Is This Anything to Worry About?

Question:

Okay so I gained a lot of weight last year from staying up really late at night and not going a minute without eating junkfood.  I gained about 25 pounds.  I went from 125 to about 150.  I didn’t really realize that I had gained so much weight until last summer when school ended.  I started worrying about it a lot which is something I had never done in my life.  I have always eaten whatever I liked and not gained any weight.  I got back to my normal weight around last fall by exercising and not eating as much as before.   It seems that since then I am constantly worrying about my weight and what I should and should not eat. I plan out my meals so that I can eat as little as possible through the day and when my parents come home I eat with them.  I  chew gum a lot to resist the urge to eat.  I really don’t know why I am doing this.  I am worried it may be turning into a eating disorder that I can’t control.  Most of the time I am just not hungry so I feel I should not eat.  Sometimes when I do eat and it seems a lot to me ,I feel like I should get it out.  I havn’t done that though because Im afraid it will become a habit.  If I feel I ate too much I feel really upset the whole night.  Im not really starving myself, I weigh 115 now.  But I cant help thinking I want to be thinner.  Its almost like a game.  Everytime I weigh myself I am hoping I will weigh less than the last time I was on the scale and if I do I am happy with myself.  I really really do not know why I am doing this, how can I stop thinking this way.  Could one of the reasons be that I stay home all day and dont get out with friends? My mom has gotten on to me about not eating and got really angry a couple nights ago about it.  She said I look too thin and that I need to eat more, but if I do it makes me miserable.  I don’t want this to become a big problem and I dont want to worry my family.  Worrying about my weight is becoming pretty obsessive and it is all I can think about sometimes.  Could you please tell me what you think is wrong and what you think I should do about it.  Is this even anything to worry about?

Phyllis replied:

I know very little about the best way to treat beginning anorexia, but the fact that you are so concerned about it seems to indicate that you need to talk with someone about this.  One of the things you said made me wonder why you ARE staying home all day and not going out?  What do you do all this time?  It sounds to me as though you would be bored out of your skull.  You seem to have had good results in the past from exercising more and being careful about what you eat.  Why not add to this a hobby or volunteer work that would make your life more interesting?  Sitting around all day worrying about food seems so, so, so bor-ing to me.  You’re on the right track when you say you don’t eat when you’re not hungry. Great.  But do your body a favor and  eat when you are hungry.  If you can strike a good balance between food, exercise and doing something interesting with your time, the false weight issue may not rule you as it does now.