Eating Disorder

Do calories really cause weight-gain?
This may seem like a strange point, but i think this is an issue which seriously needs to be looked at. The calorific value of a food is only an indication of the amount of heat that would be given off if the food was burned or oxidised. Some guy in the past must have proposed that calories cause weight-gain this idea became generally accepted, but many people have suggested that calories are not the cause of weight-gain. I dont see a reason why calories should necessarily cause weight-gain.

 

I'm a chemistry teacher, so I could be wrong, but this is how I explain it. When you eat food, you absorb fats, carbohydrates, proteins vitamins etc to do jobs round your body. Carbohydrates are used to give you the energy to do stuff. A by-product of it giving you energy is the reaction releases heat keeping you warm. If we wanted to measure the energy it took to row on a rowing machine or use an eliptical for an hour, the answer would be in calories or joules.

If we get an answer for the amount of energy that goes out that's in calories, it would make sense to note how much energy we put in in calories. This is useful because if one is bigger than the other we either gain or lose weight.

Calories don't in and of themselves cause you to gain or lose weight, it's how we use them that's important. A snickers bar has 323 calories, but if you only do 320 calories of work, you're still going to gain weight.

 

I agree totally with what you said. The problem for me now is how to stop myself counting calories. It's not something I plan to do but when I go to make myself a meal I just sort of do it and only someone with a similar problem imagine how good I feel if I limit myself to under a certain amount for each meal.

 

my point was meant to be that anorexics become very proficent in their ability to count calories and to know the figures of certain products i.e. the least fattenining lowet calorie food.
i could of told you how many calories were in certain products from the length of time i spent reading the packageing when i was ill.
as for comfort eating,people seem to have a problem so find comfort in food, no problem with that but it often leads to the m going to the extremes of overweight/underweight.
i used to comfort eat when i was a kid for years and when i became mentally unstable it seemed the most natural thing to then fall to anorexia.
obesity is really an issue in the uk now,with the govt really setting inititives to get everyone healthy.
the obese mortality rates are at an all time high.

 

*nods* It's almost impossible for me to avoid, and I freak out inside if I don't know how many calories are in my food. If I eat out, it makes me very uncomfortable because I don't exactly how much is in everything. I ultimately usually come home and work out like crazy. It's really annoying.

I feel much better, and more at ease when I know how many calories I'm eating, and that's really fucking pathetic.


I desperately need to recover. Fully.

 

lovin the discussion. my days have been hard. im in a binge stage.

 

me too dietcoketree. I feel your pain.

I would go into more detail, but I just dont have the energy to.

 

aloneinabigbadworld, thanks for the reply, but i was already aware of what you referred to in your reply.
If you claim that calories make people overweight, then show me some experimental evidence.

 

calories dont make people overweight.
ingestion of too many calories make people overweight

 

no energy to do anything anymore. school started and it seems im just drained. i get up at 5am during the week, and 7 on the weekend cause i work. i never get to sleep before midnight. if even that; this is my third day just awake. my eyes burn and im so tired that i started dozing off while sitting at the dinner table. i get weird muscle aches; like in my little toe and it will shoot up into my ankle. just really weird aches and pains.

and oddly and sickly enough, i kind of feel a sense of pride. im actually DOING something to myself that is causeing a REAL result. i was walking through a store today gettign a new note book and i saw stars.. and i was thinking; no one else here as any idea that im alone in this little world ive made for myself, and theres not anything they can do. to them, i look like just a girl that enjoys pizza on friday nights and whatnot. i guess its just something to call my own.

 

this also depends on your activity level and your metabolic rate too though.
some people can consume more calories and not gain an ounce.
others cant eat more than 2000 cals a day without gaining.

My boyfriend can eat two whole pizzas in a day, plus all of his junk food crap that he munches on all day, and hes still a stick.

It depends on the person and the way their body burns calories and uses them.
And like I said the activity level. My hunny also works in construction all day. I sit on my ass as a secretary.

 

This might sound like a retarded question, but do people with eating disorders spot people with issues over food more quickly?

I only ask because my friends and family have started to say I'm looking too thin (but made no mention of anorexia), but a new family moved in next door and almost the first thing the mother did was ask me how long I'd had one (she's mid 30s and has had one off and on since her early teens, which just depressed the hell out of me).

 

I think so. Once you've dealt with it firsthand, I think it's easier to spot that same "look" in someones eyes... everyone who has an eating disorder has it. I too have this weird ability to pick up on it. Some girls I met at this new high school I went to senior year, from the moment I met them, I just KNEW something wasn't right... later on they confessed to me that the both of them struggled with bulimia.

The first time I met my fiancee's mother's side of the family, the second I spotted his cousin I knew she was anorexic. Not because she was so thin, but the way she walked, and the fact that her arms had the downy fur all over them. I choked up the second I saw her, and I asked my hunnys mother if she had an eating disorder. She didn't know at the time and blew it off and said "well I dont know she's always been thin"

Later that day, this girl's mother told the family that she was in therapy for her anorexia and all that.

This has happened to me SEVERAL times.

I can tell the difference between someone who's thin, and someone who has an issue, in a heartbeat.

 

It was somewhat amusing for her I think, because I looked a little surprised that she guess. It felt a little weird admiting out loud that I had a probelm, but given my response to her question I didn't feel I was in a position to deny it.

She has given me the name of her therapist and all but insisted I set up an appointment with her (which I have done, I'd been putting it off if I'm honest).

In addition, she's started inviting me lunch, which is aimed I think at ensuring I eat at least one "propper meal" a day, but which is also a little strange because there are 2 other women locally who go (they are problem eaters too but I'd've never have guessed it). I'm not sure I should go, however, because I'm a little wary of becoming too involved with people who have eating disorders, given I've been told I have one myself. Any suggestion?

 

I don't know what to tell you, I am not in your situation enough to understand it.

However, regarding how you said it was a bit depressing how she was in her mid thirties and struggling with EDs since her early teens... it's sad, because that's not uncommon. EDs are one of the most powerful, gripping mental disorders...

I was venting to my mother today, about how I'm starting to believe I will never fully recover, and that I'm always going to relapse.
I'm feeling rather hopeless, and that I'll end up like your neighbor.

*sigh*

it's been just over 9 years now since I first developed my eating disorder... and I really just don't know how I'm going to escape it.

 

Do you find talking to others with EDs a good or bad thing? That was why I was worried. I'm not sure if having my 'one good meal' with people with EDs is necessarily wise.

 

it scares me to think that this issue will not just 'be gone' one morning. i WONT have the perfect life where i have breakfast with my husband, go to lunch with my girlfriends, and then a romantic dinner at night. id rather be 'busy' and unable to make it. even if i get recover, it will always linger in my mind and i will never enjoy those sorts of parts in my life. hearing about a 30 year old having an ED, not that its old, but it seems far off to me and knowing that ill still have some frame of mind as i do now scares me.

and in a way, i thank god because i wouldnt know what else to do with my energy i have towards needing something of my own. i sing, write, and other stuff that should help me enoguh; btu for some reason, i just feel like i NEED this.

 

Hi, I'm new here on the forums, but I have been following this thread for some time now and I guess it helps to put down your thoughts. Well, I'm in it as well, fighting with myself to get rid of this anorexia that has simply got hold of my brain. For some 8 years now. By the time I was 18, I had come to weigh even 38 kg at 1,72 m. My family was desperate. I've been taken to a therapist, after some time I refused to go anymore, I really didn't wish to get rid of this anorexia, I was afraid that if I did I'd get fat. Now I haven't weighed myself for some years, I get panicky when I even hear of scales, there are days when I eat nothing, only drink fruit juice and take my vitamin pills. I have a deformed image of my body, I feel fat when I'm actually still underweight. I wonder if I ever will be normal again (though I don't know if I wish it).

 

welcome to the forum and this thread.
there are many of us here who have or are struggling with this mind set.
i have a history of anorexia,life threatening levels.
i make no exscuses for putting it that way because that is the truth.
but i conquered it !
dont really know how or why but did it, i had to.
i started by admitting to myself,friends and family i was seriously ill although it was obvious to them as i was near death skeleton.
then i had to force myself to eat more,wonderfull at first but then after a while the guilt and confusion sets in.
but i conquered it.
and got over it.
but i know how the mental side is addictive and captivating and wonderfull and terrible at the same time.
all i can write is from my own experience
and you can get over this by eating good wholesome regular meals and then the mental side of this illness will ease.
try it, you can do it !
i did.

 

my purging has gotton so bad that my throat is KILLING me and my voice is only a horsey gasp. homecoming is coming up, and i got myself my DREAM date (no idea why hes going with me though) and the [ressure is unbeleivable to be sooo pretty