn in the afternoon and soup for dinner and I'm fine.

Am I the only one? I feel superior to food now and I don't miss it. I no longer plan my day around what I am going to eat or where or when. I just go about my day and if I'm a little hungry I'll have something. It's crazy....or am I crazy?

[Jachut 487]

I'm not sure, I think the real issue is whether you're using dieting behaviour to control some sort of issue in your life.

I think I've only been anywhere near this realm once in my life and I found it different to simply enjoying the lack of appetite that I had with the band and eating very little just because I could. That's not necessarily healthy behaviour but then again, you probably wont keep it up. However, its not anorexia.

I found during the last year with my cancer treatment, I slid into what I consider almost anorexic behaviour without realising it, and it was a control issue.

I got my band totally unfilled and I started being VERY careful so that I wouldnt gain. No problem there. But over time, as I got really skinny and people begain to comment, I actually enjoyed the attention and the fact that I was so very thin. I began to look forward to seeing my surgeon or oncologist and seeing them express concern at how thin I was. I felt very very anxious that should hang onto this low weight, to the point where I began to get upset at things that happened beyond my control - dinners out, changes in meal plans, having a wine or a cookie or something thrust at me in a social situation. I was thinking about what I wasnt going to eat 24/7. I happened by pure chance to come upon Portia De Rossi's book Unbearable Lightness and I read that and got really scared - so much of the behaviour she describes, I was doing. I was also running 8kms a day, going to body pump, all stuff my body was used to and my regular routine, but my reasons for doing it became to stay incredibly thin and keep that concern and horror from those around me going, and also it was my way of controlling what cancer did to my body. I was also very depressed and anxious at this time about everything, because I really couldnt control my medical progress, my career, our family's finances, etc.

When i finished chemo, it was like a light went on in my mind, suddenly I was rational again, my body was healthy again and I couldnt control the slight weight gain back up to a healthier weight. I fought it for a while, but that sick way of looking at food and eating was just suddenly gone, as was the anxiety, depression and negativity. I really believe for me, it was a side effect of chemo - and much as I am my normal self - never thin enough, always could do more, eat less etc, that behaviour has settled back into the realm of relatively normal for a female who has had weight issues.

So..... for me, it was definitely a control thing, a way of manipulating those around me, an inability to stop punishing my body. Definitely disordered, and I knew it, but I liked being too skinny too much to seek help. I'm very lucky it just kind of all went away and it seems completely nuts to me now. But just eating barely anything because you can - not necessarily disordered or abnormal but beware that if you start to like the result or fall into the habit of eliciting responses in others by your eating behaviours, it might be time to seek some help. The way you say you feel superior to food, its a little bit left of centre and perhaps a warning sign.

[Jack 855]

re: "I found it different to simply enjoying the lack of appetite that I had with the band and eating very little just because I could."

I read Jachut's post about control of those around us and anorexia. I've never experienced that aspect; however I wonder about the very opposite: OVEReating as a way to 'feel' we have control over situations where obviously we don't. And I mean 'overeat' apart from any actual food-related issue of taste, hunger, etc.

I wonder whether the dysfunctional secret belief that the mere act of swallowing is a type of control which stands in place of any/all other ability to control our lives. Perhaps that is another form of depression/etc.

Because even reading about such behavior is difficult to understand what the writer REALLY is talking about, I've erected my own sense of order in this entire 'Morbid Obesity' issue. My premise is the alleged reasons for such is of relatively minor significance; it is our behavior (overeating despite all physiological needs) that is the singular controllable and measurable aspect.

My own behavior has changed enough that I'm no longer "morbidly obese"....although at BMI of "35" I remain "obese".....which is where I've been nearly all my life.

Whether further BMI decrease can be achieved seems to be increasingly less likely.... based on my eating behavior.