opening up about my eating disorder 

I appreciate you sharing such an insightful perspective. I survived anorexia and later fell into binge eating after my recovery, so I can absolutely relate to the feeling of being out of control despite thinking you’re capable of resisting the urges. I think eating disorders are comparable to OCD in the sense that they kind of hijack the rational part of the brain. It’s also not surprising that type A, perfectionistic people tend to struggle with them, though it might seem paradoxical to some at first. Those with the most discipline and a strong work ethic may be foreign to the experience of not being able to push through a struggle with hard work alone, but eating disorders are a whole other beast and very difficult to treat for a reason. I hope you’re doing a lot better these days and living your life with more balance and peace. Best of luck to you!

Awesome video! Thank you for sharing your experiences. I began binge eating behaviour around seventeen. It was accumulated from behaviour which I had witnessed, through friends, acquaintances and television. I thought that I could use it to help me to manage eating sweet foods, as I had begun to eat sweeter foods to manage stress and exams, and with eating foods which I did not want to eat, in order to please others. I also struggled with body changes and how my body appeared to me. I'm not sure if I fit into body dismorphia category more seriously, but I definitely have stress and discomfort with my own body image. I managed to end the bulimic behaviour roughly a year later, when I moved away from the old friends, and when I realised that I could choose to eat what I like and I don't need to eat foods that others think I should be eating. It is, as you say, still an active decision I make, and not something which can disappear. I also feel strongly the physical affects of the acidity in my stomach, esophagus and mouth which last still today. Following the end of this bulimic behaviour, my avoidant restrictive food intake behaviour became more pronounced. I have autism and am sensitive to a variety of behaviours around food, which is challenging to deal with. One large part is sensitivity to noisy environments, groups and eating around people. I still struggle with this and have been seeing a therapist for a few years. I am always looking to hear others experiences and to gather advice, which is always needed, so thank you again.

I think another issue is that a lot of men do not know how to identify eating disorders. Especially with the wealth of misinformation on gymtube, so many people fall into, at the very least, disordered eating and have no idea that they are suffering with it because people don’t talk about the myriad of ways disordered eating looks. I think almost all Americans frequently struggle with disordered eating and many more than we know have an eating disorder. Work, media, school, etc. really force us to do crazy things that we do not immediately recognize as unhealthy or dangerous and for many of us, it becomes more pathological.

I have something similar with this. I use to weigh about 240 in high school and played sports, but I played all the positions that I needed to get by. I ended up getting up to 315 pounds my sophomore year in college. BUT, fast-forward years later I am now around 180 pounds currently, but at my lowest weight I would do crazy stuff to keep the weight off from gaining weight. It's an everyday struggle still, but learning to let the thoughts go by is a process and takes time.

My gosh bro🤦‍♂️ You really look good! I guess my own insecurity is being too slim.