Teen Eating Disorders - Thread 5

[myrtleWilson]

Welcome everyone,
Our last thread can be found here
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eating_disorders/4279530-Teen-Eating-Disorders-Thread-4?watched=1&msgid=111172926#111172926

That we're on thread 5 in about a year is a reflection of the incredible increase in mental health issues, including eating disorders amongst young people over the last couple of years.

With that in mind, we thought we'd try to include some resources that have helped us along the way to date. No one resource will be a panacea but hopefully this list will be a useful starting off point for any newcomers and a reflection for others. It is our first go at sharing a list of resources on a thread so it won't be perfect!

www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk

anorexiafamily.com/?v=79cba1185463

www.youtube.com/evamusby

www.youtube.com/channel/UCa7G1P5WQopVMc9qTSP_lgA

www.orri-uk.com

www.nhs.uk/mental-health/feelings-symptoms-behaviours/behaviours/eating-disorders/overview/

www.stgeorges.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Junior-MARSIPAN-Risk-Assessment-Framework.pdf

People to look up on social media
Hope Virgo
Ro-Recovering
James Downs
Cara Lisette
Adam Fare
BarefootRebel
Ilona Burton

Girlie hope Covid is not too bad for your DD

Betty - great news on a gain!

dark how are you doing?

@Mogtheanxiouschat that’s brilliant. Well done to you both. Really reassuring that it can be done.

I had a lovely talking to by the dietitian but in a gentle, non judgmental way.

@Mogtheanxiouschat well done!

I do think that small changes can make a big difference. My pastor always used to say 'how do you boil a frog? - Slowly'. Small changes don't get noticed and can be built on.

@Valleyofthedollymix sorry that the ED is being challenging. I don’t know if it makes you feel better but we were warned about that by the nurse yesterday. Dd has made a great start and he said to be prepared that this week might be harder as the ED fights back.

As teenagers go my dd is generally quite a nice one but we get to the ED clinic and she turns into this surly monosyllabic creature who shrugs at everything and says ‘don’t know’ or ‘fine’ to everything.

I’m after breakfast ideas. Dd is so fussy about a lot of typical breakfast foods. No cereal, no toast, no milk, very little fruit… she will eat things like pancakes, croissants etc though which is one of the suggested options with fruit and a yoghurt. But she won’t eat yoghurt. I was thinking of doing her croissant/pain au chocolate and a smoothie, maybe putting some yoghurt in the smoothie? Any other ideas? Or do I just need to feed her some foods that she won’t eat?

[quote Moomarre]@Valleyofthedollymix sorry that the ED is being challenging. I don’t know if it makes you feel better but we were warned about that by the nurse yesterday. Dd has made a great start and he said to be prepared that this week might be harder as the ED fights back.

As teenagers go my dd is generally quite a nice one but we get to the ED clinic and she turns into this surly monosyllabic creature who shrugs at everything and says ‘don’t know’ or ‘fine’ to everything.

I’m after breakfast ideas. Dd is so fussy about a lot of typical breakfast foods. No cereal, no toast, no milk, very little fruit… she will eat things like pancakes, croissants etc though which is one of the suggested options with fruit and a yoghurt. But she won’t eat yoghurt. I was thinking of doing her croissant/pain au chocolate and a smoothie, maybe putting some yoghurt in the smoothie? Any other ideas? Or do I just need to feed her some foods that she won’t eat?[/quote]
Why doesn’t she want these foods?
If you can pick that apart with her then may help with ideas

Moom I think Lougle had a high calorie pancake recipe, you can make the pancakes with butter and cream. Will she have a nut spread on them? Nutella or similar? Also very calorific.

moom is your DD vegetarian? If not could you turn the croissant into a baked ham and cheese croissant or you could make it into a pudding a la nigella www.nigella.com/recipes/caramel-croissant-pudding or pile on some buttery scrambled eggs on to the croissant

(never have I typed croissant so much!!)

DD used to eat French toast which I'd make with a two yolks and one white plus a bit of cream, with fruit on top. It's like a pancake feel but easier I think. Now she alternates between weetabix and porridge, neither of which seems like it would be an option for your DD.

Thanks for the ideas. She is veggie but cheese and mushroom could be an option also scrambled egg. Will try the French toast too.

@Reallyimeanreally2022 when I’ve asked her she just says ‘I can’t’. Bread and cereal seem to be her biggest fear foods. From weaning she only ate cereal without milk but she’s got fussier and fussier. As a young child she’d eat almost any cereal dry, a year ago she’d eat cinnamon squares, crunchy nut cornflakes and normal cornflakes only. Now she won’t eat those. Toast I sometimes make her have but she spends the whole time picking it into tiny pieces and gagging on it.

Dd just had a full fat cows milk yogurt after her lunch. It’s been like watching an exorcism for the past half hour. I’ve not seen her like this before. This is the hardest thing in the world.

Why is it always the yogurts they react so badly to? I remember DD kicking off not long after she went back to school and I was meeting her for lunch. I brought her up a Tesco finest creamy yogurt rather than her usual Yeo valley ones (honestly it was all I had in the fridge). She went ballistic and refused to eat it saying I was trying to make her fad. I said she couldn’t go back to school if she didn’t eat it. She ate it, wailing and crying all the while telling me how much she fucking hated me.

She literally despised me back then. It was awful. But it will get better. As they say “you need to see the beast to slay it”!!

Yy re yogurts being hard, dd will only eat certain types of yogurt and generally prefers the pouch type ones (probably because it's easier to not finish them 🙄) she once took a yogurt and smeared it all over the kitchen tops - fun times.

Just catching up with the thread:

Dark good to hear from you. Hope you manage to get hospital to up the snacks! What reason have they given for not providing them?

Valley sorry your DD has hit a bump and hope it doesn’t continue. DD has shown me so many “recovery” accounts where the girls are clearly not recovered. I really do think these social media giants have a duty to check the content being posted on their platforms. Sorry you’re having to turn down work. This illness is so isolating and time consuming.

@Mogtheanxiouschat yaaay on the weight gain front. That’s a Stirling effort! 💪💪

Just on the multi vitamin front, DD also takes Zinc and Biotin. She is on them specifically because her hair was falling about but I think they are both good for boosting the immune system.

This was an Aldi Madagascan Vanilla!
I’ll try some zinc as DDs hair has been thinning too.
She o ly needs to gain 0.5kg per week and she’ll be back to school after half term.
Just booked two weeks off work too.

@Moomarre I don't know what recipe you use for pancakes, but I used 4oz flour, 3oz sugar, 1 duck egg, 70ml whole milk, 70 ml double cream. That makes 1200 calories. Then I'd put butter and either golden syrup/Nutella on top, which brought it up to about 1500 calories.

Having said that, I appreciate that I'm lucky that DD1 never had a particular thing about healthy/unhealthy foods, so I could use chocolate/syrup/butter. It's harder if there is a focus on 'bad' foods.

Hi from me. Cals are being upped and more snacks introduced but not a good start with a flat refusal.

Olanzapine three times a day now and they definitely won't discharge if she's relying on the fortini or the ng tube. They're definitely talking about a tier 4 unit and I feel so sad.

I'm sorry to hear that things are still hard, @DarkBlueEyes. But I think you have made progress. A couple of weeks ago you weren't convinced that you had grounds to take your DD to hospital. Now she's in hospital, getting the treatment that she needs. It's a horrible starting place, but we've all been there in one way or another - you have to start from the bottom. I know a girl who went to a tier 4 - only for 2 months in the end, but it was what she needed to address the issues and recover.

I agree dark that although it's not good being there, you've got the support and medical advice needed to help the recovery. I assume tier 4 is a specialist unit? The staff there will be so well trained.

Ahhh don’t feel disheartened Dark. I agree with Lougle that you’ve made huge progress. You have fought against ambivalent medical professionals to get your DD the help she desperately needed. She’s getting it now thanks to you. You’re no longer fighting this battle on your own. Inside your DD will be relieved that she has you fighting the ED for her when she can’t. Big hugs to you! ❤️❤️

I promise that in time to come you will look back and be amazed at how your DD used to look and how healthy she is. I look at photos now, of DD1 8 months ago, and I wonder why I wasn't sitting in A&E, refusing to leave until they saw us. But we get conditioned to the slow creep of the ED, until we're grateful if they're eating anything at all. It's so far from normal, but only a step away from the day/week before.

DD1 is 17kg heavier than she was and she now looks like any other girl. I thought she looked 'normal for her' back then, but I now see that she was absolutely skeletal.

I'll echo that - bloody well done @DarkBlueEyes - you've hammered and hammered on doors that needed to be opened for your DD. As despairing you were, you persevered. You knew then and you know now your Dd needs you to fight the ED on her behalf until she's ready to join you. There is a Buffy the Vampire Slayer metaphor begging to be made here.

Keep at it, you're moving mountains daily.

@Lougle thank you that recipe is really helpful. Dd is also not too bothered about fatty foods, she just doesn’t want to eat anything at all. She’ll eat pastries and cream far more willingly than toast and milk. This is one reason I didn’t think she could have an ED!

Main problem we have is she also doesn’t think she has an ED. The nurse suggested she named it to externalise it and make it a separate being to her “I don’t need to name it because I don’t have one”, he said about us not being here to fight her but to make her well “I am well, I’m fine, there’s nothing wrong with me”

She’s really angry at me at the moment, Says I shouldn’t have said anything to the gp or CAHMS, that I’m overreacting, that forcing her to eat when it hurts and makes her feel sick is going to make her kill herself…

I am counting my blessings that I can give her high calorie foods and that we have only had one complete meal refusal since we started this. It is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done and I’m just in awe of those of you who have been doing it for longer and who have had a far harder time if it than I have.

Also I want to say sorry that I’m really bad at responding to comments, I do read everything and am thinking of you all. I have a two year old bouncing in my arm and shouting in my ear most of the time and have lost countless posts I’ve typed through trying to look back and respond to people 🤦🏻‍♀️

I don't think, at this stage, that it matters what you call it. I would say 'Ok, you don't think you have an eating disorder, but you have got into a habit of not eating enough food and now you are at an unhealthy weight for your height. That means that, for a while, you're going to have to eat more food to get your weight into a healthy range.'

I took the approach that I didn't care what DD1 ate as long as she gained weight, because it was her weight that was killing her. So I did the 1500 calories pancakes every day for weeks, because she'd eat them. I made chocolate brownies that were 300 calories per slice. You want 2? Go ahead. For a good while, later, she had 3 hazelnut chocolate croissants for breakfast each morning. Expensive, but 900 calories.

I went for 3000 calories per day, loaded at breakfast because evenings weren't so good for her. At one stage she was gaining 2kg per week.

If she'll eat anything, just not lots of it, you just have to make every mouthful count. A chicken korma is good because you can use coconut milk and double cream but it just looks like a curry.

Moom I had similar thoughts at the beginning, my dd also would eat but just not enough. She got to a point where she'd eat a small lunch and dinner but then eat a packet of biscuits in the evening.

I saw the ED for what it was once I started FBT, she was just like your dd almost word for word!! Denial there's anything wrong with them is part of the illness so is threatening to kill them selves if we make them eat 😕

There's something called atypical anorexia which I think probably fits my dd best.

We're struggling here really, having dd at home for the last week and a half has not done either of us any good. She is smearing and hiding food again, I need to book her in for a weight check as I she's lost some 😩

@Moomarre a persistent refusal to admit that there's an issue is an absolute hallmark of an eating disorder. I find it is what makes it so hard - if someone has cancer, they want to do everything they can to make themselves better and follow the doctor's orders. DD doesn't want to get better because she's still not convinced there's anything wrong with her. She still maintains that she was fine before we got her diagnosed - that it's the diagnosis and all this scrutiny and meal plans that has caused the issues, not anorexia.

I'm in awe of @Lougle pancakes! There's no way on this planet that DD would have anything like that. DD is adamant that no 'normal person' has ever gained a kilo in a week and that the maximum she can gain is 500g, even if she's lost the previous week. Hence why she has gained so little.

At the beginning, she was much more open to calorific foods so if I were you I'd get anything down her that you can even if it's all in croissant form.