At the end of my tether with my eating disorder

LegacyUser

For most of my life, I have struggled with food and weight issues. I remember being self-conscious about my body at the age of seven. When I was 14, I became anorexic and dropped to a dangerously low weight. I was forced into recovery and stabilized at a low but healthy weight. For a few years I maintained this weight but still had disordered eating and thought processes. I then gained weight due to binge eating. Then I lost a lot of weight and became very underweight again. That was a year ago. Since then, I have developed a binge-eating problem and have gained a lot of weight. I am now 24.

The sudden and drastic weight gain has caused some problems. My clothes don’t fit me (was a size 4-6 a few months ago, am now a size 10-12). Every few days, I will feel myself a little heavier when I lift myself out of bed, walk, wash myself and do other things. I don’t want to go outside because I hate the way I look. I’m constantly depressed and frequently have very dark thoughts. I am usually in physical pain from the binge eating, dehydrated, distended stomach, high body temperature. When I am in this state, I can’t do much.

I feel like there is no hope for me. As a teenager I went to psychotherapy for my anorexia. Last year I saw a counselor and attended a few support groups. I have asked Samaritans and Bodywhys for information and resources, downloaded their literature, tried my hardest to be positive and pro-active. I recognize the importance of being productive and filling your life with meaningful things. I’ve had jobs, attended college, gotten involved in extra-curricular things and basically tried to life a normal life. But no matter how hard I try, my life is always dominated by matters of food and weight. I feel like I have explored every avenue and now after ten years I am at the end of my tether.

I have lost so much to my eating disorder. I shunned hobbies and interests. I’ve lost friends. I’ve had to defer college. I feel like I never developed properly. As a result, I am lacking in both practical life skills and social skills. I am still financially dependent on my parents and I hate it.

I am so miserable and pessimistic at this time. My future looks very bleak. I look at normal, functional adults with stable careers, partners, children and I get very depressed knowing that I'll never have that. I just don't see what options there are for me or what I'm capable of doing so long as I am like this. What are some things I can do to pull myself out of this funk and get me going on the right track again? I am desperate.

Thanks in advance.

Rubberchikken

A future with a partner, kids etc is possible, you just need help and support at the moment.

Talk to your gp. Tell him/her what you wrote in your post. They need the full story to know how to help.

You've beaten this before so you're more than capable of beating it again, you just need the right support.

Take care and good luck

LegacyUser

Rubberchikken wrote: »

A future with a partner, kids etc is possible, you just need help and support at the moment.

Talk to your gp. Tell him/her what you wrote in your post. They need the full story to know how to help.

You've beaten this before so you're more than capable of beating it again, you just need the right support.

Take care and good luck

Thank you for your input and for the good wishes.

The thing is, I haven't really beaten it before. I "recovered" from anorexia in the sense that I gained weight, but I still had disordered thought processes which have manifested in various ways to this very day - intermittent starvation, over-exercising, binge eating, what-have-you. I never got over the fundamental obsession with food and weight. It continues to affect nearly every aspect of my life.

I intend to talk to my GP but I don't know what they can do for me that I haven't heard before. One thing I haven't tried is medication (antidepressants and such). I have also heard good things about hypnosis...

Windorah

Hi OP,

I have more experience than I wish with eating disorders so I just wanted to say you can beat it. It's going to be a long hard road but god it's so worth it:)

Stick with it. Speak with your GP. Get counseling and take as much time as you need.

For some reason I found researching as much as i possibly could about various eating disorders helped me understand my own warped thinking and realizing what motivated me and what was the driving force behind my disorder.

All the very best. You can do it!!

LegacyUser

Windorah wrote: »

Hi OP,

I have more experience than I wish with eating disorders so I just wanted to say you can beat it. It's going to be a long hard road but god it's so worth it:)

Stick with it. Speak with your GP. Get counseling and take as much time as you need.

For some reason I found researching as much as i possibly could about various eating disorders helped me understand my own warped thinking and realizing what motivated me and what was the driving force behind my disorder.

All the very best. You can do it!!

Thank you for the ode of confidence and well done on making progress yourself. That is solid advice - I just wish it weren't all so familiar to me! In therapy and counselling I did learn a lot about other people with eating disorders and about myself. I've also done a lot of independent research and taken inspiration from people like yourself. It helped to change my perspective somewhat. But I am still bad. It just seems like lately it's taking every ounce of my willpower to keep ploughing on. It is no way to live

Windorah

No it's definitely no way to live. It's not living it's just surviving. It will take every last ounce of will power and then some but you will get there if u want to.

I'm a few years over the worst if it and about a year from the last relapse. I still have bad days but the good definitely outweigh the bad. I have even been able to take up sport for enjoyment again not just to torture myself!

I often feel doctors focus too much on the scale and weight. Personally I never felt that reflected where I was at and how was feeling. If possible try and distance yourself from the numbers and comparisons (very difficult I know!)

When I was beginning to get better I used to plan and record EVERYTHING I would eat for the week in my notebook. I did know all the calories or whatever in the food but I made sure to get enough. That way I wasn't going to start a binge/purge/starvation cycle. It's not ideal and I don't know would many doctors recommend such a rigid approach but it gradually worked for me.


I don't know if any of that is relevant to u at all but if u need advice or whatever just ask. I very rarely speak of it and generally HATE when people bring it up with me so it's almost felt therapeutic writing it all down:)

I hope u find something that works for u. It will be so so worth it in the end:)

CaraMay

Op I don't have any advice for you but just wanted to say how much I admire you. You are a fighter and fighters win. Don't give up on yourself. Your future is there for the taking so keep plugging away day by day. Best of luck.

beks101

Ah God OP sorry for your lot. I can identify very strongly with your experience.

A few things. And please bear with me as I tend to ramble with it comes to food and weight-related issues, as they've dominated my own life in a similar way.

First of all, please understand that there is a strong physiological component to your binge eating. In essence, it is your body trying to protect itself and trying to survive. If you starve yourself, which you've clearly done for years, your body will fight back, usually by seeking out the very foods you've been trying to avoid - high fat, high energy foods that will quickly release sugar into your bloodstream and keep you alive.

During my late teens, I dieted quite obsessively for a few years, resulting in a bout of anorexia where I ate next to nothing and exercised myself into a black hole. To this day I struggle with binge eating occasionally, and I'm now 29 years old, no longer under-weight, no longer a dieter, no longer neurotic about calories or 'good' and 'bad' foods like I once was. That historical precedence of starvation and nutritional neglect can have a significant physiological stronghold, almost as instinctive as your flight/fight response. So please, please go easy on yourself. Stop the blame game, stop the shaming, stop the "I'm fat and disgusting and I've failed in my diet and have no self control" etc etc. What's happening to you is a natural physiological response and in a warped way, it's a GOOD thing - your body is looking out for you! What a wonderful, albeit in this case, slightly warped mechanism.

You just need to learn to trust yourself again, build up your confidence, and find a balance, nutritionally, physically, emotionally and mentally, so you can get to a place where true recovery can start.

I can tell you right now that it is a long, painful, terrifying, agonizingly slow and frustrating path - over many many years, not months or weeks - and one that is paved with relapses and disappointments. To be perfectly honest with you, I don't think it ever fully goes away. You just learn how to manage it so that you can have a healthy life. Food addiction is probably one of the greatest taboos in the addiction family - my own father couldn't understand why I couldn't "just eat" back in my worst days, or why I couldn't walk into a room on my own full of chocolate and cake without having a panic attack.

That's a common perception you'll come up against with people around you and with people in the medical profession. Oh God some of the stories I could tell. I sat in front of one of the top eating disorder specialists in Ireland exactly ten years ago and he told me to "just say STOP or NO every time you feel the urge to starve or binge". He took one look at me and because I wasn't catastrophically underweight like many of his severely anorexic patients, and because I had "a sparkle in my eyes", told me I would be fine in no time. Not that I would have the battle of my life on my hands.

It wasn't he who helped me. It wasn't any GP who helped me. It wasn't any diet plan or "healthy living" self help book that finally put recovery on the table as a viable option for me. It was a kind psychotherapist who had no interest in what I had eaten that day or what the scales read. Instead she wanted to know how I was feeling. Where did those feelings of inadequacy come from? Why did I feel like I had to be the best, the smartest, the most successful, the skinniest? Why did I think that things had to either be black or white, good or bad, success or failure? Why was I intent on hurting myself? Where did I learn that it was OK to do that? What was I really looking for? Why did I not deserve love and respect like everyone else? Why could I not see how good and decent a person I was?

I was like a wounded animal when I started counselling with her all those years ago, I cried like a baby for about six months straight. I cried for what I had lost and what I had done to myself over years. I cried for the child in me who just wanted to be loved and didn't know how to deal with pain so had internalized it, and had learned to self-destruct as an outlet that would be less on an imposition or inconvenience on others. Because my self-esteem was on the floor.

I learned many things about myself that gave my obsession with food and my weight less of a hold over me. I started to fill that gap with these new revelations about myself and I started to accept that I needed self-kindness, not self-flagellation, to prosper as a human being. And THAT was the place where recovery started for me.

And that is what you need to find too. You need to find out why, and where you got lost along the way and sought to find something you needed through this eating disorder. And it's incredibly painful and the truth hurts, but you will not change any aspect of your life until you face up to this.

If I could offer you one piece of advice, it would be this: take it one day at a time. Each morning you get up, you are reborn and blessed with the opportunity to give yourself a better day than you had yesterday. You will need to slowly re-programme your brain when it comes to feeding yourself and changing your body image, and that process starts and ends with kindness. Not self-destruction.

And with that winding thesis out of the way, here are a few practical things that help me:
- writing in a journal every time you feel anxious, stressed, sad, panicked, depressed, or any single emotion that triggers you to behave self destructively. Just sit there and write about what's leading you to these behaviours and what it is you actually need.
- Calling a close family member or good friend or your boyfriend and having a good catch up. It reminds you that you are loved and appreciated - things that are lacking in those moments when you starve/binge eat.
- Going for a walk/run/cycle/insert-preferred-exercise-here, inserting your ear phones, listening to some good music and getting the endorphins pumping. It gives you an instant lift.
- Having a good cry.
- Getting rid of your weighing scales - chuck them into the bin today. You know that right now you can't be around them and feel good about yourself. The focus should be on your mental health and feeling good from the inside out. Likewise with skinny jeans etc.
- Pampering yourself. One thing that was distinctly lacking in my life when I was at my worst was an effort to look my best. Essentially I wasn't living my life - instead I was holding my breath "until I reach that perfect weight". Don't do this. Get your hair done. Do your makeup and nails. Buy that dress. Get dressed up and go out with friends. You deserve to enjoy yourself.

But most importantly, go shopping for a good counsellor. This one is down to chemistry and comfort in that person's presence, which is essential in building trust. Set up appointments and meet with a few. Any good therapist will allow for these initial meetings without any sworn commitment unless you feel it's a right fit.

Personally my eating disorder is one of the best things that ever happened to me. It's made me immeasurably strong, patient and compassionate towards others, characteristics that define my personality today.

Don't give up on yourself. This is just the beginning. You are young, strong and able for this. x

alaskayoung

I don't really have much advice for you as I'm in a pretty similar situation myself at the moment, but just know that you are not alone and people can and do recover from this. Despite how you're feeling now, things will get better.

If you're not seeing a therapist, I'd really recommend it. I've only just gotten the courage to talk to someone after struggling alone for quite awhile but even just telling someone felt like a huge weight being lifted from me. From my experience, it's very difficult for people who haven't experienced an eating disorder to understand the emotions and thoughts associated with it, but find someone who'll listen to you, just talking brings so much relief.

Someone told me before that when I'm feeling low or about to binge/purge, to just think and breathe and tell yourself that it's not you that's telling you to do these things. It's not you making these decisions. This is the disorder speaking.
I don't know but that's something that's stuck with me. To have that separation between my mind and the voice of the disorder has really been a source of comfort to me in a few of these situations. Because that's what it is, it's a sickness, it's not you.

I've also found that when I'm feeling low, writing things down truly helps. Just getting your thoughts onto a page allows you to let go of so much. You'd be surprised how much you realize after writing something down, it really helps you process things.

None of this is going to cure you but the idea is to find little things to help you cope. Recovery isn't going to just happen. Eating Disorders are a mental illness not a physical one. Speak to a doctor or a therapist, try to figure what's actually causing this because changing your diet, eating more or less, is only aiming to treat the symptoms not the problem itself. That lies a lot deeper.

Good luck and I really feel for you.

Magicmatilda

You say you saw a counsellor last year but I would recommend that this should be ongoing. Were you in counselling for long or just a couple os sessions.

Aslo have you attended EDA (Eating Disorders Anonymous) or OA (Overeaters anonymous (which contrary to the name deals with Anorexia and bulima also)). A search of the internet or a treatment centre could advise you of meetings schedules. These groups are 12 step programmes aimed at giving you an alternative way of dealing with life than your current disordered thinking.

Also perhaps you could think about residential treatment, it can be very effective for people, especially someone like you who wants to get better and deal with the disordered thinking.

I hope you find the support you need.

LegacyUser

Thank you all for the kind, supportive and insightful replies. I really appreciate it.


@Beks101
It’s very complicated with me. When I was at a very low weight early this year I was still binging, albeit with intermittent starvation and over-exercising. Gradually due to stress and a compromised schedule, I completely lost control and just started binging all the time. For the past three months or longer, I haven’t been starving myself and I have been binging a lot (hence the weight gain). So from a logical point of view I don’t see how this could be a physiological response. Unless, as you say, the “historical precedence” of starving myself for so long has left me with this instinct. Often during a binge, I get overwhelmed with irrational anxiety and feel that I must eat as much as I possibly can, kind of like the “fight or flight” thing. Why? I have no idea. There is no sense to it at all. There is also an element of “I’ve started, I might as well keep going… and going and going and going”. Anyway, those are just two contributing factors. It is very difficult to explain because there simply is no rationality to this. I hate doing it, absolutely hate it. I’m terrified of weight gain and I dread the awful feeling after a binge, but for some reason I just *have* to do it. It’s an ingrained mechanism, intertwined with so much emotional baggage. I don’t know how to eat normally at all. It is hell.

my own father couldn't understand why I couldn't "just eat" back in my worst days,
or why I couldn't walk into a room on my own full of chocolate and cake without
having a panic attack.

I can strongly relate to this. When I was anorexic, people couldn’t understand why I couldn’t “just eat”. Now that I am a compulsive binge eater, people can’t understand why I don’t just stop eating! I believe that both behaviors may be rooted in a common neurological compulsion.

Like yourself, I was always a perfectionist prone to extremes. Before and during my anorexia, I had very low self-esteem (still do, but not as bad). I thought that if I couldn’t be pretty or interesting or funny, I could at least be skinny. And if I wasn’t skinny, then I was just a boring blob with nothing special to attribute to myself. Very black or white, as you say.

You are so right that food is the most misunderstood of the addictions. At least with drug and alcohol addiction, it is possible to avoid those things. Whereas food is an unavoidable part of life. And people take drug addicts very seriously. Whereas I think a lot of people would just view my behavior as ridiculous. Even though food addictions have the highest mortality rate of all…

alaskayoung wrote: »

Someone told me before that when I'm feeling low or about to binge/purge, to just think and breathe and tell yourself that it's not you that's telling you to do these things. It's not you making these decisions. This is the disorder speaking.

That’s an interesting approach. Thinking of the disorder as something external. I will try to keep that in mind. I have heard of people giving names to their eating disorders, like “Ed”, but I guess I always considered myself too “hard-minded” for this to work… But gosh, I will try anything at this stage. I once saw a dietician on an eating disorders show say “When you eat one slice of pizza, you are going to feel a wave of anxiety to keep on eating. Instead of giving in to that, I want you to ride that wave”. I found this helpful.

You mention that writing is therapeutic for you. The other day I tried drawing something. I figured this might be something novel I can take into my life and ascribe meaning to. I used to be really into art as a child but shunned it when I became obsessed with my weight (sitting down and drawing is time that could be spent exercising…)


@Magicmatilda
The counsellor I saw all of last year was a free service at my college. I didn’t get much out of it to be honest. And it’s not like I go into these things expecting them to cure me after 2 sessions and then get angry and brand all therapists with the same brush when that doesn’t happen. I tried my very best to be co-operative and open-minded. I had made more progress with a privately funded therapist when I was sixteen. I haven’t attended EDA or OA although I have attended other support groups. Will look into it, thanks. One thing I’m wary of is being the only binge eater in a room full of tiny girls… I would find that triggering. Residential care is another idea worth trying (heck, anything is worth trying at this stage). I have looked into the residential services in Ireland. They are all frightfully expensive even with a medical card seemingly.


I am very touched to receive all this advice and support. I would “thank” you all a thousand times if I weren’t posting anon.