A Guide to Eating Disorders

Things Pro-ED people won't tell you

So this was inspired by URNotALoneLostSoul, whose post asked me to expand on this. It does focus only on body-dysmorphic disorders like Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa, but those are the eating disorders where Pro-Ana/Mia are prevalent. This was Mackensi's original message;

It's hard not to stay up late at night looking at all these Pro Ana blogs on Tumblr, or looking at thinspiration etc, but I want to point out some things that those blogs don't let you know about, some of the worse side effects that Ana (Anorexia), Mia (Bulimia) and many other eating disorders cause.

She put several points after this, which I will also copy-paste and add on to. All the credit goes to Mackensi for coming up with these posts and ideas.

1. No matter what your weight is or what your goal weight may be, it's very hard to effectively control your weight. Whether you are trying to build mass (for Muscle Dysmorphia), or are trying to lose weight, the grip that you have on your weight at first will spiral out of control and end up becoming drastically low. This is due to the hyper-focus mindset that most people with body-dysmorphic eating disorders have.

They focus extensively on a single point that they simply need to reach (as a part of the mental illness) and end up losing the control that they aspire to have, because once they focus too long on something, it's almost as if the mind doesn't know what it wants anymore. This is one of the most dangerous parts of these eating disorders because what starts out as losing five kilograms becomes excessively more, just like a snowball rolling down a hill.

2. By not eating if you're Anorexic, you catapult your body into believing that you are in a famine and it will cling onto every calorie you consume, which can eventually lead you to keep gaining weight when you start eating normally again, which then triggers the ED behaviours again. When you do this, it's also much easier to become severely hypothermic or have your vitals messed up because your body focuses the minimal food on the body functions that are absolutely necessary and loses heat quickly.

3. By throwing up after eating, the acids from purging are ruining your teeth, so the quote "You can smile once you hit your goal weight," isn't really true, because your teeth become very sensitive and sore. And truthfully, your teeth won't be all that attractive anymore. clear. And that isn't even the only physical effect that throwing up has on your appearance.

4. Even if you are Pro-Ana, having an eating disorder will forever affect the way you look at food. It's almost impossible to actually have a good relationship with food after an eating disorder because while you may want to forget, your brain will still react the same way as it used to, after you trained it that way while you had the disorder, whether that be glancing at it and cataloguing the facts (calories, percentage of fat, how long it takes to run it off) or being frightened of a package of Cheetos.

During the hardest times of your life, your brain is the most impressionable, and so, being Pro-Ana will forever affect you—for the rest of your life, even if you're lucky enough to recover without lasting physical effects.

5. Another thing that Pro-Ana's won't tell you is how much this disorder will ruin your relationships. How can you have a healthy relationship when all you can think about is not eating, and lying to your partner about eating and your health? Think, is this really worth losing my friends, family and the people you love?

6. Anorexia doesn't only affect your relationships with others, but also your relationship with yourself. Those that are Pro-Ana, even if they feel happy being Pro-Ana, will constantly put themselves down, saying that they are too-this or too-that and too-much. It's hard to think of yourself in a positive light when you've told yourself so many times that nothing was right. Regular positivity or self-confidence is hard, even when you've only ever targeted your body positivity.

7. Recovery is a sliding scale. Many will tell you that it may not work and have given up, but that is simply because of the lasting effects of the eating disorder that will be there forever.

For some, recovery means being able to eat healthily and maintain a regular weight for age, ethnicity, gender and height, which is AN INCREDIBLE ACHIEVEMENT. For others, it means being able to eat freely and not worry or think about anything the way they did when they had an eating disorder, which is, I suppose, the universal idea of recovery and also AN INCREDIBLE ACHIEVEMENT. However, the latter is just unrealistic for a lot of people, and that makes them feel less-than. Whatever recovery is for you needs to be enough. Having achieved simply that is amazing, and the fact that you have gotten that far is inspiring. Recovery itself takes work and isn't an instant satisfaction type of thing, but it is so rewarding.

Mackensi's last part of the message, which is a great theme;

These are just a few bad effects of ED's that Pro Ana's don't tell you about. If you can stop now, please do. Talk to someone. Turn back around, and forget about this. This is not something you want, I promise you. Being thin is NOT WORTH any of the pain you have to go through to get there.

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Over the month of October, I will be going through and rewriting the individual ED chapters to make them all equal lengths and make the information easier to absorb. I will most likely update all of the chapters on the 31st or the 1st in their new form. Just wanted to let you guys know. If you have any requests for chapters that you would like me or our new writer to write soon, please let us know so that we can get on that.