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eskielover · Dec 11, 2014, 09:32 AM

For me, stress growing up always caused me to feel sick & not want to eat & when I did eat, somehow, my stress metabolism would cause me to loose a lot of weight. My life was so normal that it never turned into an ED. Growing up I was really active, marching band & horsemanship classes in highschool & college & really always sort of ate on the run.

I always promised myself that I wouldn't let myself go like my mother did after she got married & had me (she claimed that made her gain weight).....so I made sure I didn't gain any more weight than my baby after getting married & getting pregnant......was proud of myself actually that I didn't gain any more than my baby. Refused to have any junk food in the house & I swam every day & rode horses & even was skiing the week before I had my daughter. Graduated with my degree & got a great engineering career & played racquetball with the guys every day at lunch (I was one of only a couple of women in a mostly man's career in those days. That kept my weight very stable & I was in good shape. I needed all the energy I could get to keep going with all that I was involved in as I also performed with my flute & was treasurer of our home owner's association so I couldn't allow myself to weigh as little as I would have liked to....besides...muscles weigh more in the first place.....our winter vacations were snow skiing in Jackson Hole Wyo where we owned a time share condo that we used EVERY YEAR for the family & friend get together.

So......

The ED actually started when I was 42.....the stress that hit wasn't just like studying for mid terms or breaking up with a BF......I ended up loosing my career. What I didn't know at the time was that the bad marriage relationship was building up & all those times I wanted a divorce.....had added up....but I nor no one else realized this.

Anxiety hit then depression & suicide attempts & I no longer had my career because aerospace industry fell apart in Calif & I ended up t rapped in a very bad position that I hated......pdoc was trying meds on me like I was a guinea pig....in & out of the mental hospital.....& then pdoc decided to prescribe prozac....& for me...it took my already bad appetite completely away & I lost so much weight & because I had always wanted to be thin & not like my mother, they put me in an eating disorders treatment center from just before Thanksgiving until after the 1st of the year.....just about 18 years ago. By that time, I was also focusing on doing dressage horse riding & would ride for hours.....& without eating because the prozac really made me feel sick....on top of the stress of realizing that my whole life was pretty much over as I had wanted it defined to be. I got out of the treatment center & really wanted the anorexia to kill me....but that didn't happen & everytime for about the next year when I would pass out, I would end up in the medical hospital with a central line & IV nutrition...not what I wanted....but it did get me out of having to live in the same house as my H.....that went on for almost 4 years while my migraines were also really horrible & making me totally sick but around 2000, I ended up having my weight go in the opposite direction without even binging.

That condition lasted about 3 years & then the summer of 2004, my horse was pregnant & there was a bad forest fire that caused me to have an asthma attack that landed me in the medical hospital for 10 days & that was the start of my loosing again.....& it triggered a massive weight loss & not eating....everything tasted like forest fire smoke so I couldn't stand the taste of food. At the same time my mother's cancer after her surgery was getting worse & I needed to watch out for her & my mare had her foal but at 3 weeks old she injured her leg & that required my care several times a day out at the ranch......& I didn't have time to eat & I really couldn't even imagine eating at that point......so the weight started to fall off. Then came Thanksgiving & the realization of how bad my mother really was while she was still in denial...so there was no reasonable communication with her. (I also think she had a mild stroke from the blood clots in her legs because she didn't have her normal cognative ability that her oncologist brushed off.....then this woman managed to manipulate her way into being the home care person....this women was the neighbor & friend of my mother's BF......the trauma that hit because of her & the abuse that she put my mother through while I was there & trying to figure out what was happening.......felt my own life was being threatened......& the weight began to crash. I couldn't eat....& didn't want to eat.....& loosing so much weight...I liked being that thin......so there was no desire to gain the weight back......It was like the previous time...I wasn't working & being active like I had been all my life so loosing weight by not eating & keeping my weight lower by not eating has become my standard of life.....

Stress is always the trigger for loosing weight & not wanting or feeling like eating but then the loosing weight almost becomes addictive in that I keep wanting to loose just a little more.....I catch myself even now getting into that mode.....I have a safe range & living alone with no one to take care of me when I get too weak to take care of myself. What I find is that even within the safe range, I have the restrictive eating at times & it's not easy to make it stop once it gets started

There have been lots of studies done on what starts the ED behaviors & they have found that many do have CSA in their background no matter what the ED.....some have had abortions that have triggered the behavior...maybe not when it happens but later on......trauma's. They are doing a DNA study to see is there is anything in common with the DNA's of people who have or don't have anorexia (specifically anorexia)....but just like all DNA's.....you might have the tendency but if the trigger isn't there it might not happen.

To be honest.....there are as many different reasons for ED's as there are people who have them.