NOT ANOREXIC

sorry to use this forum to blow off steam, but i thought someone might be able to relate. i have always been small and now i have UC (and a restricted diet) and i lose weight easily. i am also a 23 year old blonde girl, which apparently puts me in the "highly probable anorexic" category. anorexia is a serious disease and should be dealt with accordingly. in any case, maybe someone else has experienced this type of judgment....

thank you!! i can't tell you how nice it is to have just one person relate!!!! i didn't even know that people with UC lost weight until i came to this forum :)

I'm a 24 year old guy, and I went from around 170 pounds to 150 pounds in a short time. A few people were asking me if I was eating healthy, but I imagine the looks would be a lot worse if I were female.

Actually, a bunch of people would ask me what I did to lose the weight, because they wanted to do the same. I wanted to respond "Well, you get a debilitating intestinal disease, then the pounds just fly off!"

Definitely, I get it all the time. Always have. Girls are particularly mean too, especially back in high school, and the insult they would often use would be to call me anorexic. I'm like "Yeah, maybe that would hurt my feelings except I eat probably more than you do, so you just look like an idiot now".

I'm sure it doesn't help that I don't like to eat in front of other people due to severe social anxiety and the fear that I will eat and have to use their bathroom and risk the chance of clogging it up and having to deal with that embarrassment. So people don't see me eat too often so they just assume, and I don't blame them. I did have someone come up to me once and say "Hey I haven't seen you in awhile! Have you been eating???" I was like "Do you go up to fat people and say 'Hey! Have you been doing anything but eating??'? No, I didn't think so. So why would you think it's any less rude to say that to a skinny person?" They didn't have much to say after that.

i know!! oh this is amazing, i aways felt so alone!! i actually feel worse for my mother, who gets handed stuff about being a "mother of an anorexic" she thinks it is funny--she knows that i eat mass amounts of healthy things, but it pisses me off that she gets stigmatized as much as i do!!

i know this is in poor taste, but i actually make the "drug addict" joke. people will either call me anorexic or a drug addict, and i respond with, yeah--i'm hooked on probiotics--or something like that :)

that's AWESOME (having had a similar experience...without the apology)....

also the worst is when they weigh you before a colonoscopy. i've had nothing to eat and yoy have asked me to take 24 laxatives?! and NOW you want to weigh me?!?!?!?!?! i HATE IT

I've had the drug addict accusation before too. Once I went to donate blood once and the lady asked, really rudely, "Do you even weigh more than 100lbs?" to which I replied "Yes, I weigh 115lbs." And then she proceeded to ask to see the insides of my arms! To check for track marks!!! After that I sat down and waited for my turn and watched her work up the other people and she didn't ask a SINGLE one of them to see the insides of their arms. And I could see everyone else was thinking the same thing, like they felt embarrassed for me or maybe they too were thinking I was a drug addict. I was really pissed and I just left and said they obviously didn't want my blood so forget it.

And as for our parents getting the third degree about it... I never knew my mom did until one day she confided in me that since I was diagnosed she's always been having to defend me (even to family members) and tell people that I do not have an eating disorder. She said she didn't care except that she didn't feel it was anyone's business one way or another, but she didn't want people looking at me in that way. It doesn't help when you can't sit through a whole meal without going to the bathroom at least twice so people think you're going in there to puke it up.

Oh well. I say let people think what they want, most of the time they're just jealous because we're skinny and eat pounds of food, while they gain weight just looking at a donut, so they try to criminalize us to make themselves feel better ;)

Well, when I lost weight my during my first flare, I even thought I looked anorexic (less muscle and fat). I just didn't look healthy. I honestly don't blame people for thinking we have an eating disorder. However, I don't think it is right to judge, but put yourself in their "uneducated" shoes. We don't intentionally starves ourselves, but if we are loosing weight, then we are unintentionally starving ourselves. Most of our bodies need extra energy (calories) for repair. I would recommend seeing a nutritionalist if you need to gain weight. I have a high metabolism and am slender. But, after my last flare I was able to put on weight, mainly muscle and I look very healthy now.

Determining your BMI is the easiest indicator of how healthy your current weight is. I beleive mine is 20.4 which is in the healthy range.

What is your BMI?

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/bmi-calculator/NU00597

Hehe. I used to say I suffered from "involuntary opposite bulimia" - a bulimic forces themselves to vomit up nearly everything they eat, whereas I don't WANT to but nearly everything I eat comes right out the other end! ;)

Sara, take advantage of the younger looks now because you are going to LOVE it when you get older! :) I'm 37 and people say I still look like I'm in my 20's so to me that is a much needed compliment to this almost 40 year old! But I know what you mean about it irking you now. I used to be the same way. When I was 25, I was constantly carded for everything.

Looking young can be annoying but i am looking forward to using it when I am older. Back when i was a bartender i used to try to card people and they would accuse me of not being old enough to make the drinks. I always had my ID on hand. If I needed to see thiers they were welcome to see mine. But I always told them that I had to card everyone, even my own mother.