Expert: Meg - 7/24/2006

Question
hi i have an eating disorder and am sooo fat that i hate it sooo much i am 169cm tall and weigh around 48-49 depending and have decided to starve for 10 days to hopefully lose weight! how much can i expect to lose i exercise 4 hours a day and am going to live on chewie and water for 10 days how much weight can i lose by doing this please tell me the truth also along with coloxyl tablets will that help me even more even though they are a stool softener i feel humungous and fat and feel like everyone looks at me because i am fat fta my ultimate goal weight would be to weigh 42kg i can't stand to put on any weight as i get depressed and anxiety attacks

Answer
Hi Jenn,

Sorry for taking a few days getting back with you.  I have been having computer trouble and wasn't able to log in.  

Thanks for your question and I'm sorry that you are going through this right now.  I hope that I can be of some help or at least point you in a more healthy direction, as it does seem like you are pretty deep into your eating disorder right now.

It sounds like you are feeling desperate to lose weight and this is your main focus right now-and you are willing to do anything to achieve your goal.  This, by definition, is the height of an eating disorder and I hope that you can take a step back and see how this is affecting you right now.  

I know that you "feel" humongous and fat and feel like people are looking at you because of your body-and that you are willing to take extreme measures such as fasting, laxatives and over exercising to make yourself feel okay.  While this is normal thinking for someone who is being controlled by her eating disorder (and I do not mean to judge as I certainly was at this place in my life as well), it is not a healthy way to think and hopefully you can try to take a look at why this is going on.  What if your best friend/little sister/cousin was behaving this way and had plans to do these things to herself.  Would you think that SHE had a problem and should find ways to get healthier?  Sometimes, looking at it this way helps as its easy to feel like "you" are fine and just want to lose weight-and that it's not "really" a problem for you.  But, I think that at least a little part of you probably knows that it is.

I don't think that you will lose a lot of weight by doing this to your body as the body goes into starvation mode and does whatever it can to keep alive-and this means shutting down to the point that you require fewer calories to exist.  What I would guess will happen if you do this for 10 days is that you will get weak, faint, feel terrible, not be able to do much else, probably "feel" fatter-as generally the more into your ed you get, the worse you actually feel-and be even more stuck in this cycle.  

Depression and anxiety are common for people who are suffering from eating disorders and believe it or not, fasting and the ensuing physiological changes that ensue actually make both problems worse.  

I really suggest taking as honest as possible look at your behavior and what is going on here and thinking about ways to get healthier or else talk with a professional who can help you do that.  

Honestly, I know that it can seem so certain that losing more weight and reaching your goal will make everything okay-but having been there, I can swear on my life that when you do reach your goal, things still feel just as depressing and you still feel like you are fat.  That is the sad reality of eating disorders.  They really do keep you reaching for that elusive brass ring that unfortunately always remains just out of reach.

I hope that you can think about all of this and maybe read a little more about eating disorders and consider talking with someone about this so that you can feel good again (both physically and emotionally).

Please feel free to write again if there is anything else that I can help with or if this answer is not clear.

Take care!

Meg