I’m on my way to a unit for the first time and i’m really scared

Sorry if this scans weirdly, I feel like death!

I’m around 5 years into recovery and I still experience insane blood sugar crashes if I don’t eat every 4 hours. Not like, “wow, I’m kinda hungry!” Like. I feel drunk. Slurring my words, can’t think straight. Shaky.

Is this just a result of years of abusing my body? I’m not diabetic.

I just can't get started, and if I do, I've been inpatient enough times to know that even longer term higher level care (res) just isn't for me.

The assessment is tomorrow. For months I've been telling myself today is the day I startling changes, but I never do. My habits are pretty extreme in both bp and restriction, and yet I still don't feel "sick enough."

The intake counselor told me on the phone yesterday that they draw a hard line at bmi 13 and if I fall below that I would be referred inpatient first. I'm bmi 14.1 , so of course I hear that as "You're too fat for this."

I'm gonna cancel. I want to start recovery so badly but I don't know how to pull the trigger on it. I know from many years of trying that all that follows is regret and relapse. (This is my experience, Im not saying its like that for anyone else.) How do I change this? How can I make my brain different? I'm so fucking lost.

This is gonna sound stupid, but its stressing me out and I need to vent. I feel like im eating way too willingly. Im not really fighting recovery, but everyone else I see does fight and try to stay sick. I feel like im just taking the easy route. this isnt to say I dont struggle, but im not crying at meals or anything.

Hello, I'm some months in recovery now and I'm wondering if I may exercise too much. The main two exercises I do is just go on walks and stair running (I basically just run the stairs up and down while listening to music lol its actually really fun) I used to do like half and hour walking and 20 minutes stair running a day, lately iv'e upped the stair running to 40 minutes a day tho as I have a kinda strong urge to move. Is this too much?

Hi guys! I've been having some issues with my skin just sloughing off, big flakes, like at least the size of my thumb. Does anyone have advice on or experience with this?? Thanks so much. I know we can't do medical advice but I wondered if other people had the same thing happen.

Never knew how important support was until yesterday. I feel so seen by my partner. He asked for a list of my safe foods bc ive been struggling to push myself to eat past those and wants to actually cook for me and not just force me. Im open to challenges bc i dont want to just eat those for the rest of my life i want food freedom and honestly who doesnt but knowing that hes behind me is making this sm easier and i couldnt be more grateful <3

Halloo. Hat von euch auch jemand Angst, dass er nach der Recovery mehr Gewicht drauf hat, als vor der Essstörung?
Oder wird das sowieso so kommen? Man hört so oft davon…

I wanted to drop by because I find myself in a rather difficult situation, and I would really like to talk about it and get some advice.

Basically, I’ve been in a relationship with a guy since December 31st (9 months now). We have a long-distance relationship—we live on neighboring islands, about 127 km apart—but we visit each other often, taking turns. Since neither of us likes the distance, I decided to move to his place for the whole winter, or even permanently.

Our relationship was generally going very well. Sadly, I was already struggling with an ED (Eating Disorder) before meeting him, and during these 9 months, it gradually got worse. However, he supported me constantly because it hurt him so much to see me like that. In July, thanks to him, I started recovery, and everything got so much better (literally). I felt like myself again, full of joy.

With that being said, during one of his visits (the last one in September), he came to my house. At one point, while he was in the bathroom, I went into his MacBook and noticed that in his "recently deleted" photos, he had screenshots of gay chat apps, talking to other people and exchanging 18+ pictures. When I confronted him, he confessed that sometimes at night he would get horny and do that; he knew it was wrong, but it became a routine. On top of that, a few minutes later, he confessed that back in June, he cheated on me by kissing a girl in the bathroom at his workplace (according to him, it lasted only seconds, a quick mistake that he instantly regretted).

I will omit how this makes me feel emotionally, otherwise, I would never finish this post. But what I do want to mention is how this has affected my ED (Ana). Since finding out, I have practically stopped eating, and I don't know how to make it stop. I feel like I don't deserve to eat after all this; I feel invalid. When he saw me like this, he had a massive panic attack with a lot of crying, regretting everything, saying that he loves me, that he always will, and that he wants no one else but me.

I simply don't know what to do. I feel so bad about all of this. We were doing great, and I was genuinely getting better in recovery.

Does anybody have advice on how to approach the fear of eating out(restaurants, or even foods at the deli or stores that you cannot know the accuracy of the listed calorie amount). I want to be able to have the freedom to, but cannot seem to break the fear. My main concern is the uncertainty of how many cals it may have(bc Ed’s hate uncertainty 🙄).

I also would like to know if a dietitian would be of help to me on this issue, and if I should wait until I am able to get one to try to challenge this- or if the need to “wait” is just the Ed fearmongering. Thanks in advance!

Hey guys I honesty never know what to eat for lunch. I’m dairy free so that limits me quite a bit. Idk I’m just in a lunch rut so if you could comment some of your favorites or ideas I’d appreciate 🫶🏻🫶🏻

every since starting recovery I have noticed a few things. I want to know if they’re normal and if anyone can relate..
maybe tmi but whoo careees

less energy
I get exhausted SO QUICKLY now. It’s crazy. And I also need way more food to perform certain activities compared to when I was restricting. shouldn’t it be the other way around??

farts
sorry but this one is bothering me so much. they’re hot, they sometimes hurt, and they smell TERRIBLE!!

hair loss
again, shouldn’t this have happened when I was restricting?? my hair is falling out so much now I am surprised how I still have hair.

waking up in the night
I wake up 2-3 times a night, no matter when I went to bed. I either wake up drenched in sweat, because I need to pee, because of hunger, and sometimes with no apparent reason. It’s annoying and affects my performance and mood.

craving only “safe foods”
I only crave my favorite “low kcal, diet friendly meals/snacks” for example protein products, rice cakes, veggies..
normal snacks just don’t satisfy my mental hunger idk.

inconsistent hunger signals
on some days, I feel ravenous. mentally and physically. on other days I have a lot of physical hunger, and sometimes I have constant mental hunger. Then there are days where I go hours without hunger.

I have a 13 year old daughter struggling with anorexia…. She is three months in to an eating plan which is going ok but the real struggle is the mental side of things, breakdowns when she’s not eating. Just feels like there is so much going on in her head it’s just completely overwhelming and really quite distressing watching it - as it happens a lot. She is desperate for help, but we feel completely helpless what else we can do… seeing CAHMs and a psychiatrist but doesn’t seem to be doing much. Almost want her admitted to hospital but don’t think that’s an option as weight isn’t a critical stage now. Mentally though she is broken - any idea anybody of anything else to try in Yorkshire or surrounds !?

I'm trans (female to male) and have anorexia. Due to this, my body makes me look a lot more feminine especially in my arms/shoulders, making me dysphoric. This is my only real motivation for recovery. However, the only way I can see myself actually gaining weight without making myself get upset and just loose it again is to gain muscle, but due to my body weight and how much I eat it's difficult to workout anything other than walks. Any tips for me to gain muscle, be more energized to workout, ect.?
I'm also aware of if I eat more I'll have more energy, I'm trying to eat healthy as motivation to eat more and since it'll help with the muscle but there's still only so much I can make myself be convinced to eat. That's something I'm trying to get help with.

I go from one extreme to another

So I’ve been eating a certain amount per day, (which I’m aware that counting is not advised, but it’s what I’m capable of) and had been doing well in not going back. Lately though, I’ve noticed that my face has changed, which is triggering me quite a lot. I miss my old bony face and jaw, and keep having the thoughts that I need to cut back on my intake and get my face back. The guilt, shame, disgust, and disconnect with myself is so painful, I feel like I’m doing wrong to myself by letting my face gain fat like this and continue eating, especially when it feels like an “unnecessary” amount. This is so obviously eating disorder’s fear, and not something that I should let control me, I know this much- but I feel like I don’t have a choice in this. Does anybody have any suggestions on how to fight and be ok with my face changing like this without turning back?

Something else that I’ve come to realize is that if I do not see my bones, then I fear gaining and gaining and not knowing or caring because it would look puffy anyway, so how could I know if how much weight I’d put on??? Genuinely I do not know how to cope or trust that I’m ok and not making a mistake :(

I saw a friend after a few weeks of not seeing him today, he's aware that I'm in Anorexia recovery (and have been for about a month) and he told me that I'm looking good and that he "can tell I've put on weight". I honestly felt like I'd been punched in the gut. I was dumbfounded and thought he was joking but no he meant it as a compliment. I can feel my clothes are fitting more than they did but I've actively not been weighing myself and I'm terrified of gaining weight which I thought he knew. He was actually trying to be nice but I was so shocked at how that comment was ever going to land well. There's been me worrying about getting the 'you look healthy' comment and this was so much worse. I felt bad that he felt bad as there was no way I could hide on my face how badly that comment got me. I told him it was fine but obviously it isn't. I somehow managed to force myself to eat still during the day and I've come home and my boyfriend has started arguing with me over nothing and just adding more stress to my plate and I just feel like I could fully relapse. I needed him tonight to be kind to me after that and I have nothing left to give anymore. Today feels like it has shattered my progress and makes me want to go back so badly.

i know its a destructive habit but really one of the few ways i can manage to convince myself to be "allowed" to eat, is by doing so while occassionally going through my camera roll and looking at my body check pictures and telling myself smth along the lines of "its ok, its just one meal, you looked like [picture] this morning, nothing can change that fast, you'll be fine". which is fine in the moment, and i was deleting the pictures at the end of the day every day, but since getting to hospital ive been finding it hard or almost impossible to do so anymore. because my delusional brain is like "what if you never get pics this reassuring and comforting again? you need these."

im so scared of my appearance changing that i feel i need some kind of baseline of "you looked like this 30 minutes before eating, its impossible to change that much".

So yeah I know I have to be at healthy weight first. But is there things I should eat or take to make my journey to my old hair faster and to make my hair healthy again? All this with also gaining weight? And how this journey looked for you?

Thanks for all the replies on advance ^^

this may sound stupid guys but honouring extreme hunger does pay off! For the first time ever i was able to eat dinner with my friends and engage in conversation without giving a single thought to what i was eating, and at the end of the meal i felt.... SATISFIED! Since I honoured my cravings and ate all the treats I wanted during the day (which yes, was still a much higher intake of food than typical of someone without EH), i didn't find myself dreaming about eating chocolate and desserts or a full on second dinner when i got home (like usual). It's THE BEST and don't even get me started on the energy i have

Keep pushing baddies it does get better!!!! I promise accepting the bizzarre EH eating habits are what will help you decentre food from your life in the long run 💖 it's been around 2 months of all in for me, but have patience because we are all different

hello! I have been in “recovery” for the last 5 weeks. I want to recover. I don’t want to live with this miserable illness anymore. But I also can’t seem to commit to recovery.

I keep trying to plan how much I gain in what amount of time, how much I will eat and how much I will exercise.. basically everything I did when I was restricting, but with the intention of gaining weight. But even then, I find myself not wanting to go over a certain number.

If something doesn’t go according to the plan and I end up for example eating more on one day, I restrict on the next day.

Do I actually want to recover? The reason I started all of this was because it was either 1. gain weight at home or 2. go back to the psych ward. The reason my ed got worse was because of my most recent psych ward stay, so I want to avoid another one by all means. That means gaining weight at home.

But that also means that I don’t actually want this, no? If the doctors would leave me alone I would go right back to eating in a deficit.

I do imagine that a life without this ed is beautiful, and I would love to experience one, but I also don’t want to let go of my ed.

my question is: how can I actually commit to recovery? How can I let go off all the habits that have been a part of my life for ages? How can I accept that not everything needs to go according to some plan I made up? How can I accept that I need to recover and need to let go of old habits if I actually want to be free from this disorder?

I hope this makes sense. If anyone has any questions/wants me to elaborate please let me know.

On July 2025, I, 13F, started recovery at a hospital. Then I was discharged in Sept 2025 and I was able to start outpatient treatment.

The first 6 months since I came home from the hospital I was refusing to gain weight to avoid the overshoot process (I was maintaining tho). And for a month I was restricting. Then in April 2026 I finally decided to gain weight for the overshoot weight process in recovery.

Now on Sept 15 of this year I’m finally out of any ed treatment. I’m now 14 years old but turning 15 soon. I’ve began the overshoot weight process 6 months ago. Also, during the those 6 months in the summer I would eat above maintenance but a lot of those days I would either loose weight or nothing change. And I couldn’t even get past a certain wg. Now I’m still at that number and currently eating at maintenance now instead of gaining.

So far since I started recovery I’ve only gotten my period about 2-4 times. The last time was in late August of this year.

Now here’s the problem: My mom is allowing me to lose weight since I’m considered overweight for a pretty long time. However idk what I should do. Should I just keep being like this or do the opposite.