anorexia

[kjra]

I am a 45 year old, happily married mother of 3 children and having the battle of a lifetime. Is there anyone else in a similar position suffering from anorexia, or recovered or involved or experienced in anyway with the disease? Would love to chat.

I am a recovered anorexic, still have issues but they get less all the time, I was in my teens when I had it though. I found the eating disorders association were really helpful.

I don't have anorexia but my mother did when she was in her thirties with three young children. I don't think she exactly "won" the battle with her eating disorder but a truce was called that enabled her to gradually move away from it dominating her life. She has a much more relaxed attitude to food these days but is still only a small size eight!)

I think My mother started to get back in control when she found fulfilling and challenging activities outside the home to get involved in. or maybe she was able to do that when she was a little more in control, not 100% sure.

She went back into further education as a mature student.

I think it is more common than everyone thinks, I'm sure there will be others on Mumsnet to help, good luck.

I am a 24yr old mother of 2 with another on the way, and have struggled with anorexia and bulimia since i was about 12 (diagnosable), but my bad relationship with food began when i was 8.

i am also on a support forum online for eating disorders, and these days there are a lot of mums and older women on there, i find it invaluable to be able to talk to other people who are struggling, people who are recovered, and people who are trying to recover.

if you ever want to chat, im always around, ive got 4 weeks or so left because im csectioned and current on bed rest!!

I'm 33 and only in th past few years have felt recovered, though am now having to deal with the medical repercussions.

I'm always up for chat - is there anything specific we could say/ask that would help?

How long did it take you to recover? How did you know you were recovered. Is life easier and better now? I want so much to get better but seemed to have reached a plateau I can't get over and I am still a long way from being well. Did you have to go into a clinic?
Sorry about all the questions, would love to hear from you.
kjra

How is bed rest going, sounds horrendous to me! Am trying to recover from anorexia and not doing too well but so fed up with the fight. What is the eating disorder forum you mentioned. Support from people in the same position would be wonderful and news of people who have recovered and how it feels would be great.
kjra

How is bed rest going, sounds horrendous to me! Am trying to recover from anorexia and not doing too well but so fed up with the fight. What is the eating disorder forum you mentioned. Support from people in the same position would be wonderful and news of people who have recovered and how it feels would be great.
kjra

Whereas there are many great support forums like kt's, I'd add a note of caution. I'm sure you'll have heard about the pro-ana movement online... don't go there.

I don't think there was a sudden event or magic recovery moment, but I slowly reached a point at which I realised I was at a healthy weight and food was no longer dominating my life. And only then I got very ill from the consequences of all those years of anorexia. I guess what I'd stress though is that it's always a slow and gradual process, and probably gets slower and more gradual the older we get.

Do you have any professional help/support?

yeah the proana movement is something that gets mocked and shunned where i go online. the place i go is www.lunchbox-forums.com/ my username is ~Kt~ if you wanna find me! ive been on and off there for about 6 years now.

the bed rest is horrible, driving me insane, way too much time to think about things, luckily i managed to get referred and finally have got myself on the service of the eating disorders and im due to start CBT after the birth, but im seeing an ED nurse in the mean time. i know that i will most likely relapse even worse after the baby is born, as thats what happened the two previous times. but at least for the moment theres not much i can do!

How did you combat the daily battle of putt ing on weight? I want to get better more than anything but it is a daily hell. How wonderful it must be to recovered.
I see a consultant phsycatrist once a week and get weighed at the surgery once a week.
Did you go into a clinic or manage to recover at home.
Thank you for advice on pro-ana movement, will avoid it and try the ones suggested.

The best advice I can give is to weigh yourself or be weighed as little as possible. I found that the less I had to do with my weight the less I obsessed and stressed about it - in the end I put my scales in the wheelie bin. Some people close their eyes when weighed at doctors/hospital appointments, too.

Is your psychiatrist helpful?

I was in hospital for the worst but mainly at home. I know that eventually I'd have to learn to live and look after ourselves in the real world, and I didn't want to get institutionalised. But I know that clinics do work for some people.

I'm sad to hear you're having a crap time, kjra. Everybody's body-image disorder is their own special brand, so it might be that nothing I have to say will be helpful to you. I only had full-on anorexia for 2 years (was caught in time) but the related disorders lingered for decades. Susie Orbach's "Fat is a Feminist Issue" literally changed my life. Have you read it?

Orbach's exercises are designed to help you re-establish a happy relationship with food, as well as with your own body. One of them involved stuffing my cupboards with impossible quantities of my 'binge' foods. This was the original edition; I don't know if the newer one contains the same advice, but am sure the general mood of the book is the same. I thought I should mention this in case the very idea would trigger you negatively. In a similar vein, I have the following tale to relate:-

After divorcing H#1 - who told me I was fat when I was skinny, and who tried to prevent me doing the cupboard-stuffing exercise - I went travelling to Brazil. At this point my weight was stable, I had no eating issues but was uncomfortable with my stable weight. I wished I were thinner but, thanks to Orbach, knew better than to hate myself for it. Something very odd happened in Brazil. I became slim, slinky and very confident in my body. It happened because, observing the stunningly beautiful Brazilians at play on their lovely beaches, I realised they were not all beautiful - not by a long chalk. What made them beautiful was their confidence. Every Brazilian, finding themselves beautiful, thus appeared beautiful

So all the above has been a very long-winded way of saying "if you can lose the stress, you gain success." It worked for me but my anorexic neice, for example, requires an eating programme and regular weigh-ins. Should the lighter-touch approach appeal to you, though, please do discuss it with your shrink or therapist.

Good luck, and please remember you are worth taking care of.

the struggle of gaining weight is a daily one, and something i never quite figured out how to deal with, hence getting myself on the CBT list during pregnancy this time, i want to try and avoid a major relapse post birth like in my two previous pregnancies.

im not recovered by a long shot, but this is the first time ive actually found myself in a position to be getting (starting to anyway) and wanting to beat this with enough of a drive. most of the time my desire to keep living the only life i know (i.e. my eating disorder) over rules the desire to recover.

in my first pregnancy they agreed not to weigh my at obstetric appts and we had regular growth scans instead, which really helped, but in the end i still relapsed after the birth as i had gained a lot.
in my second they weighed me in appts but didnt tell me the number or write it in my handheld notes (just their own hospital ones), but that didnt work
this third pregnancy im getting weighed, its being written down, but it makes no odds to me anyway as where possible i weigh myself anything between 5 and 30times a day.
luckily (depending on how you look at it) for the last 3 weeks i am no longer able to get upstairs and no longer have access to my own personal scales and my husband refuses to bring them down for me!

i dont know anyone thats managed to recover on their own at home. sometimes friends have managed to strike some kind of medium between not getting much worse, but not really getting better. the only people, i know at least, who have managed to get to a really good place in recovery have had inpatient care, and sadly in the UK there are very few places and you have to be almost, if not at deaths door to get a place.
outpatient treatment can be really good if you get a good team of dieticians and psychiatrist behind you.

im on msn if you want to talk further, or happy to just keep posting, being on bedrest with absolotly nothinng to do, im more than happy and have plenty of time on my hands!

Hi,
My name is fran. I am 25 and 39 weeks pg with my first. struggling with bulimia long history of anorexia. I just bobbed in on this topic; but wanted to tell you about a book called ' in the thin cage' and a website called 'findingbalance.org'