yes and no. i don’t want people to worry abt me but i want them to realize that i’m not doing as good as they might think

 

Fk no. I have been there and it was horrible. That's why I'm trying to avoid family etc as much as I can. I just want to disappear and not be stopped tbh.

If they find out I relapsed then shit will hit the fan and I cannot deal with that

 

i want ppl to know but i dont want to tell them. like my main thinspo rn is not seeing my friends for a week and them seeing me get smaller and smaller. i want them to find out by how small i look, and maybe theyd start to care.

 

Nooooo way. Too embarrassing. I'm a nearly 25y/o man with a job and shit to do. I already feel like an outsider bc I just moved cross country where I have no friends, I just want to appear normal and functional. Nobody here knows but my fiancé and that's how I'm keeping it.

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Absolutely not lol, theres 2 people that know about mine (my therapist being one haha and my boyfriend bc i can't hide it from him). If my parents knew i would live under surveillance i don't want that, i'm a very independent person i don't want to be babied and treated differently. I don't mind people suspecting, or thinking i look skinny, but will i ever tell anyone else? Not if i can help it

 

they're welcome to speculate (because if it crosses their mind as a possibility, that probably means they think i'm thin) but i'd rather they didn't know for sure

 

Nooooo way. Too embarrassing. I'm a nearly 25y/o man with a job and shit to do. I already feel like an outsider bc I just moved cross country where I have no friends, I just want to appear normal and functional. Nobody here knows but my fiancé and that's how I'm keeping it.
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Exactly, except I'm twice your age and have even been told to my face that EDs are something people 'grow out of' by their twenties. I'm not actually sure anybody would believe it, not that I GAF.

I suppose if you become very thin and underweight at 50+ people think you have cancer or something instead, so they can crack on and do that (now I'm secretly hoping I can get thin enough that people might think I have cancer, which is pretty bad).

 

Definitely not. Sometimes i wish people thought so just by looking at me, but then ill go to earths end to make sure they think its unrelated.

 

I'm pretty sure alot of people know and I don't try and hide it. There's nothing they can do as I'm 33 and won't be forced into anything

 

Absolutely not, no way. Worrying about your loved ones dying while you're powerless to help is an awful feeling that I wouldn't wish on anyone.
I can understand wanting people to care, but wanting them to worry is really pretty selfish. You should find a therapist to talk to, so you don't have to put something like that on your friends.

 

I wanted to be open about it on Facebook for a while but not any more. Just wanting to get to my old underweight set point where things feel more right and stabilise there without people making too many comments or any major interference from doctors or clinics. Not dysfunctionally underweight but still very functionally superskinny. Once the skinny fat goes things will feel more like a state of equilibrium to me. Yeah I did need help when I was plummeting fast through EDNOS territory but I feel like things are calmer now I'm slightly into the underweight zone. I did searches of ED related content I'd left online and then made those posts 'me only'
not 'friends' to extricate it from the web. And because I don't want what I said when I was EDNOS and low restricting to be available any. more. I'd rather just get to BMI 16.7 to 17 and stay there. The outpatient ED clinic I was attending want to discharge me anyway cos I have PTSD and they can't offer me trauma informed ED therapy. And even if I was offered the ED therapy I was previously promised I'd probably just pick at the bits I find useful anyway 'cos I know I look and feel better and more attractive when I'm slender and quite fine boned. And it just feels daft to me carrying excess blubber for no reason. If I shared my weight and BMIs with the normies as I slowly high restrict the last bit of the weight loss to my UGW I'd probably not hear the end of it -despite the fact loads of people complimented me at my underweight set points in the past -before HAES rhetoric got weaponised so much. Plus I have a damaged knee so I don't want any busybodies pushing me towards the kinds of normie weight gain that would make it start hurting excruciatingly again. So I think being low key and not engaging too much with services is the way forward. As long as I stabilise in a way that my levels don't go awry (with vitamins and supplements) I might just stay in a zone that works for me -even if I get the occasional 'I'm worried about your weight' comment.

 

I want them to know just by looking at me... I want to be severely underweight so people just assume something is wrong... This way is so much easier than using actual words and explaining you're not all right... I hope I make sense...

 

Exactly, except I'm twice your age and have even been told to my face that EDs are something people 'grow out of' by their twenties. I'm not actually sure anybody would believe it, not that I GAF.

I suppose if you become very thin and underweight at 50+ people think you have cancer or something instead, so they can crack on and do that (now I'm secretly hoping I can get thin enough that people might think I have cancer, which is pretty bad).

Oh gosh, I'm sure it's even harder the older you get. I remember being in res with women in their 50s-70s years ago and that was my first major realisation that ageing out of anorexia was not a universal reality.

I WISH we could grow out of this horrible disorder and my heart goes out to you for having suffered for so long. Being an adult with an ED is such a unique experience bc many of us have nothing to fall back on if we get too out of control and our bodies "bounce back" less easily as time goes on. This shit sucks so much and I know it's only going to get worse.

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These days, I don't give a fuck to be honest. When I was young, I was scared of my parents seeing that I was not eating, well, all the stuff that most of you go through, and post about.

As you get older, things don't matter as much.

 

really close friends already know. letting others know (strangers especially) that you're suffering from an eating disorder, is honestly terrifying. one time, when i was hospitalised (psych ward), some random girl asked me what am i doing here and later said "seriously? you don't look like an anorexic". even though i was diagnosed, had a bmi around 16 at that time, i felt so fucking invalidated. now that i have bmi 17 or something, i don't in fact look ill (even though it is literally a mental illness, so technically your appearance doesn't matter, but, whatever) i have started paying more attention to what i'm saying in various conversations (body mass, weight loss, looks, beauty, personal struggles - you know the drill). at the same time, as sick as it sounds, it gives me some mad sense of power, you know? i am lying like a politician all the time; about me being fully recovered and not wanting to lose any more weight. cause the thing is - i want to. obviously. i am currently at my lowest point (mentally-wise) in life ever. i want to look like i'm about to die any second. i want everyone to be worried. disgusted and completely shocked by my physical state, so they can finally understand, how much i am struggling with basically everything. honestly, i just want somebody to care. then, disappear. as if i was never there.

 

Tho. I will say. Fucked as this might be? I want my old cpn to see me thin and regret discharging me. In my discharge paperwork - in big bold letters on a sentence on their own she wrote ' the problem continues because you never reach your goal weight'

I wanna make her eat her words. I'm like bitch. Watch me.

Also I will add she works at the mental health place right next to my house where I walk past several times per day

 

No. I rather keep it a secret. But eventually people will speculate once I get thin enough.

 

No not anymore. Made the mistake of telling two friends and they both do triggering shit and it pushes me away from them. Wish I said nothing.

 

I'm at a bmi where people suspect SOMETHING but can't be sure which is how I like it

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i definitely keep it to myself to the best of my ability. i want to get to a point where my body just speaks for itself. i would be very embarrassed if people knew i had anorexia at my weight. i cringe at the idea that someone would know and think to themselves "anorexia? she's not emaciated so it can't be that serious". the times people have noticed and talked to me about it i just instinctively brush it off and change the subject.

 

no but also kind of yes. i want to keep it hidden from anyone who could stop me, but at the same time i would also love for strangers on the street to be able to clock me just because i look so sick. that's when i'll know i've "made it" lmao. but i also wouldn't want to be asked about it, or have anyone try to do anything. an open secret i guess

 

Not at all. I'd rather everybody I know stay blissfully ignorant of what I'm going through. I don't want to trigger anyone by bringing it up, or by having them notice my sudden behavioral shift towards eating/food. Also, At this point telling people about it would just be setting myself up to get invalidated since I don't "look" anorexic, and have been told so by my therapist when I tried to bring up my struggles with eating & obsession with keeping my calories low. Obviously I want people to care but I've already caused enough grief for my family and friends in the past. So no, I don't want them to know, and I'm willing to do (almost) anything to keep them from finding out.

 

I want strangers to know but not my family if that makes sense because I hate that they can get worried

 

Nope nope nope

If I tell anyone, they will judge me.

Scenario 1 is that they will think I'm not skinny enough to have anorexia, which will just validate my ED telling me I need to lose more. Or in Scenario 2, they will believe me and try to make me eat more, which will make me gain which will make me feel worse about my body and will just make me restrict more when they're not around.

 

I want ppl to know, because I am 40 years old and I've been all over the scale. This is what a lifetime of poor health care does. This is what society does. This is what a lifetime of heartbreak and rejection does. My life has been robbed.

I want people to know because, well…. I've spent a lifetime trying to be in control in an out of control world. And the thing I e learned is that 99% of everything in this world is bullshit.

I don't want anyone to make the same mistakes I did. Trashing your dreams because you're never good enough, trying to gain approval of the wrong people, just wanting to be seen by SOMEONE while at the same time wanting to be invisible and untouchable and disappear from the world.

It's too late for me, but not too late for others. The world wants to steal your potential. Don't ever lose it.