Hi Desperado,

I could write a book about myself but in forums like this everyone gets pieces-parts. Here's a little more history on me for this anarexia thing.

Root Cause:
When my dad turned 40 and I distinctly remember that birthday, I was 9. For what ever reason I remember his noticing his own gain in weight as he was getting quite the belly on him. He had already been on blood pressure medicine since he was 36. With basic understanding genetics at that time, I knew that in time, I'd be looking like him and for what ever reason, that wasn't appealing. At that time, I must have burned in my mind or put this in the back of my head that I would watch for this to start happening of course not wanting this to happen. For the next 28 years, I had stayed thin from just being an active person and some of my jobs. I was only semi weight conteous and never payed much attention cause my weight was always low... 125-133.

Trigger:
Recently, I had been maintaining 130-133 for quite some time in my upper 20's to mid 30's but then when I hit 35, my weight started to creep up.... 135 then 138. I started cutting a couple things out of my diet but when my weight touched 141.... Bang!.... Noooooo! A couple buttons had popped off my pants in a short period. That was it. I went on a diet... well, I changed my diet habits <-- the smart thing.

Hair Trigger:
I was happy getting back down to 127 and maintained that for 6 months. Even at that time my wife wanted me to gain back 5 pounds. I am keeping a daily log of my moring weight watching my weight average in a constant state of flux in a spreadsheet graph. When my weight average slowly but surely started to creep up and especially over a 2 week vacation to which I lost my controled daily routine, this sudden deep down fear struck and I started going to an extreem and re-lost that pound plus a couple more. I would even out for a couple weeks and when ever my average when back up a half pound, fear would come on again and I would loose one to two more pounds again. The downward spiral started. I even started fasting one or two meals on the weekends. I would have a very small breakfast with my wife and then skip lunch and not eat or drink some times till she got home from work.

Fears:
Like fear of heights, or stage fright, or clausterphobia or arachniphobia, this fat phobia, I need to treat the same way as I did with stage fright. I have to face this fear willingly on my own. I am a cadet counselor at my church and it took 2 years to get over the stage fright I had every cadet night. Now I go over and teach my cadet class without a thought. I have to follow the same principle with this fear I have now. I have to push myself to eat normaly every meal and talk my subconteous into believing I am too thin... that it's ok to gain some weight back. That's kind of hard when you love the way you look as it is. My self perception may be unrealistic at the moment.... I think I'm just fine when actually I'm too skinny... but I'm blinded at the moment and can't see that. At least for me, I don't look in the mirror and think I look fat. My attempt at gaining weight by building muscle failed as I seem to be buring more fat than what I gained in muscle. I might look like a stick like my wife says but I'm a buffed stick.

There is more to me and more factors that affect all this but I can't think of them all at once. I just need some moral support as I fearfully eat a little more and hope I can handle putting some meat on my bones.

Thanks for the replies Desperodo and Freewill.

Oryan