A Day in the Life of an Anorexic: An Aide to Those Who Can't Identify

Anorexia is a very hard for people to understand. Many see it as a harmful lifestyle choice. The truth is, it is a mental disorder and not any more a choice than depression or schizophrenia is. Some wonder, what is it like to go through a day in the life of an anorexic? The answer may be a bit tough for some to take.

But let's imagine...

You wake up in the morning and your stomach growls. You take a shower and when you get out you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. You wind up wasting 10 to 20 minutes staring, pinching fat here and there, sucking in your stomach, imagining what you'll look like 5, 10, 20 pounds less.

Before getting dressed, you weigh yourself. You must weigh yourself naked because you are afraid that anything, even your socks, will add weight to the scale. You step on and off about 3 times until you are satisfied you are given an accurate number. If the number is higher than yesterday by even a tenth of a pound, you will feel like you want to die. If it is lower, you are momentarily happy but you remind yourself you have a lot further to go.

You get dressed and go down to the kitchen, take a look at everything there is available to you, but you stop yourself from having a bite of anything. You tell yourself that the feeling of a hunger is a good one, that you need to keep strong because giving in would be giving up on yourself.

You go through the day thinking about food. You go to work or school, you socialize and smile, but in your head you are thinking only about food. How much you want it, the reasons you can't have it, how you are going to avoid this meal and cut the calories on that meal.

You've given yourself a maximum daily allowance of calories, a number that is probably 5 to 10 times below what your normal intake should be. If you manage to stay under, it is a good day. If you go over, even by 10 or 20 calories, you are disgusted with yourself. So disgusted that you feel you could scream.

You spend your time online looking at pictures of models and researching every tip in the book. How to dress to look thinner, what foods will fill you up quicker, what exercises will tone which muscles.

You over exercise on very little energy because of the lack of nutrients in your system. You feel like you are going to faint, but you push yourself anyway. That voice in your head is telling you than being thin is worth it.

You start to have a mental list of your "safe" foods. You fear certain foods to a point that if you are faced with them, you feel like you might cry. In fact, you probably will. You can't eat out with friends anymore because you can't stand not knowing all the calories in your food and they can't stand watching you suffer.

It will hurt to sit because you will feel your bones grinding against the chair. You will find your hair falling out more than usual. You will risk early onset of osteoporosis and possibly a heart attack.

You spend your night lying in bed, planning what you are going to let yourself eat the next day and you can't sleep until you have figured it out.

You have your moments throughout the day where you fight with yourself. Where you want to just force yourself to eat. The times when you realize what you are doing to yourself and you are nothing but scared.

But the anorexia becomes a voice so strong and powerful that you feel like the real you has been forced into some back corner of your mind, struggling to be heard. You don't know what to do or who to turn to because you feel like no one understands.

You finally get yourself to sleep, not knowing whether you will wake up in the morning.

The next day, you go through it all over again.

So please, before you pass any judgments on someone dealing with this terrible disease, understand the suffering they go through on a daily basis.

And if you know someone who is suffering from any eating disorder, get help as soon as possible.