🧊 Circulation, Feeling Cold & Eating Disorders: What Your Body’s Trying to Tell You
Your circulation system is like your body’s central heating network — it keeps warmth, oxygen, and nutrients moving where they need to go. But eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa can seriously disrupt that flow, leaving you feeling freezing even when everyone else is fine.
Let’s unpack why this happens:
❄️ How Anorexia Nervosa Affects Circulation & Body Temperature
When your body doesn’t get enough energy, it shifts into survival mode and prioritises vital organs. To do that, it reduces blood flow to areas it sees as “less essential” — like your hands, feet, and skin.
Common circulation effects:
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Poor peripheral circulation — hands and feet feel icy or numb
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Low blood pressure — can cause light-headedness and chills
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Reduced metabolic rate — your internal “heat production” slows down
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Loss of insulating body fat — less natural warmth retention
👉 The result? You might feel cold constantly — even indoors, even in summer, even under blankets.
🌬️ How Bulimia Nervosa Can Affect Circulation
Bulimia can also impact circulation, especially through dehydration and electrolyte imbalances caused by purging behaviours.
Possible effects:
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Dehydration — lowers blood volume and reduces warmth delivery
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Electrolyte shifts — can affect blood pressure and circulation efficiency
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Cold sweats or chills after purging episodes
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Fluctuating body temperature due to fluid imbalance
⚠️ Even short periods of dehydration can affect circulation because blood volume drops — meaning less warm blood reaches your extremities.
🧠 Important Reality Check
Feeling cold all the time isn’t a personality trait or just “being sensitive to temperature.” It can be a physiological signal that your body doesn’t have enough fuel or fluid to keep its systems running properly.
This symptom can happen at any weight, not just when someone appears underweight.
🌱 The Hopeful Part
Circulation is one of the body systems that often improves once nutrition, hydration, and balance are restored. Many people in recovery notice their hands and feet warming up again — sometimes surprisingly quickly.
💬 Quirky but true takeaway:
If your body keeps turning the thermostat down, it’s not being dramatic — it’s conserving energy. Warmth is a sign your system feels safe enough to spend energy again.
My Personal Experience of Circulation Issues and Feeling Cold
One of the most uncomfortable symptoms I experienced with my eating disorder, particularly during my anorexic phases where I presented at a lower weight, was the constant feeling of being cold. This was caused not only from the lack of insulation through reduced body mass, but also a direct side effect of my poor circulation.
In addition to my continuous feeling of being cold, the negative affect my ED had on my circulation left me with an unhealthily, pale complexion that mostly affected my face and extremities. It was no surprise that my fingers and toes suffered the most, exhibiting a grey-blue tinge that was particularly noticeable in the winter months when temperatures were at their lowest.
Unfortunately, the intense and uncomfortable feelings of being cold was not enough to make me eat and stabilise myself through weight restoration, despite the intense discomfort. I didn’t actively accept it as a side effect of my eating disorder at the time, but even if I did it was a price I would have been willing to pay to keep my eating disorder happy.
I recall one winter when I was in a state of semi-starvation, where I spent every evening huddled in a tight ball on my bedroom floor positioned in front of a rotating infrared heater, wearing layers of clothing that included a winter coat. I positioned myself so close to it that the heat was mildly burning my face. As soon as I moved away or the heater’s timer lapsed and the unit switched off, I instantly felt the effects where I soon started to shiver.
It was only whilst in treatment that I learned in more detail the physical causes of permanently feeling cold. I already knew that being being medically underweight meant I had less insulation from tissue and reduced body mass, but I learned that being in a state of semi-starvation with limited energy intake meant my body was forced to direct all calories to areas controlling my critical bodily functions to keep me alive, so my internal organs took priority.
It was not only at times I presented underweight that I struggled with circulation issues and feeling cold, because much of my bulimic life I felt the same, where I was always turning up the heater or adding an extra layer of clothing. I guess my body did not know whether it was coming or going in terms of when it would next receive energy and whether that would get digested or quickly expelled from my stomach. So it needed to prioritise it for more important bodily functions.
What I have Learned
Since restoring weight through regular nutrition where my body has stabilised physically, I no longer experience the erratic and extreme fluctuations in my body temperature. Life is far more comfortable, particularly in winter, where I can now focus on more important things in life without the distraction of freezing my backside off in environments that others find comfortable.
Now that I’m in recovery, I finally see just how much the constant feeling of being cold was my body’s way of asking for fuel via nutrition. Today I wake up feeling warm, and I no longer spend my days layering up and constantly firefighting to create a tolerable environment. That simple comfort is something I once sacrificed without hesitation, yet now I see it for what it truly is — a quiet, powerful sign of healing.
I am grateful every single day that I chose recovery, because feeling warm in my own body isn’t just physical relief, it’s a reminder that I’m alive, nourished, and free.
