New Tracker

[Kila_Malia]

A good tracker would be eating disorder's. What do you think?

[Med Help]

An eating disorder tracker has been suggested before and it appears to be a very controversial subject. We'll continue to consider this tracker, but would value more feedback from the community and from experts on whether or not such a tracker would be more beneficial or harmful to our users.

Thanks,
MedHelp

[Kila_Malia]

I was reading the votes! But I have to disagree with one thing. They say once a addict was a addict right? Well same goes for eating disorders.Well that's what I was told in a support group. I don't make my self sick lately but I could at anytime just like alcohol etc. So I am never recovered from this. I just thought it be a good idea just like the diet tracker. I still have problems wanting to eat so I thought a tracker would be nice! :)

[marileew]

I thought about this too... but was also worried it might be VERY counter productive. I am one of those recovering eating-disorder people and I say recovering just like an alcoholic would say a recovering alcoholic because although I am a healthy weight and I am VERY happy with my body image, I know that I am still vulnerable to eating disorder thinking and behaviour if I tempt myself...

People who have eating-disorders but are currently recovered are suggested to not own scales and stuff like that..

I was vegan when I had the eating disorder and although the two are NOT RELATED, I even stopped being vegan because I realized that (although being vegan has NOTHING to do with eating disorders what so ever) in my case, it HAD become another way for me to control my food intake... so, I knew that in order for me to rewire my mind to become a healthy mind again, I had to stop restricting myself in such ways and became just a vegetarian again (what I had always been).

So much of recovery from eating disorders is learning how to NOT track oneself in relation to food because so much of an eating disorder is tracking oneself in relation to food.

I think that in order for a eating disorder related tracker to be helpful and not extremely dangerous to those at risk and vulnerable... it would have to exclude, as in it could absolutely NOT include anything to do with the following:

- calorie intake
- number of meals eaten
- binging
- purging
- weight (even if it was supposed to be tracking weight gained back to a non-anorexic healthy weight)
- moods that related to feelings of "fatness"

The thing is... everyone I know who has an eating disorder begins, at some point, to start tracking... and that is when you know that the disease has really progressed to a very serious stage and a stage that is extremely hard to treat. It is not uncommon to find large stacks of journals with exact numbers of calorie intake per day and the number of times a person has purged or exercised or the number of pills they have taken (depending on the eating disorder)...tracking is a very serious symptom of eating disorders.

So... yes, although I have also though an eating disorder tracker would be a great idea, I think a lot of careful thought would have to go into it to make sure that it could NOT be used as a tool to aid the illness.

Maybe a tracker that only focused on positive steps.. and positive steps that could not be reversed or seen in any sort of opposite light (so nothing to do with eating... anyway, eating disorders aren't actually about eating, that's just a symptom). And maybe a tracker that sort of was like the addiction tracker... but, with a bit of the mood tracker added into it.

Things I think could be included would be:

- Attended support group / counseling / psychotherapy session today.
- In-Patient Hospital Stay. Acute Hospital Visit. Physician appointment.
- Holistic Supports: meditation, prayer (we could brain storm some others...?)
- Mood: Good, Okay, Bad
- Medications (medications are used to treat some eating disorders) : bupropion, lithium, tricyclic antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, etc. (NO weight-loss medications!!!!)
- Stresses (like on the mood tracker) : Family, Work, School, Personal, etc.

Those are my thoughts anyway.

[Fingerprinted]

I don't know that it would need to include a calorie tracker.  It could, however, be used to track:  binge eating, purging, cravings, exercise binges, etc.

[drifter0213]

the opposite of diet tracker !

[Haddock_Entrap_Propulasion]

I could see it being helpful.  At the same time thought, giving people a way to track calorie intake, for example, easily might be counterproductive to recovery.