pregorexia, anyone??

Question

wondering if anyone else here is dealing with an eating disorder while pregnant? i have restrictive tendencies and purge by exercise when i overeat. balancing proper intake for the baby (due 2/17) and trying to ignore the e.d. thoughts in my head is exhausting. just wanted to shout out to anyone else who may be going through this...

Answer

It's been a really tough 9 months. I thought my love of wanting to be a mother would out weigh my bad thoughts about gaining weight for the baby but it hasn't. I was barely a few months into recovery when I found out I was pregnant and I was excited as could be and I wanted the baby bump and thought I wanted it bad enough my bad thoughts would disappear, but they didn't. I'm 39+3 now and the fact that I can't see to shave, I have stretch marks on the bottom of my stomach, my body might not go back down to how it was before I got pregnant, the stretch marks may never go away, I won't be as skinny, I've gained too much weight, all things I think about on a daily basis. And lately I've been thinking once the baby is here I won't have a reason to have all this extra weight and I'll just be fat. It's extremely hard dealing with these thoughts while pregnant because I love my little man more than anything in the world but I can't help but hate myself and my body right now. I'm supposed to be happy and glowing but I'd rather sit in my room and clean and cry.

Answer

I struggle a bit with this. I wouldn't say I have ever dealt with annorexia but I am always hyper aware of my calorie intake and as a long distance runner I am very conscious of frequent exercise. It has been interesting watching my body change! I try to focus on nourishing my baby always. I track my calories now but it's to make sure I'm getting enough and the right kind of calories. I've found that talking to my husband really helps because he is great at telling me how beautiful he thinks my new pregnant body is! I've also kept up exercising but minimized it (i.e. 2.5 mile runs instead of 5 mile runs). Overall I just try to focus on health and less on body image! So far it's going pretty well and I'm having a healthy pregnancy and weight gain :)

Answer

I have a sort of body dysmorphic disorder. No matter what size I am I always think I'm too small. I'm plus size and I acknowledge that, at my absolute smallest which was actual abs and lean muscles I was a size 14 - and extremely unhappy about it.  My best size is 16 and 18. But with this I eat alot and get concerned that I'm too small in places (I have a naturally large chest and it makes my torso seem very small so I tend to want to gain weight to even it out a bit). It's been hard with pregnancy cause I've been revelling in the weight gain and hated when I lost 10 lbs in my first trimester.  But it's all for baby, my body knows what it's doing. But last week I caught myself complaining that I thought my belly looked small and I thought it would be bigger by now (34 weeks) but he is measuring big...so I really shouldn't want to gain any extra. Hard for me to find a happy medium between gaining but not gaining too much just as you with the struggle of not wanting to gain at all.

pregorexia, anyone??

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