Answered questions(30)
Eating Disorder or Drinking Problem?
If a person barely eats because they don't want to gain weight because they are partying hard and drinking a lot every night do they have an eating disorder or is that considered just a part of having a drinking problem.
Read answer →Am I destined to be overweight? I'm 5'9", 280 lbs. and no matter what I do, I can't lose weight.
I have been overweight my whole life. My parents are very heavy and my grandparents were very heavy. I am now 24 years old. I am 5 feet 9 inches tall and I weigh 280 pounds. It seems like no matter what I try I do not really lose much weight. Because everyone in my family is so overweight is it reasonable for me to assume that we have some sort of metabolic condition that runs in the family that makes it difficult for us to lose weight? I am frustrated with trying to lose weight and enduring miserable diets that do not work.
Read answer →Do I Have an Eating Disorder? My Friends Say I am Too Skinny.
Do I have an eating disorder? Even though I know I am very thin and most people say I am too skinny I still feel good when I wake up in the morning and I look even skinnier than usual. I am kind of confused by this because I can see that this is messed up…I know it is not good, but when I get worse I feel better…WTF? I am not sure if this means I have an eating disorder because I am not blind to this situation I can see that I am too skinny but at the same time I am always thinking about not eating too much so I won’t get fat.
Read answer →I am tormented by gross thoughts about food that I can't stop and it's interfering with life. How do I stop them?
When I was a kid I found I couldn't leave my bowl of cereal alone or I couldn't eat it. If i was present and watching it I knew nothing bad had happened to it, If i left it for any reason my mind would suggest all the things that could be in there that I couldn't see, typically worms, and I would have difficulty choking it down. As an adult, this has morphed into, i see something i find gross, (worms and house centipedes mostly) the next time I go to eat my mind will give me vivid images of finding, ( or worse, NOT finding) those things in my food to the point where even if i do manage to put the food in my mouth I'm fighting my gag reflex to swallow and keep it there. The result is that I won't/can't eat the rest of the day and only manage light amounts the next. Extreme distraction at the time of eating helps, watching a isn't typically enough but reading a book or very compelling or passionate conversation can. Why does my brain do this to me? Why does it hate me? How do I get it to STOP? I have a very fast metabolism and am already teetering on being underweight.
Read answer →What can I do to help my friend? She told me that she made herself throw up and she stopped eating for two days cause her sister called her fat.
my friend told me that she made herself throw up and she stopped eating for two days cause her sister called her fat but she told me she's going to stop and knows it's unhealthy for her. What can I do to help her and would exercising with her help her stop?? She also seems really stressed out lately, is there anything I can do to help her get through this??
Read answer →Making myself throw only up once in a while. Is it dangerous?
I only make myself throw up after I really pig out, like after Pizza hut buffet. How can this be so dangerous when I only do it 1 day a week or 2 days because it is not like I am making myself throw up after every meal. I am not fat and I want to stay that way so what is the big deal it is not like I am starving myself to death or anything like that!
Read answer →Is there really such a thing as food addiction?
Can people really get addicted to sugar? I swear if I try to go a day without sugar I am craving like crazy for it, but I never thought that it was like a real addiction, like cocaine or heroin etc. If it is a real addiction, do you have to give it up completely to get sugar-sober like an alcoholic?
Read answer →Is Bulimia something that only girls get, or do boys get it too?
Are there a lot of teenage guys who binge on food and then make themselves throw up? I am 17 and I do this 3 or 4 times a week. I am very ashamed of this and embarrassed because everyone thinks this is just something that girls do. I do not know why I need to do this all the time.
Read answer →Is it OK to overeat and then exercise enough to work it off?
My husband has asked me to stop exercising before bed and he is concerned that there is something unhealthy about my weight control habits. Is it wrong to keep track of everything I eat and calculate the calories and then calculate my daily resting caloric expenditure and then calculate how many calories are surplus and then make sure I do as much exercise at night before bed as is needed to make sure my intake and outtake match almost exactly? It is something I have been doing for about a year and it has helped me to control my weight very effectively, and in the past I have struggled to control my weight. This way I can eat as much as I want without guilt because I know I will work it all off before I go to bed.
Read answer →Having No Luck at all with Weight Loss
I’m 18 years old, 5.8 feet tall and weigh about 280 pounds. I have always been heavy, and actually my mom and dad are pretty big too and I’ve never really been able lose much weight. Lately though, I have been making a real effort to get healthier. I broke up with my girlfriend of 2 years about a year ago and since then I haven’t had so much as a date and I am pretty sure that it is my looks that are the problem. But even though I have been trying to get out and exercise and to eat less, I am having no luck at all with weight loss. I think I may have some sort of eating problem. My family has always been a bit weird with food. Now, even though I’ll go for a fast walk for a half an hour and really watch what I eat all day, I almost always wreck things and all the good work I did with a huge pig out at night. Not every night but a lot of times I’ll get back from school and I’ll just be replaying some conversation or whatever in my head and getting myself all pissed off or upset and then before I know it I’ve eaten like a whole large pizza and a box of cookies. It almost seems like I go into some sort of trance, I mean not really, but that my mind kind of turns off when I get upset and I don’t think about the fact that I am really tired of being the fat guy and that I am working really hard to lose weight…I just get focused on the food and eating the food and I don’t feel or think much of anything else while I’m doing that. And then afterwards I feel like garbage. I feel guilty and I feel pathetic and since I’m such a loser anyway I might as well have that quart of ice cream. How can I stop acting like this? I want my life to be better and I am willing to eat healthier and exercise, but how can I ever lose weight if I can’t control myself whenever I feel stressed out?
Read answer →I feel so guilty about everything I eat. I thought I would feel happy when I got skinny but I don’t.
I have been trying to lose weight for 2 years. I have lost 40 pounds, so obviously I was very unhealthy and overweight before and everyone tells me how great I look now. I am still 10 pounds above my goal weight so obviously it is not as easy to drop pounds as it was in the beginning. The closer I get the harder it is. I understand this intellectually, but when I weigh myself each morning and I see I have not lost any weight or if I have gained weight I feel really panicked and terrible and I try to eat as little as possible all day. When I was losing weight in the beginning it felt great all the time but now I only feel OK if I am losing and to lose I have to be pretty vigilant and when I am not losing I feel like crap and I feel so guilty about everything I eat. I am not sure what to do now. I thought I would feel really happy when I got skinny but I don’t (:
Read answer →I need to lose 100+ lbs., and I don't want to take years, or fail at it. Which is the better surgery?
Right now I weigh 360 pounds after losing about 40 pounds in the last year. I am happy with the 40 pound loss but I am still far from my goal of a healthy weight. I have a family history of obesity and heart disease at a young age and even though I am only 32 I am worried that if I don’t lose weight now I am going to die very young. I have been obese for my whole life. My dad died from a heart attack at 44 and he wasn’t nearly as big as I am now. Obviously at 360 I am still morbidly obese and at the rate I am losing weight I will remain morbidly obese for another 5 years or so before I get to my target weight of about 180 (this is accounting for some slowdowns as I have less weight to lose near the end). While I know that weight loss is supposed to be a slow and steady thing I am just worried that I don’t have enough time to lose that weight and that I could be dead by the time my diet and exercise program gets the results I need. I am thinking about asking about bypass or lap band surgery. Is one better than the other? My doctor says that I should not take the risks of surgery if I am having success with my weight loss program but I am not sure I can wait so long. I am also just so tired of looking disgusting and feeling so tired all the time. I understand that you cannot give me specific advice since I am not a patient of yours, but in general would you say that my logic is sound? For someone with a risk of early heart attack do the immediate weight loss gains of bariatric surgery outweigh the risks and is this a better option than the slow ‘natural’ course of weight loss I am currently following?
Read answer →I've been dieting and now I'm starting to binge. How do I stop?
I have been dieting pretty strictly for about 8 months and I have lost more than 30pounds during that time but the problem is now I am starting to gain some of the weight back and I seem to be losing control over my eating whereas before I have always been very strong about limiting my calories. I have been trying to eat no more than 800 to 1000 calories per day and I have been quite serious about journaling what I have been eating and making sure to stick to my goals. But then what happens is that every few days or so I start feeling upset about something and I get these really strong cravings to eat carbs (I am doing a mostly low carb diet otherwise) and I’ll end up having this total pig out session where I eat as many calories in one meal as I might eat in 3 days of normal dieting. I have been too embarrassed to write down what I eat in my food journal after these sessions, even though no one looks at this but me. I have never had a binging problem before. How can I get this under control?
Read answer →Am I risking relapse to coke if I try to lose weight?
I was addicted to cocaine for a very long time. I was pretty thin during those days and I just took it for granted that I didn’t have to worry too much about managing my weight. Now, I am about 11 months clean and I am getting so fat. I have gained 53 pounds in less than a year. I think that I am eating like I used to use drugs. At first I wasn’t too worried about it since I was pretty much only worried about keeping things together and staying clean. Now I can see that this is becoming kind of a big problem, but when I’m in my room in the evening watching TV I just always feel like I need something to make me feel good, and now that something is food as it used to be getting high. Should I tackle weight loss now or should I wait until I’ve got a little more clean time under my belt first? I can always lose weight down the road but if I go back to using again I bet I’ll be a dead man within a couple of years.
Read answer →I'm Miserable With my Eating and Myself, but I Don't Think I Have a Real Eating Disorder. Should I Bother an Expert?
I have been struggling with what I believe to be an eating disorder for many years now, but everything I research about different types of eating disorders doesn't seem to fit me. I am afraid to get help, because I don't know if I actually qualify as having an eating disorder, because I am at a healthy weight. I am now 22 years of age, but I have struggled with my body image and eating habits all my life. When I was younger, I was diagnosed with childhood obesity. Now that I am older I am now at a healthy weight for my height, 5'7 and 140 pounds. However, I struggle every day with my eating habits. I began to make myself purge my food when I was in about 14. I don't have to do it after every meal, its more of if I eat too much, or if I eat unhealthy. Some days I have better control than others, and for a couple of years I was able to stop. For the past year and a half, however, I have started to purge more frequently, and I know the dangers of this behavior, but I can't seem to stop. I don't eat massive amounts of food though either. I try to eat as least as I can, but also as healthy as I can. I feel such a relief after I purge, but I hate that I have to do it or else I feel so guilty and like I can actually feel the fat being added to my body. I can't stand the thought of ever being fat again, and I am so tired of constantly worrying about what I eat and how my body looks and my thoughts constantly being consumed with food. I don't know what to do because I don't know if I would actually be considered as having an eating disorder or not. I know something isn't right, but I just don't know what.
Read answer →How Can I Help my Overweight Daughter? Should I Send her to a Camp for Overweight Teens?
My daughter is an overweight 14 year old. I was an overweight teen so I remember how painful it can be too be the butt of fat jokes in high school hallways. I wish there was something I could do to help her lose weight so she doesn’t have the same experience I did growing up. How can I get her to lose weight without pushing her too hard towards things like anorexia? My wife and I are also overweight so when we tell her to be careful with what she eats our words may not have as much impact as they would if we were very fit. I am considering sending her to a summer camp for overweight teens. My daughter is 5 foot 6 inches and she weighs about 180 pounds. Is this the best way for me to help her lose weight? Is there anything else I can do to get her to start eating more healthily?
Read answer →I Used to Have Anorexia and Obsession with Diets. I've Recovered but the Paleo Diet Sounds Healthy. Should I Try it?
I had bad anorexia in my early twenties that I got under control with the help of a really great therapist who sadly passed away a couple of years ago. I am now 37 and I am doing really well. My weight is healthy and I don’t obsess about calories (much) and I am feeling really good about who I am and about what I can and can’t do in the world. I have started seeing this guy and he is really into eating paleo. He is really smart and he is really healthy so it is working for him. I have not told him yet about my past struggles with eating disorders and about how diets of any kind are really dangerous things for me to get into. Anyway, he has been explaining more about Paleo and about how it is not actually a diet but more of a lifestyle change for better health, better disease resistance and for more energy. He is encouraging me to give it a try and I am thinking about it. Do you think that eating paleo is dangerous for someone with a history of anorexia? I am tempted to try it, and in some ways I already am since I am eating so many meals at Rob’s house and there isn’t much in his fridge that isn’t paleo friendly.
Read answer →It's my Husband's 4th Deployment. The Kids are Driving me Nuts. I'm Eating like Crazy and Gained 20 lbs. He's due Back! Help!
My husband just left last month for his fourth overseas deployment. We have three kids and I find it very difficult when he is gone. I do not get depressed like a lot of military spouses but I do feel anxiety more often and of course I worry about him and mostly I just feel overwhelmed whenever he goes at the job of taking care of these kids and the house and the bills and his parents and everyone and everything all alone. And to really complain about it just feels so selfish. During his last 8 month deployment I gained about 15 pounds. My husband was shocked when he came home because I have always been pretty fit but I just started feeling overwhelmed all the time and I just ate a lot as a way to cope I guess. Now he has been gone for a month and it’s been the holidays and I have already gained another 5 pounds. I really don’t want to get huge and unhealthy but I can’t seem to control myself when I get stressed out, which is like every day. How can I stop comfort eating when I really need that comfort?
Read answer →What's a good diet pill?
Are there any diet pills that are safe but effective to use. As I understand it much of what’s on the market is pretty much caffeine based, or maybe even some sort of speed. The last thing I need is to be more anxious and jittery than I already am, but if there was a safe and effective diet pill it would be a godsend to me. I am 22 years old, 5 foot 4 inches tall and 160 pounds. I try to eat healthy but I invariably fail and I eat a lot of junk food almost every day. If there was a pill that could reduce my appetite so my crvaings weren’t so hard to manage maybe I’d finally be able to lose weight.
Read answer →Does the training for The Anderson Method give CEUs?
Mr. Anderson When we talked on the phone a couple of weeks ago, I forgot to ask if you offer CEU's for your training? If so, are the approved through the ASWB?
Read answer →My obese daughter uses her allowance to buy junk food and my mother gives it to her. What should I do?
My 8 year old daughter is 4 foot 6 and she weighs 135 pounds. She is not interested in exercise of any kind. I have been trying to model healthy eating and exercise habits but she doesn’t seem to care. I do not want to put her on a diet because of the message that sends but when I let her choose how much to eat she eats too much and she eats too much junk food as well (even though we don’t have it at home she has an allowance and her friends and grandma also supply it). How do I get her to lose weight without putting a lot of negative pressure on her? I don’t want her hungry but something has to change.
Read answer →Am I a Food Addict? I'm Very Overweight and Can't Stop Overeating.
I don’t know if I have an eating disorder but I am a very overweight man. I am 33 and 5 foot 9 and weigh 275. I know that I need to lose weight for my health and as I am approaching middle age I can’t let this go anymore. The problem is that I am obsessed with food. It’s all I think about. I’ll finish breakfast at home with my wife and start plotting out which of the drive throughs I’ll hit on the way in to work for a second breakfast my wife doesn’t know about. And in the evenings it’s worse. I watch TV and eat and if I am not snacking I am just dreaming about all the things I want to be eating. I am trying to exert some will power over myself but my thoughts about food and my cravings are really relentless and I can’t seem to control myself and I am getting bigger by the year. How can I diet and lose weight if I can never stop thinking about and eating food even for 20 minutes? Is there something wrong with me, like some sort of mental illness that makes me act like this? Or am I just someone with no will power? How do you lose weight when diets won’t work?
Read answer →How do I get quality professional treatment for my daughter with an eating disorder?
Have a daughter with an eating disorder asking for help, took her to University of Iowa that stated they had an 'eating disorder" treatment center where it is a child psychiatric ward with no other eating disorder patients. Tried to discharge her to get help somewhere else and they pushed a court order on us stating she refused treatment which she never has, she has been asking for treatment. She does not believe she is getting the correct care and is very very scared in this environment. What can we do, we are looking for different centers in the Midwest but do not want her in a similar place. She does not feel safe and we feel helpless. So much more to story but any suggestions to midwest treatment centers and also ones that accept insurance?
Read answer →My daughter gets weight loss tricks from pro anorexia websites. How worried should I be?
My 14 year old daughter gets weight loss tricks from pro anorexia websites. I have told her to stop this but whenever I see her doing some new trick like chewing on ice chips while watching TV or making diet coke popsicles or drinking a huge amount of water and trying to be sneaky about it before eating then I know she has disobeyed me and is looking again. If she was too thin I would be very worried but she is what I would call a healthy weight and what she would call too fat. I do not know what to do. I talk to her about food and nutrition and I know that she believes me but there is a stronger part of her that wants to believe her friends and these website girls with their tricks. I am a single dad and I am out of my depth trying to fathom the emotions and pressures she is living with as a teenage girl. How worried should I be?
Read answer →Do I have an Eating Disorder? I have some strange eating problems.
i can only eat unhealthy food mostly,junkfood,high fat,high sugar etc,i have tried many times to eat healthy but keep failing,i heave up at the taste of some foods,dont like meats ,fish or fruit & veg.Could i have an eating disorder?
Read answer →Too much exercise?
Can there be such a thing as too much exercise? My roommate likes to party and she can drink like a fish but then the next day she always calculates how many calories she needs to burn from the drinks and food she had the night before and then she works out like a freak for hours until she decides she is back to even. This can take her 2 or 3 hours and she does this most days of the week. It sounds weird that exercise would be harmful but there is something kind of obsessive and crazy about it – like there is no way that she would EVER miss doing that mega workout to burn those calories off, even if it were like finals week or whatever. Should I be concerned about her? Right now it‘s something we joke about but it seems less funny lately…
Read answer →How do I Stop Pigging Out?
I’ve always been very careful about what I eat and about getting enough exercise and I have always managed to stay at about 110 pounds or less (I am 5 foot 6). Over the last few months I have gained almost 20 pounds. I know I look really fat and I even have a roll of fat that hangs over my jeans. It makes me feel disgusting to look at and I need to get back to my healthy and happy weight. The reason I have gained weight is because I have started having these food binges like 2 or 3 times a week. I’ll eat normally at work all day and then I’ll get home from work and lock the door behind me and go to the kitchen and eat a totally ridiculous amount of food. Usually bread and crackers and pizza and things like that and a lot of milk and ice cream and basically whatever else I can get my hands on. After I finish eating I always feel physically terrible and so guilty and pathetic too and I swear I’ll never do this to my body again. But the problem is when I get the urge to go and pig out it’s like I can’t control it and then once I start binging I can’t stop myself until it runs its course. What can I do to get back in control over myself? I have always been a very disciplined and in-control person so it’s killing me that I can’t even control myself to stop eating like a pig.
Read answer →How do I get my son to stop eating junk food?
My 7 year old son only eats basically carbohydrates. He won’t eat any vegetables and he’ll only eat deep fried meats – if it’s not crunchy and battered (nuggets or fish sticks for example) he’s pretty much not going to do it. A lot of the time I can’t get him to eat any kind of meal; he will only eat snack type foods like chips or crackers. I know this makes me sound like a terrible parent to let him have chips for dinner but I am so desperate a lot of the time just to see him eat anything that I will let him eat what he wants, just so he’ll get some calories in. He is very skinny now although the doctor says he is not dangerously underweight. I do give him a multi vitamin each day so I hope that helps. How can I make him eat a more varied diet? I have been trying to encourage him to try to eat different things for years and it just is not working. If it is something he doesn’t already ‘like’ he won’t even try it. This has been going on for years and it is not getting any better. Everyone told me that this would get better as he grew up but it doesn’t seem to be happening. I am really worried that he is never going to change his ways and he is going to be very unhealthy or not grow properly. I don’t know what to do. I am ashamed to admit this but I was so frustrated last night I even tried force feeding him. It was awful. What can I do to make him eat even a little more variety?
Read answer →What can I do to help my friend? She told me that she made herself throw up and she stopped eating for two days cause her sister called her fat.
my friend told me that she made herself throw up and she stopped eating for two days cause her sister called her fat but she told me she's going to stop and knows it's unhealthy for her. What can I do to help her and would exercising with her help her stop?? She also seems really stressed out lately, is there anything I can do to help her get through this??
Read answer →Anorexia and cocaine addiction. Which do you treat first?
My 22 year old daughter called my wife and I to pick her up from a hospital emergency room 2 nights ago. When she called she had already been treated and was getting released and she was fine, but she had been scared that she was going to die. She was dropped off (by her so called ‘friends’ who didn’t stick around to see how she was doing) after she started having heart palpitations and she thought she was having a heart attack. Some medication and time under observation was all the hospital treatment she needed because she started feeling better pretty quickly after the doctors started in with treatment. I was also left with the bill, which is OK when you are paying for your daughter’s lifesaving care, but it is illustrative of how I am often only called after the fact to pick up the pieces. My daughter is a very beautiful girl who is starting to look like a skeleton. We have been trying to get her some help for what we feel is her obvious anorexia but we have not yet been able to get her to admit that she has a problem. On the drive home from the hospital she admitted that she had a problem with eating and she asked us to get her some help but said that her biggest problem was cocaine and said that she couldn’t stop using it on her own and that it was after using too much cocaine that she ended up in the hospital. I feel like we have a window of opportunity here to get her into a treatment program and this is something we haven’t had for a while. But I am confused about what she needs. It seems to me that if a person has a cocaine addiction and an eating disorder that you have to treat the cocaine addiction first because you just don’t eat when you’re high on cocaine all the time. But some of what I am reading online seems to suggest that the eating disorder needs to be looked at first. I am confused. Should I look at sending her to a drug rehab which has services for people with mental health issues or to an eating disorders facility which offers substance abuse counseling…or to something else entirely?
Read answer →