why you need to eat

starvation causes eating disorders. eating disorders cause starvation in some cases.

eliminate starvation and you've knocked off half your problem.

it was discovered that eating disorder symptoms are in part caused by starvation after a study was conducted in world war ii with several male volunteers. their calories were cut in half, they dropped weight like nobody's business, and weird things started happening. the men were obsessed with drinking coffee and chewing gum, they binged and felt very guilty for it, they were depressed and anxious, they were withdrawn, they took a long time eating, they couldn't concentrate... one guy even mutilated himself to try to get out of the experiment.

the refeeding period was even worse. the men binged like crazy and felt extremely guilty for it. they were always ravenous. most of the men gained up to their setpoint plus 10% and then dropped down to their setpoints within about a year.

any of this sound familiar?

these were perfectly healthy men with no history of any eating disorder tendencies, and being starved provoked symptoms that would mimic marya on a bad day in "wasted." the minnesota starvation experiment emphasized that if the body is unhealthy, the brain is unhealthy. a large portion of your anxiety, depression, and odd behaviors are a direct result of malnutrition.

and don't think you have to be underweight to be malnourished. a 300 pound man can be malnourished. weight has nothing to do with it.

if you're sitting there going, "meh... i don't eat much but my weight is okay. i'm fine..." well, i both want to sympathize with you and shake you really hard, because i have been there and that is bullshit. you need to go on google and look up the nutritional requirements for humans; they are pretty extensive. you need quite a bit of vitamins and nutrients to keep your body functioning properly. restricting one little part can have long-lasting consequences.

for example, you need vitamin d to absorb calcium. if you are restricting any or both, then you are not feeding your bones, and they are crumbling to bits inside your skin.

if you are still resistant to the idea of needing nutrition because you are somehow different than all the other humans on the planet, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malnutrition have you looked at the consequences of malnutrition before? just lacking one vitamin can give you some really ugly health problems.

you don't need to get the food pyramid tattooed on your body to ensure you're eating right. meal plans are really excellent for re-learning how to feed yourself. just recognize that if you are eating, like, 500 calories a day, you're depriving your body of what it needs to live, and this is serious shit. you can't survive doing this. you WILL get sick. you may die. yes, i am trying to scare you... because this is scary. you've got a disease with a 20% mortality rate; any time is the right time to admit you've got a problem and need to do something about it.