Very unhealthy relationship with food! Advice please!

[Itsabeautifuldayinnit]

I’m healthy and have a normal relationship with food now, but I used to have a fear of eating and gaining weight. I would fast for days (eating nothing, only drinking water) until the effects of low presumably blood sugar became too much and i would have to eat something, however when I did eat I only had sugary sweets and candy or sugary juice as it was usually low calories but gave me a good boost of energy and I could start my fast again. This started a cycle of eating enough candy/sugary soda to give me energy to fast for the next few days but not enough calories to gain weight.

Needless to say I ended up unwell from it. I was in hospital after an unrelated procedure and my blood sugar was measured whilst there and it would go from low (it was usually low 3s and a nurse told me a few times it was 2 something, according to Google it’s not actually that low but they said it was still lower than it should have been) to suddenly going very high when I would eat the candy or drink a lot of sugary pop. Then it would crash and go very low again because I wasn’t eating anything else. Then very high again when I couldn’t ignore the hunger and had to eat some more candy. It was basically a non stop high/low cycle.

I know this is unhealthy, and just to reiterate I DONT do anything like this anymore, but I just realised I never fully understood why it was so unhealthy? The nurses were always saying that the constant swinging from high to low to high to low to high to low was really dangerous, and i fully agree that it is, but just realised I never actually understood why it was dangerous and what was happening in my body when I was doing this? In my mind it was fine because I lost weight doing this so I was happy, but obviously I wasn’t well so wasn’t fully appreciating how much I was hurting my body. Just wasn’t sure if the science behind why it was such a dangerous way to lose weight! I was in ketosis if relevant.

Pleased to say I’m better now and have a healthy relationship with food and my body :) I’m a lot older now and am very happy with my size and don’t have any food/weight issues anymore.

Your diet had no nutrients, just sugar. You would lack vitamins, minerals, fibre, essential fats.

This could cause vitamin deficiency conditions like scurvy and rickets.

It would increase your risk of bowel problems like diverticulitis and haemorrhoids.

Your bones would be at risk of osteoporosis.

The answer is just massive because we can’t, as humans, be healthy living on a candy binge every few days/weeks.

that make sense, I hadn’t actually considered the lack of other nutrients/vitamins but I see what you mean.

At the time I was unwell and just thought it was a great way to lose weight, as ridiculous as it sounds now. I didn’t even feel that bad until my blood sugar was in the 2s and low 3s and then I felt unwell, but apart from that I felt ok so I think I thought I was invincible and that they were lying about the high/low blood sugar spikes being dangerous.

Obviously I know they were right and I’m glad to be be better now, but I was just curious about the science behind it all!