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Help me fight my eating disorderlies!
Oboro
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1) No, I don't think I have any eating disorders, but I think I have bad habits and unrealistically-poor body image and I want to correct those.
2) I'm male, about 179cm tall, and about 56kg strong. I've weighed as little as 47kg, but even I'd say that's unhealthy. When I step on a scale, and it reads out what it does currently, I find myself saying things like "goddamn fat-ass" under my breath against better judgment. I had a shirt fit a little more poorly on me than I'd like, and I got so upset that I ripped the shirt to tatters.
3) I don't vomit after I eat, or after I think I've eaten too much, but sometimes-- usually when showering, or in similar processes-- I get so upset about my body image that I find myself "involuntarily" vomiting. I think it's just me being an idiot, though, since it doesn't happen in locations where I couldn't clean it up easily, or anything like that, and if it were truly involuntarily those distinctions wouldn't be made.
4) While I can wholly acknowledge that I'm already so thin that it's about impossible to find [male] clothes that fit me, I still feel like the clothes are too tight. I don't have to wear a belt with 29" waist jeans (smallest size I can usually find), and that makes me feel bad about myself.
One of the problems I've run into is that I don't understand the actual health problems that arise from being 'underweight.' Most people I've asked this to until now just told me, "Well, it's not healthy!" over and over without bringing up any physiological facts-- I'm sure they exist, I just haven't learned them yet.
Are there any tried-and-true methods for developing better eating habits? I live alone in a hotel and can only eat where it's "free" (campus cafeteria et al, about 30 minutes away), and I think the fact I have to drive a pretty fair amount of time and then eat "alone" make not eating much easier than it should be.
Similarly, any advice anyone can give on overcoming the cognitive dissonance? I'll tell someone I'm hungry, and then later when they say I am starving myself I'll reason it away by saying I eat when I want to, I just don't always want to eat when I'm hungry. Frankly, I can see that's retarded logic, but I believe it and hold myself to it-- that's bad.
This has been going on for a while now, got better briefly around the start of the semester when I was holding myself to very strict nutritional standards (minimum 2500 calories per day mostly from good fat/protein/cholesterol, multivitamin because I couldn't afford variety, exercise regularly), but my casual budget shrunk and shrunk and once I could no longer stock my room with food, it just dropped off and then got worse from there.
Honestly, all of this said, I'd love to weigh 45kg and look like some of the girls on campus here and I know that's unhealthy but damnit, I can't deny it. Give a gal a helping hand.
ADDENDUM: I don't think it's altogether too relevant, but I'm a pre-hormones pre-operative male-to-female transsexual and although this probably ties in somewhat to body image issues, it's not something that can be helped so I'd like to try and focus on this from a perspective apart from it. Once hormones are more imminent, I think I'll gladly be able to scarf down food by the pallet-- at that point, excess weight will go to the "right" places, and the hormones mean I'll be losing weight anyway as muscle breaks down into fat.
IMPORTANT EDIT: Somehow, I forgot to mention my current dietary habits: on an average day, I'll eat one or two candy bars/cans soda and have one meal which is usually a cheeseburger and fries, mozzarella sticks, or just two slices of pizza or something similar. Nothing healthy-- this is a pretty recent development in shitty eating though, so uh. Sorry. I sometimes eschew the 'meal' at all, and when I do have spare cash I'll try and spend some of it on food-- bananas, green beans, stuff like that, but I usually end up throwing it away even if it isn't expirable.
2) I'm male, about 179cm tall, and about 56kg strong. I've weighed as little as 47kg, but even I'd say that's unhealthy. When I step on a scale, and it reads out what it does currently, I find myself saying things like "goddamn fat-ass" under my breath against better judgment. I had a shirt fit a little more poorly on me than I'd like, and I got so upset that I ripped the shirt to tatters.
3) I don't vomit after I eat, or after I think I've eaten too much, but sometimes-- usually when showering, or in similar processes-- I get so upset about my body image that I find myself "involuntarily" vomiting. I think it's just me being an idiot, though, since it doesn't happen in locations where I couldn't clean it up easily, or anything like that, and if it were truly involuntarily those distinctions wouldn't be made.
4) While I can wholly acknowledge that I'm already so thin that it's about impossible to find [male] clothes that fit me, I still feel like the clothes are too tight. I don't have to wear a belt with 29" waist jeans (smallest size I can usually find), and that makes me feel bad about myself.
One of the problems I've run into is that I don't understand the actual health problems that arise from being 'underweight.' Most people I've asked this to until now just told me, "Well, it's not healthy!" over and over without bringing up any physiological facts-- I'm sure they exist, I just haven't learned them yet.
Are there any tried-and-true methods for developing better eating habits? I live alone in a hotel and can only eat where it's "free" (campus cafeteria et al, about 30 minutes away), and I think the fact I have to drive a pretty fair amount of time and then eat "alone" make not eating much easier than it should be.
Similarly, any advice anyone can give on overcoming the cognitive dissonance? I'll tell someone I'm hungry, and then later when they say I am starving myself I'll reason it away by saying I eat when I want to, I just don't always want to eat when I'm hungry. Frankly, I can see that's retarded logic, but I believe it and hold myself to it-- that's bad.
This has been going on for a while now, got better briefly around the start of the semester when I was holding myself to very strict nutritional standards (minimum 2500 calories per day mostly from good fat/protein/cholesterol, multivitamin because I couldn't afford variety, exercise regularly), but my casual budget shrunk and shrunk and once I could no longer stock my room with food, it just dropped off and then got worse from there.
Honestly, all of this said, I'd love to weigh 45kg and look like some of the girls on campus here and I know that's unhealthy but damnit, I can't deny it. Give a gal a helping hand.
ADDENDUM: I don't think it's altogether too relevant, but I'm a pre-hormones pre-operative male-to-female transsexual and although this probably ties in somewhat to body image issues, it's not something that can be helped so I'd like to try and focus on this from a perspective apart from it. Once hormones are more imminent, I think I'll gladly be able to scarf down food by the pallet-- at that point, excess weight will go to the "right" places, and the hormones mean I'll be losing weight anyway as muscle breaks down into fat.
IMPORTANT EDIT: Somehow, I forgot to mention my current dietary habits: on an average day, I'll eat one or two candy bars/cans soda and have one meal which is usually a cheeseburger and fries, mozzarella sticks, or just two slices of pizza or something similar. Nothing healthy-- this is a pretty recent development in shitty eating though, so uh. Sorry. I sometimes eschew the 'meal' at all, and when I do have spare cash I'll try and spend some of it on food-- bananas, green beans, stuff like that, but I usually end up throwing it away even if it isn't expirable.
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Oboro on
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But, if you don't have any fat, and to me, it sounds like you don't, your body will start consuming its own muscle mass. Which is INCREDIBLY dangerous. For reasons which are obvious.
I'm in a similar situation as you. I'm 5'11", which is 182cm, and I weigh 68kg. Quite a bit more than you, but I'm still very much slender. 6 months ago, I was 52kg. I took up brazilian jiu jitsu, and put on 16kg of muscle. I feel a lot better, and everyday life is just easier...I can lift things easier, walking back from the shop with 6-8 bags of shopping is a breeze now (before it used to take almost all my energy for the day to do so), and I'm just all around healthy.
Being heavy is not unhealthy. Its when you're heavy, and the weight comes from fat, that is where the problems lie.
Being fairly heavy due to muscle mass is > Being light due to no fat or muscle > Being heavy due to fat.
By the way, I don't recommend weight lifting. Its boring and often takes a long time to give results, and if you ever give it up, the benefits will disappear and you won't have anything to show for it.
Instead, I recommend you do what I did, take up muy thai kickboxing and brazilian jiu jitsu. You can wikipedia brazilian jiu jitsu if you don't know what it is, or look up youtube. There is an excellent demonstration video of BJJ on there. Essentially its a groundfighting grappling art.
The brazilian jiu jitsu will help you put on a lot of muscle mass, and gain a lot of confidence, because you learn things that you will recognise are almost impossible to defend against for an untrained person.
The kickboxing will improve your cardio, and general health, and will tone the muscle mass you gain from BJJ. It will also help the self confidence. I used to get picked on a lot, and it didn't change when I left school, because I was physically very weak and easy to physically shove around.
Then, about a year after I started kickboxing, when I was at blue belt level, we were walking home from a club, I was the driver, so I was sober, when probably my worst enemy from school confronted me. my friends were drunk off their heads, so they weren't going to be any help, even though he was alone. He walked up to me, and grabbed the front of my shirt. Previously, i would have tried to talk my way out of it, probably failed, appealed for mercy and ended up with at least one punch in the face.
this time, i grabbed his wrist, twisted, shoved his arm up under my armpit, and started applying force. an arm-bar. basically, if I kept going, his elbow would be bent the wrong way completely and his arm would be snapped.
he didn't take it seriously, tried to grab me with his free hand, and I broke his arm. after that, no one messed with me, despite the fact that all of my friends denied telling anyone about the incident.
and i felt infinitely more confident.
you will feel better.
EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention. I know that it looks like you'll need to be big and strong to manage to successfully learn a ground-fighting grappling art, but you don't. the big and strong guys are actually at a long-term disadvantage. when they learn moves, and practise, if their technique is not *quite* right, they can usually compensate for it by bullying through with their strength. you will not be able to do this, so you will have to get technique down pat, and then later, when you are stronger, you will have far superior technique.
It's cumbersome finding good physical activity, though, due to the whole living in a hotel on the side of a highway thing. I like playing tennis, but it's been hard to get my stamina up (probably due to the eating stuff, adurr adurr) and there's hardly ever anyone willing to play me since I'm just learning and not all that good.
While we're here, if anyone knows any really, really affordable ways to have a healthy, calorie-intensive diet, I'd love to hear them. When I was "taking care of myself," it was still incredibly difficult just to get more than 1000 or 1500 calories in a day with the budget I had. Fruit worked somewhat, but I have no refrigeration and it's not always that cheap, and it honestly makes me feel like shit for the most part-- too much sugar.
No refrigeration/no cooking/very small budget make dieticians sad pandas!
Brazilian jiu jitsu is a different beast to all other martial arts, in that it is very much a strength training art. When you're rolling around on the ground with another person who usually weighs 50kg at MINIMUM, and most weigh 70kg or more (in my class, I am the lightest person by 20kg), it builds up your strength like nothing else to be throwing them around.
that is a shame about the overcommercialisation. and in a situation like yours, I doubt if you could even FIND a BJJ trainer anywhere. the good ones are not common.
carbohydrates are a good way to get calories.
how much bread is in your diet? Eat more. Try having weetbix or something similar for breakfast, and have a lot of it.
My way of eating them is to put two into a bowl, next to each other, fill the bowl with milk up to just below the level of the top of the biscuit, put about a teaspoon of sugar on each weetbix and go to town. I usually have about 5-6 lots of 2 every breakfasttime...so...10-12 weetbix.
I'm not sure whats similar in the US, but you could try.
Anyway, it was just sort of a tangent and elaborating on it in lieu of everything else I said in the OP (if I even said anything else that can be talked about, I can't even tell) wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. A lot of the time when I buy something I want to eat, I get sick of it very quick and feel like I'll be sick if I eat any more so I either suffer it or throw it away after only a bite or a sip.
Eating is hard! I know there's no miracle pill or anything for this but,... halp?
EDIT: I just thought of this. You may be like me, and have a fairly small stomach, so its nearly impossible to eat large meals. The way I get around this is to graze. I literally eat pretty much all day. When at work, I'm on my own in a store, with a cafe just next door, and four or five fast food places just down the street, plus a HUGE shopping center (you would call it a mall
Try that. it may help, if you don't do it already.
Thank you very much for offering so many, many varieties of suggestions, but now all I can say is that we stayed on the topic of food itself for too long and I'm going to ignore this thread for a little bit. I'll uh, check back in the morning, I guess. Thanks again, but try and read a little more closely and work with what we've got! Even if I get to taking a job somehow and eventually I don't foresee being able to put too much into a food budget so if you or anyone else still want to yammer on about that, try and work within the limits I've put out there.
Bad things that happen to you from undereating: Bone density loss, muscle tissue loss, lack of energy, poor sleep, various vitamin and mineral deficiencies. I guarantee you wouldn't be nearly as up-and-down moodwise if you were better fed, and you'd find it easier to cope with day to day stresses.
The only way we can help is if you list off what's at the cafeteria at breakfast/lunch/dinner and we tell you the good shit and the bad. So do that
I'd also recommend trying to eat breakfast. You don't have a fridge, which does mean no milk, but you could always try some oatmeal. Instant oatmeal may not be the healthiest thing on this earth, but all it requires is some water and a microwave, throwing in some dried fruit or nuts if you have them and would like a little variety. Most fruit doesn't require refrigeration either if it's uncut and you plan on eating it within the next few days.
And if you have no microwave along with no fridge, and no way to prepare anything whatsoever, I'm not really sure what you could do. I think some people on a previous thread (perhaps the original fitness thread) discussed leaving oatmeal overnight to soak in cold water, but I don't know how appetizing or safe that is.
As for eating disorders go...yeah, looking at what you wrote, I would say you probably do have one. In particular, body dysphoria and some variety of anorexia. It's very prominent among women, and I would say your situation (transitioning) probably has a lot to do with it. You mentioned you're in school? If there's any sort of counselling available, get into that regularly and make sure you bring up your eating and body image problems. Basically I see your problem as two-fold: you have disordered eating, and you don't have anything to eat. It'd be best if you worked on them together.
You're underweight for your height (BMI of 17.5, 18.5 is the lower bound for "normal"). A "healthy" weight would be about 20 pounds more than where you are now. Anything lower than where you are now is simply dangerous. It means your body is consuming itself just to stay alive.
Find something in the cafeteria you like to eat. Anything. Eat it until you're full, and then take some with you, and eat more when you're full. You won't be able to eat much in a sitting, conditioned to starving yourself as you are. Just eat whenever you can. If you overcompensate and put on too much weight? Adjust your diet again.
"Starvation" is the right word for it, and Wikipedia has this to say about it:
A site on eating disorders gives this pleasant description:
So please, eat something. Anything.
I know you're a MTF and I know you want to start looking the part, but at your height and your gender (and your body is still entirely male) you won't look like a skinny girl your age without being malnourished to the brink of death. I don't know if hormones or surgery will change that (not an expert on that sort of thing), but right now you need to stay alive, and that means eating and gaining a little weight. I'm sure you would make an exquisite corpse, but I think Penny Arcade would like you to stick around a little longer than that.
Along the same lines, you may just not have the bone structure to look like a super skinny girl. In other words, there are quite a few girls (and guys, I suppose!) who simply couldn't ever look like that unless they somehow changed the shape of their skeleton.
Once I realized this, attaining what I thought would be my ideal body shape suddenly became much less of a necessity. I just realized that specific image wasn't physically possible for me. I've decided since then that my main effort is going to just be staying in shape and being healthy...because as a result of these things, I will be skinny, but not underweight, and not overweight, and I'd have a fair amount of musclemass to boot.
Calorie shakes like Ensure and Boost are specifically recommended for people who are underweight and undereating, and they don't need to be refrigerated.
By the way, adding to all the other health complications... frequent vomiting is pretty bad in and of itself. It can eat away at your esophageal lining, which over time could lead to various problems with that (including internal bleeding); it can also destroy your teeth.
This is probably a little too personal for H/A, but did you ever get back on psych meds? How about therapy? You, my dear, probably need to be getting both on a regular basis, just based on some of the stuff you've said in the past.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Yeah, it sounds very much like you're in denial that anything needs to be done.
You have an eating disorder.
Once you accept that, you will be able to try and fix it.
If you don't, you will end up in hospital. Some people who do accept it still end up in hospital because they feel powerless to stop themselves; I've seen several people do it, and they sounded much like you do.
Start eating more now. If you can't or won't, see a doctor.
While certainly... strange I don't think it qualifies as an eating disorder, though it does sound a little bit like this. Eating disorders tend to be heavily psychological; if you feel that you have to burp up a little food now and then you might call it one.
Not to derail, but it sounds more like acid reflux to me, as the "throwing up" with the burp is involuntary.
It can happen when somebody burps, especially when it's a forced burp, because the stomach is being compressed. Not sure if it's considered acid reflux, but it's basically the same thing.
This actually used to happen to me when I was younger, but I somehow grew out of it. I think I also stopped forcing burps. :P
Anywho!
about the cafeterias-- there's a buffet style cafeteria, but I've been avoiding it since last year when I used to be harassed by the employees there. The most grievous one got canned even though I never reported him, and I really shouldn't have anything to fear, but even if I dress as a boy I can't really bring myself to go there. If I do, then the food is just unpalatable anyway and all I can do is focus on eating something and getting out ASAP. Also, they have a checkpoint so it's rather hard to sneak anything out, and I'd rather not sneak anything from there out anyway. There's fruit, but I don't like trashy college fruit, and it's not worth swiping into the cafeteria just for that.
(I said "free," but I meant "free, because it's already paid for and incorporated into my meal plan." I have another 90 or so meals for the semester, I think, spread out between now and December 22nd-- I paid $1650, got 125 of them to start with.) The cafeteria I do eat it is a la carte, and like I said I usually just get the nasty-food equivalent of two pieces of pizza, sit by myself, eat very quickly, and then leave as soon as I feel like I don't want to eat anymore.
t comments about eating in the room-- refrigerator and microwave, I want to say, are definitely no-nos since they go against hotel policy and we're only allowed to rent them from the hotel ($200 total; not a deposit, either, but an actual fee), and not only that but the hotel ran out halfway through the 98 rooms of college students. Still, I don't think they could find out, and I don't think they would really care, and a girl I met last night mentioned she had a mini-mini-fridge she wasn't using; I'm sure if I meet enough new people, I'll find someone with a microwave too? There are public microwaves in the garbage room (what the fuck to that re: the smell), but again, due to harassment I've received walking to the garbage room from my room I'm hesitant to make that trek regularly. Still, I guess forcing myself to do things I don't want is the key here.
t individual food suggestions-- money money money is important, but I have $140 overflow in my student account I can spend in our stupidly-overcosted campus convenience store on stuff mentioned (oatmeal, etc.). I'm not sure how long I can stretch that out though when it's $2/serving for instant oatmeal, as an egregious example, so I have to get a job of some sort sooner or later (proving difficult since I'm ineligible for campus jobs, diff. issue), and I'll work on that ... later, I guess.
t people commenting on body issues-- I understand the health issues a little better now, but some seem just like fearmongering (my heart, she is going to fail!) and the others are sort of... well, expected. As a biological guy, it was always less an issue of weight from fat, but more an issue of all the excess muscle in places I'd rather not have it. When I was younger, I saw on a website that the response to prolonged starvation was muscular atrophy-- I've sort of had an off/on problem with this since then. The intent is to starve myself to the point where a lot of that muscle is gone, and I guess I should know that's very unhealthy, but
it's hard when I'm getting closer to what I want by doing this, and I'm still physically function while doing this, and the only negative response I get at all is from friends who think that what I'm doing is a terrible atrocious thing and lead me to make forum threads where I can't get over my own stubbornness. Blech.
So, game-plan for the time being: 1) keep pushing forward with the referral process, maybe stop coming on so heavy and hard to prospectives so that they stop pushing me further down the line (where fees go up accordingly, too); 2) I still don't feel like eating more food than usual, so I think I'm just going to focus on trying different foods. For the time being, at least, maybe there's a chance I'll hit on something I really like and can gorge myself on-- otherwise, at least I have a reason to eat that isn't "Satisfy hunger!," and that will make it a little easier. 3) t Cat who mentioned it, I still have generic multivitamins from last time I just haven't been taking them because it says to take them with a meal and I really have been avoiding that concept of a "meal." ... I'll take them, I guess, as long as I can stomach it.
Thanks for all the responses, even the "YOU HAVE A PROBLEM!" ones that it was looking I wouldn't get any of. I don't think a BMI of 17.5 is all that worrisome since I know people who have BMIs two or three points beneath their "healthy" mark and they're fine as far as I can tell, also, but whatever whatever. Thanks again!
1) Call your county health and human services department. Ask them for referrals.
2) What's your nearest major metropolitan area and how far away is it?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Just a shopping tip, but the little instant oatmeal in the pouches is, not to put too fine a point on it, a rip off. A bag of instant oats is often equivalent or cheaper, and gets you a greater supply of food for your dollar. The only downside is the lack of included flavouring, which can be rectified with some brown sugar, cinnamon, some dried raisins, etc. On the plus side, you can control how much sugar you're getting that way.
Of course, all this may be moot with your budgetary restrictions and lack of cutlery, bowls, etc. Thrift shops are often a good, very economical, source of those things, though I imagine I'm only pointing out the obvious here.
In regards to your eating habits mentioned in the OP, swapping those candy bars for granola bars might be a positive step.
I'm a bit perplexed about something. You mention that fruit makes you feel bad due to too much sugar, but you're regularly eating candy bars and soda? If its really the sugar making you feel bad, shouldn't candy bars and soda be having the same effect? Maybe someone with a better knowledge of nutrition than me could comment.
2) New York City is a bus/train ride away, like 15 minutes, but that's a pretty quick way to hemorrhage away money (like $1.95 each way). Why?