Everything-depression, exhaustion, fear over eventually dying (I went
through it right after my 13th birthday and for about a year after that,
and I’m now 19, so it was a long time ago)
I’m sorry that you’ve been struggling for so long. You didn’t suffer from organ damage?
I don’t think anything major. I had ST elevation for a while, and I still
have a weak heart as a result. I am dizzy whenever I stand up, and my red
cell count is really low (but that’s just a symptom of the low T).
ST elevation? And you don’t believe your heart can recover?
I don’t really know. I’ve given it years, so I’m not waiting with baited
breath or anything.
What is St elevation? And I’m sure you’ve already come past another forum called “youreatopia” but it does a really good job of outlining what recovery looks like and how long it takes, in women. But I don’t think male and female bodies are too far apart when it comes to recover from excessive stress and restriction.
What have you found to help you the most?
I haven’t found anything really all that helpful, except steady strength
training. Focusing on building the body up, becoming stronger and more
resilient.
How long have you been suffering yourself man? How old are you?
I’m 20, I anorexia athletica hit me about 14-16 months ago. I went from 195 and well built to 155 lbs and very skinny, sick, depressed, and literally no testosterone.
I tried to come back into strength training, but I found that with a lack of testosterone that my body wasn’t recovering fully after my workouts no matter how much I ate. I would eat around 4,000 calories after relatively simple workouts and still would get injured, and barely gain any muscle.
Lately I’ve focused on eating to recover and resting, been resting from exercise for 2.5 weeks and it’s so tough.
Fuuck dude! I’ve experienced pretty much the exact same thing. I modified
my workouts to be extremely minimalistic, with low stress, long rest
periods, etc,etc.
It hasn’t helped though. I still feel awful. I’ve tried two Clomid HPTA
restarts, the first one didn’t work, my T shot up to 750 and stayed there
for a month after I was off Clomid, but then dropped about three weeks
later. I’m awaiting the results of the second one. It’ll be interesting
to see what happens with you though. Since you experienced it relatively
recently, you probably will be able to recover quickly.
I fear that since I developed and went through it so long ago, the
epigenetic changes have already set in, and there’s little I can do to
reverse it :(.
We’ll see I guess.
The thing you must remember is the amazing power of the body to heal itself. It’s hard to think that way, and I also find myself doubting it sometimes, but there have been many examples of humans that went through much much worse for longer time periods, and eventually they healed.
If you think you could handle not exercising for a while, I would try and take a long term break. Check out “youreatopia” as well, there is a lot of decent information.
It is difficult for us because there aren’t a lot of guys on the internet that have gone through similar things, but I think that is a good sign, but I know there are many many males over training and not eating enough, so there should be more examples on the internet of them asking for help, but if there are few that must mean many of these men healed and didn’t need to hit forums for help.
The anxiety one feels with something like this though is that you’ll stop
exercising, get really out of shape, and then have nothing to show for it
when your HPTA still isn’t functioning.
If you eat at maintenance or slightly above, you shouldn’t put on additional fat. I’ve noticed I look softer just from a couple weeks off, but that is mostly from my muscles getting a tad smaller, but overall I’m still in decent shape.
I feel your anxiety, but I also don’t want to be stuck in an endless cycle of exercising and not seeing results, what’s the point then?
I’m not entirely sure my LH production will ever come back online. If I
take daily injections, I can mimic the body’s natural hormonal production
(high in the morning, tapering off during the day).
I’ve eaten at maintenance AND above for the past four years. It hasn’t
helped. I still feel awful. Plus, there’s the issue of me having taken
weekly T injections for a year and a half (I quit to try and get my own
production back a little over a year ago).
Maybe with rest and recuperation, my body could work again if I hadn’t
thrown synthetic T at it right when my HPTA was the most vulnerable and
weak, but I don’t think it can anymore.
There have to be some experts out there that have seen this before. It is insane to think that we’d have to deal with this alone.
Keep me updated please, I hope you feel better. I’ll let you know if I start feeling better as well.
Thanks man. Stay strong, and I’ll let you know what happens!
Peace!