just the general sense that you’re always a hair’s breadth away from passing out 🥴

 

definitely, i know it’s something people tend to romanticize but it actually sucks 😭 whenever i get fainty and dizzy i feel like im going to barf

 

my lowest weight was bmi 23 which I had not been for many years. At the time, my spine was sticking out I could not workout on the floor without feeling pain. I was walking over 12 hours a day so my knees hurt constantly, ironically I lost a lot of muscle mass due to excessive cardio. And I could see the bones in my arms before my gut disappeared 😵‍💫 the body is strange sometimes. Thank you for sharing your story with visible digestion (scary) and showering.

 

yesss i can relate with the joint pain from overexercising 😵 my feet used to ACHE from the walking i did

 

• people treating it like a moral failing
• getting stared at by children
• my specific symptomology being hobby-incompatible, relationship-incompatible and enjoyment-incompatible
• seeing my loved ones as obstacles to routine rather than human beings who care about my welfare
• anhedonia. emotions limited to rage, existential disgust at the world and suicidal despair
• obsessed with food to the point of not caring about anything else on earth
• i would probably be arrested for shoplifting by now, although that started once i'd consciously regained a bit rather than actually at lw
• completely pissing myself more than once a day and having to wear incontinence pads with those sandwich-bag fastening clips holding my underwear up
• eternal binge paranoia
• contemplating giving myself fatal refeeding syndrome over a death binge and getting taken out by a meal. didn't try to. just thought abt Death By Deep-Fried Spring Rolls a lot.
• feeling some kind of mental countdown to death where i'd wake up with morning dread and certain days felt like some kind of anxious warning to not go out because this'd be the day i collapse in public
• being too depressed to change out of pyjamas
• single bite c/s from public bins where people would throw away entire takeaways
• having it be legally "justified" to have my autonomy removed
• having my identity stolen by other underweight people the minute i was in a hospital setting
• brain-dead staff somehow qualified and getting paid to ruin my life
• to be looked down upon by people socially-acceptably killing themselves with their own poor intake
• people thinking they had any place to comment on what i do with my life
• hypos
• eustachian tube dysfunction
• seeing pensioners in public with more energy than me
• once in a while, seeing people bigger than me with friends and laughing and happy-looking and realising it was me with my whole world-view fucked up beyond recognition. i wasn't holding the secret knowledge that everyone else was ignorant to, nobody was impressed by the circus act i took disproportionate pride in publicly flaunting, i was just. fucked. it wasn't that they couldn't do what i could, it's that they had no reason to ever want to.

edit +1d:
• worst insomnia i've ever fucking had
• lw muscle wastage, couldn't move neck, couldn't lift up from shoulders and needing help to get up from seated positions including the toilet. nobody else on here who hit the 10s (bmi not kg) seems to have had that happened to them which makes me sound like a massive liar. or like i developed AN by some kind of universe accident.
• massive swollen sausage fingers the second it got cold bc secondary reynaud's
• self-imposed ban from sedentary creative outlets and i wouldn't have been able to make anything if i wanted to

 

• people treating it like a moral failing
• getting stared at by children
• my specific symptomology being hobby-incompatible, relationship-incompatible and enjoyment-incompatible
• seeing my loved ones as obstacles to routine rather than human beings who care about my welfare
• i would probably be arrested for shoplifting by now, although that started once i'd consciously regained a bit rather than actually at lw
• completely pissing myself more than once a day and having to wear incontinence pads with those sandwich-bag • security clips holding my underwear up
• eternal binge paranoia
• contemplating giving myself fatal refeeding syndrome over a death binge and getting taken out by a meal. didn't try to. just thought abt Death By Deep-Fried Spring Rolls a lot.
• feeling some kind of mental countdown to death where i'd wake up with morning dread and certain days felt like some kind of anxious warning to not go out because this'd be the day i collapse in public
• being too depressed to change out of pyjamas
• single bite c/s from public bins where people would throw away entire takeaways
• having it be legally "justified" to have my autonomy removed
• having my identity stolen by other fuckers the minute i was in a hospital setting
• brain-dead staff somehow qualified and getting paid to ruin my life
• to be looked down upon by people socially-acceptably killing themselves with their own poor intake
• people thinking they had any place to comment on what i do with my life
• hypos
• eustachian tube dysfunction

hospital actually sounds like hell, it can be helpful to some people but the way i’m wired it would absolutely drive me nuts to lose all my autonomy and be belittled and controlled. recovery on my own terms was so much better and i’m sorry you had to go through that : (

 

• Freaky heart palpitations/heart pain. The amount of caffeine I was consuming at the time could’ve easily killed me too so that did not help lol.
• Chronic fatigue, legit didn’t do anything ever. Would go to work in the mornings but that was brutal in and of itself, spent the rest of the day sleeping.
• Immune system was piss poor. I got covid when I was at/close to my LW and I was down for the count for WEEKS.
• No attention span. Couldn’t focus on anything. Dropped out of college because I couldn’t focus or stay awake long enough to finish assignments.
• “Generic comment about bones sticking out”. I remember it hurt to sit down.
• COMPLETELY preoccupied with food. Made worse by the fact that I was a vegan and avoided almost all dietary fat at the time. Starvation brain made me feel like I was legitimately going insane.
• Insane c/s habit that I was deeply embarrassed by. Would c/s whole trays of baked goods I originally made for other people.

 

YEAH omg i got covid like 5 different times it was ridiculous 😭

 

Pissing myself
Losing most of my hair
Getting peripheral neuropathy from cardiovascular damage
Vomiting up protein shakes because of gastroparesis
Brain fog
Not showering so I could exercise more
Not doing anything so I could exercise more
Loose skin from going underweight-> emaciated
Hoping that if I just lost even more, then it would make people want to take care of me
All medical interventions, all drs and nurses

 

Pissing myself
Losing most of my hair
Getting peripheral neuropathy from cardiovascular damage
Vomiting up protein shakes because of gastroparesis
Brain fog
Not showering so I could exercise more
Not doing anything so I could exercise more
Loose skin from going underweight-> emaciated
Hoping that if I just lost even more, then it would make people want to take care of me
All medical interventions, all drs and nurses

gastropareisis SUCKS. when i was really bad with purging it would genuinely take 24+ hours for me to digest a single meal

 

Couldn't climb stairs or getting on the bus (you need to climb go get on).

Cold no matter what.

I needed to be extra careful not to fall. I didn't had the reflexes to support the fall.

Couldn't squat if I needed to pick something up from the floor.

Lifting my legs to get on bed was an handful.

 

• Pressure sores/ bruises from sitting or lying down
• Inability to fully shave under my arms
• Weak bladder muscles especially overnight (self explanatory)
• Constipation plus gas
• Bald patches in my hair from hair loss

 

• Shocky feeling every time i rested my elbows on something due to having no fat protecting the nerve
• People just straight up saying "you're going to die" to me unprompted
• Chronic fatigue
• Throwing up in my mouth every time i bended over

 

THE THROWING UP ONE OMFG… i totally feel u, i remember being super cautious whenever i ate soup because even coughing or laying down would make it come back up again

 

Obviously not the most serious thing but it affected me so much mentally - all of the facial features I dislike on myself were so much more obvious at my lw. My nose looked way bigger and I have a very mild cleft chin (looks more like a little dimple but I hate it lol) that appears when I’m underweight. My forehead looked longer too lmao. I desperately want to lose some of my current face fat but a bit of padding hides those features a bit.

 

OMG sorry if you didn't want a reply but I relate to this so much because at my lw I found out I had very high cheekbones and I disliked them so much like no stay away from me...maybe next time when you lose weight, if you ever do ofc, you will retain some padding

 

Fear of getting locked up against my will
Fear of seeing healthcare professionals

Unfortunately these haven’t gone away

 

Heartburn and reflux...

 

My facial asymmetries were more obvious at lower weights.

 

There's a specific moment of fatigue you get ONLY at the top of the stairs

I.K.y.k.

when i get that one a more regular basis. Like not climbing stairs

why is that feeling so real


And
pretzel legs with spaces

 

Difficulty going up and down stairs

 

my hair becoming dry and brittle
cold alllll the time

 

being unable (or finding it very hard, or just not caring enough) to control my expression of emotion towards people who tried to get me to eat. so many terrible things said to my parents that i really really do not mean, so much stress caused. apologies can only do so much, the hurt i've caused for my family won't ever just go away

 

oh and another, not feeling any emotion at all apart from when in situations involving food/ed treatment

 

i don't miss when trying to take a bath that my bum bones would hurt and bruise and just make it unbearable

i don't miss my flat boobs, now i'm slightly overweight and have super nice feminine boobs, at my lw bmi 17 i was pretty much flat

i don't miss my hair loss

i don't miss my face looking so altered that i looked years older than i am

 

• pissing myself and having to stop on the motorway to squat down for a piss to avoid drenching my car seat
• raised squiggly white veins on my thighs
• having to consume 3 500ml cans of monster ultra daily to have the energy to be a functional human, and the ridiculous amount of money that entails
• giving myself refeeding syndrome on christmas
• binge paranoia
• almost falling asleep behind the wheel coming home from the club
• weird comments on my basket by supermarket staff
• food shopping every two days to restock monster ultra
• orange/brown spots on my index and middle fingers where i hold a cigarette from smoking too much (both hands)
• waiting for the shops to open at ass o’clock in the morning in december to make sure no one got to my safe foods (soya yoghurt, monster ultra, pot noodles) before i did
• having to wear a coat indoors
• dark marks on my ass from (what i assume to be) blood pooling due to shit circulation and spending 90% of my day sitting down (the other 10% i was lying down)
• having to take a nap before lunch because i couldn’t form sentenced thoughts by 11am after waking up at 5.30
• being so tired i was unable to sleep

 

I used to get the most random pain all throughout my leg for no reason at all. Sometimes I’d wake up in the night with cramp all down my leg.

Low blood sugar sweats, I’d wake up all sticky and the smell was horrendous. It wasn’t normal sweat, it was so pungent.

 

fluid sensation in chest ( pericardial effusion / heart failure )

 

anterograde amnesia ( a.b.i. acquired brain injury )

 

Still hated my body, still felt crazy insecure, hair fell out in chunks, my nails were brittle and always broke, gut issues/constipation, got dizzy easily, relied on caffiene too much and had constant headaches, and I was aaaalways cold.

I wasn't even underweight lmao end me 😭

 

not being able to think straight, hair thinning out, the constant obsessing

 

Worst one was lack of pelvic floor control, which usually ended up with 1s and 2s occasionally finding their way out with no effort.

The weird repetitive thought loops, not always negative, just weird. I remember I used to distract myself by playing Bejewelled Blitz, and it’s genuinely all I would think about for hours. I used to see the gems falling in front of my eyes n stuff.

The lack of fat on my face also wasn’t my favourite. It looked like someone had stretched my skin out. Made me look so much older.

The weird looks from kids, and pitiful looks from adults.

 

for all of my tendencies to romanticize and yearn to be at a low weight, there are still things that make me go hmmm

warning: tmi

whenever i would shower, i didn’t have enough ass to shield my butthole from the hot water running over it 😭 it made me cringe every time i was in the shower because it’s such an odd sensation.
i also hated being able to see the food digesting in my stomach and moving through my intestines, it just looks uncanny and gross to me


share yours if you have any! it’s always fun to commiserate lmao

lmao I relate to the weird feeling of water over your ass in the shower when you no longer have enough butt to cover it. It’s so fuckimg strange but now I’m sadly used to it