I am so sorry. TTC is stressful no matter what. Do you have to go off your psych meds too?

I had/have anorexia though the severity comes & goes. It was worse in college, but it is not good now. It's the stupid purging type anorexia, the type where you purge thru overexercise, not throwing up. Since i eat pretty normally, this is probably the easiest ED in the world to hide. My weight is too low by quite a lot. I tell my husband I have the same ED I had when I was in college (he didn't know me then), and he says, "No you don't. You just exercise a lot because you're stressed and anxious and just don't eat enough. You don't have an eating disorder." The "and just don't eat enough" to make up for the calories burned thru exercise is the key.

Did you get infertility thru the ED stuff or just start TTC later in life or is it unexplained infertility? I didn't even think I wanted children until my biological clock kicked in when I was 28. I got pregnant super fast with my daughter (2nd month trying), but then with a sibling...IDK if it was the ED, using a copper IUD for birth control, or just unexplained secondary infertility. Now, IDK, it's been many years without birth control and nothing, and I'm 41 now, so the odds are against it. Ages ago, we had the initial testing done; nothing wrong with either of us, and we decided not to pursue it farther, and I didn't have the nerves or money to.

Being pregnant was SO hard for me. I wanted the baby, so I ate as I should, but going to the OB, seeing those numbers creep up on the scale (should have had them weigh me backward, definitely ask for that thru infertility treatments and if you get pregnant. Even though I gained pretty much the amount of weight the doctor wanted (I was low-normal weight for my height when I got pregnant), I felt like I whale. I went to the gym every single day and walked on the treadmill until 2 days before delivery (and by then, I was 4 days past my due date and super cranky), so you can see my ED/exercise addiction didn't even leave me alone when pregnant. Luckily, I stuck to walking and some arm/leg weights (nothing major).

Does your husband know of your struggles with your weight, or do you internalize it? I most definitely do internalize especially as it took nearly 8 or 9 years to convince him bipolar was a real disease and I had it and it wasn't going away. I don't really discuss my mental health issues (ED or weight either) with H. But going through IVF would have to be a struggle. I remember women on a fertility forum I used to belong to posting about their struggles, and a lot of them didn't have EDs but did start hating weight gains with their various fertility treatments or being pushed by fertility docs to gain or lose weight. And these were women without EDs for the most part (there were a couple who admitted to past EDs).

No, a diet is not the answer and would not help your chances of pregnancy. If you don't have an ED therapist around, have you tried a therapist trained in CBT? I've had the most luck with those, ED and bipolar & panic disorder combined.

I often wish I could go back to my wedding look. IDK, it was shortly after my initial ED recovery, and though I had ED thoughts, I didn't act on them and was a low normal weight. I had a super fast metabolism, could eat junk food and still I pretty much stayed the same weight, and not to brag, but I looked really good. I had special photos done before my wedding (a photo book in the style of the Far East, China mostly). We were probably the only completely white couple there, but OMG, the pics turned out beautiful (then we eloped in a non-fancy ceremony). I looked a lot like Grace Kelly when she was in her early to mid 20s. I saw one of her movies, and it was surreal, like watching my younger self on screen (though I lacked all her acting and dancing skills).

I'm sorry about all the upcoming weddings and the stress you feel to be skinny for them. And you know the way of the ED monster anyway. No matter how skinny you are, it is never skinny enough. And at my lowest weight, I definitely was not happy. I didn't have much of a life at all beyond exercise, counting calories, wandering grocery stores filling up carts of food I didn't buy and would just abandon, hoarding food under my bed but never eating it, having nightmares that I had eaten an eaten chocolate cake slathered in chocolate icing and I needed to purge right away but I sucked at making myself throw up, or on the other end, not sleeping for 3 days and getting sent to the psych hospital...oh, the joy...And skinny keeps on being never skinny enough...

Good luck on your IVF journey. I've got bipolar as well, type I with mixed features, the "mixed" of which never seems to go away unless I'm crashing at one end or the other. Feel free to PM me if you like.