Was wondering at what age did most peoples ED start? Was there one specific thing that started it off? Did any family members have it? Was your family life stable? Also what physical effects have you experienced due to ED. Whatever you want to share would be fine. Thank-you :)

I can't exactly claim to have an ED, but I seem to have a major problem with overeating, which I think may be OCD. I've never been good with food at all, tending to try to starve myself but always ending up binging on food and being overweight. It's gotten a lot worse recently though.

I first started having issues with food when I was very young, just starting junior school, so around 7. I used to make myself sick a lot, but the dinner ladies never cared and no-one really said anything, except other kids who would run and tell the dinner ladies. I only ever used to take one sandwhich to school for lunch, on request to my mother, and that was that really. I also used to rub my arms harshly against the rough brick walls of the school, as an early naive form of self-harm.

At that time, me and my mother had just escaped her partner who was a violent alcoholic.

At aged 9 I was... well, I guess the most delicate way to put it would be molested... by a boy the same age as me. Because I never told anyone about anything I was feeling things started a downward mobility. I was a self-harmer and at age 11 I desperately wanted to weight 4st. It was rediculous and unrealistic, but it was what I wanted. I never ate healthily. I would go through bouts of trying to starve myself, trying to eat and then make myself sick, but would always just end up binging majourly. I became very overweight because of this behaviour and am trying to tackle it now, at 15 years of age.

I dont have an ED, just an unhealthy attitude to food, supported by cruel comments and snide remarks made by people from my family and beyond. I guess the best thing I can do now is try to turn that around, loose weight so that I can get down to a healthy weight, and learn to understand a bit more about me and about what I am eating.

This is how it happened with me... my mom has always struggled w/ her weight, so i guess it all kinda built up, one day i looked in the mirror and decided to get really skinny. i have a great home life, so that wasnt the problem... i was about 12, and though it started with just eating healthy, it turned into not eating at all! very bad stuff... ok, im done now! bye!
:bouncing:

My ED began I guess when I was 14. I am 24 now, wow that is a long *** time!!! I can not believe I am still dealing with this ****!!
Anyway I think it started for a bunch of reasons when I was young & neither myself or my family were willing to deal with it. As I got older the problem just got worse an so did things at home and in my life which just made everything worse.
I have dragged this disease around with me. I have taken it through high school, though 2 different colleges and now across the country with me as I begin my "working" life! I have been counceled, medicated, hospitalized, lost and hurt friends, tortured and scared my family and harmed my body permanently, yet I still can not just LET IT GO!!
I struggle every day wondering why and trying to recover. I am not sure it matters anymore if I know exactly when and why this all began, but maybe it does, I dont know, I just want to be better.
I am not sure if that is what you wanted to hear but I tried.
Thanks for listening
Jade

I never had a problem with food until I got pregnant last year. I was fine through most of my pregnancy, but the last few months I really started to watch what I ate and exercised ALOT. It became almost an obsession. I all of the sudden became extremely afraid of gaining too much weight and I counted calories and fat grams. I allowed myself what I needed to be healthy for my baby but no more. It got much worse after she was born. I was a healthy 110 pounds before pregnancy and ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. Now I'm 92 pounds. I just started cutting calories more and more and wasn't happy with my body no matter what. I have an intense fear of weight gain. It's horrible! An ED just completely takes over your life. I'm now trying my hardest to fight this. It's tough but I'm not giving up! I can't live like this forever. I just want to be normal and healthy again. As for the age when it begins...that just depends. It's most common in younger females. I'll be 20 next week and like I said I never had a problem until about 9-10 months ago, my daughter is now 7 months old. I think my mom is also suffering from an ED. I haven't talked to her about it and she doesn't know I have an ED but she is pretty restrictive when it comes to food. She doesn't restrict herself as much as I do. There is a thin line between just self-discipline and having an ED. I crossed that line but maybe she is just considered more borderline. So there may be a family link there. I know she was practically anorexic when she was young (around my age). My family life was always stable and I had a good upbringing. I had both parents at home and I feel they raised me very well and always did what was best for me. So I know my family life has nothing to do with it. The physical symptoms I have are weakness, fatigue, bloating, sometimes chest pains and shortness of breath, I don't know if that's related to the ED or not but it's possible and I'm also cold ALL the time. It's like I can't keep warm. I always have a sweater on or I'm wrapped up in a blanket when I'm at home. I can't stand being outside in the cold. I about freeze to death! I never understood anorexia before it happened to me. My attitude when I thought of people with anorexia was "Why don't they just eat and not worry about it?" I wish it was that easy! And now I definently understand and know how hard it is. I wish everyone on here the best of luck in recovering from your ED. My thoughts and prayers are with all of you!

Thanks for the replys so far :) I am trying to inform myself to understand what a loved one is going through. I know their are tons of web sites on ED but it is so much better to have real people's imput, I hope to hear more.

My ED started last summer. All the "therapy" people ask me if i had any triggers, etc... but I really was just tired of wishing I was thin and never BEING thin.

One ED handbook said that the top four sports for ED's were dance, gymnastics, figure-skating, and long-distance running. Hah... I've done all four. My main sport is figure-skating. When it became too expensive for my parents to pay for more than one lesson a week, I started to slip... so I gained a bit of weight. This on top of my first year of high school and honors classes, etc., made me very stressed out. I began to think that the reason I wasn't doing well in skating was because I gained weight (it was really just because I couldn't practice as much... after five years, that's a big let-down) I became embarrassed to see people who had not seen me in a while, because i knew the weight gain was noticable. At 5' 3" I got to 139 pounds that summer. To make it worse, it was Orange County and bathing suit season.

I started making myself throw up at my grandparent's house in July after big meals. When I came home and realized I had lost a couple pounds, it got worse. August, September, and the first half of October I was able to throw up without anyone knowing. My mom found out halfway through October when I became doubled up one night because I was having such bad stomach pains. I still don't know what they were, but I was forced to give her a reason for them. So I spilled.

She became gradually more involved, and anyone who has an ED knows how frustrating that is... you feel like you ate too much, you want to throw up, you are stopped. I've never felt such intense anger as I felt when my mom would not let me purge. I'm glad I didn't have a gun.

Since then, it has been extremely difficult to find times to engage in "eating disordered" activities. So, Ana has become my friend... and everyone knows anorexics are always skinnier... now I'm plus or minus 112 pounds at 5' 3.5" Recovering really sucks.

The fact that my family was always obsessed with food... not obsessed, but greatly worried about, especially because my older sister is overweight, and my mom recently went on a diet to control her gallbladder pains, which included no sugar, chocolate, or flour. Health food. I became obsesed with food, added to the fact that my WHOLE LIFE I thought I was fat, even though I never told anyone.

People sometimes say stuff like, "Oh, I'm so fat," just to get attention, and I always assured them they weren't. But me... I never joined in on those conversations, because I was afraid I really was. I remember looking down at my stomach once when i was about 7 and thinking, "I'm fat."

Once I heard an advertisment about the danger of perfectionists and eating disorders on the radio, and disregarded it, thinking "I'm a perfectionist, but there's no way I'm going to develop one."


Yeah right. So basically my causes are: overprotective parents, health-food always in the house, my mom's crash diet because of medical problems, my sister being over-weight, figure-skating, gymnastics, ballet, cross country running, bathing suits, and being in a new school.

Thanks for listening to me ramble,

Cassie

I have always had a very unstable family life. I coped pretty well for 12 years but then I found out my parents were getting a divorce and something in me snapped. I started self harming and developed coe. I went from an average to slim little girl to a very large girl who always made jokes about her weight before other people could. When I was 13 I saw a photo and finally realised how large I was, I hadnt even noticed somehow. One night I just though "to hell with it, what harm can making yourself sick do" I didnt know the dangers. It wasn't all that sudden, for months before I had started to understand people with EDs and to understand why they did what they did to be thin. I never knew it was not the weight though.

A few months later I was purgeing daily and restricting a lot. I lost 3 stone. That was about a year ago. I have found this board since and managed to stop purging though sometimes I slip. But I still restrict, that ina sense has gotten worse and I still have issues with my weight.

My family life is still very unstabel 2/3 years on from teh divorce and I struggle with that.

This probably hasnt helped much, sorry!
xoxox

Was wondering at what age did most peoples ED start? Was there one specific thing that started it off? Did any family members have it? Was your family life stable? Also what physical effects have you experienced due to ED. Whatever you want to share would be fine. Thank-you :)

I started at the age of 19 with eating nothing but oatmeal and exercising for hours. Then I moved on to emotioinally eating...especially at night...I would wake up in the morning with bowls, plates, and wrappers on my nightstand. Then I started binging at the age of 26 and abusing laxatives and diet pills. No one else in my family has an eating disorder but everyone in my family loves food. My family life was unstable...my father was mentally, emotionally, and verbally abusive. Since I abuse laxatives I'm always in the bathroom and it has caused me to have IBS. I've also had problems with my hair falling out, abdominal pain and cramping, sometimes I wake up after in the morning after I've taken laxatives the night before and feel sick and have to make myself vomit. I also have problems with restricting. Sometimes I only eat one meal a day, others I eat constantly or binge, and then other days I don't eat anything at all. :nono:

yeh...i was fat when i was little. i didnt care. my rents seperated. i was cool with that. their still close buds. but i dunno. when i was 8 i started getting awkward bout my weight and at age 12 BAM! bulimic. still am now. and i am freaked. i am only 5 lbs heavier than a gal whos been hospitalized.

I was 11 when it all started. I'd moved to secondary school from primary school where my mum taught, so there was always a parent around. I was bullied a lot because I was clever and people thought I was posh (great). I fell out with friends all the time because they'd have arguments, I'd sort them out and then they'd turn round and tell me they didn't want to be friends with me anymore. I encountered a lot of jealousy at school. My home life was great - all my family have always been thin and my dad does crazy amount of exercise - but I suffered from depression and decided that my parents didn't love me (totally untrue) and started self-harming. I have never been fat. I have always been very stubborn. I'm 20 now and in recovery but I fight the mentality of anorexia every day. Physical symptoms...hair falls out and looks horrible, nails break, always, always exhausted, cold quite a lot, bloated stomach, pale, dull skin, constipation (nice) and I get every cold and virus that goes round. Emotional/mental side...hate myself sometimes, still think I'm fat which really sucks after 9 years!!, lack of sex drive (anyone else get this?) the list could go on and on!! A lot of the time I don't know if things that are wrong with me are because of my anorexia or what.

anyways! hope you're getting the info you need! Let us know if we can help more with what you're going through, it must be really hard supporting someone with an ed. Good on you!

J*L

I am 24, and my bulimia started about a year ago. I've always been an emotional eater though, and have been on and off yoyo diets. My eating became a real problem when I started dating this guy though. I'm a perfectionist, I should say... And I thought I should try and 'improve' my body to be more attractive to him. This was fuelled by low self esteem, as he's very intelligent and I felt I wasn't good enough. I thought 'well, one thing I can improve fast is my looks'. So I started dieting, except that really I was starving myself, and I would exercise everyday for 2 hours, and always be pinching myself for fat and weighing myself. Except that I couldn't keep going for over a week without craving the foods I was 'forbidden' and then binge on them (chocolate!!!!). That's how the binge/purge cycle started and intensified. Until I couldn't even go back to eating normally without having the urge to binge. I am now trying to recover. It's been nearly a month since my last binge and my weight is stabilising, yay! But it's a daily struggle and I have to write out a meal plan with times and exactness, and if I don't stick to it I feel really unsettled and insecure, so my eating is still obviously very controlling and a major issue in my daily activities. I still have to turn down parties and social events due to the fear of what food there'll be and having to eat with others is a major stress! I abused laxatives, and now have IBS as a result, I think. I also have a general lack of energy and sex drive.
Is crap, and very hard to recover! It seems that it gets harder with time. This last week it has been so hard to resist the chocolate cravings!!
Don't know if this helps...
:wave:

Thank-you to all who have replied so far, it is helping me sort all this out. Good luck to all of you :)