I was 16 when I first struggled with my ED. It kind of went away for a while until 2 years ago. My fiance and I decided to both go on a diet since we were both unhappy with how unhealthy we'd become. He was at a lower SW than me, so it quickly became a competition to me. I jumped straight into severe restriction, which then led to me having stomach issues. I went to multiple doctors and couldn't figure out what was going on. Just about everytime I ate, my food would sit in my chest and I would end up puking it all back up. I also kept having repetitive bouts of gastritis that were extremely painful. During this time, I was watching my grandmother's health decline. I monitored her health constantly, and was obsessed with her health charts.
I slowly improved my stomach issues by living on soft foods & nutrition shakes. I was fully convinced all of my stomach issues were because I couldn't digest fat or gluten. So I cut them out.
Eventually my grandmother was sent home on hospice, and I watched her die. Shortly after I was attacked by a 16 year old neighbor. I became obsessed with exercise; it pushed me to leave my house instead of hiding in fear. I would spend hours on my bike or outside walking. The pounds dropped fast, I was happy. I thought I was being so healthy. I started drinking a lot, multiple days a week for months. On the days I drank, I would eat very little or not at all so I could maintain my deficit. Sometimes while drunk, I would just stay up all night exercising. At some point I stopped drinking just to fully focus on restricting my intake. A few months after that I went to ED treatment, and that was where I found out I was pregnant after being there a few weeks. Of course, the fact that I got pregnant made me feel like I failed at my ED. And now here I am. I definitely left some things out, but that's a lot to type and I've already wrote an essay lol.
