When I don’t eat enough, I get low blood sugar and I find it hard to concentrate and function enough to do anything. And that’s just from skipping a meal, let alone if I hadn’t eaten for days or was subsisting for years on a very small amount of calories. When I see anorexic people in movies or books, they seem to have enough energy to exercise compulsively, go to school or work, and other things. Is it that their eating disorder gives them anxiety and that makes them more energetic? Or does your body just get used to not eating and functions fine after a while?
In: Biology
It sucks really badly.
Most people don’t go from eating regular amounts to full on daily starvation. It tends to be a gradual lowering of intake, and the body gets used to it. That doesn’t mean the body isn’t exhausted, sore, or unwell, but the body adapts. Stomach feels like it shrinks, hunger cues change, hormones fluctuate, etc. as the body gets depleted. People in the throes of an ED sometimes feel validated by the daily pain that starvation causes, and that can be a motivator to keep restricting. So it becomes a maladaptive cycle.
Eventually, there’s effects you can’t ignore (low blood pressure, insomnia, loss of muscle control, brain fog, heart and breathing problems) and you have to adjust what you can/can’t do because you just have no energy for it. You can’t survive forever on nothing at all, which is why EDs have such high mortality rates. People are surprisingly resilient, and some will look “fine” for a while before they finally can’t do it anymore.
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