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for straight a students, how do you balance studying and ana?

4.6K views 30 replies 31 participants last post by  emaciated_cutie  
#1 ·
did your grades change from before and after developing an ed?
 
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#2 ·
after becoming annorexic after bulimia i associated restriction less with perfection and more with numbing so i stopped caring as much about a lot including school, i still keep my grades decent in difficult classes (~4.4 gpa ) because it allows me to not be monitored so closely by my parents, i have had good grades all my life so its expected, and its a distraction from food and source of validation lol

i dont really study too well lol... i just go to school do some homework and hope i remember it lmao or resurrect the memory 30min before the test lol, makes me wonder what my grades would be like if i tried more
 
#3 ·
As a former giftie, keeping up with expectations was tiring but after the ED it became PHYSICALLY exhausting. My procrastination got worse and I wouldn't be able to balance the two at all. If in my head I thought I HAD to get perfect marks, I'd force myself to eat more. When I lost that motivation, it all became about weight loss.

Im so stupid now and my marks are shit, but the need to be perfect never left me. The only difference is that the expectations I had previously met, I no longer live upto.
 
#5 ·
For me they went hand in hand with eachother. The last time I relapsed, I was in my first years of uni. I was really strict and one rule I had was that I wasn't allowed to eat until I completed a certain amount of assignments or readings. Once I did, I would allow myself to have something. Focus can be hard, but I found it pretty easy to focus so long as I was properly hydrated and caffeinated. I found I was always super ahead in my work and had really high grades
 
#6 ·
I wish there was an easy answer to this. My ED follows the course of the academic year. Every summer I go back to heavy restriction since for me, studying is the only motivation to eat. At university i normally have a large coffee and a protein bar that would keep me pretty full for the day at around 240 cals. I also carry a heavy bag to campus up several hills. But I normally drop weight in the summer and gain it back in the new academic year when the demands of my course means that when I don't eat I can't concentrate. Caffeine always helps.
 
#7 · (Edited by Moderator)
My ed started because of a million little things, as much as I want to pinpoint the exact reason I can't. One of two things happen.

1) I typically will come home and eat for the first time all day, take a small break and then start studying at 5 or 6. I'll study until 10:30 or 11 and then get a snack. I know i shouldn't be eating that late, but at that point I still have a few more hours of studying. I'll study until around 12-1 and then head to bed.

That happens or, I have to study for x amount of hours before I can consume y amount of calories. Some days I'll use studying as my distraction to not eating. It helps me with fasting
 
#9 ·
when i'm in a b/p cycle my grades suffer more than when i'm just restricting. when i'm in my intense restriction phases, i usually just fast all day which means i can go to my morning class, study during my break, go to afternoon classes, do homework and extracirriculars in the afternoon/evening and then eat all of my 300-500 calories around 8pm. i know that this definitely doesn't work for everyone, i usually just have the most energy in the morning anyways and will only get hunger pangs or unfocused if i start eating earlier in the day bc my blood sugar will go haywire!

my ed has definitely made my focus/energy/dedication worse though, and it takes a lot more effort/time to get As than it used to (especially with my adhd). caffeine definitely helps with exhaustion but to some degree it's inevitable
 
#11 ·
When I had ana restrictive type, it was quite easy to study but this year I became ana b/p type and it is horrible. I skipped so many days in this term and I feel so ashamed because of this. I'm also stressed about school and to lower my frustration I vomit more which takes hours for me therefore I have less time to study
My grades stayed quite the same though but I have no idea how I managed to keep my grades the same
 
#13 ·
I feel uncomfortable (please don’t think i believe I’m the shit) but they’ve always been perfect no matter how bad my ed was. When i was IP with a 13 bmi i studied there in my free time even because you could only go to the clinic school st a certain bmi lol. I have ADD and ever since I’m on ritalin I’ve been the top percentage at school and now at university as long as I study for the exam until I understand everything which i do because thanks to my ed i have no social life and even when i had a better social life I’ve always put studying first because good grades is how i get love from my family. Nothing else in my life to make them proud and while i don’t really care what they think of me, it feels really good to get praised and hear warm words from your family
 
#14 ·
I had a 4.7 GPA in HS and now a 4.0 as a major at uni. I let myself restrict harder as a reward after getting good grades on tests and stuff, but I make sure to focus on getting protein and electrolytes to help me focus better and avoid brain fog. I also find it helpful to eat the exact same thing everyday so I don’t have to think about it and can focus on studying.
 
#16 ·
I'm not studying anymore but back when I did I had no social life like Zero. I'd do anything like high restriction and exercise and low restricting and fasting all over the place. Outside of my ED my life was only university I'd study for multiple hours every day it was hard to retain information I had to invest like twice as much time as everyone else to get the same results I feel like. I always had good grades though but it was hard and mentally draining. I had like 2-3 monster energy drinks a day to give me energy and I'd eat Alpro yogurt, skyr, carrots and green beans, peppers, apples, grapes, berries, egg whites, mushrooms and canned tuna and chicken breast etc just low cal stuff but things that gave me as much nutrients and energy as possible. It actually worked quite well until I got extreme hunger and developed AN BP and basically BPed every single day that made me spiral and after a few years drop out of uni because I couldn't handle all the work load anymore

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#18 ·
i can do it well but i'm not even uw. good student but bad anorexic. i'm not sure if it's possible to be good at both. but hey apparently marie curie was a starvibg student, passed out from hunger (bc of poverty, not ed) and became one of the best chemists in history...
 
#19 · (Edited by Moderator)
I've always tested well. I've always just looked over notes right before a test and it was good enough for me
My grades did slip a little with restriction though. Not even necessarily because it was harder for me but restricting can make my anxiety worse and I had a hard time convincing myself that my classmates weren't going to hurt me physically if I went to class. And also I was not motivated at all to do an assignment I did not like. My grade dropped from an A+ to a B+ in a month just because I hated the class so much and couldn't bring myself to care anymore. So no longer straight as I guess oops
 
#23 ·
I used to be really, really fucking good at school. Last year I had an average of like 96%. This year it's gone down by like 10-15% ig (Not seen the report card yet). I don't know if it was ana or drugs. Probably both. But it does impact your concentration like hell.
 
#25 ·
I was able to keep my grades the same but you also have to take into account that it was the Covid year when I was deep in my Ed before forced recovery so everything was just easier overall…no way I’d be getting high 90s in person because I had my notes out for basically every test 🙃