[Letícia161]

Hello, everyone!
(First of all English is not my first language, so excuse any mistakes )
I may be a little too worried and overreacting over nothing, but I’m concerned about my health and I just want to make sure I’m not developing any eating disorders and bad habits with food.

So it all started when I got tired of being chubby and decided to loose some weight. At first, I was super healthy... went to the gym, ate healthy food (but nothing too extreme) I still ate some “not so healthy foods” and never felt guilty about it. I lost weight and it felt amazing! I was always shy and didn’t have many friends, but after that, I completely changed. (I still had many insecurities) but I made a big progress... and not only with my weight.

Eventually, I was not losing weight anymore... I got demotivated and hit a “plateau”. I completely freak out! I could not go back to being my old self again. So I started counting calories (worst thing I could have done). According to the website I went to, I needed to eat at least a certain amount of calories to lose weight in a healthy way. So that’s what I decided to do. I felt great... for the first couple of days but then I realized I could eat less calories a day and lose weight even faster! Again, I felt great for about 5 days then I felt like I was eating too much and realized that if I ate even less calories I could loose weight soo fast… the pattern kept repeating: Eat fewer calories. Feel awesome. Think about eating less. Feel awful about my body. Restrict more calories. Repeat.

I knew I was going down a dangerous path so I decided to make some rules that would separate me from disordered eating. As long as I followed them, I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t being unhealthy. It became for me the thin line that separated me from eating disorders. For instance: I would never purge, not matter how awful I felt; I would never lie to my parents about what I ate; I would never eat less than a certain amount of calories…
Needless to say, in a few weeks, I managed to break all my rules EXCEPT for the purging one.

It got to a point where I feel awful if I eat more than a certain amount of calories. My day can be turned into the worst if I realize I ate more than I planned, and it can be the best if I managed to eat less. I’ve some OCD tendencies and I realize it’s becoming about control. I feel so controlled by counting calories.

Whenever I eat something and don’t know how many calories the food had I feel awful. I already “broke down” because of this ( sorry not sure if that’s the correct term) but so far I’ve cried twice because I felt so guilty about eating something that in my mind I shouldn’t have. Logically, I know I didn’t eat that much to be a “binging” and the food I ate wasn’t that unhealthy but if I eat and can’t determine the calories of the food I kinda freak out.

I usually eat around a certain amount of calories a day and I normally eat eggs, salad or an apple. Sometimes, though, I let myself eat a "bad food" like chocolate or anything high in carbohydrates.

So anyway… Should I be worried? Or is this a normal behavior? Thanks in advance for putting up with me

[Skeezyks]

Hey... Leticia... I believe this is your first post here on PC. So... to PsychCentral! Oh... & by the way... we're not "putting up with you". This is what we're all here for!

Unfortunately, we here on PC cannot diagnose you. In order to really find out if you are developing an eating disorder, you'll need to see a mental health professional... ideally at an eating disorders program... or perhaps a therapist who is experienced in working with individuals who have eating-related concerns. I see you live in Brazil. So I don't know what kinds of services are available to you where you are.

Whether or not you could actually be diagnosed as having an eating disorder, you clearly have some things going on that are of concern to you. So, under any circumstances, it seems to me consulting a counselor, a therapist or other mental health professional would make sense if for no other reason than to put your fears to rest. I wish you well...

[Letícia161]

Originally Posted by Skeezyks

Hey... Leticia... I believe this is your first post here on PC. So... to PsychCentral! Oh... & by the way... we're not "putting up with you". This is what we're all here for!

Unfortunately, we here on PC cannot diagnose you. In order to really find out if you are developing an eating disorder, you'll need to see a mental health professional... ideally at an eating disorders program... or perhaps a therapist who is experienced in working with individuals who have eating-related concerns. I see you live in Brazil. So I don't know what kinds of services are available to you where you are.

Whether or not you could actually be diagnosed as having an eating disorder, you clearly have some things going on that are of concern to you. So, under any circumstances, it seems to me consulting a counselor, a therapist or other mental health professional would make sense if for no other reason than to put your fears to rest. I wish you well...

Thank you so much for the help and the warm welcome! I really appreciate it.