Eating disorder, disordered eating or just normal?

[Onelumporthewholebag]

NC for this as long time lurker / poster.
Paranoid I'll be outed.

I go for long periods without eating then binge. So today for example, up at six had three teas then no breakfast. Will prob have a go ahead biscuit or something at 11ish.

Then at one I will probably be hungry, but I will deliberately ignore my tummy rumbling and have tea instead.

I will want to eat and be hungry, but I'm overweight so I feel guilty about eating. This guilt makes me not eat. Then I will cook everyone dinner, apart from myself (I'm overweight) and then end up cracking and having a bowl of cereal or cupasoup at about 9pm coz I'll know i won't sleep unless I eat something.

Is this type of eating normal? I feel like I've lost all sense of what eating normally even is. I'm not losing weight at all with this eating pattern so I'm not benefiting from it.
I see others eating and I think how lucky they are to be able to just eat without having to agonise over it.

Am I OK or do I need help?

Yes it's bulimia.
Op what would happen if you tried to eat three healthy meals a day? Could you? You won't gain eating your tdeee but can you? Eds go against all logic.

I was like this OP. I went to an eating disorders clinic for a year. I had to diet by eating more. So 3 small meals and 3 snacks spaced throughout the day whether I'm hungry or not. It's the extreme drop in blood sugar that then leads to the extreme binging and weight gain.

I can't eat three meals a day plus snacks because of many reasons.

1. I feel guilty if I do
2. I don't feel hungry enough
3. I can't eat for the sake of it for eg it's breakfast time therefore I must eat.
4. I've tried setting alarms on my phone at breakfast, lunch and tea time to eat at proper normal times but that does not work.
5. I cannot eat when I' should'.

I've tried many diets in my life and never been able to stick to any of them because of this.

I do want to change my eating habits.
I'm just skeptical how I can at the moment.

Your posts suggest that actually the issue may not be food, but your feelings: guilt, self-doubt, emotional instability, lack of confidence and so forth.

Would you feel more comfortable addressing this issue with your GP? Not talking about food (which may just be a way of manifesting what’s going on in your mind)?

If not, maybe try a new surgery? Or seek a specialist directly?

Incidentally, being old or male doesn’t necessarily mean your GP can’t offer effective help.

Eds are egocentric so although you 'want to change' you feel, against everything, it's actually the best thing and 'are skeptical'.

I wonder if you haven't eaten all day do you feel a sense of pride, and eating like you've given in.

Help is mainly confronting why you need your ed, whether it's success in control, needing the physiological feeling of hunger, comfort in self harm, fear of foods, find it hard to eat then stop, impatience ect

Op the guilt is misplaced. Your eating pattern is not working. Eds are like an addiction and it's very hard but it's great you recognise it's not working.

I can't eat three meals a day plus snacks because of many reasons.

I totally understand that. Like I say, I was/am the same. I went to that clinic every week for a year. I couldn't have overcome your 1-5 without them. I do still struggle with it and think I always will. Sadly that type of mental health intervention is no longer funded where I live :(

Last night I went to dinner at my friend's house. We had chinese. I ate some. Not alot, but some.

Today I've had a cup of tea because I know I ate alot of calories last night so I'm trying to readdress the balance. Today I will compensate for the Chinese by not eating much at all, even if my stomach growls.

This is normal behaviour for me. I could not just get up and eat breakfast, lunch and dinner knowing what I ate last night. Knowing the rough amount of calories it was and how I will not burn that off. Is this binge/purge? Is this really not what everyone else does if they are concerned about their weight? I'm still struggling to understand that my logic is not flawed. I've lived like this for years and years. If this isn't OK I don't know how I'm going to stop it coz it's completely natural to me.

I don't know what to do. Please me kind to me it takes a lot to post this and I'm asking for genuine help and advice.

I don’t think it’s unusual to think: oh I over indulged yesterday, I’ll cut it back a bit today.

What’s not normal is eating massive amounts of food in one sitting (more than other people would eat) then not eating anything the next day. What do you do as a job? Surely you need to eat 3 meals a day to function at work/be able to look after your kids etc?

I work full time in a medical profession. I have three children. If anything, my shifts promote unhealthy eating patterns if I'm honest. Colleagues did comment at first but everyone has come to accept that I don't eat like them. With shift patterns changing its not like everyone takes breaks or lunches at the same time anyway. My husband nags me to eat at dinner time.

I'm a v overweight yoyo dieter with a screwed up attitude to food. So hardly "normal" and you may want to take what I say with a pinch of salt. But I think some of your thinking (feeling guilty about overeating etc/being overweight/wanting to compensate for overindulging) is normal, but that the extent of your behaviour isn't - not feeling you should have 3 meals per day etc. If you can't get yourself to have regular meals, then I think you do need some sort of help from GP/counsellor. I have no idea these days how easy it is to access specialist eating disorder services (I imagine not easy at all TBH ). If your BMI is v high then you might qualify for some sort of weight loss service, which would hopefully include some psychological input.

@Onelumporthewholebag - genuine question, what are you hoping for from this post?

You've been told that you are representing as a bulimic and that your eating and thinking about food is disordered.

So first you need to accept that as the truth. Until you can acknowledge this then you cannot begin to start to recover.

Then you need to decide if you want to recover or not. It seems obvious, but recovery means change and change is scary and hard to face. Your whole eating disorder will be fighting to keep you in the same patterns, telling you that you need to hold onto it.

If and when you get to a point where you want to recover, then you can go to your GP - or download the books I've mentioned (or others). But nothing can or will help you until you accept you have a problem and decide you want to recover.

Even if you don't download the books, I would suggest doing some reading online.

This is one good source;
www.bulimiahelp.org/posts/how-it-works/

I’m a bulimic and I’d say the fact you can’t stick to a 3 meal a day plan shows how out of order things have gotten. It does get confusing in the days of 5:2, all the fasting and strange diets but if the thought of sticking to a normal eating pattern makes you feel dread, it’s a problem.

The other thing is you’re not looking after your body with this pattern. Binge eating and then starving are both forms of self punishment.

I alternate between binges and crazy diets/not eating for nearly all of the day, I’m at the upper end of the normal bmi range and the bottom line on why this behaviour needs to be fixed is that you are perpetuating self loathing with the eating and not self care.

I found this thread when googling advice for myself.

You say you 'can't eat 3 meals a day' and you 'can't eat just because you should' - I have tried every excuse in the book and have just been diagnosed with osteopoeris at 30 years old. I have been very slim for years - it doesn't make you happy, but I can only imagine being healthy does.

Please get help before this ruins your health/happiness even more - speak to your GP or find a private therapist locallly if you are able to. I was in denial and then put it off getting help for years with almost any excuse - new job I need to focus on, can't gain weight before a big event/holiday - but nothing is more important!

Don't feel you need to catergorise yourself, am I bulimic, do I have a binge eating disorder. You don't need to fit in a category. You probably have an eating disorder and cognitive behavioural therapy will help when referred by a GP. I would encourage you to look into this now before it gets worse.

I started like this then it developed into taking laxatives, weight pills etc. However as soon as I did this I knew it was wrong and sought help. There is nothing to be embarrassed about in fact you should then be proud you realised and sought help as these things tend not to get better on their own.

I only needed a few CBT sessions to put me back on the straight and narrow, it boiled down to something I never addressed a few years ago. They help you deal with things and to look at what you're doing and what you can do to change things.

Yes I still will always have an eating disorder, I will never be normal I don't think, however I know how to deal with it and am aware of it. There's not really a lot people can say to you here to be honest that will help you change things until you speak to your GP or a private therapist.

It is an illness, please ignore anyone that says deal with it as I imagine it is very difficult to get out of that pattern on your own without qualified help.