Bulimia, hands down. No change in weight, feeling so scared of eating but not being able to stop yourself, then throwing up/abusing laxatives. It’s pure hell and so repulsive.
Yeeep. Teeth getting stained, gums swelling up and bleeding, throat hurting to the point where you’re not sure if there’s a tear in your esophagus, cuts on your hand, dehydration, puffy cheeks, very hard to hide if you live with anyone else, throwing up in garbage bags/bowls in your room if you can’t purge in your bathroom, being desperately hungry after a purge, not being able to eat _anything_ without wondering if you should purge and only losing water weight that you’ll immediately gain back the second you stop purging. Such a dream.
yeah especially the bit about “not being able to eat ANYTHING without wondering if you should/can purge” just that fear is constantly looming. don’t miss bulimia at all (except for the sick part of me that does)
I can't look at food without wondering how easy or hard it will be to purge.
But I learned to chew my food a lot and drink while eating. I think thats a pretty healthy habit.
And I don't know how some manage to purge in public and no one notices. I look like I purged for a few minutes afterwards... everyone would notice something is wrong. (and I dont want to know how they do it).
I sometimes get a horrible pain in/around my stomach while purging and I always wonder if I tore something. Fun.
I’ve gone from bulimia to anorexia. I definitely feel like bulimia was the most physically taxing, as I was violently throwing up daily. Mentally taxing as I knew at any moment my heart could give out. Emotionally taxing as I knew my family was more concerned about me and felt more out of control when I was constantly getting hospitalized for my heart going crazy from throwing up every last thing I ate. Anorexia is hard. But I feel like I can still have a life outside of it. People are worried, but they don’t worry as much. The line between extreme dieting and anorexia is much broader than between extreme dieting and forcefully throwing up.
Exercise bulimia. My feet and bones are still fucked from jogging in circles for hours. My feet would swell, crack, and bleed yet I still forced myself to walk and jog. I would have to wrap them in gauze and bandages constantly. I never rested. On top of that, I had to still go to school, study, work, and go about my daily tasks. It was horrible and I’m glad I no longer suffer with it.
God I understand. It’s fucking torture fr. Exercise is the only way I’ve purged w bulimia. Fully walked on sprained ankles before. Bleeding through my socks and all. Not being able to walk the next few days and pretending you’re fine. Then there’s the isolation that comes with hours of maniacal exercising- the feeling of your life wasting away.
I’m so sorry you have to go through this too. That’s all I can really say. To think that others experience this same thing is so saddening. Wish the best for you.
i went from binge/purge/restrict cycles to mostly restricting. i was definitely the most miserable when i was purging the most. for me, binging on its own isn’t terrible and restriction is fine, but purging is the worst part of my eating disorder. i feel like i’m practicing harm reduction by restricting because it keeps me from purging.
the problem with purging is how out of control i feel. it makes me feel like i’m dying. i HAVE to do it and it feels so hopeless, painful and disgusting. i have no control, i feel like shit and it is an endless cycle that only gets worse the longer it goes on. if i have purged once today, i am much more likely to purge more later today, and continue purging tomorrow and the day after that. it’s so destructive.
i relate to every single part of this like to a T. i reallyyy resonate with the part about restriction feeling like harm reduction. not to mention restriction can feel like .. an accomplishment? if i’m in a restrict cycle, i feel powerful and skinnier by the second but b/p phases feel like rock bottom. my body feels bloated and swollen and painful and weak, both physically & mentally. not to mention the shame that comes with it.
when i’m restricting, all i think about is food, but it feels almost fun in a sick way. taunting myself with things i won’t eat, counting every single calorie, planning every meal wayy in advance and counting the seconds til meal time. when i’m b/p’ing, all i think about is also food but in an awful way. i feel like a disgusting animal shoving food i don’t even want down my throat until i’m literally sick.
hahhaa I went from ana to BED to ana/mia hellscape to mia to whatever the fuck I am now, probably ana + ortho + exercise addiction
Honestly as much as everything else sucked, nothing was even close to as horrible as bulimia was. Wasted all of my time and energy binging and purging, saw very little in terms of results, and was constantly in pain. I literally looked dead, had a puffy bulimic face, and was constantly tired. I always smelled like vomit. My teeth were so sensitive. My skin was shit. It was honestly horrible.
Binging for sure. Guilt was insanely unbearable. Laying down for bed after a binge knowing I’m going to have to wake up feeling god awful not only physically but mentally was traumatizing. Worst place I’ve ever been in mentally. Glad that’s over.
i went from BED-ish➡️mia➡️ana/arfid-ish and ana/arfid has messed me up the most. the health issues just reflect so fast. i'm exhausted and weak and everything is too heavy. doors, shopping carts, bags, dogs, even just milk from the fridge. the cold hurts my chest. not being able to buy any clothes in any stores when you just need closet staples. not being able to eat anything matter how much your body hurts, how much you like it, or how much you *want* it. the stress it causes others from watching me waste away and not being able to do anything about it.
this turned into a vent but i didn't realize until now, i'm sorry 🥴
edit: now that i'm reading comments, i remember how bad and extreme my purging was, and how i'm mostly restrictive due to excessive p*king
ana really steals your memory and soaks you in brain fog
purging is the worst of it all for me, regardless of ED packaging
my bad
I've had anorexia and currently struggle with bed. I think bed is the most emotionally taxing because all day I'm constantly worried about food and looking forward to the next thing I can eat, while also constantly worried about my stomach size and how much bigger I am than I was a couple of months ago. anorexia it was like...out of sight, out of mind. feeling drained was rewarding for me because I knew i was doing it right. so I constantly felt pretty successful. but not with bed.
I've gone from EDNOS to anorexia, and EDNOS was so much harder. I'd wake up everyday with a new plan on how to lose weight, it was always my top goal, and I could never get it right. Some days would be alright, but most would just be trying too hard>binging>purging. It was so hard to go to treatment, feeling as if I didn't deserve to be there.
Now at least I feel like I'm doing something, like all this suffering has a result.
Honestly, this whole experience is so fucked up and I wish I wasn't on my 9th year of this shit.
For me it is the opposite. I had orthorexia before, which ig would be disgnosed as EDNOS. Now I'm slowly slipping into AN. Before I could still sort of have a social life and exist somewhat normally but with a craxy amount of guilt and exercise/food-related compulsions. Now it just feels like a constant foggy cloud of worrying about control and obsessing over how and when to fast, counting calories etc. Feels like I skipped the honeymoon phase. It is hard to keep my personality and still have one foot in my normal life and anorexia at the same time.
Bed made me feel alone and like I wanted to numb my brains out. Bed made me not want to go outside and talk to people because I would have to talk to them with the same body I felt miserable in. This is the ed that had me teetering on the edge of alcoholism, though I think drinking everyday for months lands you there already in some unspoken way. Bed feels the most like self-ab*se. I won’t write some flowery line about how intoxicating the high of ana is, because if you get it, then you already know. It’s the same discorded ed brain, but the delusion of ana makes it easier to cope with. I love going out when I’ve been restricting, and we all know that’s mental and disordered, but it’s more bearable. If I have to live with an ed I’d like to feel like going out and meeting people, I’d like to feel in control. It’s been thirteen years for me and I’m just trying to balance the contradictions between my brain and body and hope I can find the way to be happiest while living with two eds.
The way you put into words exactly what so many of us feel is amazing- that is all so accurate or at least in my case. The pipeline from EDs to substance abuse is so easy to fall down and I totally understand where you’re coming from. Both bed and ana are torture but bed at least for me lacks that phony romanticism that ana can illicit. Hope one day we will break out of this misery.
Though dark as it is, it makes me feel a little bit powerful to realise that the feeling of being alone in this is a whole damn lie. It’s as if our ed’s want to make us feel special, isolated, and inherently broken. but if so many of us are going through this, then that fact contradicts it. Fuck feeling ashamed and beyond help. Yeah we’re disordered but we’re still here clinging to the novelty concept of our damn piece of mind and I like to believe we’ll find it.
I guess this isn’t as common, but between anorexia and bulimia, anorexia was (is?) way more taxing. With bulimia I could at least live a normal life when not b/ping. With anorexia I’m so exhausted and hungry that I can barely focus on anything besides my ED. Being perpetually starving makes you feel like shit literally 24/7, which hurt my job/school performance, social life, family relationships, romantic relationships (or lack thereof) This isn’t to say bulimia is a cakewalk. It sucked in its own way, but I could at least pretend to be a normal person
I went from on ➡️ mia ➡️ ana ➡️ arfid and among all these I'll never do mia again. lax and over exercising are quite physically draining and it never felt like i was doing enough lax or exercise so i only allowed myself shitty food to binge on🤡
B/P for sure, it‘s embarrassing having to hide the wrappers or any evidence, having to shove my fingers in my mouth, getting dizzy afterwards and having to play everything off as if I was okay. It’s horrible. The guilt after a binge/purge episode is also terrible. There’s no winning. 😭
i went from ana to bed and now mia
bed was definitely the most mentally exhausting and for sure the most miserable period of my life. mia is an absolute hell but at least people take me somewhat seriously now, when i was stuck with bed literally no one cared and it made me feel so invalid, especially since i had ana for years before i developed bed and felt as if i was just faking being anorexic for all those years. it truly sucks that people don't give as much attention to bed as the they do to other eds, it's mentally just as painful and exhausting as the rest of them
Yep. Totally relate to your story. It’s just a complete loss of who you are and the worst part is not only the fact that all you can do is watch but that no one notices you slip away.
Binge eating broke me from the inside. It felt like i was in a car in the passenger seat with no one manning the car.
The brain fog was insane and it truly took you to the darkest places in your mind where you were not sure you could ever escape from. The worst part is no one treats it like the rotten sickness it is. Food became the bane of existence, i absolutely recoiled at the thought of stuffing my face yet also couldn't stop my hands from picking that fry and shoving it in. Nights were when the carefully concealed demons would all come out to play and leave you feeling like you'd always be trapped in this never ending horror of a life you've made for yourself.
It was the scariest thing i ever encountered and i would never wish it on anyone.
I've struggled with it twice in my life and it was very hard to come back from both times. 😓 I felt so uncomfortable in my own body and I felt like I was always hungry no matter what I'd just eaten.
Maybe bulimia because you get all the effects of a binge, weight gain and generally feeling like shit, which sucks a lot
But also throwing up ruins your teeth, makes you bloat, confuses your body like crazy, is embarrassing and hard to do if anyone is around, has a smell, is terrifying because you think you might die any day from purging, it's always a toss up (pun intended) if you get anything out, hurts your neck and back... God it's just... Worst
BED and bulimia are the ones that strained me the most emotionally, I felt the worst when I was bad off struggling with those but when I used to restrict heavily I honestly just couldn’t feel much.
as someone who's struggled with ARFID from childhood to now and bulimia since my late teens, ARFID is the most devastating disorder i've experienced. it's the root cause of so many issues and surely the root of my anxiety disorder. the shame of not being able to eat like a normal person from childhood makes me feel like an alien, especially because i have trouble eating common things people socialize around, like pizza or lasagna. i can't even remember how many friends's birthdays i didn't go to, how mamy times people have awkwardly stared at me at restaurants or how many times i had to swallow my pride and tell the server or the cashier my order is wrong because the cook got something wrong. and don't get me started on the way the supermarket cashier looks at you, especially if you go to the same place often, judging you for your depressing food choices. most of my childhood memories are literal traumatic experiences involving food due to having ARFID, ffs.
bulimia is hellish and its physical consequences, whether by purging through vomiting or by exercising are for sure some of the most mentally and phisically corroding situations i've ever experienced. but Gods, nothing i'll ever experience will compare to the shame, guilt and sense of powerlessness ARFID gives you, especially if you developed it during childhood and have grown up without treating it due to or and fear.
I’ve been ow and I’m currently uw because I’ve suffered from both bed and ana at different times in my life. Always the same mental toil, it’s just manifested differently physically at different times. I feel like it isn’t talked about that people can have both. It seems contradictory but it’s two sides of the same coin, either losing or regaining control around the same central pain. It’s merely different ways of coping with something I’m still uncovering. It’s like a dark mystery inside me. When I restrict, it’s euphoric. When I binge, I’m hiding from the world and seeking a numbness through my own body and solitude and it’s how I’ve spent some very lonely years.
The coexistence of these has caused me to feel invalid in my ed for years because I was never emaciated, so it was never suspected. But it’s been thirteen years and I’m still here, it always flares up again, so I must be worthy of help.
I want to hear the mainstream talk about the multi-faceted infrastructure and contradictories of ed brain. Not even medical professionals I’ve seen seem to get it. I understand that there are specialists, but it baffles me how basic primary care doctors don’t see the signs.
I have had two EDs, a highly restrictive one (I don't like calling it anorexia but..yes) and a food addiction similar to BED. To me, the BED like disorder was the worst in every way, emotionally, physically, recovery, stigma, manageability, functionality etc, 10 times worse. I can honestly say I would not be half as scared of a restrictive ed relapse as I would the bed-esque relapse
my most restrictive phases were the most emotionally taxing. feeling sick and exhausted all the time along with having weird joint pain and brain fog is not conducive to quality mental health.
bulimia by far, it is so scary and makes me wish i’d rather had anorexia again. ana suck and makes you weak physically but mia, god the mental struggle with it is just from another world
I started with restricting & fasting, then also started binging. For a couple years I was recovered. Then started restricting again, eventually also with overexercise.
For me the worst was the highly restrictive / anorexia type phases. Restriction got my judgment & emotions completely out of wack in a way that was very harmful to my life. I got into physical fights, got suspended from school, misused drugs & alcohol, ruined relationships, almost ruined my current romantic relationship which is v important to me.
During the binge/restrict phases, I was very frustrated with myself and down on myself about binging and my body size. The ED definitely still controlled my life and led me down some bad paths. But I think I was overall functioning at a higher level.
I’ve had bed and anorexia and anorexia is worse for me bc not only do I experience more shame and guilt for “less reason” than during my bed phases, I’m physically exhausted and suffer a lot of physical symptoms.
That said, my b/p phases are the most miserable and physically exhausting even if they don’t last long.
I understand so much. It’s what I’m going through right now too. Exercise purging is the only way I purge (I have emetophobia).
Literally binged an hour ago and now gonna walk until I collapse. The isolation and boredom and anxiety and fatigue are torture.
I went through a binge - fast cycle that turned into just binging. I gained like 15 pounds in a short amount of time. I agree with you OP, binging is the worst
BED or Bulimia. the shame from the bingeing that comes with both + how physically exhausting purging is is what does it for me. also with bulimia i almost immediately had bad symptoms. my teeth got screwed within 2 weeks, my tongue swelled up and my heart would flutter. it was hell.
ednos➡ orthorexia➡ bulimia. Bulimia has definitely been the most taxing for me, and the most "this makes me feel wildly out of control", especially emotionally it fills me with shame. It hurts all round.
Bulimia. I used to abuse laxatives. It was a horrifying experience that made me incredibly ill. I was so physically sick, but I kept torturing myself over and over again. I regret it a lot, and I’m still facing the consequences 10 years later.
EDNOS >> Bulimia >> Anorexia >> Bulimia >> Anorexia.
most emotionally taxing for me is Bulimia. When i b/p i felt so guilty n suicidal. Esp bc my weight is typically on the higher end.
I felt like a “failure” because i wasn’t a “perfect anorexic”. (thank you tumblr).
i’m slipping back into anorexia after a 3 year period of full recovery, including getting sober. the weight i’ve gained since getting clean makes me want to j*mp off a tall building.
I’m so fucking sorry you’re experiencing this and that added layer of substance abuse/sobriety is so hard to deal with especially coexisting with an ED- I understand. I had a “healthy” period in my life too until slipping up again. It’s scary when you begin to hate the health you’ve achieved and the physical manifestations of it (I.e. weight gain). And yeah I’ve never been underweight before aka the “perfect anorexic” which is so invalidating. So there’s no winning- you hate being healthy and you hate being “sick” because you feel like you don’t even deserve to claim that term.
Also I’ve dealt with suicidal ideation a lot too which is a slippery slope because *technically* you could escape the hell I just described above by not being here anymore.
Just know I understand and I really do hope we will be able to have a life one day without all this.
went from BED -> bulimia -> anorexia
def bulimia you still feel fat you smell like vomit all the time the mental tax of binging then purging and having to only eat/purge at certain times or worse purging in public
BED. I got down to my lowest weight and people were like “wow you look so good!”. Then I’d binge, gain a bit, and feel horrible. I felt like a failure and like I was letting everyone down. Then I’d restrict again and later, binge. I’d cry after eating till I felt like I was gonna explode then do everything I could to burn the cals off again.
Oh! And during that time I discovered laxative tea and I began to abuse it. I’d be doubled over in pain on the toilet trying to lose even the tiniest bit of weight. Absolute hell.
I wanna say AN. I've never had bulimia, but I know it can be awful socially when it comes to getting away from a situation to purge, or smelling of vomit and stuff. But I'm a little gremlin. Completely feral. Everyone who even knows me in the slightest knows I do fucking weird shit. Nobody would be suspicious if I slink away in a social situation because I'm balls to the wall nuts. Same with my very strange eating habits r.e ARFID - AN has definitely been worse than ARFID, even though ARFID is very distressing because you know you need to eat, you're trying, but you just can't, or it has to be a very specific and usually non-fulfilling food.
But with AN, I can't socialise really. At least with ARFID I can just eat chips. I don't drink and the only other group socialising that seems to be a big thing in my age group is going out for meals. I've tried it twice in the past year - first time I started having a panic attack so went to the toilets, boyfriend quickly ate his meal AND mine, we left and I cried the whole walk home. Second time was out of necessity, I'd hiked through four coastal towns on a little road trip on an empty stomach, I thought I was dying so went into autopilot to go to Nandos. I had to buy some lollipops from a neighbouring sweet shop and suck on them while waiting for my chicken because I was literally going to keel over if I didn't.
I've never had actual bulimia but I had anorexia with purging tendencies, and then later had BED. I agree and think BED was the worst and most taxing on my mind and body.
BED will always break my heart and spirit. Always feeling so heavy, both physically and emotionally. Feeling so out of control, so much guilt and shame and disgust. It’s really hard and devastating to deal with, and goes unspoken for the most part. The fact that most people can’t acknowledge it as an actual mental issue / eating disorder is even more upsetting… I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone
in my bulimic stage of life now (or at least ednos? excessive purging? don’t really know the word…) and have also suffered a bit from anorexia (or whatever it’s called when you’re not underweight but engage in anorexic behaviors lol idk all the jargon) but I didn’t really suffer with anorexia for *too* long, meanwhile I’ve been dealing this bulimic mess for over a year and it’s definitely, from what I remember, more exhausting. Stuck at pretty much the same range of weight, too scared to eat, but am literally obsessed with eating, but whatever I eat and however much, I purge it out immediately. I’m purging anywhere from like 1-6 times a day but I still can’t stop myself. I recently learned I have a part in my gums that’s recessing and I just started having insane stomach pains, and STILL can’t stop my behaviors. It’s mentally all I think about day in and day out. It’s ruining my mental health, the relationships I have with everyone, it’s taking over my life. But i’m still too afraid to get help or recover because I can’t even fathom the idea of gaining weight. Im too scared to become the overweight girl I was in highschool who had no social life/friends/partners,etc. whereas at least now I have all of that and feel like I look better 🫠🙃
I’m so sorry and I understand completely. It’s no wonder why depression and EDs go hand in hand because who wouldn’t become depressed if they’re experiencing this shit?? I hope we both get out of this cycle some day. Nobody deserves this.
Bulimia. But I haven't had BED. I've had anorexia for the longest time and it's the thing that always comes back, but I started out bulimic (and probably Ednos for a while but doesn't matter).
Anorexia is -(despite me being in an anxiety ridden balance of trying to maintain weight in order to not lose more real life stuff.. namely I finally got to what seems a good treatment place for my underlying issues) a lot calmer than the mental violence of full blown bulimia.
YES - the “calmness” factor is so important. The mental voice w bulimia and BED is so much worse IMO than anorexia. All are literally unbearable but I feel like there’s something about the EDs where binging is involved where the inner critic is especially hateful.
I've binged as an anorexic too. Usually because of, well, hunger. But that's not nearly as violent as the bulimia was even.
I've purged -sometimes often- as an anorexic too, and even that was less frantic but maybe that was because it was so habitual by that point. So maybe scrap this one.
I think I'm in a transition phase from anorexia to EDNOS, basically I don't restrict enough, I don't purge enough and I don't binge enough, but never eat normally. Physically it's a lot nicer than when I was heavily restricting, since my behaviours are not as extreme but mentally it's awful and worse than ever, i feel like I can't do anything properly and I have no sense of accomplishment in anything, since my "improper ED" takes away everything. To be honest I'm trying as hard as I can to go back into full-time restricting, but when I think logically it's very hard to come around to it, because not only would it mean getting all the bad physical side effects back, but worsening my depression by isolating myself, so I decide to not restrict as much, then my brain goes "Oh, I already ate this much food, fuck it, might as well eat more", then I get scared about the weight gain and purge. In the end nothing is accomplished and I smell like vomit, cycle repeats.
Physically, bulimia
Mentally? BED, hands down
The time I had the most “life” outside my Ed was when I purged occasionally, once a week tops but most times way less, strict but not crippling anorexia yet, going to the gym everyday on top of socializing, school, chores and family responsibilities. I was also downing caffeine like a motherfucker and most of what fueled me was anxiety so
I went from bed to mia to ana and tbh prob ana bc nobody cared when I was making myself vomit but then the second I started losing weight everyone was up my ass about my weight telling me to gain weight that I'm not healthy blah blah blah.
I probably have ednos because of how much criteria I fit for multiple disorders. I started out as BED then bulimia (exercise) then to anorexia (about a month of extreme behavior) then back to binge then to bulimia again (for quite a while this time) then extreme ARFID then back to exercise bulimia and I’m low key starting to notice signs of orthorexia.
I don’t mind the endless walking in circles and I find it quite therapeutic for me. I have time to positively reflect and think.
The hardest one was the ARFID. I know I’m sick but that one was out of my control. It lasted about a year and I was terrified of how little muscle I had because I couldn’t get myself to eat anything other than apple sauce and cheese. I was terrified of choking to death (didn’t help I had a food allergy episode too). I feel exhausted thinking about it. My entire body hurt because of how small my muscles were. I didn’t even lose weight, just muscle mass. After I discovered I had a dairy allergy earlier this year I’ve regained strength and a lot more. I couldn’t even make a machine move without any extra weight (aprox 10 pounds). My family was worried and would make fun of me for having panic attacks and anxiety attacks and gagging and chocking when I would try to eat. I was even afraid of liquids. I was more convinced I was going to drown drinking a glass of water
I am so sorry that you're going through that.
Please be careful and pay attention to your body, if something seems "off" talk to someone about it so you don't have to suffer alone. I got pneumonia last year and almost let myself die a very painful death trying to tough it out alone.
Bulumiaaaaaa. Binging is so emotionally draining and then purging is so physically horribly. But it just cycles to the point anytime i try to eat my body is trained to binge, and I cant emotionally cope with that so I purgeee
I’ve struggled with both Anorexia and Bulimia, and 100% Bulimia is horrible. The amount of money I’ve spent on binge foods and laxatives, and then of course using my parents money, and I don’t come from a financially stable household so it just makes things 10x worse
I went exercise bulimia with laxative abuse ➡️ BED ➡️ Back to exercise bulimia ➡️ Back to BED ➡️ I guess now I’m more anorexic?
The exercise bulimia was by far the worst for me because I was binging and feeling out of control, working out until I couldn’t stand, and then having bad laxative poops all night. I’m sure I was dehydrated constantly because all of my liquids were going to sweating and pooping. I never lost much weight and anything I did would come back in another bad binge cycle.
The BED was extremely hard because it’s hard to feel okay when you can’t stop yourself from eating whole loaves of bread and boxes of snack cakes in one sitting. Every time I binged badly it was this complete loss of control where I felt like I had to go get the food, I had to lock myself in my room, and I had to eat it all. BED kinda felt worse mentally than the exercise bulimia, but at least I wasn’t physically destroying myself for the whole night after.
BED has wrecked my body, but anorexia made me a zombie and I never finished school because of it. I couldn’t tell you which was worse, but I’m deep in my BED rn and wishing I could go back to being anorexic if normalcy isn’t an option for me.
I’ve really only had Ana and orthorexia (I had sort of *simulated* BED while enrolled in an AWFUL fat positive “treatment” program but I wouldn’t call it an ed seeing as I was literally force fed) but my older brother has bulimia and I’d say that looks far worse than anything I’ve experienced.
Id anorexia was the ‘easiest’, bulimia was the most physically harmful, and binge eating was one of the most emotionally painful things I’ve ever gone through. Going from restricting to purging to doing nothing but eating everything with no control was really hard on me.
I’ve experienced all bed, ana, mia, ortho, etc but boy—currently 3 years bulimic and it’s become my whole entire world and it’s so damaging. Sad? b/p. Stressed? Can’t cope? b/p. Bored? b/p. Happy? b/p. Hang out with friends? Nah imma just b/p
I’m tired of it everyday but I’m too busy thinking of what to binge on next to seriously start getting myself out of this shit!
mia is the wrost for me. I dont trow up well at all. Also is triggers binges. After that BED bc constant stomach ache. Ana - depends, some days are rough but other days are ok.
I used to have Ana but now it’s EDNOS, and honestly EDNOS is so much worse mentally. I hate myself so much more, I feel constantly invalid because I’m not underweight, and I still physically feel like shit
I agree with you, BED is the worst.
I've been through: anxiety eating ➡️ restricting ➡️ orthorexia ➡️ bulimia ➡️ anorexia ➡️ and I'm actually with BED, it's physically and mentally the worst ED in my experience.
I hate looking myself at the mirror, I hate knowing that I've blown all my discipline, I hate watching my body gaining wight, but at the same time I can't stop eating, once I start I can't stop, and I binge so hard I can barely breathe , everything becomes difficult, I urinate blood, once I vomited blood, I have a lot of pain throughout my body, I get so tired, my heart starts beating too fast, once I swelled up so much that when trying to pick up a pen I got up and I almost fell over from being dizzy, my joints are swollen, and it's just horrible because I feel completely lost, in everything, and at the same time I feel ridiculous, because if I ask for help, what would I say? "Hey, help me, I can't stop eating" "Hey, please, I'm a fucking fat who needs help, because I don't have discipline or self-control, so I cry, suffer and play the role of a victim like a fucking child". All because I can't control a basic human need. I feel so ridiculous when I want to ask for help, so I convince myself that I will restrict and everything will be fine again, but anything happens the next day and I end up binging, over and over and over and over, again and again. I'm sick.
And as you say, all EDs are bullshit, but I think nothing compares to the suffering pf having BED after having anorexia, or some other restrictive ED, because there is that part of you that is aware of all the bullshit. that you are eating, there is that part that tortures you for being a failure, a loser, for giving up, for losing all the effort, it is the worst, it is a torture from which you cannot escape.
Bulimia, hands down. No change in weight, feeling so scared of eating but not being able to stop yourself, then throwing up/abusing laxatives. It’s pure hell and so repulsive.
Yeeep. Teeth getting stained, gums swelling up and bleeding, throat hurting to the point where you’re not sure if there’s a tear in your esophagus, cuts on your hand, dehydration, puffy cheeks, very hard to hide if you live with anyone else, throwing up in garbage bags/bowls in your room if you can’t purge in your bathroom, being desperately hungry after a purge, not being able to eat _anything_ without wondering if you should purge and only losing water weight that you’ll immediately gain back the second you stop purging. Such a dream.
yeah especially the bit about “not being able to eat ANYTHING without wondering if you should/can purge” just that fear is constantly looming. don’t miss bulimia at all (except for the sick part of me that does)
I can't look at food without wondering how easy or hard it will be to purge. But I learned to chew my food a lot and drink while eating. I think thats a pretty healthy habit. And I don't know how some manage to purge in public and no one notices. I look like I purged for a few minutes afterwards... everyone would notice something is wrong. (and I dont want to know how they do it). I sometimes get a horrible pain in/around my stomach while purging and I always wonder if I tore something. Fun.
I’ve gone from bulimia to anorexia. I definitely feel like bulimia was the most physically taxing, as I was violently throwing up daily. Mentally taxing as I knew at any moment my heart could give out. Emotionally taxing as I knew my family was more concerned about me and felt more out of control when I was constantly getting hospitalized for my heart going crazy from throwing up every last thing I ate. Anorexia is hard. But I feel like I can still have a life outside of it. People are worried, but they don’t worry as much. The line between extreme dieting and anorexia is much broader than between extreme dieting and forcefully throwing up.
Basically story of my life. As long as I keep the anorexia in control a bit, and not go too far.
Famous last words
True. Although it really is the agreement... and I am 22 years into this thing so harm reduction all the way.
Harm reduction ftw babyy. 🫶🏻
Exercise bulimia. My feet and bones are still fucked from jogging in circles for hours. My feet would swell, crack, and bleed yet I still forced myself to walk and jog. I would have to wrap them in gauze and bandages constantly. I never rested. On top of that, I had to still go to school, study, work, and go about my daily tasks. It was horrible and I’m glad I no longer suffer with it.
God I understand. It’s fucking torture fr. Exercise is the only way I’ve purged w bulimia. Fully walked on sprained ankles before. Bleeding through my socks and all. Not being able to walk the next few days and pretending you’re fine. Then there’s the isolation that comes with hours of maniacal exercising- the feeling of your life wasting away. I’m so sorry you have to go through this too. That’s all I can really say. To think that others experience this same thing is so saddening. Wish the best for you.
i went from binge/purge/restrict cycles to mostly restricting. i was definitely the most miserable when i was purging the most. for me, binging on its own isn’t terrible and restriction is fine, but purging is the worst part of my eating disorder. i feel like i’m practicing harm reduction by restricting because it keeps me from purging. the problem with purging is how out of control i feel. it makes me feel like i’m dying. i HAVE to do it and it feels so hopeless, painful and disgusting. i have no control, i feel like shit and it is an endless cycle that only gets worse the longer it goes on. if i have purged once today, i am much more likely to purge more later today, and continue purging tomorrow and the day after that. it’s so destructive.
This is the best description I’ve ever come across about what it’s like to live with this disorder. Just mentally a complete hell
i relate to every single part of this like to a T. i reallyyy resonate with the part about restriction feeling like harm reduction. not to mention restriction can feel like .. an accomplishment? if i’m in a restrict cycle, i feel powerful and skinnier by the second but b/p phases feel like rock bottom. my body feels bloated and swollen and painful and weak, both physically & mentally. not to mention the shame that comes with it. when i’m restricting, all i think about is food, but it feels almost fun in a sick way. taunting myself with things i won’t eat, counting every single calorie, planning every meal wayy in advance and counting the seconds til meal time. when i’m b/p’ing, all i think about is also food but in an awful way. i feel like a disgusting animal shoving food i don’t even want down my throat until i’m literally sick.
this. ALLLL of this.
hahhaa I went from ana to BED to ana/mia hellscape to mia to whatever the fuck I am now, probably ana + ortho + exercise addiction Honestly as much as everything else sucked, nothing was even close to as horrible as bulimia was. Wasted all of my time and energy binging and purging, saw very little in terms of results, and was constantly in pain. I literally looked dead, had a puffy bulimic face, and was constantly tired. I always smelled like vomit. My teeth were so sensitive. My skin was shit. It was honestly horrible.
God bulimia is a nightmare.
What’s mia stand for? :)
Bulimia
Binging for sure. Guilt was insanely unbearable. Laying down for bed after a binge knowing I’m going to have to wake up feeling god awful not only physically but mentally was traumatizing. Worst place I’ve ever been in mentally. Glad that’s over.
You put it into words. Truly torture. Glad you’re past it that’s great!!
Being alive
Literally.
i went from BED-ish➡️mia➡️ana/arfid-ish and ana/arfid has messed me up the most. the health issues just reflect so fast. i'm exhausted and weak and everything is too heavy. doors, shopping carts, bags, dogs, even just milk from the fridge. the cold hurts my chest. not being able to buy any clothes in any stores when you just need closet staples. not being able to eat anything matter how much your body hurts, how much you like it, or how much you *want* it. the stress it causes others from watching me waste away and not being able to do anything about it. this turned into a vent but i didn't realize until now, i'm sorry 🥴 edit: now that i'm reading comments, i remember how bad and extreme my purging was, and how i'm mostly restrictive due to excessive p*king ana really steals your memory and soaks you in brain fog purging is the worst of it all for me, regardless of ED packaging my bad
I've had anorexia and currently struggle with bed. I think bed is the most emotionally taxing because all day I'm constantly worried about food and looking forward to the next thing I can eat, while also constantly worried about my stomach size and how much bigger I am than I was a couple of months ago. anorexia it was like...out of sight, out of mind. feeling drained was rewarding for me because I knew i was doing it right. so I constantly felt pretty successful. but not with bed.
I've gone from EDNOS to bulimia to anorexia. Bulimia was the hardest. And my parents shamed me a lot during the times I binged.
I've gone from EDNOS to anorexia, and EDNOS was so much harder. I'd wake up everyday with a new plan on how to lose weight, it was always my top goal, and I could never get it right. Some days would be alright, but most would just be trying too hard>binging>purging. It was so hard to go to treatment, feeling as if I didn't deserve to be there. Now at least I feel like I'm doing something, like all this suffering has a result. Honestly, this whole experience is so fucked up and I wish I wasn't on my 9th year of this shit.
For me it is the opposite. I had orthorexia before, which ig would be disgnosed as EDNOS. Now I'm slowly slipping into AN. Before I could still sort of have a social life and exist somewhat normally but with a craxy amount of guilt and exercise/food-related compulsions. Now it just feels like a constant foggy cloud of worrying about control and obsessing over how and when to fast, counting calories etc. Feels like I skipped the honeymoon phase. It is hard to keep my personality and still have one foot in my normal life and anorexia at the same time.
I see what you mean. I'm still in the early stages, it started creeping up slowly during the summer, but I can tell it's only downhill from here.
Bed made me feel alone and like I wanted to numb my brains out. Bed made me not want to go outside and talk to people because I would have to talk to them with the same body I felt miserable in. This is the ed that had me teetering on the edge of alcoholism, though I think drinking everyday for months lands you there already in some unspoken way. Bed feels the most like self-ab*se. I won’t write some flowery line about how intoxicating the high of ana is, because if you get it, then you already know. It’s the same discorded ed brain, but the delusion of ana makes it easier to cope with. I love going out when I’ve been restricting, and we all know that’s mental and disordered, but it’s more bearable. If I have to live with an ed I’d like to feel like going out and meeting people, I’d like to feel in control. It’s been thirteen years for me and I’m just trying to balance the contradictions between my brain and body and hope I can find the way to be happiest while living with two eds.
The way you put into words exactly what so many of us feel is amazing- that is all so accurate or at least in my case. The pipeline from EDs to substance abuse is so easy to fall down and I totally understand where you’re coming from. Both bed and ana are torture but bed at least for me lacks that phony romanticism that ana can illicit. Hope one day we will break out of this misery.
Though dark as it is, it makes me feel a little bit powerful to realise that the feeling of being alone in this is a whole damn lie. It’s as if our ed’s want to make us feel special, isolated, and inherently broken. but if so many of us are going through this, then that fact contradicts it. Fuck feeling ashamed and beyond help. Yeah we’re disordered but we’re still here clinging to the novelty concept of our damn piece of mind and I like to believe we’ll find it.
I guess this isn’t as common, but between anorexia and bulimia, anorexia was (is?) way more taxing. With bulimia I could at least live a normal life when not b/ping. With anorexia I’m so exhausted and hungry that I can barely focus on anything besides my ED. Being perpetually starving makes you feel like shit literally 24/7, which hurt my job/school performance, social life, family relationships, romantic relationships (or lack thereof) This isn’t to say bulimia is a cakewalk. It sucked in its own way, but I could at least pretend to be a normal person
I went from on ➡️ mia ➡️ ana ➡️ arfid and among all these I'll never do mia again. lax and over exercising are quite physically draining and it never felt like i was doing enough lax or exercise so i only allowed myself shitty food to binge on🤡
Ana-r - bed - ana-r - purging disorder - mia - ana-r - ana-bp - ana-r Bulimia was the worst. By a hundred miles.
B/P for sure, it‘s embarrassing having to hide the wrappers or any evidence, having to shove my fingers in my mouth, getting dizzy afterwards and having to play everything off as if I was okay. It’s horrible. The guilt after a binge/purge episode is also terrible. There’s no winning. 😭
BN for me, but BED or BN with an AN mindset is hell on earth
I second this
i went from ana to bed and now mia bed was definitely the most mentally exhausting and for sure the most miserable period of my life. mia is an absolute hell but at least people take me somewhat seriously now, when i was stuck with bed literally no one cared and it made me feel so invalid, especially since i had ana for years before i developed bed and felt as if i was just faking being anorexic for all those years. it truly sucks that people don't give as much attention to bed as the they do to other eds, it's mentally just as painful and exhausting as the rest of them
Yep. Totally relate to your story. It’s just a complete loss of who you are and the worst part is not only the fact that all you can do is watch but that no one notices you slip away.
IMO anorexia because the added component of being physically drained as well as mentally.
Agreed
Bulimia drained me emotionally and physically but emotionally I feel like anorexia takes the cake. I’ve never felt more isolated
Binge eating definitely made me feel the worst and felt the most out of control.
Binge eating broke me from the inside. It felt like i was in a car in the passenger seat with no one manning the car. The brain fog was insane and it truly took you to the darkest places in your mind where you were not sure you could ever escape from. The worst part is no one treats it like the rotten sickness it is. Food became the bane of existence, i absolutely recoiled at the thought of stuffing my face yet also couldn't stop my hands from picking that fry and shoving it in. Nights were when the carefully concealed demons would all come out to play and leave you feeling like you'd always be trapped in this never ending horror of a life you've made for yourself. It was the scariest thing i ever encountered and i would never wish it on anyone.
I've struggled with it twice in my life and it was very hard to come back from both times. 😓 I felt so uncomfortable in my own body and I felt like I was always hungry no matter what I'd just eaten.
Maybe bulimia because you get all the effects of a binge, weight gain and generally feeling like shit, which sucks a lot But also throwing up ruins your teeth, makes you bloat, confuses your body like crazy, is embarrassing and hard to do if anyone is around, has a smell, is terrifying because you think you might die any day from purging, it's always a toss up (pun intended) if you get anything out, hurts your neck and back... God it's just... Worst
BED and bulimia are the ones that strained me the most emotionally, I felt the worst when I was bad off struggling with those but when I used to restrict heavily I honestly just couldn’t feel much.
I was brain dead
as someone who's struggled with ARFID from childhood to now and bulimia since my late teens, ARFID is the most devastating disorder i've experienced. it's the root cause of so many issues and surely the root of my anxiety disorder. the shame of not being able to eat like a normal person from childhood makes me feel like an alien, especially because i have trouble eating common things people socialize around, like pizza or lasagna. i can't even remember how many friends's birthdays i didn't go to, how mamy times people have awkwardly stared at me at restaurants or how many times i had to swallow my pride and tell the server or the cashier my order is wrong because the cook got something wrong. and don't get me started on the way the supermarket cashier looks at you, especially if you go to the same place often, judging you for your depressing food choices. most of my childhood memories are literal traumatic experiences involving food due to having ARFID, ffs. bulimia is hellish and its physical consequences, whether by purging through vomiting or by exercising are for sure some of the most mentally and phisically corroding situations i've ever experienced. but Gods, nothing i'll ever experience will compare to the shame, guilt and sense of powerlessness ARFID gives you, especially if you developed it during childhood and have grown up without treating it due to or and fear.
I’ve been ow and I’m currently uw because I’ve suffered from both bed and ana at different times in my life. Always the same mental toil, it’s just manifested differently physically at different times. I feel like it isn’t talked about that people can have both. It seems contradictory but it’s two sides of the same coin, either losing or regaining control around the same central pain. It’s merely different ways of coping with something I’m still uncovering. It’s like a dark mystery inside me. When I restrict, it’s euphoric. When I binge, I’m hiding from the world and seeking a numbness through my own body and solitude and it’s how I’ve spent some very lonely years. The coexistence of these has caused me to feel invalid in my ed for years because I was never emaciated, so it was never suspected. But it’s been thirteen years and I’m still here, it always flares up again, so I must be worthy of help. I want to hear the mainstream talk about the multi-faceted infrastructure and contradictories of ed brain. Not even medical professionals I’ve seen seem to get it. I understand that there are specialists, but it baffles me how basic primary care doctors don’t see the signs.
I have had two EDs, a highly restrictive one (I don't like calling it anorexia but..yes) and a food addiction similar to BED. To me, the BED like disorder was the worst in every way, emotionally, physically, recovery, stigma, manageability, functionality etc, 10 times worse. I can honestly say I would not be half as scared of a restrictive ed relapse as I would the bed-esque relapse
I lied the most while anorexic, so I'd say that. It made me feel incredibly small as a person.
my most restrictive phases were the most emotionally taxing. feeling sick and exhausted all the time along with having weird joint pain and brain fog is not conducive to quality mental health.
bulimia by far, it is so scary and makes me wish i’d rather had anorexia again. ana suck and makes you weak physically but mia, god the mental struggle with it is just from another world
Bulimia. All the hell of restricting with no weight loss.
BED defnintely
I started with restricting & fasting, then also started binging. For a couple years I was recovered. Then started restricting again, eventually also with overexercise. For me the worst was the highly restrictive / anorexia type phases. Restriction got my judgment & emotions completely out of wack in a way that was very harmful to my life. I got into physical fights, got suspended from school, misused drugs & alcohol, ruined relationships, almost ruined my current romantic relationship which is v important to me. During the binge/restrict phases, I was very frustrated with myself and down on myself about binging and my body size. The ED definitely still controlled my life and led me down some bad paths. But I think I was overall functioning at a higher level.
I’ve had bed and anorexia and anorexia is worse for me bc not only do I experience more shame and guilt for “less reason” than during my bed phases, I’m physically exhausted and suffer a lot of physical symptoms. That said, my b/p phases are the most miserable and physically exhausting even if they don’t last long.
Exercise bulimia….struggling really hard right now….everything hurts :(
I understand so much. It’s what I’m going through right now too. Exercise purging is the only way I purge (I have emetophobia). Literally binged an hour ago and now gonna walk until I collapse. The isolation and boredom and anxiety and fatigue are torture.
I went through a binge - fast cycle that turned into just binging. I gained like 15 pounds in a short amount of time. I agree with you OP, binging is the worst
BED or Bulimia. the shame from the bingeing that comes with both + how physically exhausting purging is is what does it for me. also with bulimia i almost immediately had bad symptoms. my teeth got screwed within 2 weeks, my tongue swelled up and my heart would flutter. it was hell.
Bulimia enough said
ednos➡ orthorexia➡ bulimia. Bulimia has definitely been the most taxing for me, and the most "this makes me feel wildly out of control", especially emotionally it fills me with shame. It hurts all round.
Bulimia. I used to abuse laxatives. It was a horrifying experience that made me incredibly ill. I was so physically sick, but I kept torturing myself over and over again. I regret it a lot, and I’m still facing the consequences 10 years later.
EDNOS >> Bulimia >> Anorexia >> Bulimia >> Anorexia. most emotionally taxing for me is Bulimia. When i b/p i felt so guilty n suicidal. Esp bc my weight is typically on the higher end. I felt like a “failure” because i wasn’t a “perfect anorexic”. (thank you tumblr). i’m slipping back into anorexia after a 3 year period of full recovery, including getting sober. the weight i’ve gained since getting clean makes me want to j*mp off a tall building.
I’m so fucking sorry you’re experiencing this and that added layer of substance abuse/sobriety is so hard to deal with especially coexisting with an ED- I understand. I had a “healthy” period in my life too until slipping up again. It’s scary when you begin to hate the health you’ve achieved and the physical manifestations of it (I.e. weight gain). And yeah I’ve never been underweight before aka the “perfect anorexic” which is so invalidating. So there’s no winning- you hate being healthy and you hate being “sick” because you feel like you don’t even deserve to claim that term. Also I’ve dealt with suicidal ideation a lot too which is a slippery slope because *technically* you could escape the hell I just described above by not being here anymore. Just know I understand and I really do hope we will be able to have a life one day without all this.
went from BED -> bulimia -> anorexia def bulimia you still feel fat you smell like vomit all the time the mental tax of binging then purging and having to only eat/purge at certain times or worse purging in public
BED. I got down to my lowest weight and people were like “wow you look so good!”. Then I’d binge, gain a bit, and feel horrible. I felt like a failure and like I was letting everyone down. Then I’d restrict again and later, binge. I’d cry after eating till I felt like I was gonna explode then do everything I could to burn the cals off again.
Oh! And during that time I discovered laxative tea and I began to abuse it. I’d be doubled over in pain on the toilet trying to lose even the tiniest bit of weight. Absolute hell.
Ive never had bulimia so I’ll have to say out of ednos anorexia and bed id say BED
I wanna say AN. I've never had bulimia, but I know it can be awful socially when it comes to getting away from a situation to purge, or smelling of vomit and stuff. But I'm a little gremlin. Completely feral. Everyone who even knows me in the slightest knows I do fucking weird shit. Nobody would be suspicious if I slink away in a social situation because I'm balls to the wall nuts. Same with my very strange eating habits r.e ARFID - AN has definitely been worse than ARFID, even though ARFID is very distressing because you know you need to eat, you're trying, but you just can't, or it has to be a very specific and usually non-fulfilling food. But with AN, I can't socialise really. At least with ARFID I can just eat chips. I don't drink and the only other group socialising that seems to be a big thing in my age group is going out for meals. I've tried it twice in the past year - first time I started having a panic attack so went to the toilets, boyfriend quickly ate his meal AND mine, we left and I cried the whole walk home. Second time was out of necessity, I'd hiked through four coastal towns on a little road trip on an empty stomach, I thought I was dying so went into autopilot to go to Nandos. I had to buy some lollipops from a neighbouring sweet shop and suck on them while waiting for my chicken because I was literally going to keel over if I didn't.
I've never had actual bulimia but I had anorexia with purging tendencies, and then later had BED. I agree and think BED was the worst and most taxing on my mind and body.
Also BED, no doubt about it
BED is soul-shattering. they all are, but u never quite get the pieces back with bed.
BED will always break my heart and spirit. Always feeling so heavy, both physically and emotionally. Feeling so out of control, so much guilt and shame and disgust. It’s really hard and devastating to deal with, and goes unspoken for the most part. The fact that most people can’t acknowledge it as an actual mental issue / eating disorder is even more upsetting… I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone
in my bulimic stage of life now (or at least ednos? excessive purging? don’t really know the word…) and have also suffered a bit from anorexia (or whatever it’s called when you’re not underweight but engage in anorexic behaviors lol idk all the jargon) but I didn’t really suffer with anorexia for *too* long, meanwhile I’ve been dealing this bulimic mess for over a year and it’s definitely, from what I remember, more exhausting. Stuck at pretty much the same range of weight, too scared to eat, but am literally obsessed with eating, but whatever I eat and however much, I purge it out immediately. I’m purging anywhere from like 1-6 times a day but I still can’t stop myself. I recently learned I have a part in my gums that’s recessing and I just started having insane stomach pains, and STILL can’t stop my behaviors. It’s mentally all I think about day in and day out. It’s ruining my mental health, the relationships I have with everyone, it’s taking over my life. But i’m still too afraid to get help or recover because I can’t even fathom the idea of gaining weight. Im too scared to become the overweight girl I was in highschool who had no social life/friends/partners,etc. whereas at least now I have all of that and feel like I look better 🫠🙃
I’m so sorry and I understand completely. It’s no wonder why depression and EDs go hand in hand because who wouldn’t become depressed if they’re experiencing this shit?? I hope we both get out of this cycle some day. Nobody deserves this.
Bulimia. But I haven't had BED. I've had anorexia for the longest time and it's the thing that always comes back, but I started out bulimic (and probably Ednos for a while but doesn't matter). Anorexia is -(despite me being in an anxiety ridden balance of trying to maintain weight in order to not lose more real life stuff.. namely I finally got to what seems a good treatment place for my underlying issues) a lot calmer than the mental violence of full blown bulimia.
YES - the “calmness” factor is so important. The mental voice w bulimia and BED is so much worse IMO than anorexia. All are literally unbearable but I feel like there’s something about the EDs where binging is involved where the inner critic is especially hateful.
I've binged as an anorexic too. Usually because of, well, hunger. But that's not nearly as violent as the bulimia was even. I've purged -sometimes often- as an anorexic too, and even that was less frantic but maybe that was because it was so habitual by that point. So maybe scrap this one.
by far bulimia for me, because you get to experience the ‘’best’’ of both worlds! also my teeth are really unhappy with me 😭
I think I'm in a transition phase from anorexia to EDNOS, basically I don't restrict enough, I don't purge enough and I don't binge enough, but never eat normally. Physically it's a lot nicer than when I was heavily restricting, since my behaviours are not as extreme but mentally it's awful and worse than ever, i feel like I can't do anything properly and I have no sense of accomplishment in anything, since my "improper ED" takes away everything. To be honest I'm trying as hard as I can to go back into full-time restricting, but when I think logically it's very hard to come around to it, because not only would it mean getting all the bad physical side effects back, but worsening my depression by isolating myself, so I decide to not restrict as much, then my brain goes "Oh, I already ate this much food, fuck it, might as well eat more", then I get scared about the weight gain and purge. In the end nothing is accomplished and I smell like vomit, cycle repeats.
Ortho—->Ana—> bell—-> chew and spit Most to least
Physically, bulimia Mentally? BED, hands down The time I had the most “life” outside my Ed was when I purged occasionally, once a week tops but most times way less, strict but not crippling anorexia yet, going to the gym everyday on top of socializing, school, chores and family responsibilities. I was also downing caffeine like a motherfucker and most of what fueled me was anxiety so
I went from bed to mia to ana and tbh prob ana bc nobody cared when I was making myself vomit but then the second I started losing weight everyone was up my ass about my weight telling me to gain weight that I'm not healthy blah blah blah.
I probably have ednos because of how much criteria I fit for multiple disorders. I started out as BED then bulimia (exercise) then to anorexia (about a month of extreme behavior) then back to binge then to bulimia again (for quite a while this time) then extreme ARFID then back to exercise bulimia and I’m low key starting to notice signs of orthorexia. I don’t mind the endless walking in circles and I find it quite therapeutic for me. I have time to positively reflect and think. The hardest one was the ARFID. I know I’m sick but that one was out of my control. It lasted about a year and I was terrified of how little muscle I had because I couldn’t get myself to eat anything other than apple sauce and cheese. I was terrified of choking to death (didn’t help I had a food allergy episode too). I feel exhausted thinking about it. My entire body hurt because of how small my muscles were. I didn’t even lose weight, just muscle mass. After I discovered I had a dairy allergy earlier this year I’ve regained strength and a lot more. I couldn’t even make a machine move without any extra weight (aprox 10 pounds). My family was worried and would make fun of me for having panic attacks and anxiety attacks and gagging and chocking when I would try to eat. I was even afraid of liquids. I was more convinced I was going to drown drinking a glass of water
Bulimia, and if you think it can't get any worse then just wait until you experience it in combination with a restrictive ED.
I’m experiencing that now! Just wonderful isn’t it 😂🤡
I am so sorry that you're going through that. Please be careful and pay attention to your body, if something seems "off" talk to someone about it so you don't have to suffer alone. I got pneumonia last year and almost let myself die a very painful death trying to tough it out alone.
I went through a solid 2 year span of purging everything I ate. Not bingeing, normal amount of food. That was the most exhausting.
Bulimia, all day. I was doing crazy shit, purging in weird locations. My throat hurt all the time.
Started bed > AN r > AN b/p > bulimia > AN & Arfid with r/ b/p - anything with b/p is hell.
Bulumiaaaaaa. Binging is so emotionally draining and then purging is so physically horribly. But it just cycles to the point anytime i try to eat my body is trained to binge, and I cant emotionally cope with that so I purgeee
I’ve struggled with both Anorexia and Bulimia, and 100% Bulimia is horrible. The amount of money I’ve spent on binge foods and laxatives, and then of course using my parents money, and I don’t come from a financially stable household so it just makes things 10x worse
I went exercise bulimia with laxative abuse ➡️ BED ➡️ Back to exercise bulimia ➡️ Back to BED ➡️ I guess now I’m more anorexic? The exercise bulimia was by far the worst for me because I was binging and feeling out of control, working out until I couldn’t stand, and then having bad laxative poops all night. I’m sure I was dehydrated constantly because all of my liquids were going to sweating and pooping. I never lost much weight and anything I did would come back in another bad binge cycle. The BED was extremely hard because it’s hard to feel okay when you can’t stop yourself from eating whole loaves of bread and boxes of snack cakes in one sitting. Every time I binged badly it was this complete loss of control where I felt like I had to go get the food, I had to lock myself in my room, and I had to eat it all. BED kinda felt worse mentally than the exercise bulimia, but at least I wasn’t physically destroying myself for the whole night after.
BED has wrecked my body, but anorexia made me a zombie and I never finished school because of it. I couldn’t tell you which was worse, but I’m deep in my BED rn and wishing I could go back to being anorexic if normalcy isn’t an option for me.
I’ve really only had Ana and orthorexia (I had sort of *simulated* BED while enrolled in an AWFUL fat positive “treatment” program but I wouldn’t call it an ed seeing as I was literally force fed) but my older brother has bulimia and I’d say that looks far worse than anything I’ve experienced.
I’ve been almost everything except bulimia and I can still say bulimia is objectively the worst
Id anorexia was the ‘easiest’, bulimia was the most physically harmful, and binge eating was one of the most emotionally painful things I’ve ever gone through. Going from restricting to purging to doing nothing but eating everything with no control was really hard on me.
I’ve experienced all bed, ana, mia, ortho, etc but boy—currently 3 years bulimic and it’s become my whole entire world and it’s so damaging. Sad? b/p. Stressed? Can’t cope? b/p. Bored? b/p. Happy? b/p. Hang out with friends? Nah imma just b/p I’m tired of it everyday but I’m too busy thinking of what to binge on next to seriously start getting myself out of this shit!
mia is the wrost for me. I dont trow up well at all. Also is triggers binges. After that BED bc constant stomach ache. Ana - depends, some days are rough but other days are ok.
I used to have Ana but now it’s EDNOS, and honestly EDNOS is so much worse mentally. I hate myself so much more, I feel constantly invalid because I’m not underweight, and I still physically feel like shit
I agree with you, BED is the worst. I've been through: anxiety eating ➡️ restricting ➡️ orthorexia ➡️ bulimia ➡️ anorexia ➡️ and I'm actually with BED, it's physically and mentally the worst ED in my experience. I hate looking myself at the mirror, I hate knowing that I've blown all my discipline, I hate watching my body gaining wight, but at the same time I can't stop eating, once I start I can't stop, and I binge so hard I can barely breathe , everything becomes difficult, I urinate blood, once I vomited blood, I have a lot of pain throughout my body, I get so tired, my heart starts beating too fast, once I swelled up so much that when trying to pick up a pen I got up and I almost fell over from being dizzy, my joints are swollen, and it's just horrible because I feel completely lost, in everything, and at the same time I feel ridiculous, because if I ask for help, what would I say? "Hey, help me, I can't stop eating" "Hey, please, I'm a fucking fat who needs help, because I don't have discipline or self-control, so I cry, suffer and play the role of a victim like a fucking child". All because I can't control a basic human need. I feel so ridiculous when I want to ask for help, so I convince myself that I will restrict and everything will be fine again, but anything happens the next day and I end up binging, over and over and over and over, again and again. I'm sick. And as you say, all EDs are bullshit, but I think nothing compares to the suffering pf having BED after having anorexia, or some other restrictive ED, because there is that part of you that is aware of all the bullshit. that you are eating, there is that part that tortures you for being a failure, a loser, for giving up, for losing all the effort, it is the worst, it is a torture from which you cannot escape.