Anorexia hits me when I have a major stress in my life.....the last time was when I went through a trauma with the home care person for my mother at the time my mom was dying of cancer. I landed in the medical hospital with IV nutrition at the time I needed to be out to go to my mother's funeral.

As a kid, I know my grade school pictures looked what I would say pudgy.....not fat.....definitely not thin......never had the real thin look even though I was really short, but promised myself I would never get as heavy as my mother did at my same height. After graduating from college, I had wonderful engineering career going & playing racquettball with the guys every day at lunch......so I never had a weight problem while I had my career.

When I lost my career, depression set in & then came the pdoc & therapy & I hated my marriage....had hated it all along but had my career to hide away in until I no longer had that. The pdoc prescribed prozac & that was my first experience with pure anorexia. I lost so much weight......even more than the last time dealing with the trauma. Ended up in a treatment center but their focus was in body image & not all the other facts that were the real reasons for my anorexia... just wanted to fade away into nothing & it would be better for my family to deal with my death in that way than the other choices I had tried. Spent a year in & out of the hospital with central line IV nutrition....no idea how many times I had landed in the hospital during that period of time.....it took years before my weight got somewhat back to normal......then for awhile, it even swong in the opposite direction....to weigh more than I had ever weighed in my life when my migraines were so bad I couldn't even get out of bed.

I can definitely understand how you feel that it's sort of bipolar acting.....I can relate to that because when there is stress in my life.....I don't feel like eating anything.....I get so sick feeling in my stomach that I can't even imaging eating food......& it doesn't take much for the weight loss to hit & go way low......then like a teeter-totter, it slowly goes back in the other direction.

I think at times it's my body deciding in giving me time to recover between the times of anorexia. I have felt much better & my weight has definitely not gone way low since living on my own with 5 dogs that are dependent on me. I can't afford to feel the way I felt when I let the anorexia win......& I physically feel better except for some times when stress gets the best of me.....but I have been able to control that area so much better when I know that I have no one to depend on other than myself & how horrible it would be for my dogs if I ever got that sick again & they would have no one to care for them. I truly think that our level of responsibility outside of ourselves, knowing that there is NO ONE else.....not just that no one else is stepping up to act.....really makes a huge difference in how we treat ourselves.

But I can truly see how it swings from actual anorexia to EDNOS. Anorexia has specific requirements to be called anorexia.....lol....but when I was too old to have my period any more.....that wasn't possible to be one of the symptoms.

It's important to be able to talk with someone about where you are coming from with this. I know that I really didn't relate to the psychologist they assigned me at the treatment center.....he was pushing this inner child crap on me & there was just no way his approach with me had anything to do with what was really going on with the anorexia I was dealing with.....I just didn't fit into the box they painted that all people with anorexia are like.....to start with....I was already 45 years old & had 15 years as an engineering professional.....so I felt this guy was totally & completely full of crap.....but I also didn't really understand myself well enough to tell him what was really going on either.....like I understand so much better now.