i'm 18 and recovering from anorexia and bulimia. i have been at a stable weight for roughly a year and a half. when i was your age i became severely underweight and had to be admitted to an inpatient treatment center. all that you have written sounds exactly like how i felt and how i thought when i was suffering from the disease most. i would constantly research diet strategies exorcises and ways to cope with the depression that soon hit me. like you and all others that suffer from eating disorders i was obsessed. i became obsessed to drown out everything else. when i was thinking about controlling my weight i wasn't thinking about the painful things in my life. i hated the way i looked. no one had ever called me fat or teased me for the way i looked. but i was unhappy with my body because it wasn't exactly what i wanted to be. at the time there were many things in my life i could not control so i turned to controlling my body instead in addition to blocking out other painful thoughts by focusing on my eating disorder. it was very hard to recover and for a very long time i had no hope. however i promise it does get better. 16 is a very rough age. it is when you start truly becoming an adult and molding who you are. it is confusing scary and overall hard to handle. perhaps this is one reason you prefer to focus on your body and eating habits because then you do not have to focus on the other turmoil life throws at you. i cannot give you answers on how to recover but i can give you some motivation to seek help based on my experience. because i was underweight: i stopped getting my period. i still have not gotten it back. it is very likely i will never be able to have children. this may be the most devastating consequence of all. i lost almost half of my hair. it used to be beautiful and straight but now even many months after being at a stable weight it is thin wispy and unpredictable. due to lack of nutrition i still have not fully developed a woman's body. my breasts are small my hips are straight and i have little curves as a woman should have. it is very often i am mistaken for an age much younger than i actually am. i am an adult now however it is hard for people to see me as one as i look much much younger than i am. because i was sick: those around me suffered from watching me hurt myself more than i could ever understand. i was unaware at the time too engulfed in my obsession to realize their pain. my relationships have never been the same. some have simply changed in their dynamic but some are shattered beyond repair. i missed two months of school during my junior year while in treatment. some people are able to be effectively treated by a treatment team they visit a few times a week however my sickness became too severe for this type to be effective. those are two months of my teenage years i will never get back. tack on the 6 months i was severely underweight and depressed as a result of anorexia and that's nearly a year of my childhood lost to an eating disorder. much of my time today is still dedicated to recovering and fighting relapse. there are absolutely countless consequences of eating disorders. unfortunately your thoughts make it seem as though you may already be wrapped up in one. asking for help may not be what you want. it may be hard and maybe even embarrassing. however if i could tell my 16 year old self one thing it would be that help has always been hard to ask for but now than ever more important to seek. it took me months of suffering and unsuccessfully trying to recover to realize that i could not recover on my own. once i asked for help i found i had stopped feeling so helpless depressed and disheartened for i finally felt hope that i would get better. for me it took months but happiness does find a way to re-enter your life if you try to find it again. think hard not just about today but years from now as well. eating disorders put everything in your future at risk but getting help can make a world of difference.
why am i obsessed with eating disorders and losing weight? . i'm 16 and basically i hate the way i look and i hate myself for saying this but i want to be underweight. during the week i teat as little as i can and sometimes purge and also get guilty over eating a small amount but then at the weekend i tend to binge with barely any guilt. i research eating disorders and weight loss/exercise every night and it's the first thing i think of in the morning. i am obsessed with all to do with eating disorders and weight loss. why is this and what should i do?