Even after you've recovered from an eating disorder it still haunts your everyday life. I miss being able to eat without some sort of anxiety. I don't wish the pain and anguish of an eating disorder on anyone. It was the darkest part of my life, and a part that will never leave me.

I don't have an eating disorder and have never known anyone who has.

Not that I know of.

I've always been a healthy eater, but I have friends who have struggled with eating disorders. I also knew a woman who died from heart failure after an 11-year battle with anorexia and bulimia. (She was only 27.) It was so sad. I try to help my teenage niece have a healthy relationship with eating, with herself, and with her body image... because it's definitely a struggle.

One of the girls I went to high school with spent the summer after senior year in the hospital because of anorexia. Such a beautiful girl but she was never happy and she also had a lot of external pressure from her parents and older sister... She recovered but she is still very thin.

I know two people who are bulimic. One is an ex boyfriend that I even lived with for a year. He told me before I moved in and I didn't know the severity of the situation. I know now if someone is mentally unstable enough to have that kind of an issue they need help and need to deal with themselves before they inflict their issues onto another person. And the other one was a friends girlfriend. She would puke in the only bathroom of the house before they eat every meal. We were supposed to act like we didn't know. She was the thinnest thing I've ever seen. I'm happy to hear he broke up with her. You just can't be in a loving committed relationship if your lying to yourself.

My 17 year old cousin had a mean 'bout with Anorexia.
Poor thing wittled down, I finally convinced her to get help.

I didn't but I was on the verge in grade school. I would only eat dinner because my family was around but I ended up passing out at school.... so that was the end of that.

I think one of my friends has anorexia. She's super skinny and is always complaining that food makes her sick, so either she eats something as 'has' to throw up, or she doesn't eat it coz it will supposedly make her sick. However, according to her it's really not a disorder and she says that she's gotten medication for her condition and that she's getting better. But still she's so skinny and I hardly see her eat.
Me and my other friends don't know what to do. Her parents don't think she has anorexia and take her to the doctor all the time for medicine. Also, she exercises a lot despite being so thin already. It's just so frustrating and worrying because she denies it and tries to cover it. So that sometimes you just think that she really is okay.
Does anyone have any tips on what to do with this situation..?

omigosh - Do you think you could contact a teacher in relation to your friend? Her parents are actually committing child neglect by ignoring her weight and nourishment needs, she is not adequately developing in line with the typical development for her age (I'm guessing she is under 18 since she has parents who take her to the doctor??) and something needs to be done.

What they think and what a doctor thinks is two different things. She could have some freaky disorder but um... deliberatly throwing up meals is pretty much an eating disorder, even if it is not 'anorexia". Very few eating disorders are actually diagnosed as anorexia - typically bulimia or ED-NOS (eating disorder - non origin specific).

Please get your friend help through more "official" lines such as a teacher/counsellor or CPS.

I have never suffered from an eating disorder, but in junior high one the girls I went to school with suffered from an ED and we were all very worried. Eventually, we talked her into getting help.

I was anorexic, and denied it all the time. I was 14 years old. In high school, I felt so fat, I would not eat...but get this...since I was anorexic, my metabolism shut down, so I lost nothing. I stayed the same weight for 5 years. Then? I started eating again and gained 70 lbs! I am now trying to lose weight again...but I will remember what that bout of not eating did to my body. I was not eating so I would never be hungry after my stomach shrank, I was very pale, looked sick all the time -- and when I finally started to REALLY nourish myself with more than 1 eal per day, I gained weight. It was absolutely insane,

What made me that way? It's sad to say that a health class on obesity, body calibrations, and all that. I just wanted to starve myself to not feel so huge anymore.

i have suffered from an eating disorder and I have a friend who has. My eating disorder was not bulimia or anorexia, I took prescription drugs (which were not prescribed to me) to me which suppressed my appetite. This is the first time I ever admitted to it, why are things so much easier to admit when it isn't verbal, to people that don't know me and probably never will. SO much easier to hide behind a computer.

I've never had one, but known people who did. One college friend went to rehab for it, but I'm pretty sure she has other issues on top of bulimia. The other person I knew was an ex-boyfriend. He was constantly "dieting", or not eating at all, and riding his bike up to 80 miles a day. Crazy.

i've known people with eating disorders but never had one myself. when i was a kid i was a figure skater and lots of girls had body image issues. it starts early with girls. my middle daughter is in 4th grade and there is already talk about who is fat and who is "super skinny". we try to focus on what is healthy, and don't have television, but the media is really providing a poor example of what beauty is. even the cover of magazines that are next to every checkout at the grocery store just scream "YOU NEED TO LOOK LIKE A STICK OR BE NAKED TO BE NOTICED!!"

i didn't have an eating disorder in the classic sense. there was a point in my life when i felt like everything was spinning out of control. being a control-freak, i decided to take charge of the only thing i could...my eating. i would feel proud that i could control myself for days at a time. it was never about being thin to me. i am a very confident person, so my weight has never been an issue and it wasn't about weight at all. once my pants started falling off my waist, i realized that what i was doing wasn't right and decided that i needed to put myself in control of something else...getting my weight back up. so, although it probably isn't considered an eating disorder in the DSM, it was a serious food issue that could have turned into something worse.

the sad thing is i had a very close friend from high school who is still struggling from anorexia. she's been in and out of treatment for nearly 10 years. she had everything going for her, now her life revolves around food. we had an intervention with her in high school. sadly, she still doesn't understand that we were trying to help her, so nobody has really had any contact with her since then. she thought we were all against her, when we were just trying to save her life. but i digress, please ladies, if you sense something is up with somebody, try to get help. i can't help but think how things would have been different if we would have intervened when we first thought something was wrong instead of waiting until she was basically a walking skeleton. probably my biggest regret of my high school days was not helping her the second i knew something was wrong.

Yes to both.

it's mind-blowing and really sad to see how many people are touched by this issue in some way.
yes to both.

When I'm depressed or stressed or too busy the first thing to go is always my appetite. Was a problem when I was younger, but now I try to make it a point to eat three times a day.

Almost. I was 17 and I had lost some weight by just eating less, drinking less soda, the right way to do it. Then I just stopped having lunch, less at dinner. Cutting back where ever I could. I just wanted to keep losing weight as quickly as I had been. It got to the point where I was laying in bed one night with a headache and a stomach ache from not eating. I was literally picturing myself on the edge of a cliff, one way was falling into anorexia, and the other way was just walking away. I chose to walk away, and I'm glad I did.

I've always had a healthy relationship with food and my body, so not me personally. But I've definitely had a few friends who have suffered from eating disorders over the years.

All my life I've had one. Mom was anorexic. I have a hypothyroidism and PCOS. That = weight issues. She would starve me and call me fat. I would get into trouble even when I went into the kitchen for a glass of water. My entire childhood revolved around being hungry and denied food. I grew up thinking the ideal weight was 100-103 pounds. hah.

I've binged, purged, starved myself, overeaten, used laxatives, diet pills, etc.

I think if I had a normal childhood and didn't have the PCOS and thyroid junk, I'd never have had a problem with body image and food.

i work in the fitness industry and as personal trainers and group exercise instructors, we are constantly being critiqued by our clients. personally, i have not suffered any body issues, but out of the last four woman co-workers i've had, three of them have an eating disorder in their past. one still shows traces of exercise bulimia... very sad.

I've never known anyone with an out right eating disorder but I was borderline when I was younger. I've never felt secure in my body, even to this day I hate to look in the mirror. In grade school I was considered the chubby one and it hurt and left a lot of problems for me. I spent part of grade school and Junior High School focused on food. Whenever I could cut out eating I did, but I've never been able to deal with the not eating cramps so I eventually ended up eating. Not a compelling story but I still have a problem with my self worth.

One of my high school classmates is bulimic. She used to eat a lot then throw it up after she eats it. She doesn't care if it's in the bathroom or in a trash can. It was scary. She did it so often that people thought she was really sick. She ate very little to throw anything up too. So it was very disturbing.

Then a gay friend of mine who kept telling us he was getting fatter (which was true for most of the people in our group of friends) told us he was on a water diet. We rushed in to stop him. He got sick because of what he did and he learned his lesson.

I've never known anyone with an eating disorder.

I've never known anyone with an eating disorder.

My sister's roomate in college is a recovering bulimic. I really don't envy her situation because sometimes she can hear her throw up and has to decide how to deal with it... whether to confront her, call her family or what. It's so tricky, especially when you're not really close to someone.
I myself have a strange situation. It's similar to omigosh's friend. For 4 years I've been having trouble eating. It started with getting a bit bloated after eating certain foods, then everything, and then nausea every time I ate to throwing up, stomach pains and unusual bowel movements (sorry if this is tmi!) I stopped eating as much and then eventually stopped eating altogether. I was hospitalised because of my symptoms and put on perscribed drinks with all the calories I needed, which were horrible and made me almost as ill as food. Everyone thought I had an eating disorder but where anorexia varies from anorexia nervosa is that I wanted to eat; it wasn't an image thing, and I persevered with the drinks for 18 months. I lost nearly 4 stone but I was slightly overweight to start with thank goodness, or I'd be incredibly unhealthy now. I'm now with the help of a dietician beggining to eat again. So please don't immediately jump to eating disorder, especially if they're being seen by a doctor and have the support of their parents - they could just have intestinal problems!

I have been bulimic for almost a decade. I've struggled to control my disorder but relapses are common, especially during stressful times. I must say though, that having my son has given me a new respect for my body and what it is capable of. Since his birth I've rarely had thoughts as obsessive as I used to--and that's with trying to loose the baby weight!

I have never had one or know a person that has.

I've suffered through bulimia since I was 15 or 16, but I've never ended up in the hospital. It's really hard to quit, especially when you're so used to the lifestyle. I've been trying really hard to quit for good by eating very healthy, tracking down what I've eaten each day, and working out on the elliptical for 45 minutes a day or going to bikram yoga 4 days a week. So far, it has been helping me.

wow, this reponse is so overwelming. i'm so glad i grew up ina country where eating disorders was a rare thing. i can see that in States it's very common... i love food too much to have an eating disorder. i just can't

I'm 18 and currently trying to recover from anorexia. I have been dealing with this for the past 3 years and it totally screwed up my last couple of years of highschool, and my friendships. Like someone else said, I would not wish this on anyone as it feels so overwhelming and dark. I've been hospitalised 5 times, the longest one being for 12 weeks, but have been out for 9 months now and never want to go back in - I want to get better and get back to my life.
I find it so sad that so many people have had eating disorders/experiences with people who have had them. I hope anyone currently struggling with one 'recovers' quickly.

I am 22 years old and have had an eating disorder since 14. i have been in rehab twice the longest being 5 weeks and in the hospital for depression relating to my eating disorder 3 times. the thing is, i was never overweight. i was always active in sports so i was always in shape. i just hated the way i looked. i have very bad body dismorphia and that is was causes most of my food issues. it is an extremely hard thing to change once you've been living this was for so long. most people dont understand that eventually it takes over your life and your mind. you eat and you cant stop thinking about it. so you purge, or you just wont eat at all. i also would never wish this upon my worst enemy because i know, that for the rest of my life, i will have food issues.