Why do you think its impossible to be a low bodyfat without mental issues? Tons of people function normally and remain in single digits.
It's not. I was under 10% for pretty much my entire life until I first 'bulked' with no issue at all. Some people can be even leaner without any problems. But everyone has a breaking point, and I reached mine. If this weren't the case, bodybuilders would stay stage ready all year round.
A normal person just doesn't do the things you have done in an effort to get lean- Purging, binge-eat-starve-binge-starve etc... monitoring glucose levels and so on. I mean for fucks sake you got to the point you were so weak, women could own you in the gym. At what point do you look at yourself and think, I'm fucking nuts and need to do something rational instead.
Normal people are fatass slobs who don't give a second thought to anything they do. But to address your main point: you don't start off deranged, you gradually BECOME deranged. After a sufficient period of starvation, you have BECOME irrational and cannot assess yourself 'normally' or choose a rational, corrective action. Actually, this phenomenon has been studied, but remains a relatively unpopular topic in bodybuilding, probably because first hand experience is 'hard to come by', so to speak.
Admittedly, it's very hard to understand without firsthand experience.
Why continue hare-brained approach after hare-brained approach? Are you some kind of fucking sadist or something?
Because I realized no one is going to 'show me the way'. I've finally grown up enough to realize the world is essentially comprised of two types of people, those who need "truth" and those who create it. The sheep and the wolves, the naive and the bullshitters, the 'betas' and the 'alphas', or whatever other names you want to give. If you aren't going to belong to the former group your whole life, you have to get into the world and get your hands dirty. Sometimes the only way you're going to learn is through the pain and suffering of firsthand experimentation.
But why do I need to learn? Because learning is the only way, I believe, to change my self-image, or identity. If I know, through firsthand experience, how harmful my 'ideals' are, I can finally let go of them. If not, I'm left tormented by question marks.
People were right to say I had a problematic body image. But I'm overcoming it, and I couldn't have done so without the experiences I had this past year or so. As hellish as it was, I don't regret it.