I've recently come to the realization that I'm addicted to extreme dieting and the refeed that always comes at the end of a cutting diet. Junk food never tastes good to me unless I'm in a starved state! IT'S SUCH A RUSH!!!!!! Insane hunger, just chowin down on WHATEVER (mostly big chicken burritos from taco shops)!!!! It's such a huge feeling of satisfaction.

The refeed after extreme dieting for a long period of time is amazing. You see your body rebuilding lost muscle. Your bones get thicker/stronger and you just plain grow! Once my body fat/muscle level returns to a certain point I loose any and all urge to eat anything but healthy though. At that point I just head in the other direction.

I'm down to 173 pounds doing this though and I'm starting to get worried about my health. I need someone to knock some sense into me about the health risks because I've now gotten in the habit of eating towards a caloric defict and simply don't feel "normal" when eating enough to feed my body each day.

This eating disorder has become my WOE over the past 3 years I'm really having trouble breaking the cycle!!!!

I don't understand how this can work for you. If you diet and lose muscle mass, pigging out isn't going to replace the lost muscle tissue. You end up becoming less lean (ie, fat to lean mass ratio goes up) by sacrificing lean mass and replacing it (via pigging out) with new fat stores. Are you lifting weights like a body builder? Otherwise, I'm really confused about this.

BD--this sounds like a form of bulimia (binge=refeed, purge=diet), which I have seen in some bodybuilders (ie, my brother) and wrestlers (prev. boyfriend, also friends).

This is a hard cycle to break--it, like all EDs, is seated in emotional issues (often control issues), and often requires counseling.

Don't mean to be a bummer, but I think counseling is where you need to start. You should be so proud that you have figured out that this is a problem--and that you will do damage to your body if you keep it up. That's a huge step.

Best,

Lucy

Thanks HiFive. As of late I've really started notice how much time and effort I put into this nutty eating pattern and I'm starting to realize I don't have the control I thought I did.

It's actually controling me because no matter how hard I try to keep away from even thinking about it, I ALWAYS jump right into the same old pattern without a thought.

I feel almost scared to live any other way, mostly because I just feel like I've lost the ability to just let things be as they are. I'm always looking for change and the only thing I ever feel I can change at some points is my body.

I'm definitely going to get some help. I've tried for years to stop and I just can't change.

Good man, BD.

Your profile says you are 20--plenty young enough to make a lasting change.

You are showing immense courage in deciding to deal with this--it's so much safer to stay with what is familiar...even if we know the familiar thing is bad for us.

You deserve a better life...you deserve to be free...you'll get there! Good luck to you.

Lucy

PS. I like your sig.

I don't mean to overstep my bounds but this definitely sounds like a real eating disorder you have.

First of all, being thrilled by seeing your body change (from unhealthy to healthy and then back again) is hallmark of many restrictive eating disorders. With restrictive eating disorders like anorexia (though you may not personally have this), there is a fetishistic fascination with changing your physical appearance, trying to depersonalize and distance yourself from the body by keeping it in constant transformation. The anorexic keeps making themselves smaller, but yo-yoing just for the thrill of breaking yourself down only to build yourself up is really no different in psychological function.

Second, you don't seem like you have control anymore over your ability to stop yourself from going over the edge. This is very dangerous ground you are treading on. If you really can't stop yourself from this admittedly unhealthy and psychologically abnormal dieting behavior, I think you should really seek professional council for it.

Personally I can relate to what you are saying entirely. I think those of us who have lost tremendous amounts of weight have this in common... we are all addictive, extreme types. In a lot of ways we are trading one addiction (compulsive over eating) for another (compulsive food restriction/body obsession). Many days I've pondered the stuff of my physical transformation. It was relatively easy for me, but why? It's supposed to be really hard, everyone else struggles, why don't I? It's starting to dawn on me that I don't struggle like others do because I am young and not yet settled in my ways. Though all of us who were at an extreme weight have the extreme personalities/obsessive streak, because I am so young it was relatively easy for me to trade compulsive over eating with compulsive restriction/dieting, it was easy to give up the single minded obsession with eating food for the single minded obsession with minimizing or purifying it. Older compulsive over eaters find this much, much more difficult and rarely are capable of losing weight forever for this reason. I think my position might resonate with your own. Maybe the problem is that we haven't really beaten our pasts, maybe we have just traded one extreme & abnormal eating pattern for another?

Anyway, I know what you mean though about how hard it is to eat enough to really be full. For me the problem is mostly one of fear... I'm afraid I'll start to gain weight if I actually listen to my body and eat more normally. Plus, let's be honest, losing weight and looking forward to it is exciting. It's exciting to have your body be in constant transformation. Also it prevents you from being acquainted with you, know what I mean? I can relate to how thrilling it is to build lots of muscle without even trying, just by eating food (I'm building tons of muscle and losing fat at the same time just by eating more right as we speak). I can also relate to a subversive desire to start dieting down just to do it again (though I've never ever done that since I know it would be totally unhealthy and sick). Through consciously I know if I eat food it will just go to be muscle on my body, and help me burn more body fat, and if I eat only as much as I need to not be hungry I won't get fat... still there is a nagging feeling like I need to be a little hungry... that I might get fat if I eat that apple or start eating and won't be able to stop... that if I get in the habit of eating as much as I really need, I'll start to over eat and get fat again, etc. It's really a complex matrix of fears and phobias and rewards and obsessions.

Fortunately, I'm enjoying feeling alive and healthy and happy and free much more than I enjoyed restriction and it's effects. For me, the choice (between indulging in the sick darkness side of restrictive diets and physical health) is not much of a choice at all. I'm going to keep eating this way, because strong muscles and physical strength and energy feels better than losing weight. Being afraid of passing out because your minerals are all messed up feels worse than being afraid that I'll get fat. Being able to fully perceive my environment and experience the vibrant color of sensation is better than the sick familiar comfort of isolation, coldness, and half-dead numbness of energy deprivation.

You are having a hard time choosing between the physical benefits of health and the dark psychological benefits of restriction. You've struggled for years, as you admit. I think you need to be honest with yourself. You need help. You need someone to help you see the benefits of health outweigh the illusory benefits of restriction. I can say this till I'm blue in the face, but I think we both know if the decision is so hard for you that it's taking you years to make it, that it's time you get someone professionally trained to really assist you. However, the Emotional Issues & Body Image forum is a great place for this kind of support. There are lots of us who have or are recovering from eating disorders.

There is a misconception that after starving yourself down (so as to lose significant amounts of weight), your body will replace the lost tissue with fat when you begin eating right. As someone who has been there, this is totally wrong. The body has a desired amount of muscle mass it likes to maintain. This is usually genetically determined, although lifestyle (e.g. weight lifting) and health (e.g. growing old, having a wasting or energy utilizing disease like diabetes) can affect it.

Once you starve yourself and create energy deficits so large to the point where you lose lots of muscle in addition to fat. When you begin eating more, your body starts to replenish that lost muscle to it's desired level. It does this simply by eating a nutrient adequate diet.

In other words, the myth that you lose 5 lbs of muscle and fat each, and regain 10 lbs of fat is just that, a myth. In fact, you may lose more body fat when recovering from mild restriction, just by increasing the metabolically taxing muscle anabolism. I feel this is the physiologic behind cyclical dieting. Eating more food after extensive restriction increases the rate of positive compensatory LBM anabolism. This then creates an energy deficit even larger than you enjoyed before. The net effect is more body fat loss for more muscle. Cyclical dieting, when done correctly, is ideal for preserving LBM and losing body fat IMHO.

True, but that's not what's happening here. He's not eating "right." He is eating more calories than he is burning, many of them [bad] carbohydrates. If you're suggesting that any amount of muscle lost through dieting is then replaced simply by eating, I disagree with you and I would like to see some published material on the subject.

You might want to take a look at Dr. Phil's seven keys to weight loss http://www.drphil.com/weightloss/we...subsection=Tips

Vikki

Good luck, BD. If you think you have a problem, you probably do - and if it's interefering with your life, it's a problem.

The direction I would go in would involve giving up CKD. The "C" in "CKD" seems to be giving you the biggest problems. How about adopting a steady LC eating plan and workout schedule?

As long as he is eating adequate protein and fat, the calories and carbohydrate he eats will be used as fuel for muscle anabolism and it will not be turned into body fat. I mean there are limits... if he is eating thousands of calories per day he'll probably put more fat on than muscle. But when you break yourself down like that, you can really eat lots of food and take in lots of energy and it will just go to repair that which was eaten away.

Bah! What a mess I've created. One extreme to another with no middle ground I can count on to keep me even.

Thanks for all the posts guys, I signed up for an eating disorder group. Putting myself around others with the same problem will at least help me feel like I'm not a complete nut. I know food is not the problem as much as my sate of mind is.

I've decided to eat towards health and well being for now, a whole food diet of the sorts. Now I just have to get myself to start eating enough which has been a real struggle .

FYI on the refeed guys. When you deplete your body to the point where you actually notice bone loss you can eat *HUGE* amounts of food and gain *VERY* small amounts of fat. I doubt this would be the case if you were eating straight dominos, but I find that when my body is in a starved state I crave heavy starches and lean meat, and a LOT of it!!

straight domino's...ugh

Good for you, BD. You have taken that important first step! So many people don't have that courage and suffer with EDs for years and years. I know, cause I was one of them.

Let us know how you are doing.

lucy

I'm glad to hear you're addressing the mental side of the problem.

Though I never brought myself to a totally starved state, I was definitely in "starvation mode" once I made the decision to let go of restriction. I know what you're saying about craving huge quantities of meat/starch after being starved. I didn't eat starch but I was horribly horribly craving meat. In hindsight, I can see that the portion control problems I had with meat foods had more to do with my depleted physical state than it did a hedonistic love of meat. Even though I am a meat craver, I was at the point where I could almost BINGE on the stuff! Now that I am much healthier I'm not compelled to eat meat like I was.

People don't realize that when you've restricted to the point where you've eaten/wasted away significant amounts of vital tissue, that you really can eat lots of food - even some junk food - and not get fat. Your body will just take the fat and protein and sugar and convert it into tissue or energy to fuel tissue rebuilding. As you get healthy, hunger and binging urges ebb away. This is just my own personal account of semi-starvation dieting though, it might be different for others.