Bulimia

Post Reply New Topic

Has anyone else on this forum struggled with an eating disorder?

Yes. Both anorexia and bulimia.

That said . . . I believe them to be more complex than your average perspective would indicate.

Bulimia is a drug addiction. Very simply put. The purging issue is a separate concern, sometimes practical, sometimes dysphoric.

Anorexia comes from a wide variety of sources. If one is discussing food itself, without its nutritional value, it might be a texture/taste/sensation issue. Otherwise, it could be an excessive fear of weight gain, but not necessarily.

I have struggled with both. It is different from a male perspective. I tried convincing my therapists that bulimia was a drug addiction, but they were not open. They're like clones too often in the psych industry.

There are some studies on the matter, but they are limited. I encourage you to research them. As depression is common on the spectrum and addiction is often comordid with depression, I encourage you to decide for yourself.

eating disorders usually come from not being fed properly when an infant. Do your parents have bad eating habits?

Yes, several severe ED's. and many treatments.

feel free to pm me- too complicated to try to post.

Eating disorders are psychological conditions and have nothing to do with how one was fed as an infant.

I have struggled with both anorexia and bulimia, from around age 8 into my early 20s. At times, it was quite severe.

I still have some issues with food, but at this point it is purely sensory-related. Textures limit me.

It makes me sad and angry at the same time that so little attention is paid to the link between eating disorders and ASD. I once read an interview with a well-known expert in the ED field and she said she believed roughly 25% of the young women she treated had undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome. (I wish I could recall her name, in order to post a link. Maybe someone else knows who I am talking about?)

I have problems with ED's at certain points in my life and I feel like I'm walking a fine line sometimes. (ie, When I'm under a lot of stress or not feeling great about myself, I start thinking about trying to lose weight to help feel more in control and, maybe more 'worthy,' and it's very, very hard not to slip back into old patterns).

Yes. I got one in my teens and it lasted till I got pregnant and then it came back after the miscarriage and went away again. Apparently I still have one because of my thoughts

But I don't even starve myself nor throw up. I recently learned you don't need to be starving yourself nor throwing up to have one. Same as over eating.

I think mine came from society. Learning about obesity and how people get fat and reading things like if you give your body less calories than it needs, you lose weight, and seeing people weighing less than me, it make me feel fat. Then it eventually came about control and I wanted to control my body and the number on the scale. Even my own mother has told me I like to be in control so I decided to use food.

I never went into treatment for it or anything. I thought I was going to be struggling with eating when pregnant but I surprised myself. I actually ate and didn't skip meals and I ate healthy and cut back on sweets and candy. Now I don't have an appitite and never want to eat but that isn't about my weight, I am just not hungry. Even before I got pregnant I'd be so busy with what I was doing, I wouldn't want to stop to eat and I would let myself starve. My mom said I never felt hungry as a kid so I never said "I'm hungry." I remember saying it but that be because I was trying to get what I want like if I felt like having ice cream and mom told me no, I would say I was hungry and she say "Have an apple" but it was my brothers who would say they were hungry and I never did that. But yet I would eat when I get served it or when I see food.

I used to think starving and hunger meant the same thing until my husband told me and I realized I never feel hungry until I am starving.

chaotik_lord-- To refer to it as a drug addiction is a perspective I have not heard before, but it's an interesting theory that holds a lot of water. Like sex, food has become like a drug for me. It is something that gives me immense pleasure, in the form of pleasing sensory input that occupies a considerable amount of space in my mind long before it actually takes place. Obviously the consumption of it dumps a huge load of serotonin into my brain.
"Conventional" psychology seems to not apply to comorbid conditions existing with Asperger's. When you hear about anorexics or bulimics, the victims are almost always portrayed as teenage girls, and indeed a majority of sufferers are from that demographic. But judging from the other posts on this thread, many people on the spectrum who also combat eating disorders are not teenage girls. I'm a 29-year-old heterosexual male, I was never abused as a child, and my parents always properly fed me.
The link between eating disorders and ASD is something together with the coexistence of sleep disturbances that needs to be researched further.
I believe that my condition developed as a result of social rejection and isolation and passive abuse by my peers as an adolescent and young adult, combined with inherent sensory integration difficulties caused by being on the autistic spectrum.
On a similar note, I know someone who works with battered women who told me that when she first met me she suspected I had been abused or even molested as a child.