Bulimia isn't just making yourself sick, anorexia isn't just not eating and binge eating disorder isn't just over indulgence
I've had a really unmotivated, boring day today and felt inspired to write a blog post. I never know how far back to take my story, but I think we have lifetime patterns with our relationship with food and how we feel about ourselves so will go right back but only in relationship to food and where I think my own eating disorders began.
At primary school I had packed lunches, I was ridiculously quiet, had no friends and even back then always felt I wasn't good enough and didn't fit in. I would be sent into the lunch room first, whatever year group was in first sitting as it took me a whole hour to eat 2 small square sandwiches, a packet of crisps which I shared around the table and a yogurt. A psychotherapist who I once saw said maybe I subconsciously felt safer in the lunch room rather than in the playground where I got bullied. But even from being that young there was a focus on food, maybe it was the only way I felt I was noticed.
Anyway when I was 11 or 12 my mum won slimmer of the year at a slimming club. Like everyone on a diet, she would talk about calories so I learnt all about calories. My mum had done well and everyone praised her for her weight loss and I think I thought if I lost weight maybe I could be good at something as I felt I wasn't good at anything. The summer before I started at secondary school I made a friend on guide camp and we were both fussy eaters. So we would hide food we didn't like so we didn't have to eat it, and we would laugh about it together, I guess we all have a bit of a rebellious side to us and it gave us something in common I guess. Like I said I rarely felt I fitted in with anyone. So we started secondary school together and to start with there was a group of us who were friends but then I got bullied there too.
I remember watching the children's TV programme childrens ward and there was a girl on there who was anorexic. Bearing in mind I was only 12 or 13 so in a child's mind i thought that sounded the perfect way to lose weight and achieve what i had been longing to achieve....to be good at something. I was about 13 when I would skip meals and dabbled with making myself sick and taking laxatives but wasn't a low weight. I would skip meals but would end up secretly eating chocolate when I got home so would make myself sick but not regularly at that time but for the majority of my secondary school years I wouldn't eat breakfast or lunch, I had to have tea as my parents were strict about it so I rarely could get away with avoiding it. When I was 14 I saw child and adolescent mental health services because of my issues with food and some mild self harm but they didn't think I had a problem despite my parents telling them otherwise so I didn't get any help then.
When i went to college I would work evenings in a factory, my days off at the riding school and full time college so I could get away with missing more meals.i was that busy and exhausted I didn't make myself sick would just avoid eating as much as i could until i felt ill I had to eat. I would bike or bus everywhere and would fall asleep on the bus and miss my stop and often could barely make it up the hill to my house on my bike and would have to walk. I went away to university studying horse studies, a physical course which included horse riding and looking after the horses. I made a couple of friends but they quit the course and some of the others on the course bullied me so I would avoid eating as much as I could, I was really depressed but completed my course God knows how, and I was never physically unwell enough to not push myself....saying that I was always cold, my fingers were blue and would really hurt in the cold outside and packing cold fish fingers I would often end up crying with the pain but rarely had time off.
After uni I got what I thought was my dream job at a horse rescue charity and I told myself I had to eat to be able to do my job well, I tried not to worry about my weight despite the ingrained obsession in my head. I don't know if I ate what a normal person did or I binge ate but I put on weight. The manager often got us to get on the scales because of weight limits for riding the horses. One day he asked me to get on a horse to make sure it was safe for a work experience girl to get on. It wasnt a small horse and I was 11 or 12 stone, probably the healthiest weight I have ever been as I am 5ft 8 I had previously always been between 8 and 9 stone. But the boss told me I was hurting the horses back and I felt so guilty even though I know I wasn't it made me tell myself I wasn't allowed to eat as I was so fat and heavy. So I would avoid eating all day but by an evening after doing a physical job I was physically and mentally starving.i wasn't happy I was living in Lancashire miles away from home, hadn't made any new friends so only went to work and rode the bosses horse. So the combination of my depression and being physically hungry meant I became like a food addict I would go to the 24 hour asda on my moped and buy loads of food daily and would binge on it but then make myself sick as I was so disgusted with myself and to try to control my weight (as a trigger warning making yourself sick makes you lose weight in the early days but the body gets clever and holds onto the weight and it causes lots of physical damage, I have no enamel on my teeth and I have a pacemaker as it made a hereditary heart condition worse and was told I would die without a pacemaker). Anyway I moved back home to my parents as I was so unhappy away. I hid my bulimia for months, I would be sick in carrier bags in the garden or would take the dog for a walk and be sick in the woods, it's not a glamorous illness, it eats away at the little self esteem you started off with. I went to the drs and admitted to a nurse I thought I was bulimic she told me half the battle of getting better was to see you had a problem, if only that was the case. I saw various mental health professionals who k we nothing about eating disorders and told me things like I was like a car and needed petrol, rationally I knew that. I had a constant voice that told me I was fat and useless, I felt I was only good enough to work in a factory, I had no life goals apart from to lose weight. That was a period I was a lower weight, my parents would try to get me to stop making myself sick, I was also taking laxatives and diet pills and exercising, nothing else mattered apart from losing weight but I also saw it as a problem and did try to get help for it which never came apart from me and my mum went to a support group in hull for eating disorders. As the years went on I got various jobs in care and with horses but my bulimia was as bad. I would restrict food and avoid eating at work and then binge and purge when I got home. In 2007, 5 years after asking for help, but getting no specialist eating disorder services i had to have a pacemaker as my heart consultant who i saw for a hereditary heart arrhythmia that causes Sudden adult death syndrome (sads) said I was at high risk of dying because of my bulimia and the low potassium that causes. In 2009 my dad complained to someone in local mental health services advised by Marg from the eating disorder support group who were a great support at that time. I finally got referred to an eating disorder clinic in Leeds, I saw an eating disorder nurse and had to write food diaries, and write thoughts and feelings every time I ate or engaged in any compensatory behaviour such as the vomiting, laxatives and obsessively exercising. But it made no difference and I was classed as too severe for outpatient treatment as I was being sick after most things I ate. So I was offered an 8 week symptom interruption program for bulimia which wasn't weight focused ( if you had anorexia the aim of treatment was to gain weight so they were there for months with psychology, groups about body image, nutrition, eating out, shopping and thoughts and feelings), however I got told I wasn't there long enough for the intensive psychology I needed for underlying issues and so literally got bed and food and continued being sick there. So I came back home to no support. I focused on trying to train as a mental health nurse and wanted to help others in a way I hadnt been helped. I told myself I wasnt allowed to self harm ( another problem that developed alongside my eating disorder, I would cut myself to punish myself for eating, I even had the word "fat" carved in my arm and leg at one point, it got covered over by lots more cuts)and i wasn't allowed to be sick. But i continued to binge eat and put on weight. I got bullied on my access to nursing course and found some birth family which stirred up emotions and i relapsed with making myself sick and self harm. I eventually saw an eating disorder nurse who was really helpful and would set me goals such as try having breakfast every day, try delay how long it was before I was sick even if just 10 minutes and build it up but I only got 20 sessions of CBT for what then was a 10 year problem and then the nurse moved abroad. So then I gave up and got into a cycle of taking overdoses, some overdoses were in response to a "voice" in my head that said I deserved to be dead, other overdoses were at times I felt so out of control with eating the only way to stop was to be physically ill and in hospital I always had a rule that I wasn't allowed to eat there although sometimes i would still end up eating and being sick and self harming. I continued trying to get more eating disorder help but by then i had a diagnosis of personality disorders because of my self harm and suicide attempts and so i was too complex for eating disorder services. I ended up in a locked hospital in 2015 sectioned for my personality disorders because of the severity of my suicide attempts which i am now thankful i survived but it was more luck than judgement, there were times i was found unconscious after tying ligatures and it was 64 co codamol that gave me heart failure and chronic kidney disease. .....but my eating disorder was the drive to it all i had an eating disorder voice that constantly tells me I'm fat and useless and worthless etc. and I still fight that every day. The voice is one alot of anorexics describe that praises you when you lose weight but torments you when you give in and eat I have that crossed with a food addiction, I crave food physically after restricting food for as long as I can and emotionally when I'm depressed, but can be at good times too, food is associated as a big part of socialising and although I have social anxiety I do like to socialise with people I feel I can trust and be comfortable around. Society has so many contradictions though, food is a big part of socialising yet the media, drs and society in general praise weight loss and thinness and class fat as bad. No wonder so many people have eating disorders.
Eating disorders can be triggered by dieting, if we deprive ourselves of food, our bodies natural survival instinct craves the fuel we need to survive, even anorexics often binge and 50 percent of anorexics become bulimic, often sufferers can alternate between anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder, there is so much overlap between eating disorders.
I am still trying to fight the voice that makes me feel guilty about everything I eat and often end up crying over a jacket potato I have held out until 3 or 4 in the afternoon to eat then feel bad for giving in to eating which rationally I know we all need to do but then later on I often cave in and will eat late at night, i do try not to be sick but i am if i end up having a full on binge which is rare as i gave my bank card to my mum as i can be like a food addict on a bad day. Back in my worst times I got into so much debt and being honest have been known to get take aways from McDonald's and burger king and food from the shop and have a night of constantly eating and being sick numerous times, that's a big part of why I got suicidal it is a living nightmare to live with although I also have underlying issues relating to being adopted and from the years of bullying I had at school.
CBT specific to eating disorders is a good therapy to deal with the here and now, you briefly look at a timeline of your life and significant life events but the therapy is aimed at changing the way you think about food and body image. You are taught to eat 3 meals and 3 snacks and everybody has a set point weight, the weight your body is naturally healthy at, this can be a higher BMI in some people than others depending on genetics, bone structure, muscle mass etc. It is also recognising the emotional connection to eating behaviours so for example was you feeling sad when you were over eating or avoiding eating or being sick etc.
For me the organ damage from years of eating disorders and the many overdoses I took, some antidepressants I was on called mirtazapine and probably my metabolism mean I put on 6 stone about 6 years ago and have struggled to lose a significant amount of it. I often try "proper diets" that other people do trying to convince myself that it will work this time, rationally I know my eating disorder spirals when I diet, a while ago during lockdown I tried a special k diet, I spent a Sunday afternoon working out the calories in nearly every item of food and drink in my flat, wrote calorie counted meal plans which were maximum of a 1000 calories a day but it soon spiralled that my eating disorder mind though anything above 500 calories a day was bad and I was making myself sick after my main meals because of the guilt so I nipped it in the bud. I normally stopped myself being sick as it's not good for singing which is the main positive thing I do. For me rationally I know I need to accept myself whatever size I am when I eat regularly even if it's not the ideal weight I wish I was. I was probably the healthiest at the end of last year as I was doing a sponsored swim for charity I told myself I had to eat enough to swim and told myself I would burn it off I felt healthy and although my scales didn't go down alot I toned up and felt fit. Unfortunately I got a sinus and ear infection and had to stop swimming I'm still waiting to see the ent specialist as my ears keep blocking and I keep getting sinusitis which affects my voice and hearing which is a pain but once that is sorted and the caronavirus is safe I will start swimming again for now I will keep plodding on. As I keep trying to tell myself thin isnt necessarily healthy.....the picture of me in the ball dress I was 15 stone, size 16, swimming regularly and felt fit, the picture of me smaller i was 10 stone 4, being sick after most things i ate and just before I was admitted to the eating disorder clinic. ..
At primary school I had packed lunches, I was ridiculously quiet, had no friends and even back then always felt I wasn't good enough and didn't fit in. I would be sent into the lunch room first, whatever year group was in first sitting as it took me a whole hour to eat 2 small square sandwiches, a packet of crisps which I shared around the table and a yogurt. A psychotherapist who I once saw said maybe I subconsciously felt safer in the lunch room rather than in the playground where I got bullied. But even from being that young there was a focus on food, maybe it was the only way I felt I was noticed.
Anyway when I was 11 or 12 my mum won slimmer of the year at a slimming club. Like everyone on a diet, she would talk about calories so I learnt all about calories. My mum had done well and everyone praised her for her weight loss and I think I thought if I lost weight maybe I could be good at something as I felt I wasn't good at anything. The summer before I started at secondary school I made a friend on guide camp and we were both fussy eaters. So we would hide food we didn't like so we didn't have to eat it, and we would laugh about it together, I guess we all have a bit of a rebellious side to us and it gave us something in common I guess. Like I said I rarely felt I fitted in with anyone. So we started secondary school together and to start with there was a group of us who were friends but then I got bullied there too.
When i went to college I would work evenings in a factory, my days off at the riding school and full time college so I could get away with missing more meals.i was that busy and exhausted I didn't make myself sick would just avoid eating as much as i could until i felt ill I had to eat. I would bike or bus everywhere and would fall asleep on the bus and miss my stop and often could barely make it up the hill to my house on my bike and would have to walk. I went away to university studying horse studies, a physical course which included horse riding and looking after the horses. I made a couple of friends but they quit the course and some of the others on the course bullied me so I would avoid eating as much as I could, I was really depressed but completed my course God knows how, and I was never physically unwell enough to not push myself....saying that I was always cold, my fingers were blue and would really hurt in the cold outside and packing cold fish fingers I would often end up crying with the pain but rarely had time off.
After uni I got what I thought was my dream job at a horse rescue charity and I told myself I had to eat to be able to do my job well, I tried not to worry about my weight despite the ingrained obsession in my head. I don't know if I ate what a normal person did or I binge ate but I put on weight. The manager often got us to get on the scales because of weight limits for riding the horses. One day he asked me to get on a horse to make sure it was safe for a work experience girl to get on. It wasnt a small horse and I was 11 or 12 stone, probably the healthiest weight I have ever been as I am 5ft 8 I had previously always been between 8 and 9 stone. But the boss told me I was hurting the horses back and I felt so guilty even though I know I wasn't it made me tell myself I wasn't allowed to eat as I was so fat and heavy. So I would avoid eating all day but by an evening after doing a physical job I was physically and mentally starving.i wasn't happy I was living in Lancashire miles away from home, hadn't made any new friends so only went to work and rode the bosses horse. So the combination of my depression and being physically hungry meant I became like a food addict I would go to the 24 hour asda on my moped and buy loads of food daily and would binge on it but then make myself sick as I was so disgusted with myself and to try to control my weight (as a trigger warning making yourself sick makes you lose weight in the early days but the body gets clever and holds onto the weight and it causes lots of physical damage, I have no enamel on my teeth and I have a pacemaker as it made a hereditary heart condition worse and was told I would die without a pacemaker). Anyway I moved back home to my parents as I was so unhappy away. I hid my bulimia for months, I would be sick in carrier bags in the garden or would take the dog for a walk and be sick in the woods, it's not a glamorous illness, it eats away at the little self esteem you started off with. I went to the drs and admitted to a nurse I thought I was bulimic she told me half the battle of getting better was to see you had a problem, if only that was the case. I saw various mental health professionals who k we nothing about eating disorders and told me things like I was like a car and needed petrol, rationally I knew that. I had a constant voice that told me I was fat and useless, I felt I was only good enough to work in a factory, I had no life goals apart from to lose weight. That was a period I was a lower weight, my parents would try to get me to stop making myself sick, I was also taking laxatives and diet pills and exercising, nothing else mattered apart from losing weight but I also saw it as a problem and did try to get help for it which never came apart from me and my mum went to a support group in hull for eating disorders. As the years went on I got various jobs in care and with horses but my bulimia was as bad. I would restrict food and avoid eating at work and then binge and purge when I got home. In 2007, 5 years after asking for help, but getting no specialist eating disorder services i had to have a pacemaker as my heart consultant who i saw for a hereditary heart arrhythmia that causes Sudden adult death syndrome (sads) said I was at high risk of dying because of my bulimia and the low potassium that causes. In 2009 my dad complained to someone in local mental health services advised by Marg from the eating disorder support group who were a great support at that time. I finally got referred to an eating disorder clinic in Leeds, I saw an eating disorder nurse and had to write food diaries, and write thoughts and feelings every time I ate or engaged in any compensatory behaviour such as the vomiting, laxatives and obsessively exercising. But it made no difference and I was classed as too severe for outpatient treatment as I was being sick after most things I ate. So I was offered an 8 week symptom interruption program for bulimia which wasn't weight focused ( if you had anorexia the aim of treatment was to gain weight so they were there for months with psychology, groups about body image, nutrition, eating out, shopping and thoughts and feelings), however I got told I wasn't there long enough for the intensive psychology I needed for underlying issues and so literally got bed and food and continued being sick there. So I came back home to no support. I focused on trying to train as a mental health nurse and wanted to help others in a way I hadnt been helped. I told myself I wasnt allowed to self harm ( another problem that developed alongside my eating disorder, I would cut myself to punish myself for eating, I even had the word "fat" carved in my arm and leg at one point, it got covered over by lots more cuts)and i wasn't allowed to be sick. But i continued to binge eat and put on weight. I got bullied on my access to nursing course and found some birth family which stirred up emotions and i relapsed with making myself sick and self harm. I eventually saw an eating disorder nurse who was really helpful and would set me goals such as try having breakfast every day, try delay how long it was before I was sick even if just 10 minutes and build it up but I only got 20 sessions of CBT for what then was a 10 year problem and then the nurse moved abroad. So then I gave up and got into a cycle of taking overdoses, some overdoses were in response to a "voice" in my head that said I deserved to be dead, other overdoses were at times I felt so out of control with eating the only way to stop was to be physically ill and in hospital I always had a rule that I wasn't allowed to eat there although sometimes i would still end up eating and being sick and self harming. I continued trying to get more eating disorder help but by then i had a diagnosis of personality disorders because of my self harm and suicide attempts and so i was too complex for eating disorder services. I ended up in a locked hospital in 2015 sectioned for my personality disorders because of the severity of my suicide attempts which i am now thankful i survived but it was more luck than judgement, there were times i was found unconscious after tying ligatures and it was 64 co codamol that gave me heart failure and chronic kidney disease. .....but my eating disorder was the drive to it all i had an eating disorder voice that constantly tells me I'm fat and useless and worthless etc. and I still fight that every day. The voice is one alot of anorexics describe that praises you when you lose weight but torments you when you give in and eat I have that crossed with a food addiction, I crave food physically after restricting food for as long as I can and emotionally when I'm depressed, but can be at good times too, food is associated as a big part of socialising and although I have social anxiety I do like to socialise with people I feel I can trust and be comfortable around. Society has so many contradictions though, food is a big part of socialising yet the media, drs and society in general praise weight loss and thinness and class fat as bad. No wonder so many people have eating disorders.
Eating disorders can be triggered by dieting, if we deprive ourselves of food, our bodies natural survival instinct craves the fuel we need to survive, even anorexics often binge and 50 percent of anorexics become bulimic, often sufferers can alternate between anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder, there is so much overlap between eating disorders.
I am still trying to fight the voice that makes me feel guilty about everything I eat and often end up crying over a jacket potato I have held out until 3 or 4 in the afternoon to eat then feel bad for giving in to eating which rationally I know we all need to do but then later on I often cave in and will eat late at night, i do try not to be sick but i am if i end up having a full on binge which is rare as i gave my bank card to my mum as i can be like a food addict on a bad day. Back in my worst times I got into so much debt and being honest have been known to get take aways from McDonald's and burger king and food from the shop and have a night of constantly eating and being sick numerous times, that's a big part of why I got suicidal it is a living nightmare to live with although I also have underlying issues relating to being adopted and from the years of bullying I had at school.
CBT specific to eating disorders is a good therapy to deal with the here and now, you briefly look at a timeline of your life and significant life events but the therapy is aimed at changing the way you think about food and body image. You are taught to eat 3 meals and 3 snacks and everybody has a set point weight, the weight your body is naturally healthy at, this can be a higher BMI in some people than others depending on genetics, bone structure, muscle mass etc. It is also recognising the emotional connection to eating behaviours so for example was you feeling sad when you were over eating or avoiding eating or being sick etc.
For me the organ damage from years of eating disorders and the many overdoses I took, some antidepressants I was on called mirtazapine and probably my metabolism mean I put on 6 stone about 6 years ago and have struggled to lose a significant amount of it. I often try "proper diets" that other people do trying to convince myself that it will work this time, rationally I know my eating disorder spirals when I diet, a while ago during lockdown I tried a special k diet, I spent a Sunday afternoon working out the calories in nearly every item of food and drink in my flat, wrote calorie counted meal plans which were maximum of a 1000 calories a day but it soon spiralled that my eating disorder mind though anything above 500 calories a day was bad and I was making myself sick after my main meals because of the guilt so I nipped it in the bud. I normally stopped myself being sick as it's not good for singing which is the main positive thing I do. For me rationally I know I need to accept myself whatever size I am when I eat regularly even if it's not the ideal weight I wish I was. I was probably the healthiest at the end of last year as I was doing a sponsored swim for charity I told myself I had to eat enough to swim and told myself I would burn it off I felt healthy and although my scales didn't go down alot I toned up and felt fit. Unfortunately I got a sinus and ear infection and had to stop swimming I'm still waiting to see the ent specialist as my ears keep blocking and I keep getting sinusitis which affects my voice and hearing which is a pain but once that is sorted and the caronavirus is safe I will start swimming again for now I will keep plodding on. As I keep trying to tell myself thin isnt necessarily healthy.....the picture of me in the ball dress I was 15 stone, size 16, swimming regularly and felt fit, the picture of me smaller i was 10 stone 4, being sick after most things i ate and just before I was admitted to the eating disorder clinic. ..
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