Hello,
I’m starting to feel quite bleak about my relationship with food. It hasn’t always been easy through my teen years to now but I would say overwhelmingly fine, and the times when I have dropped to a low weight have been mostly when I’ve been going through terrible anxiety.
My BMI is currently healthy at 19. I am 101lbs and 5 foot 1. Which is all fine - except I was 119lbs in September.
Since the new term (I’m a teacher) things have been unbelievably difficult. I have just been diagnosed as being coeliac which lead to unintended weight loss because a) it took a lot of the joy and spontaneity out of eating and b) I can’t eat a lot of my favourite “junk” foods anymore. My carb intake was naturally a lot lower because gluten free bread is quite shit.
Things with my partner have also been terrible and I’ve felt utterly out of control in my life. The stress caused me to lose my appetite.
Basically, it’s now cumulated in me barely eating all day for months now. The other day I ate three actual meals and it was a shock to realise I haven’t done that in weeks. I used to have to persuade myself to have the healthy option for dinner but now I can’t imagine just going to the shop and buying a frozen pizza or something.
The weird thing is I am ok with dinners despite this - I can eat chips from the chippy or something but that’s because I have made sure I’ve had like 300 calories for the whole day so I almost know that I’ve enabled myself to eat something I want for dinner. In the staff room I look at people eating pasta etc and I’ve realised there’s absolutely no way I could do that.
When I went on holiday I brought my scales and absolutely hated eating out every day and couldn’t wait to get back to work where I could restrict my food.
The only way I will put weight on is by eating more and the idea of doing that is scary (and the idea of putting on weight is bad too). There’s like, a buffer zone I would be ok with which is maybe up to 105lbs.
People have started to comment, such as my boyfriend, and my friend at work who said to me that he worries about how little I eat. I feel like a fake having people worry because I don’t feel I have an eating disorder. I am a healthy weight and I will eat takeaways for dinner even though I don’t finish them and i can only do it if I restrict beforehand.
I just keep hearing that I’m “in denial”.