Recovering from BED/bulimia caused by restrictive eating

[Taq]

As the title really. This follows on from another thread in 90 days only, and hopefully it can be a nice, supportive thread where we can help each other out.

There is only one rule. Please DO NOT suggest or advise ANY kind of dieting, restrictive eating, or rules around food/what to eat/how to eat. That is what got me and many others into this mess!

I totally get that diet culture is so ingrained into our society that people might suggest things like intuitive eating or intermittent fasting etc thinking it might help. But it won’t, and if this is pointed out to you then please take it on board. There are many other threads where that will be welcome 🙂

Please feel free to share resources. Personally, I have found Brain over Binge totally revolutionary. I think because it closely mirrors my own story - I had a health condition that made me lose lots of weight. I felt amazing being so thin and had so many compliments. When I was better and began to climb back to my normal healthy weight (BMI 23 - I have never actually been clinically overweight which I think it important to note) I panicked and began my first diet - calorie counting.

I lost all the weight again calorie counting and I was under 8 stone. I was obsessive over it but the intense hunger made me binge one day. And so began the cycle of binging and purging. Like the author of BoB, I couldn’t make myself vomit, my purges were in the form of starving myself and exercising.

That is a very condensed history of a very long story. I am now in recovery and I have the book to thank as it was almost tailored to my exact situation. My binging wasn’t caused by psychological issues; it was simple biology of hunger, which then caused a habit which I carefully nurtured and ingrained over 3 years without realising.

Everyone’s story is different and not every approach will suit everyone. The philosophy of BoB worked for me but different people will need different methods.

I'm not naive enough to think that this is me cured forever. But I am now absolutely positive of two things:

1. I will NEVER diet again.
2. I am now a recovering bulimic.

Hope this thread ends up being a helpful and supportive place 🙂

Thanks @Taq 😊

I hope you guys don't mind me joining the thread, I did see the old one and it was really really eye opening for me because I'm very stuck in diet culture and only considered conventional dieting and weight loss attempts before seeing it.

Rainyrunner that's amazing!

@Taq "My binging wasn’t caused by psychological issues; it was simple biology of hunger, which then caused a habit which I carefully nurtured and ingrained over 3 years without realising."

I think it's so important to acknowledge this. I think a lot of people are encouraged to find the root source beyond the restrictive behaviour, but sometimes I think it really can solely be one's relationship with food that is the issue.

While I think for some people therapy for other issues is key to recovery, I've been stuck in diet culture not realising how traumatising it is for my body, probably due to my restrictive eating in formative years and how that has shaped my attempts to control my eating. Even when I thought I had figured this out, I would still restrict and always when down a cycle of starting to restrict a small amount, then the highs would start and I'd restrict further, and then inevitably "fall off the wagon" which is actually just my body saying wtf are you doing.

I still don't know what my plan is for recovery. I find it extremely difficult to control my urge to comfort eat and it my favourite foods. I have a plan which doesn't involve my diet culture go to's (IF and dividing food into good and bad food), but I don't know whether to go down the medication/therapy route or whether the GP will do what they usually do and give me Orlistat.

Oh it's me CandlelightGlow btw! Think i'll change back, this one was just an NC for something 😃

Thank you for starting this thread was normal weight 81/2 stone until getting dumped at 15 went to art college at 10st normal weight for 5ft 7 started my first diet went to anorexia / bulimia modelling for 10 years a lot of pressure. Settled at 10st up to 11st after birth of only son been up and down 12/10st over 20 years am up atm eating not great I like this thread a lot seems some good recovery on it. I’m feeling a bit lost right now with food. I’ve bought BOB and I am exercising every day it makes me feel better for sure I don’t know if my low mood is to do with menopause or life

Placemarking for later. Thanks @Taq

I don’t know what my plan for recovery is either my go to is IF and low carb or Cambridge but there has to be another way to be free I’ve struggled for 40 years on and off

Thank you for the new thread.

I agree that we are often encouraged to think about binge eating in terms of psychological or emotional issues, with the idea that if you understand these, you will somehow magically be cured of the behaviours.

I think that while it is very helpful for people to understand themselves if they've had a traumatic background (and this does put you at a way higher risk for BED, bulimia and other addictions and destructive behaviour) simply understanding this probably won't solve the behaviour.

BoB is good in that it separates out these things and addresses binge eating as a habit. So it applies behavioural approaches. This is a great relief for many people - just to think that they don't have to go through years of therapy to resolve this one issue. And if you don't have severe trauma to resolve, it must be good to stop feeling pressured to find some underlying reason for binging when it's literally just a habit formed by restrictive eating and hunger.

I think where BoB falls down for me is the simplistic approach. BED in my case was driven by a complex mix of trauma, ADHD and unhappiness. On the one hand, yes it was a behaviour and I needed to just not binge, but it was not possible for me in the beginning to recognise a binge urge or find any space between the urge and the action. BoB fired me up and inspired me but I didn't feel it equipped me with useful tools for me in my situation.

However, therapy for emotional issues wasn't the answer, either, at least not wholly. What eventually worked for me was a mix of parts work (IFS), ADHD management, and lots of different behavioural approaches from different resources. Time, patience, self compassion and honesty are all also important in my recovery.

I find the Binge Eating Therapist (Sarah Dosanjh) very helpful and especially her podcast, Life After Diets. Her co-host on that is brilliant in understanding nervous system dysregulation and I find her really relatable. They both have experience of recovering from BED but their experiences are wildly different, so the discussions are incredibly nuanced and helpful.

I also really like the Fuck It Diet book by Caroline Dooner. It's basically intuitive eating but so clearly explained and very encouraging.

At the moment I'm reading The Kindness Method by Shahroo Izadi. What I like about her is that she is very encouraging of people who still want to lose weight but need to not diet. A tricky situation to be in! For some on this thread, maybe it's a matter of a few pounds or an extra stone (the Fuck It Diet is a great resource if that's you) but others may be looking at a large weight gain and I think there are fewer resources for such people. Having said that, Life After Diets has lots of episodes about being in this predicament too.

I'll report back on The Kindness Method once I've got to the end!

Could I ask, since we're in the eating disorders section now, that we don't go into specifics of weight gain/loss, numbers, sizes etc? It can be really triggering for people with BED or other disorders. Would that be okay?

Agreed.

My mind starts categorising and comparing - diet culture is competitive I think.

@beastlyslumber yes sure I’m sorry I put a potted history it can be removed if wanted

Yes absolutely - please no weight gain/loss numbers, measurements, goals etc.

I know they are not meant in that way but I also find it quite 🔫🔫 when trying to get totally out of the dieting mindset. It is SO easy to slide back into dieting mentality when you’ve been in it for sooo long!

reasons for binge eating

Coincidentally, this just came up in my memories! Hope it's useful to some here.

Intuitive eating is what we’re born with and our culture overrides. I watch my four year old and admire him. He’ll finish his food and say “My tummy is full” and I’ll ask if he’s “a lotta hungry” or ”a little hungry” when I serve dinner and he’ll tell me. He’ll eat a nibble of Easter egg and say “I’ve had enough” and will not be tempted with more.

I tell grandparents off for “just another mouthful” or “you’ve had enough” he knows instinctively - they don’t, they can’t feel what he’s feeling. And I think that’s how it happened for us.

My Mum was enmeshed in diet culture. Whatever the magazines said we should be eating, she ate and if she was eating it the whole family was expected to. I ate the family food, I got a little bit chubby. My Mum was on a diet so put me on a diet. She did the same to the household. I remember so clearly being on holiday about 8 or 9 and having a lions bar. She said “you’ve really worked for that haven’t you” because her view was I had eaten with enough constraint in the weeks leading up to that moment to be deserving of the lion bar.

I started binging in my room. I was still primary aged. I’d eat 3 or 4 bags of crisps really fast with my back to my bedroom door. My Mum would binge on the weekend/annual leave/evenings and always have an excuse if you reminded her of her diet. So at those times I was also allowed to indulge. Cementing the cycle for me.

At about 14, dissatisfied with my weight I started making myself sick and developed bulimia.

My Mum and I dieted together at 18, I was using laxatives before the weekly weigh in and making myself sick after binging episodes. I remember getting to goal and being delighted and my Mum asking what I weighed and saying “that’s heavy for you!” I was happy with my weight and yet she still thought it was too high!

I have since dieted, binged and purged in many ways. I’m early 30’s now. I don’t use laxatives or make myself sick, I replaced that with exercise. I would say my purging is better controlled now. Frankly I have kids and so can’t run a half marathon or rack up 30k steps after a binge so a lack of opportunity has (mostly) stopped that habit. I’m still active but my goals are different.

At some stage I developed anxiety and depression and so attached my BED to that. I’ve had therapy for a few years hoping that if I just managed that I’d stop binging. I haven’t.

Brain over binge has helped me enormously. I’ve not binged for maybe two weeks now.

I am now of the view that the urge to binge is why I binge and with that knowledge I am better placed to brush that urge aside. For now, I’ve stopped weighing myself, stopped measuring and tracking. That’s helping too.

A bit of brain dump there but that’s my story!

I will add that I will really try to ignore things that I personally find triggering, as I absolutely get that a lot of people won’t and you can’t police language. But what diet/weight loss talk I just really can’t engage in.

It’s hard too because it’s everywhere. I used to do it myself, when I was in the thick of bulimia all I could talk about was what I was eating that day, if I was doing well on my diet, how much weight I’d put on or lost etc etc. I was probably completely tone deaf. It’s embarrassing now!

One of the main things I’ve done in RL is to stop thinking and talking about food, beyond ‘what shall I make for tea tonight?’
It’s unbelievable how often, especially at first, I had to stop myself from talking about food and dieting. I still find myself mentally making meal plans and then stopping myself. It’s incredibly free-ing though now I’m getting more used to it.

I’d like to go back and apologise to every single person I ever talked to about dieting. I used to advise calorie counting myself!! I’m so embarrassed and guilty about that. Not talking or thinking about food and dieting has been such a huge shift and positive change in my life.

And yes, I know I’m kind of doing it here but there’s no other way to say it 🤣

Yes I get that, but personally I see it as yet another food restriction/rule/guideline dressed up in sheep’s clothing.

I totally get that others may find it helpful, that’s just my view 🙂

@Morningcoffeeview so sorry to hear about your experiences with dieting and weight loss at such a young age. I had similar experiences with my mum who was anorexic and made me feel absolutely disgusting for eating normally. I went on my first diet aged 8.

Really happy to hear you've not binged for a while! That is awesome and I hope gives you lots of confidence in your recovery.

I am feeling for me this is the most honest I’ve been for years around my eating and food I have so much shame around it. It’s crucifying

Thank you @Taq for starting the new thread.

I don’t know what started my BED. From early childhood I can remember my BED mother telling me that eating would take away her unhappiness, and watching her behaviour around food. I have recently been diagnosed with autism, so have always taken things literally and therefore I presumably accepted my mother’s dysfunctional relationship with food as being a normal set of behaviours around eating. I certainly remember developing anorexia in my early teens as a means of trying to communicate to people that I was unhappy, rather than as an attempt at losing weight.

My BED is so deeply entrenched that I have low hopes of freeing myself from it, particularly as it is tied up with neurodiversity which, as @beastlyslumber rightly points out, adds in a whole raft of extra complications, and for which there isn’t a huge amount of advice. I had several years of counselling for bulimia in my late 20s which helped me unravel my feelings towards my parents, but it never had an effect on my eating which has been problematic for 40+ years now.

Added to that I am currently quite overweight which is causing me a lot of joint pain, so I am pondering on the wisdom of remaining at this weight but freeing myself of BED versus continuing trying to lose some weight to alleviate other health problems.

I’m about to start reading the recommended books so hopefully that will help shift something in my brain.

Re. Intuitive eating. Caroline Dooner talks about how she used IE as another kind of diet! However, IE is anti-diet and it isn't about weight loss at all, but about getting out of diet culture and reconnecting with your body.

I find it hard because my hunger/fullness cues are still not clear to me (possibly from years of dieting, possibly because of ADHD. Or a combo) I find mechanical eating to be more helpful, I.e. eating 3 meals a day no matter what. In fact, that was my first real step to recovery - committing to eating 3 meals a day.

But many people love IE because it is about what makes you feel good and connected to yourself. I think the IE book is okay but prefer the Fuck It Diet (which is not a diet at all!) as it makes it all so clear.

I absolutely relate to this. The shame is so overwhelming and would drive me to binge more. I thought I was the only person who did this and that it meant all sorts of things about me.

Part of recovery (a big part for me) is learning to let go of the shame and guilt. To say, this is not my fault, even though I choose to take responsibility for it. It's a disorder, it's very common, and recovery is possible.

@Helenahandkart I can't remember if I watched this one but I've heard the adhd woman speak before and she is good

I think that weight loss is possible without restriction - Intuitive Eating and Mechanical Eating are two approaches. The idea of IE is that you don't restrict food and don't binge. Instead you eat according to what makes you feel good and supports your health and your body will over time relax into your weight 'set point' by either losing or adding weight.

However, I don't think IE is great for people with ADHD because we tend to have poor interroception (not being able to sense our internal body cues). Personally I've found mechanical eating to be good. If I'm not hungry or restricted, I don't think about food in between meals and I don't binge.

I also think IE is widely misunderstood and misused by people who think that your body will naturally want to eat the smallest amount of food possible. People misuse it as a weight loss strategy so if you want to try it, do read the original book and/or the Fuck It Diet, as they explain it properly and are totally anti-diet.

@beastlyslumber i know and then my head gets overwhelmed by the thoughts which makes me feel worse and here goes the spiral of disgust shame etc. in fact it also coincides with being single for 2 years of finally being myself and not being a certain size or look