Can I still be suffering from anorexia at a normal weight?

by Nicole
(Texas, USA)

I suffered from self starvation, self mutilation and I exercised excessively in high school. I was never extremely skinny - I must have been 5'6" and 120 pounds at the lightest, but I would shift between going full weeks with no food and had a slurry of different food rituals for several years.

I ate once every three days I blacked out, I was always dizzy and sweating and half aware, and couldn't remember things clearly - but I remained at a passable weight, though I did look sick. I don't know WHY I wasn't emaciated, given my calorie intake, but I wasn't. Or maybe I was, but didn't think so?

Fast forward about eight years, and I am doing a lot better. Now I am almost incapable of losing weight unless I revert to starvation tactics and have all kinds of digestive problems.

I eat about a quarter as much as the people around me, but I early satiety makes me feel full very quickly. Eating a big meal makes my weight fluctuate as much as four pounds for a day or two because I bloat miserably.

I feel like I'm healthy, and I say that I am, but I still regulate what I eat so carefully and go hungry at work most of the day.

So, after a very long blah, I would like to ask - knowing that you aren't a professional or a therapist or anything, but I know that you have been there and wonder what your opinion may be - do you think I am still suffering from disordered eating?

I think I am scared to ask for help, because I think I'll be laughed at. I never felt like a "real" anorexic, even when my food regimen was one bottle of Snapple per day, I guess because I never had a feeding tube in my stomach.

But I definitely felt like my life was out of control when I blacked out in a restaurant, where some guy was apparently feeling up my skirt, and I came to with two of my friends holding me up between them, dragging me down the street, and I had no memory of anything that had happened. I just remembered sitting at a bar stool drinking tea. Apparently we were kicked out because my friend punched the guy who was touching me.


I never went for treatment. I saw a psychologist for depression as a teenager (and after some traumatic events), but he never took any interest in my comments about disordered eating. Actually, all of my therapists have been bollocks and ineffectual.... but that's another story.

I guess I even managed to be a fat anorexic, huh? My family was in denial, my mother was convinced I had an autoimmune disorder and ordered a number of blood tests (before which I refused to eat - or drink orange juice afterwards. Hello??! I don't have lupus!),

I felt that nobody would ever believe me or take me seriously. Even my relatives were coping with my inability to cope in a messed up and avoidant way. My close friends all knew I had a problem, and bless them, they really tried to help. However, it was such a sore spot and I was so defensive. I probably verbally chewed out every single person who tried to help me until they were afraid to bring it up. I didn't even know how to help myself.

Now, at an even less impressively slim weight, I feel like there's no way on earth anyone will believe that I could have a problem.

Do you have any suggestions, thoughts - or am I just crazy?

Thank you for this website. I really appreciate the depth of your sharing and your outreach to others who are struggling with anorexia and the disorders that are frequently present with it.


Thanks for reading my incredibly long and incoherent story... Nicole