A friend of mine, male, 18, 150 lbs (healthy, no?), keeps talking to me about how much he regrets eating after eating. He says he's jealous of me for my skinniness. It's becoming/has become an eating disorder. I keep trying to tell him that so long as he eats healthily, and regularly, his body will regulate itself to a natural weight and size, which is individually different, obviously. I myself am borderline underweight. However, I eat regularly, often, yet healthily. How can I convince him that he doesn't need to lose 30 pounds? That would put him at weighing less than me. So far, he hasn't budged.
It's a self-esteem/depression issue. Not a bodily one. Don't let him pull you into the "How fat/skinny am I" game. Because nothing you ever say will be the right answer that will make him comfortable in his skin. If you say he's too skinny, he'll think you're lying to fatten him up or you're just saying it to spare his feelings. And if you say he's not skinny...he'll keep starving/purging/fasting until he's thinner. Realistically, he needs to be in counseling for it. I think you'd be better off urging him to do that than eat. But still, urge him to eat when you can obviously.
seconded. the best thing you can do is push for him to get help and let him know that you are there to support him. eating disorders are so hard to explain to someone who has never had one . . . on the surface it's about being skinny (natural body size isn't "good" enough), but if you delve below the surface, there's always something else going on. it's a negative coping mechanism - losing weight just gives you something concrete to focus on and "fix" that's easier than attacking the real problems.
The really awful thing about eating disorders is that they're able to take practically anything and use it as evidence to convince the victim that everything will be better if they just restrict their food intake. There's no surefire way to convince him: the decision to eat must ultimately be his. Taking on a diseased brain, not to mention an entire cultural indoctrination that celebrates thinness and dieting, is a mammoth task. But that's not to say that there's not a few things you could try: (1) Keep discouraging him from restricting his food intake. This is actually really important: speaking from experience, even if he's resistant at first, you pointing out that he has a problem could plant the idea in his head that he needs to seek help. (2) Inform him that losing that much weight will do lots of really awful damage to his body. Starving bodies don't just draw on fat: if he diets himself down to that extent, his body will start to break down his heart, bones, muscles, and other organs to make ends meet. In doing so he risks developing heart disease, osteoporosis, kidney failure, and eventually death. (3) Let him know that restricting food intake to that extent will eventually backfire in terms of becoming thin. Once you've starved yourself for a while, your body starts to freak out and plops the lion's share of the remaining fat stores it's got square on the belly so that it can protect vital organs. He might think starving himself is a quick route to being thin, but he'll eventually find that even though he's losing weight, his stomach area will get bigger. (4) Encourage him to seek help from a counselor, preferably one specifically trained to handle eating disorders. I applaud you for being a good friend (*hug*) Good luck with your friend.
honestly, all that stuff had zero effect on me. my attitude was always, "yeah yeah, well it hasn't killed me yet." i was extremely underweight (5'4" and 60 lbs), and everything was shutting down. i couldn't urinate without physically pressing over my bladder. i couldn't stand up barefoot because i was standing on my bones, which is excruciating. i couldn't run, best i could manage was a fast shuffle. my legs would randomly go numb. i'd pass out all the time. my skin was gray and so dry it would flake off in big pieces. but literally the only thing that fazed me was my hair - so much of it fell out and i was really self-conscious about it. i would hesitate to say this because, quite frankly, it doesn't always happen. people told me this, or variations of it, numerous times - and over time i came to think of them as liars who just wanted me to stay "fat" because their threats never came to pass. it's now 16 years after i first got sick and i'm still a bit underweight, and it's still true that these things never happened to me. this. i would actually say it's imperative that the counselor or therapist have experience with eating disorders. most people don't realize how very little the average doctor, therapist, psychiatrist, etc. actually knows about eating disorders.
In addition to what Red just said, some people want to die. And they know that their ED will eventually kill them. But they hate themselves so much that they think they deserve a slow and tortuous death like that, through starvation. Your friend isn't that bad yet, but eventually he'll get there. ED's are like a spiral that start out innocent enough--five pounds here, five pounds there. Because they think that if they're just a little bit thinner, they'll feel better about XYZ. But when they don't feel better, or if they do it's only in very fleeting moments--then they decide that they obviously just need to lose more weight because they're too fat/stupid/ugly/disgusting/weak, and then they lose a bit more, until there isn't any more to lose and their hearts give out or they literally just drop dead. Eating disorders totally fuck with your perception of your body and self-worth. If his weight drops low enough for his stomach to start bloating, then he'll take that as a sign to restrict his diet even more. To exercise more. It's like living in a mirror, everything's opposite. Tell your friend that you love him. Be available for him. Urge him to get into counseling. Urge him to eat when you can. Other than that, there isn't much you can do.
I had anorexia and bulimia for 13 years. I nearly died in 2010. I was servely anorexic in 2010. I was doing of forms of laxatives. I was so sick but I'm in recovery now I did it all on my own I hadn't binged and purged in over 6 months and I'm very proud of myself for beating my eating disorder. Tell your friend that eating disorders are not worth it and they can kill
Dealing with people who have eating disorders is very tricky. Honesty, I think a therapist is the one who's more qualified for that. Someone mentioned that has to do with self steem... True. The thing is no matter what you say... and how he looks in the mirror (he might see himself rather in a good weight range), his eyes will focus on the fat in X part of his body making him want to diet to lose that weight. Hmm... Honesty, if you see him losing weight and you're concerned about him the best thing you can say to him is "you look sick". Chances are you might lose that friendship, but you'll be behaving like a friend. Saying "you look normal"... well, for people with body issues it sounds like "you're chubby" more often than not. Seriously. "You look sick. I'm worry about you. You should see a therapist" is the most loving thing you can tell him. Might be harsh... might make him want to distant himself from you, but you'll know that you were not indulging those habits. What redstormrising said makes a lot of sense to me. I do not know how it is to have an eating disorder, since I don't have one. I have a couple of close friends who do and I see paterns there. Seriously, the best thing you can do is to tell them: "You look sick... and I don't like it. Go see a therapist". These guys, when confronted, they just start rationalizing EVERYTHING you say... and they do everything they can to ignore your arguments no matter how good they are. It's as easy as that. "You look sick".
