Here’s some background information about me:

I’m 16. The toxic eating habits started when I was 10-11 years old.

It used to be that I wished to be 95 pounds.. that was a “goal”. Some days I feel like I should be skinnier, other days I feel like I should be thicker. Other days I feel completely comfortable with myself. I used to weigh myself 3 to 6 times a day but now that I know it can trigger something, I don’t do it as often. This is because I very rarely liked the number that appeared on the scale. I dislike eating before 11-noon now that I’ve gotten into a schedule, it feels like a cheat. I don’t like eating after 7 or 8 but I think that’s because I have digestive issues so it makes me feel uncomfortably bloated. I especially try to avoid weighing myself while on my menstrual cycle (TMI, but it’s because I’m bloated). If I don’t burn a certain amount of calories during my workouts, sometimes my brain tells me I didn’t do good enough. When I’m injured or sick, like right now (knee pain day after running), I’m terrified of what people at school will think of me during gym class (we have testing and we have to meet previous score for the first test of the year and then continue to improve throughout the other 3). If I eat a lot, my brain likes to tell me I need to starve myself the next day. I limited myself to 600 calories a day. I know it’s not healthy but it happens. I’ve purged and I’ve had days when I didn’t consume anything, and barely any water in fear of weight gain.

My family has known about my issues for awhile. They’ve always made it seem like a “teenage phase”. My mom actually threatened to put me in a psych ward when she noticed I wasn’t eating & found out that I was self harming (a few years ago).

I cried to her about it yesterday and she really doesn’t understand.

Granted, the eating issues got somewhat better for awhile but I do have triggers. The last few weeks, I haven’t been hungry at all. I got used to it so when I became hungry, I began to ignore it or it would be a ‘cheat’ for eating more and eating beyond my summer ‘schedule’. While my mom and I were talking today, she said she would be concerned if I were binging and gaining weight, but not if I was becoming skinnier. She mentioned how it’s normal for girls to feel this way and doesn’t understand why it’s a problem all of the sudden.

I have to remember that my mom (who suffers from depression and anxiety) and aunt don’t believe in loving oneself. My mom has two scales she weighs herself with in the morning and at night. She calls herself fat in front of me, and even showed me a calorie tracker app that I became OBSESSED with. My aunt limits herself to 800 calories a day and doesn’t replenish calories after exercising. She tells me that I don’t know how it feels to hate the way one looks because I’m skinny and “have nothing to worry about”. My family is obsessed with weight loss.

I’ve only talked to a few people about my recent problems. My father, who is in prison, seems to be the one who understands most. He’s been absent in most of my life (met him when I was 7 and he was a drug addict that loved to party and lie so, ya know..). I don’t know how to cope with this but I deleted the calorie tracker yesterday and I’ve eaten a lot. I didn’t want to, especially since I cannot workout right now. I hate that I’m still hungry and craving non dairy ice cream. But I know that I need to change. Part of me wants to recover, but the voice inside me wants me dead. I’ve asked for a psychiatrist, I got denied.

Please help me with any advice you have❤️