Anorexia and clumsiness

Ever since I developed anorexia, I have become incredibely clumsy. I have scars all over my arms and hands from accidently burning myself. Even at the moment I have fresh burn marks on my arms and hands from my wood fire, the iron and my oven. Besides burning myself, I am also prone to accidently cutting myself while using knives to prepare meals. Something else I frequently do is run into things as I am trying to walk past them which results in large bruises on my legs, hips, knees and arms. Has anyone else experienced this type of thing with anorexia or starvation?

I suppose it is only natural that my concentration levels have decreased and I have become more clumsy as I know my brain has been so badly damaged. this damage has come from starving my emtire body, including my brain for so long, meaning that it is no longer able to function optimally.



While I was unable to find much information about whether or not there is a relationship between anorexia and clumsiness on line, I did find the following information about how starvation effects the brain. I was quite happy to read that as I recover, my brain should recover too, which should mean my clumsiness will be gone when I am recovered. Perhaps this is an indicator I can use to make sure I am physically repaired internally, when I appear to be physically repaired externally.

The Effects of Starvation on the Human Brain

During starvation the body does everything possible to preserve the brain. The brain has highest priority when it comes to gaining access to essential nutrients and fuel. The brain is, therefore, the last area to suffer from a shortage of food. There is even some evidence that short periods of starvation may be healthy for the brain. However, even the brain must eventually metabolize its own neurons to keep the rest of the brain alive.

Breakdown of Muscle and Neurons

When starvation is allowed to continue for an extended time period, most of the body's stored fat has been used up and the shortage of vitamins and minerals becomes significant. At this point, the body's only chance of survival is to metabolize its own muscles and connective tissue. The brain too lacks essential nutrients and begins to break down its own neurons to keep the rest alive.

Reduced Brain Volume

When the brain starts to break down its own neurons, the brain literally shrinks. This shrinkage, however, is reversible if starvation is ended. A study published in the May 2010 issue of "International Journal of Eating Disorders" showed reduced brain volume in people with anorexia nervosa. When anorexics starve themselves to lose weight, their brain starts metabolizing its own gray matter. However, those subjects who regained weight also regained brain volume.

Obsessed with food

Whenever I was starving myself or restricting my food intake I found it almost impossible to think about anything else other than food. I would spend my days sitting around waiting until it was time for my next meal (if i was eating anything at all at that stage). I think that many people presume that anorexics dont like food but this is certainly not the case, well as least for me anyway. It is important to note however that I only loved food while I was in control of it. While I was in hospital I hated everything that I ate as I wasn't controlling my intake at all.


I loved cooking or baking for other people around me but always refused to eat what I made myself. I also strangely enjoyed watching other people eat. I felt as though just watching others eat satisfied my own hunger, as if I was the one actually eating it. I would try and eat my meals as slowly as I possibly could so that I could enjoy them for longer and I insisted on eating all my food with tiny teaspoons or childrens cutlery so that I could savour the food for longer. I didn't only spend alot of time eating my meals but also preparing them. I had many rituals I felt as though I had to follow while preparing food and eating it.

I started watching cooking and food television shows all the time, my favourites being masterchef and man vs food. I also enjoyed shows like the biggest loser, supersized vs super skinny and secret eaters. The second I finished one meal I would start to think about the next. My poor body wanted food so badly but I continued to ignore what it was telling me. I still felt hungry all the time, I just learnt to ignore my hunger. It made me feel strong and powerful when I didn't give in to my hunger.

This is a part of Harriet Browns book brave girl eating that i think sums up how anorexia makes you feel perfectly.

Imagine that you’re standing in a bakery. Not just any bakery—the best bakery in Paris, its windows fogged, crowded with people who jostle for space in front of its long glass cases. The room is fragrant and you can’t take your eyes off the rows of cinnamon rolls and croissants, iced petits fours, flaky napoleons and elephant ears.
And you’re hungry. In fact, you’re starving. Hunger is a tornado whirling in your chest, a bottomless vortex at your core. Hunger is a tiger sharpening its claws on your tender insides. You stand in front of the glass cases, trying to swallow, but your throat is dry and your stomach clenches and contracts.
You want more than anything to lick the side of an éclair, swirl the custard and chocolate against your tongue. You dream about biting off the end of a cruller, feeling the give of the spongy dough, the brief molecular friction of the glaze against your teeth, flooding your mouth with sweetness. The woman beside you reaches into a white paper bag, pulls out a hunk of sourdough roll. You see the little puff of steam that flares from its soft center. You breathe in the warm yeasty smell it gives off. She pops it into her mouth and chews and you chew along with her. You can almost taste the bread she’s eating. Almost.
But you can’t, not really, because how long has it been since you’ve tasted bread? A month? A year? An eternity. And though your stomach grinds against your backbone and your cheeks are hollow, though the tiger flays your belly, you can’t eat. You want to, you have to, but your fear is greater than your hunger. Because when you do—when you choke down a spoonful of plain yogurt, five pretzel sticks, a grape—that’s when the voice in your head starts up, a whisper, a cajoling sigh: You don’t need to eat, you’re strong, so strong. That’s right. Good girl.
Soon the whisper is a hiss filling the center of your head: You don’t deserve to eat. You’re weak, unworthy. You are disgusting. You don’t deserve to live. You, you, you. The voice is a drumbeat, a howl, a knife sunk in your gut, twisting. It knows what you’re thinking. It knows everything you do. It has always been inside you and it always will be. The more you try to block it out, the louder it becomes, until it’s screaming in your ear: You’re fat. You’re a fat pig. You make everyone sick. No one loves you and no one ever will. You don’t deserve to be loved. You’ve sinned and now you must be punished.
So you don’t eat, though food is all you think about. Though all day long, wherever you are—doing homework, sitting with friends, trying to sleep—part of you is standing in the bakery, mesmerized with hunger and with fear, the voice growling and rumbling. You have to stand there, your insides in shreds, empty of everything but your own longing. There will be no bread for you, no warm, buttery pastries. There’s only the pitiless voice inside your head, high-pitched, insistent, insidious. There’s only you, more alone than you’ve ever been. You, growing smaller and frailer. You, with nowhere else to go.
The voice is part of you now, your friend and your tormentor. You can’t fight it and you don’t want to. You’re not so strong, after all. You can’t take it and you can’t get away. You don’t deserve to live. You want to die.
This is what it feels like to have anorexia.

Since starting to eat so much more I no longer spend my days thinking and obsessing over food but I think I do like food more than normal people. My meal times are usually my favourite times of the day and eating yummy foods makes me happier then anything else. I suppose it is natural for me to like food as much as I do since I denied myself of it for so long. Its kind of like the saying, you don't know what you have got until its gone. I didnt know how much I liked food until I stopped eating it and the more I denied myself of it, the more I wanted it.



Feel free to share your own experience of how you felt about food while restricting. Do you feel like having anorexia made you hate food or love food even more?

Why having a healthy weight is necessary for a full recovery

While I am very serious about recovery, I have already started to worry about getting to a healthy weight. I have even considered stopping trying to gain weight before reaching my goal weight but know that this would be a bad idea. Afterall, as long as I am still feeling terrified about reaching a healthy weight, this is a good indication that I am still not healthy and that I need to continue repairing my body and mind. The following article sourced here explains why you should not stop gaining weight too early on in recovery and why having a healthy weight is essential for you to make a full recovery.

The Effects of Being Underweight

Most people who have an eating disorder are not noticeably underweight. Many will under-eat at times and binge eat at other times, so that weight is maintained overall within normal limits.

However, some people with an eating disorder maintain extreme control over their diet, and remain significantly underweight.

One of the diagnostic criteria for Anorexia Nervosa is a body weight less than 85% of the weight expected for a particular height. This is serious, as being underweight has significant physical, psychological and social consequences, and these consequences are often seen in people with Anorexia.

The Psychological Effects of Being Underweight

Physical effects of being underweight include profound effects on the heart and circulation, muscles and bones, intestinal function, sleep and temperature regulation.

Mental and emotional consequences have also been noted. Mood is generally low, and irritability and anger are exacerbated.

There is a tendency to become socially withdrawn and inward-focussed, and people who are underweight have an increased need for predictability and routine, with difficulty being spontaneous. Thinking becomes rigid, and concentration and decision-making capacities are markedly impaired.

Preoccupation with food is usually intense, with almost constant thoughts about food and eating, such that it is common for underweight people to become very interested in cooking, recipes, cookery shows and so on, with a corresponding decrease in their engagement with previous interests and hobbies.

Obsessiveness increases, with people becoming inflexible in their routines, particularly around food. There may be rituals around food preparation, the order or way in which food is eaten, the timing and circumstances of meals, with people often needing to eat alone, and food may be eaten very slowly.

The Minnesota Starvation Experiment

An important study of the effects of starvation has had a profound impact on our understanding of these behavioural and psychological changes. This study was conducted in the early 1940’s and has subsequently been called the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. As Allied forces moved across German-occupied Europe, they encountered starved and emaciated civilians, many of whom had survived largely on bread and potatoes.

As little was known about the effects of starvation or how to deal with the re-feeding of these people, a study was conducted in which 36 psychologically healthy young volunteers were subjected to a six month period of semi-starvation, followed by a three month re-feeding period. During the starvation period the men were given about half the calories needed for weight maintenance, and most lost about 25% of their original body weight.

The physical, social and psychological effects of the starvation on participants were studied in great detail, and reported in a two-volume text called The Biology of Human Starvation. The participants:

• Developed an intense preoccupation with food, with most of their thoughts oriented towards what and how they would eat.
• Had significant impairment to their concentration, judgement and alertness.
• Ate extremely slowly, with unusual concoctions and heavy use of condiments, caffeine and chewing gum.
• Sometimes resorted to binge eating when the desire for food became intolerable.
• Became more depressed, irritable, angry and anxious, and sociability markedly decreased, with the men becoming withdrawn and socially isolated.

During the re-feeding phase the men had difficulty regaining control of their eating, and struggled to identify whether they felt hungry or full. For the majority of participants their eating behaviour did not return to normal until they had been at their pre-study weight for several months.

Clearly, as the participants in this study were psychologically and physically healthy prior to the experiment, all the behavioural and psychological features seen were direct effects of the starvation itself.

Personality Changes

The implications of this study for understanding the symptoms of Anorexia Nervosa are clear: The behaviours and psychological changes that occur in people with this illness are direct effects of being underweight, rather than being due to the illness itself, and therefore will begin to resolve once normal body weight is restored.

The behaviours and characteristics shown are not indicative of peoples’ true personalities, which are in fact effectively masked by being underweight.

It is therefore clear that the primary goal of treatment for an underweight person with an eating disorder is weight restoration.

Many of the features of his or her underweight behaviour and apparent personality change, will gradually disappear after normal weight is restored.

As found in the study participants, the body does not immediately return to being able to regulate food intake on its own, but consuming a well-balanced and nutritionally complete diet, spread regularly throughout the day, encourages the body to re-establish normal weight maintenance mechanisms.

It is very important for weight to be fully restored in order to reverse the starvation effects. If only partial weight regain occurs, the effort applied to achieve that weight gain will not be matched by equivalent gains in mental and physical health.

It is often difficult for an underweight person to engage with treatment initially because many of the effects of being underweight keep a person “locked-in” to the eating disorder, creating vicious circles that maintain the problems.

For example, the rigidity of thinking makes it difficult to make decisions or changes; the obsessional, inflexible approach to life makes it difficult to imagine eating or living differently; the social withdrawal reduces engagement with others and lowers mood; the preoccupation with food makes it difficult to consider engaging in other aspects of daily life. Support from others is likely to be centrally important in helping get through the weight-restoration stage of recovery.

Once the effects of being underweight have been reversed, other psychological factors that contributed to the development and maintenance of the eating disorder may need to be addressed, and areas of life which have been neglected will be re-developed.

If you (or somebody you love) have disordered eating patterns and are underweight, it is extremely important that you see a doctor and have a comprehensive medical assessment. Please consider making an appointment with me, so that we can discuss your situation and explore treatment options.

I always tried to tell myself that I could recover without gaining weight but I now know that this is not true. For me, recovery means becoming the same person I was before my eating disorder and as stated in the article above, this is only possible if I become weight restored. Every time I get scared and want to stop gaining weight, I need to remind myself that it simply is not an option. Reaching a healthy weight is something I MUST do in order to recover. It is something I WILL do in order to recover.