Life at my lowest weight: Physical and mental effects of eating disorders
*NOTE: I am not a medical professional. The testimony I share below is based on my personal experience only.
For years, all I wanted was to weigh [insert number here] pounds. And no, I will not reveal this number. Let’s just say it was ridiculously low for my height and activity level.
Yet I still strove for it. It was all I cared about. The goal came before family, friends, work, and every other thing that should be more interesting and more important to a woman in her early 20s.
Did I reach that weight? Well, here’s the thing—in the mind of an eating disorder, the goalposts are always moving. Once you reach what you thought was your goal weight, it’s no longer good enough. Then you want to weigh even less.
This perpetual adjustment in aspiration is as exhausting as it sounds and requires an obscene amount of mental energy. But once the eating disorder takes hold, it keeps pushing you until your body can no longer keep up.
In my own experience (REMINDER: Every journey is different), the number associated with my desired weight was eventually buried under the eagle-eyed obsession to make it lower than it’d been the day before. It became less about numerals and more about competing with yesterday’s version of me.
Looking back, I did reach a very low weight. What did that get me? In short, nothing good. Allow me to explain.
Physical repercussions at my lowest weight
The results of achieving my lowest-ever weight were both physical and mental in nature. First, I’ll cover the physical results. And they’re not pretty.
Loss of energy
It may seem obvious but it’s still worth saying: a lack of nutrition directly correlates to a lack of adequate energy to fuel the body. And not just the energy we might need for walks to the store or staying awake for late-night TV. Specific nutritional elements (e.g., protein, carbohydrates, fat) are vital to support our constantly evolving cells. Without them, our bodies can’t perform simple functions like metabolism, digestion, and even thought processing.
Without these functions, the body relies on stored energy reserves, plucking each molecule of ATP from anywhere it can until we’re completely depleted. And take it from me, when I was at my lowest weight, I had energy, drive, and enthusiasm for absolutely nothing.
Unnatural hair growth & loss
When our bodies scramble for energy to support their most basic functions, they pull energy from wherever they can, usually from parts that aren’t essential for survival. One such area is the integumentary system, also known as hair, skin, and nails.
At my lowest weight, I started to grow thicker hair in areas like my arms and legs. I learned this was a natural response to a dangerously low weight—my body was trying to keep me cool to make up for my loss of muscle and fat.
But my head was a different story—I lost hair there. Clumps came out after hair washes and I found strands littered around my apartment. It was confusing but also made sense. My body was just trying to survive.
Heart palpitations
Arguably the most frightening side effect of life at my lowest weight was the chest pain that came when I lay in bed, just before sleep. They began slowly and dully but eventually grew sharper and longer-lasting. Each time they showed up, I struggled to pinpoint whether they were a side effect of anxiety or my food restriction. This uncertainty put me in the ER multiple times.
Many nights, I wondered if I would make it to the following morning. If I went for a run during the day, I’d leave behind a map of my route so that if I collapsed, people would know where to find me. I was barely hanging on but still pressured by my eating disorder to keep pushing, the end ever unattainable.
Mental repercussions at my lowest weight
Nearly four decades of living life have revealed to me the undeniable connection between our minds and bodies. While I was depriving my body of its most basic needs, it only made sense that my mind suffered right along with it.
Erratic moods
I rode a high after a binge, only to fall from disgrace upon seeing my reflection in a mirror. This is just one example of my moods’ volatility at my lowest weight. A nutrient-deprived brain works much like a nutrient-deprived body—not well.
My mind constantly played tricks on me, convincing me I was doing OK one minute, then jolting me back to a place of hopelessness the next.
These mind games didn’t stop at moods alone.
High anxiety
While my moods vacillated between sensory pleasure and abject disgust, I remained in a steady state of anxiety. I constantly questioned things like:
When can I eat next?
How long has it been since I last ate?
What am I allowed to eat next?
How much do I need to exercise today?
Note that none of these questions include words like “want” or “feel.” They’re all needs and must-dos. In order to do what I wanted to do, I had to ask the eating disorder for permission. And the answer was almost always “no.”
Obsessive tendencies
Anxiety is often relieved when paired with its partners: obsession and compulsion. My anxiety about food and my body was lessened with rituals like eating food in even numbers, abiding by precise meal times, and recording everything I ate.
Numbers played a starring role in my obsessions. They were easy to track and make sense of. They indicated whether I was succeeding or failing, at least in the eyes of my eating disorder. Rather than relying on intuition or trust—both of which I’d ditched when the eating disorder moved in—I turned to external measures to gauge my progress.
Social isolation
As you may have assumed by now, the physical and mental repercussions of eating disorders take up a lot of time and a lot of energy. There isn’t much room left for things like social pursuits or hobbies.
My eating disorder was my hobby and, strangely, my best friend. I’d come to trust it more than I trusted myself. And in doing so, I’d isolated myself from any relationships that might jeopardize the one I had with my ED.
Life at my lowest weight wasn’t even a smidgen of what I thought it might look like. Instead of being filled with satisfaction, achievement, and relief, it was life-destroying.
It wasn’t until I tossed my scale, stopped counting everything, and started listening to what my body needed that I realized the abilities of my body when it was well fed and the mental wherewithal I had when I was properly nourished.
By living at my natural weight (a number I still don’t know because I stopped weighing myself in 2008), I have the energy, focus, and stamina for everything I lacked when at my lowest weight. I have the ability not only to live but to thrive.
Pause & Prompt
Make a list of things you’ve accomplished that have nothing to do with your weight.
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