Feel F***ing Disgusting. :(

[dedydedje]

Got BED. Came to light in October after suffering all my adult life. Been good and had a lot of success with the keto diet since about feb - lost 1.5st and felt good, no binge, no starve.

However, it seems my brain re-sets the bar after a time: although I've 'enjoyed myself' a little and MAYBE (dont even know as i dont weight myself obsessively anymore) put on a few lbs, I know from my clothes I haven't put that stone back on. Yet I feel as utterly disgusted with myself now as I did then. This has coincided with a tiny bit of starving, partly because I've been working so hard and funny hours so its difficult to plan ahead and prepare healthy meals so I just don't eat instead, and I guess partly to make up for the little bit of 'enjoying myself' I've done. On top of feeling DISGUSTED when I look in the mirror (all i see is love handles, gut and bingo wings :( ) I also feel ANNOYED that I can't just..eat food. Normally. Without a shit tonne of angst about it.

For a couple of days now I've been wandering around with this backing track in my brain saying 'you look fucking vile'. No one would know, to the outside world I'm a pretty, healthy, ballsy woman. I'm complimented all the time. I'd never admit these feelings to anyone. I'm so far refusing to go get CBT because I know for a fact as soon as I voice this to my GP I'll break down and I can't handle that.

I've tried to distract myself with personal grooming to make me feel better about myself :( Only does so much really.

Thanks so much for listening.

I'm so sorry you're feeling like this. I have struggled - do struggle - with similar issues. I read somewhere that there is new research to suggest that even in recovered ED sufferers, the moment you go into a calorie deficit the old behaviours are chemically triggered. For me, I feel it when I go into a calorie surplus too though - like you say, I can't "just eat", I have to really think it through to avoid hitting either of those places.
I recently, after three or fours years of hard won stability, gained some leg muscle - leg muscle I worked for and ought to have been proud of - but when I saw how much tighter my jeans were I lost the plot. Cried on and off for a week and even thinking about deciding what to eat was too much for me. I did look up a local ED specialisy but couldn't quite get up the guts to go and talk to her. In a way, just knowing she was out there calmed me a bit. My cycle ended after I hit a low point and decided that the general public would have to deal with how awful I looked. I just walked around not caring that I looked terrible and unsughtly. Then recently caught sight of myself unexpectedly and thought WTF is wrong with you, you look lovely. I felt sorry for my poor maligned legs. But then I looked at them for too long and could almost see them swelling in front of my eyes so I had to quickly go and do something else. Learning to not think about it is really, really hard.

I'm so glad I'm not the only one! and yeah I think I mustve gone into deficit and triggered it all off again :( people dont understand though, I just get 'but you look lovely!' or 'eat less and move more!' - noo! no to the eating less! shut up!!

You're definitely not the only one.

I've also heard the same thing about caloric deficit that arielmanto had mentioned. it's hugely problematic for me because I'm now obese (BED for 40 years) and need to lose weight for health reasons.

Every expert in the field that I've read, or talked to, says that the BED has to be dealt with and a certain point in recovery reached before we can even think about trying to lose weight.

There was a helpful series of threads on here some time back but they're not very active any longer.

I have to say that every time I've tried to 'diet' in the past 40 years I have lost some weight, sure, but the BED has come back worse each time and I ended up heavier than before.

I can't really offer you any help, as I said I've been dealing with this for 40 years but just wanted you to know that you're not alone.