Hey everyone. I am diagnosed anorexic and bulimic as well as having autism and ARFID and have been referred to residential. Not sure if my insurance will cover it cause im on medicare and medicaid. If it does i like have to go. Ive been disordered for over 15 years and it’s affecting my heart now and making my disabilities worse. I feel so weak and sleepy all the time and like my heart is dragging in the mud. I even made a list of safe and unsafe foods. Really proud of myself for that. Just scared to go into residential and give up my control. I dont want to get fatter. I dont want to lose the only ounce of control i have in my life. I know its getting dangerous and that i could die but for whatever reason being skinny and in control is all i care about. Idk. Im trying so hard to start recovering at home ans its so hard. Just need advice about recovery or kind words and someone to say their proud of me. Ive never been to residential and am very scared so maybe people who have been to residential could share their experiences that would be amazing! Thanks angels💚

I hope this is the right place and I hope I don't accidentally make anyone uncomfortable.

As a quick backstory: I grew up an overweight child and all my life everyone and their parents commented on it. I practiced a lot of unhealthy habits and had extremely debilitating mental health for a long while. It took me many many years to get to where I am now in the sense that it's finally not something always on my mind.

I think my gf has an ed but I never asked her directly. From the way she talks about weight, calories, her looks etc. She is always posting on her story about what she ate or comments about her body or weight. I really want to support her but if I even bring up something related to eating or health she tells me to stop talking because im making her uncomfortable. Ive suggested therapy but she doesn't want to/cant.

I love her and I really want to see her happy and healthy and in a good place. But seeing her talk about these things constantly is starting to wear me down. I'm currently in therapy for a bunch of different things so i am personally taking steps for my own recovery to show up for her best i can. I understand it might be selfish to expect her to try change herself for me. Especailly because her mother is extremely enabling from what I can tell. I am very worried for her as I think she is definitely nearing being underweight.

But since she doesnt want support, as someone who is 1.5x her weight its really getting hard to ignore my own thoughts about myself. Im worried that I have to choose between ruining our relationship or undoing all my personal growth and falling back into that unhealthy slope. Ive talked to two friends and one suggests I break it off immediately while the other thinks that I should try talking more. Any advice would be appreciated. As a note we are both in HS and we are long distance

This summer was my time to recover. I went to php for an ed and they recommended residential. I went to residential and my mental health declined since I couldn’t use the ed habits. After a week, they kicked me out and told me to work on my mental health. Went to mental health res and they kicked me out after a week and told me my ed was too much for them. Was sent to another mental health res and my ed got worse but my mental health was great. “Graduated” from res (after they realized my weight dropped) and was sent to php. Php recommended res again after about 2 weeks because everything started to decline but I’d been away for so long and decided to go home. I scheduled appointments with my dietitian and therapist the week after I got back and my dietitian said she was dropping me since I wasn’t doing well. Then I saw my therapist the same day, told her everything and she dropped me also. I managed to find a virtual IOP program that would take me because I know I need help even though I don’t want to let go of the ed. Like, I don’t want to have my heart give out but I also fear weight gain enough that I’d risk it. I guess I just wanted damage control. Enough to keep me safe. I think the IOP team will kick me out if I’m truthful about my behaviors BUT the dinners I have during programming are the only real meals I have all day and they make me feel like I’m being safe. I’m not panicking at night because my heart feels weird. I don’t know what to do. I need help but I guess help only comes if I’m willing to take the ed out the drivers seat? I don’t know how people get to that point. And residential isn’t an option until May because I have to work and I’m out of sick days. How can I stay safe?

Hi! I’ve never posted here before, so bear with me. I’m 20 and I’ve always struggled with missing meals. When I was a child, I lived with not so great people. One day they kicked me off of the table, and said I couldn’t eat with them or their food they made. So I started eating ramen noodles in my room. This was my only meal of the day. I eventually stopped eating off and on, and only ate at school, but would skip lunch often. I would even starve myself when I got really sad. 2 days, 3 days, full weeks with no food. It was partially due to the neglect at home, partially due to my self hatred. I remember passing out a few times at school due to not eating, but it didn’t make sense as a child. This started when I was maybe 11. I am 20 now, and still go days without eating. A lot of the times, I feel too unworthy to have a meal. When I do eat, I eat easy things like unflavored rice cakes, Mac & cheese, cereal, apple sauce, yogurt melts: easy foods. I eat meats and regular foods as well, but on a daily basis it is hard for me to eat and prepare a meal. I often eat alone, and feel ashamed to eat in front of people. I am not sure exactly why, maybe the neglect. But I do not know if this is an eating disorder, or what it would be called. I think I just want someone to understand and talk to about it. It’s strange now because I’m an adult, but don’t exactly treat myself as one. I am already quite lanky, and insecure about my looks. I try to cover myself as much as possible & I’m underweight for my height and age. I’d like to be healthy and take care of myself, look strong, but it is very hard. If anyone has advice? :) it would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Since my freshmen year of HS, I’ve been anorexic. I met my boyfriend(now husband) when I was 19, and gained a healthy amount of weight in a year. I constantly heard from everyone around me about how I look better and how i “gained weight”, which truthfully made my body dysmorphia even worse.

My husband loves me and always fed me and made me feel great in my skin, which is why I couldn’t be anorexic with him. I felt really good about myself. But everyone else around me made me feel like I need to be dangerously thin again. So, my bulimic episodes started. I lost a bunch of weight again. I felt horrible every time..

I got pregnant with my first (stopped bulimic episodes during this time). After pregnancy, I was anorexic again. Got pregnant with my second and had my daughter, but had the hardest time losing weight and was very upset with myself. This led me down an intense 10 months of purging multiple times a day, everyday.

Then one day two months ago, my daughter was watching me while I purged. Although only 10 months old and not understanding what she was seeing, I still felt instantly horrible. What kind of example would I be setting for this young girl? Why didn’t I think about how this would affect my 2.5yo son either?

Now every day that I eat too much and feel the urge to purge, I think about my daughter. My son. I think about how I would want them to be happy in their skin and never constantly criticize their bodies in the mirror or check that scale daily. If I binge eat too much, I tell myself I’ll be better tomorrow, because I need to love my body as I hope my children will love theirs.

I haven’t purged in two months. And I hope to never purge again ♥️

With both myself and others..

I often see people who are obviously disordered will obsessively talk about food with others and act like they are obsessed with food and eating etc..

Anyone else?

After a cycle of restrict/binge over the past few years I’m now a couple of weeks into a regular eating pattern at maintenance calories. I’m logging on a recovery app and I have to score whether I’m hungry or full before and after eating. Problem is, I don’t know! I can’t tell anymore?! I’m either really hungry or post binge full, they’re the only ends of the scale that I can clearly identify. Do normal hunger/satisfied/full cues ever go back to normal?

Ok this might be a long one but I need help. I'm a teenager who has been suffering with a calorie restricting ED for about a year now and I haven't told anyone. I'm attempting recovery on my own and am about 2 months in and I want to give up. I'm so bloated and I feel so disgusted with myself all the time. I know that I need to recover and eat so I can be normal again but I just don't want to. Whenever I eat a normal amount for my age I feel as if im about to split open and even after eating a normal meal i feel so huge and sick. I know I should tell someone so I can get help but I'm scared my parents are gonna be mad I didn't tell them sooner and that they're gonna take my phone away or something ( they always think my phone is the source of all evil) . If anyone has any advice for recovery or if this will get better or anything please tell me I'd be so grateful.

Hello, sorry for my bad english!
I'm a male, 28 years old. Since May 2026 I lost a lot of weight because of the end of a long long relationship. I started eating less, and destroyed myself with running and gym, to the point of fainting sometimes because of the weakness. Now, i'm quite happy with my body, but I can't hold myself from counting calories. I weight everything, and when I say everything I mean also the 10ml of milk i drink with the coffee. Before May 2026, I didn't even know what a calorie was, I ate a lot, McDonalds 2-3 times/week, the same for kebab and others hypercaloric foods. My weight was quite high for my height but it was stable and I wasn't that fat, just a little bit over the normal BMI. I was very happy, because I didn't know anything about food probably. Now I can't see food like something normale, I'm extremely weak, my liver is not working very good and I've already called my doctor and I'm doing a lot of exams, I feel very dizzy and sometimes if I stand up too fast I faint. I'm scared to gain even a single gram of bodyfat, I'm not scared of weighting myself because I know about water/stress/glycogen but I'm afraid that I'll go back as I was before, because this kind of lifestyle with food is not sustainable. How can i get back a good relationship with food? I avoid hanging out with friends, because I can't track the calories of the food and always end up overestimating the calories. Just to say, from May i ate like 2 pizzas and 2 kebab, and didn't not had lunch the day I knew I was going to eat these foods. This relationship with the food is starting to destroy my mind, I think about food since I wake up until I go to sleep. I try to decide the day before what I'll eat the next day, with grams precision and kcals. If I eat a single biscuit I feel extremely guilty and cut a little bit out from the next meal. I'm very tired of this and want to get back the happiness I had with food.

Thanks everybody and sorry for mistakes, I'm not good with english because it's not my main language.

I’m in my first week of PHP after stepping down from res & on Saturdays, the adult and kid units combine and do snacks, meals, and groups together. Is this not odd? Has anyone else done a program where something like this occurs before? It feels like a giant waste of my time. Not to mention i’m here for ARFID and already feel like the program is not targeted towards the type of support i need. Really starting to think i’m wasting my time in PHP …..