BDD + Eating disorder?

LegacyUser

Hello I am a 20 year old male long story short I hate how I look I struggled with weight problems since I was 11 or so, I have very low confidence and a terrible attitude towards msyelf, lots of self loathing etc, so I went to counselling and was diagnosed with BDD. I never thought I would see the day where I would develop something, I was and still am sort of a confident person, outgoing etc, but I started having bad thoughts about msyelf and how I view myself. I'm not grossly overweight just a little, today my friends in college were talking bout girls and blah and I said something like "I need to lose weight first before I have any luck with anyone" all my friends naturally said there was nothing wrong with me, I'm filled out, a big guy etc, but I know it's crap talk, I can't hold a candle to any of them and I feel at times that I don't deserve. I feel like I am not good enough for anyone, whenever I see girls I like I just tell myself that I'm not good enough and then compare myself to someone else and laugh at how bad I look. I wish I was thinner all the time and feel people would like me better, I feel I would like myself better

Lately when I eat I feel guilty, this is a new thing. I relate food to my size, and I see it as the enemy. When I eat it almost feels like I am doing drugs or putting something in my body it doesn't need. I keep picturing myself getting even fatter and more ugly. Lately I have been thinking of starving myself to lose weight and look better. Or that I don't deserve to eat because eating has me looking this way I really don't know who to tell or what to do I feel really bad

STAR2011

Contact www.bodywhys.ie, they should be able to help you. Good luck

Logical Fallacy

fatuglyguy wrote: »

Lately when I eat I feel guilty, this is a new thing. I relate food to my size, and I see it as the enemy. When I eat it almost feels like I am doing drugs or putting something in my body it doesn't need. I keep picturing myself getting even fatter and more ugly. Lately I have been thinking of starving myself to lose weight and look better. Or that I don't deserve to eat because eating has me looking this way I really don't know who to tell or what to do I feel really bad

Hey mate, first up I just want to say you are not alone in how you feel. Loads of blokes feel this way and often times you'd be surprised who is and who isn't confident in themselves body wise.

Associating food and guilt is a bad spot to be in though, people can make some rash decisions and i think you are edging close to making one yourself. Starving yourself is not the route to go and is actually one of the LEAST effective ways to lose weight believe it or not. It's also really bad for your health and won't solve any of your problems in the long run. You might just go from being a bit overweight and not happy with that to being a bit drawn out and skinny and not happy with that either. Mean while your relationship and control of food won't have improved at all and you'll end up bouncing between the two stages, never feeling happy with yourself. I've seen it happen to a few people i know.

The best route to take is proper eating and exercise. Watch what you eat, eat with structure, train with structure and you'll shed the bad weight, add some lean muscle and end up looking and feeling a lot better. It's also the healthy route.

If you starve yourself the following things will happen

Your body doesn't want to starve and has built in reactions to times of low calorie intake, because if there is one thing your body wants to do it's live. So what happens is you stop eating, your metabolic rate slows down and you start to shed muscle. Unlike fat, muscle requires calories and energy to maintain...so if your body suddenly feels it's in a famine scenario it drops muscle first. It holds on to fat because stored fat has a higher calorific value for the body as an energy source and doesn't need to be maintained. Basically you would end up getting soft, weak and not particularly happy about that i reckon.

Out of interest, do you have any ideal build you would like to look like? A famous person or sports player maybe? It would help get an understanding of your expectations.

You are away you have self esteem issues and food issues. The choice you have before you now is to either deal with them the right way or the wrong way. Do it the right way and you'll be a new man in no time with some hard work and effort, do it the wrong way and i guarantee you nothing will change.