I can't control it any more.

[Libby456]

I'm lost, I don't know who I am.
Most males and females grow out of these after their teens right? I'm 21 and I've felt disgusted in myself since I can remember.
I feel sad about myself, voices in my head tell me I wont achieve anything, I have to avoid the mirror when I undress which is hard in the bathroom with our wall stretch mirror, when I feel sad I tell myself that I will eat healthily etc but find myself skipping meals, I eat a cup of porridge in the morning then skip lunch and by the time i finish work I convince myself I'm hungry and I binge. I eat until I physically cant eat any more and I'm tired of it. The voice in my head tells me that no one will want to be friends with such a fat ugly person, no one will want to love me.
I don't know what to do, I don't know what's wrong with me. But i do know that I need help. Someone, please, help me :'(

[Littlefish]

You are very brave. You have taken the first step by admitting that you have a problem with food, eating and control.

Could you go and speak to your GP about it? Alternatively, could you afford some counselling privately?

There is a an organisation called Overeaters Annonymous who have a website, and organise local meetings - it might be worth looking them up.

Good luck.

[Inasimilarboat]

I am 28 and have exactly the same feelings.

I have just been to request some help for my eating disorder and am waiting for an appointment to come through.

I don't binge like you, just restrict food. Some days I don't eat anything at all, others I can managed child sized meals.

I hate myself, hate the way I look, hate the person that I am. Most days I can push it to the back of my mind and get tjrough the day but I've realy been struggling lately.

Always happy to talk if it helps. The ED board here is always fairly quiet.

[seabream]

Oh OP, I sympathise so much. I'm a fair bit older (36), and for me it comes and goes, but the deep self disgust is always there just under the surface. I don't binge, and I do eat fairly normally (carefully and selectively but normal portions), but I exercise compulsively and self punish if I feel heavy. Today I went on the scale at the gym, saw 1kilo extra, and the same old voice told me I was a disgusting fat cow. I had just run 4 miles. Fast. And had run 10 the day before. I remembered that I'm pre-menstural, but the voice tells me to quit making excuses.
I have had this since I was tiny. I remember being around 12, a healthy active child, and turning down an ice-cream, and enjoying the feeling of power that gave me. It makes me so sad now. I've never sought or had help, despite being bulimic in my 20s. I haven't done that for some time but have replaced it with exercise. I know my thinking is deeply disordered but don't really know how to shift those habitual thought patterns. It definitely gets better when I'm happy otherwise and feel in control. If anything goes awry in my life, the ED voice shouts so loudly, it seems to drown out anything else.

You are so young and can get on top of it. Get help, reach out, there is lots out there now, far more than when I was your age. Seek happiness and try to get better.

This is the first time I've admitted in any way that I have a problem.

[piercedprincess]

Yeah I have struggled with disordered eating periodically throughout my life too. It gets worse when I am unhappy or feel frustrated about things which are out of my control but it stems from having an emotionally unstable upbringing, body image issues and then having to deal with emotional abuse within my relationship due to my partner having been an alcoholic, he's now recovered. I have a lot of anxiety, always have, even as a child but life hasn't helped to exacerbate my issues. I suffered from periods of severe anorexia for a year in my twenties where my weight dropped to just 6 stone and even now I'm 35 I still periodically restrict more than is probably healthy for periods of time, months at a time sometimes for example I'll eat only 1000 calories every day. Not starvation but I should probably be eating more. I do this whenever I feel I am getting too fat, which is most of the time, or whenever I have a body image anxiety, again most of the time, or when there is another anxiety in my life, again most of the time. And if I don't manage to restrict to around 1000 calories, like for the past week, when I've eaten around 1500 - 2000 calories a day, I feel disgusting. I'm perfectly healthy, I weigh 50 km and I'm 5 ft 3 and I have my periods regularly which is good because I am trying to conceive but still I battle between knowing if I want to start a family I can't let my weight drop much lower and feeling disgusting whenever I eat a normal amount of food. The way I restrict I lose weight slowly but consistently so I know I can't continue eating 1000 call a day, but because I have an extremely sedentary lifestyle, I work as a freelance copywriter from home and don't go out much I find my restricting doesn't really affect my health, probably because I am actually eating. But I know it definitely will affect my health if I continue to lose weight so I know I have to stop all thoughts of restriction if I want to stay healthy.
What I would say to the OP is get help now, once you get ducked into the mindset of disordered eating it pulls you deeper and deeper and can often become a vicious cycle that repeats itself throughout your life. I wish I sought counselling an age ago, in fact I plan to do just that this year. Please for your own sake, don't let disordered eating rob you of your enjoyment of life. Take it from one who knows it's truly not worth it.