 [ Symptoms ] why am i obsessed with eating disorders and losing weight  i am 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 lossexercise every night and it is 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 [ Disease ] i am 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 was not 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 was not 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 is 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