Struggling with Eating Disorder
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Struggling with an ED. No, I am not talking about my dick. Well… We will get into that. Anyhow. Just looking for some solid advice. Yes, I am also getting professional help for this. I’m actually in the ER right now because of how insane this has gotten. Woke up this morning with insanely high adrenaline, psychosis, and my blood pressure was 146/87 upon arrival.
I have been really struggling with my relationship to food and all the diet culture garbage. I’ve looked deep into the natural hygiene/detoxing/cleansing stuff as I want to heal myself. I’ve had gut issues for a long time along with other issues (skin problems, joint pain, low energy, low libido). Working with a functional doc and have diagnosed fat malabsorption and SIBO.
All the information is giving diminishing returns at this point and I’ve been causing myself more harm than good. I have not been eating enough for a consistent bit of time now and feel like everything is poison. This has gone on for at least a year or 2. The ED thoughts have slowly crept in more and more and it’s reached a tipping point to where I’m actually scared I will die if I don’t fix this. What does one do when their entire reality of food is so fucked, yet you want to get back to a place of knowing what works for you and how to make responsible choice.
Obviously, not looking for medical advice. Id love to hear from anyone who has experience with an ED as it’s not as easy as just eating more foods and variety. The intrusive thoughts catch me dead in my tracks and it legitimately pisses me because it’s like why the fuck can I just not over think food. The carnivore community as well as the raw vegan/fruitarians have legit ruined my idea of what health even is. This is even after learning about Ray peat and the bioenergetic perspective.
Please have some compassion, this is an extremely difficult time I’m going through and have basically no support in my life for these issues.
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No personal experience with it, but you could take the opportunity during one of your saner moments to make a list of acceptable go-to foods and trust the list when you feel anxious about what to eat or not to eat. I'd try not to focus on detox etc but rather on digestible foods so you get enough energy to pull yourself out of the state you're describing
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Start by eating whatever tastes good to you until you're healthy again and then when you're in a better mind state you can start worrying about the small details. A couple months of not eating perfectly won't kill you.
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I think having meaning and purpose in your day to day life is required to escape from these sorts of thought patterns. Ray has this fascinating quote on appetite here and relates it to a function of our own will, or the will of each of our cells working towards a common goal. If you have purose in your life, food and diet become simply something that serves that purpose - and so you learn quickly which foods are most effective for you. It's hard to do anything without a stable source of calories and nutrients though. Cyproheptadine could help in such a transitory period, Sun & Steel by Yukio Mishima, too.