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 🙂

@Parsley1234 That's really tough to go through. All I can tell you is that it does get easier in time. I still have the shame spirals and negative thoughts and self-abuse but I'm way better now at mental fitness and it's easier to deal with. I'm 50 years old and it's taken me most of five decades to get here, but it does get easier!

@beastlyslumber Thank you. I’ve just ordered a secondhand copy of The Fuck It Diet so that’ll be my starting point.

It's possible I'm misusing the label mechanical eating. To me, it means eating 3 meals a day, even if i dont feel that hungry for them. Not necessarily at set times (my life is a bit random.) But breakfast, lunch and dinner. Meals can be anything but should be a good balance of nutrients over the course of the day. I started by also having 3 snacks a day on top of meals but found eventually I forgot to have them, was just too much effort to try to fit them in. I will sometimes have a snack between meals.

I don't have any food restrictions now but find my previous binge foods aren't all that appealing. I try not to eat in front of screens as that was always how I used to binge. As in intuitive eating, try to be present and enjoy my food rather than be distracted by TV or MN! Also as in IE, I "honour my hunger" - I don't let myself go hungry and I try not to forget to eat (that's where the mechanical eating can help.) I am getting better at sensing my hunger before I'm starving but it isn't easy for me. It helped when I learned about different ways people experience hunger. For me, if I get a bit irritable, that's hunger!

Would love to hear more about the eating with ADHD course, if there's anything you can share.

@Rainbowsandbutterflies1990 i would be interested in learning more about this ADHD and binge eating work

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?’

I went for dinner with someone I actually don’t know all that well and she spoke almost compulsively, for the majority of the evening, about her diet, exercise and weight. I saw past me in her - I had started to recognise my obsession sometime ago. I sat thinking she has disordered eating. I had just listened to “it’s not your weight” by Liney Cohen and I recognised it all from the book.

My Mum still, to his day. Will report back everytime she’s brought something “bad”
on her weekly shop or eaten something bad. I have asked her SO many times over the years not to do this or comment on my weight.

Thing that really gets me is with the children. She’ll lecture them on what’s healthy and not healthy. My niece was seriously underweight and under the hospital for care re it, my Mum still would try and direct her to higher protein breakfasts than her cornflakes or whatever and encourage her to focus on low fat/high protein.

I feel like I’m having a rant about my Mum but it’s clear how diet culture has shaped the generation before me who raised my generation and how it’s happened.

It's so, so normal though isn't it, especially amongst women. A huge chunk of conversations I have with my sister are about weight loss, diets, exercise (with the soul aim of weight loss). It's absolutely everywhere.

I went for dinner with someone I actually don’t know all that well and she spoke almost compulsively, for the majority of the evening, about her diet, exercise and weight. I saw past me in her - I had started to recognise my obsession sometime ago.

This is past me too. Makes me ashamed to think of it! Never again.

My Mum still, to his day. Will report back everytime she’s brought something “bad”
on her weekly shop or eaten something bad. I have asked her SO many times over the years not to do this or comment on my weight.

My mum does this too. She is lovely and would be mortified to think she was having any kind of negative impact, but I always dread having my weight commented on when she visits. It’s always ‘positive’ as in ‘oh you’re looking slim, you’ve lost weight’ etc but it just makes me so paranoid.

My mum has been overweight and on a diet my whole life. I remember going to slimming clubs with her, sitting bored whilst the leader handed out prizes and talked about sins and red and green days.
She never imposed dieting on us kids and I think she tried to hide it from us, but not successfully.
I had constant comments on my weight though, how ‘lovely and slim’ I was etc and although it was kindly meant it made me paranoid about my appearance and also to associate slim with good.

This probably definitely helped my habits to become ingrained though, as there was such a high motivation to stay ‘thin.’

It's possible I'm misusing the label mechanical eating. To me, it means eating 3 meals a day, even if i dont feel that hungry for them.

See when I’m “dieting” I’ll eat when I’m not hungry. Because that’s the plan and it’s time to eat and when I’m hungry I didn’t eat. It’s back to intuitive eating. Which may be misused as a term but is a primal instinct.

Bold fail!

I grew up watching my mum and sister always dieting, my sister was tall and slim and perfect really. It was what they did and talked about a lot. I was always a size or two bigger than my sister, but by today's standards I'd be pretty slim. Anyway I think it got out of control around my sisters wedding. I tried on two bridesmaid dresses, one was horrible (It fitted me) one was lovely and it was too small. My sister basically told me I'd be wearing the horrible dress, I said no I'd lose the weight and that was the start. I successfully lost it, wore the dress then carried on until I had lost a lot and was in the grips of a full blown eating disorder. I think I was stuck in it for a few years then one day I ate and didn't stop. I then got very depressed for a while, life carried on and found a happy place, had friends and a social life again. I ate normally and got to a normal weight and was happy again. After having my son I wasn't eating so much but I wasn't forced, I just wanted to look good and I was happy with my relationship with food. Then about 6 years later I was diagnosed with crohn's, unlucky for me the side effect wasn't weight loss but gain, from the steroids then the resulting depression and from not being able to eat fibre rich foods like salad, wholegrains etc also at this time I became a sahm due to moving abroad. I was the perfect storm for my BED. I've been up and down since, covid want particularly helpful as I drank so much wine and ate alot. But I'm here and I'm trying to get to grips with it all. I won't diet again. I'm now thinking about summer and I just cannot be binging am feeling shit in my summer clothes. When I binge I feel so horrible.

Sorry about the typos my phone screen Is broken and half the letters don't respond!

Just to add I mentioned it briefly but “Your weight is not the issue” by Lyndi cohen is a great book on the psychology behind the diet culture and our attitude to weight and diet. That was the start of my recovery.

It’s hard isn’t it because there’s perfectly rational and justifiable reasons to desire to be slim. Like health and fitness etc. So on the one hand you feel you’re making positive changes for your benefit but you end up making yourself ill in the quest!

It’s mad isn’t it when you look back? So much projection onto such small children.

I agree IE is a great goal for many. But a lot of ND people need more structure. So it's good to have that flexibility - some people can learn to eat intuitively and others of us need more structure as a permanent support. Maybe some need "guard rails" for a while as they learn to eat intuitively and can let go of the structure as they go along.

I also know of people who are "eating for weight loss" while in recovery from BED which means having some restrictions in place. That's a really hard situation to be in.

Whatever works for you is awesome.

Yeah, it's fucked up!

I think the focus for me is on trying to connect to myself, my body, my likes and dislikes and really try to not self-harm with either dieting or binging. Mechanical eating works for me because otherwise I forget to eat and then I binge, or i tell myself I'm not hungry and start skipping meals, which triggers more restriction. And i have lost weight although i try really hard not to think too much about that.

I wish I had a more intuitive connection with my body but this is way, way better than where I was. I don't restrict or binge now. Maybe aiming to be an intuitive eater is a bit futile for me. Maybe it stops me recognising how well my recovery is going, because it doesn't look like a NT person's recovery? There are a lot of challenges with accepting myself as I am, especially when that seems different from how normal people are. Probably true for all of us!

I definitely need structure. I am geared up as an individual to follow rules and structure. Which is probably why I find BED so problematic - I am going against the rules in a massive way!

My job is all about frameworks and rules and how they’re interpreted so professionally this makes me excel but personally it’s quite difficult at times.

You might find some kind of mechanical eating works for you @Morningcoffeeview . It is a technique that was developed for people recovering from bulimia and it means you have a structured eating pattern that you stick to. You can plan out every meal in advance if you find that helpful. I tend to have a rough plan for the day in my mind but I know people who plan every meal for a week. You can't use that for restriction though! I think the original plan is 3 meals and 3 snacks a day, so you eat every couple of hours. It is very comforting and definitely stopped me binging. I can't keep up with the snacks now as I kept forgetting about them.

You should be able to find more information online. I basically took the general idea and came up with my own version, based on the principles of eating enough, and eating foods I enjoy, and never skipping a meal or getting too hungry.

I think it's totally legit to come up with your own structure for eating. And this may be controversial, but I think it's legit to have some restrictions as well - but they should be for a good reason. I.e. I choose not to eat too much sugar because it makes me feel weird and it doesn't match with my health goals. I don't eat gluten because I'm coeliac. But I can't choose to not eat enough calories or to skip meals or cut out whole food groups etc because those restrictions would totally trigger me.

@beastlyslumber thank you. I will definitely look it up. I plan my meals a way ahead anyway for my weekly shop. But I guess some of that is an issue I have with control. I genuinely find it anxiety inducing if my DH uses for example the mince assigned for a chilli on a Tuesday for a spag bol on a Monday. Huge issues with control!

I have a food intolerance and oddly, that doesn’t bother me. I manage that and don’t eat wheat (coeliac) and haven’t for 20+ years with absolutely no difficulty. For some reason that doesn’t bother me at all. I get v ill when I eat it.

It sounds like it might be good. For me, it helped me not to binge because I was not physically hungry - if anything, the opposite! I think the key is to eat enough. If you're not sure you've had enough, eat a little bit more. Somehow this really calms my brain and makes me feel safe and stops me from thinking about food all the time. When I've tried Intuitive Eating I feel anxious and uncertain all the time and obsess about food. This way works well for me and is considered a healing method for bulimia, so I'm sure it's worth a try.

Mechanical eating sounds useful as I respond really well to rules - up to a point. The last diet I did involved planning three nutritious meals a day, and I found this aspect of it really helpful to have the structure of meal plans. It took away a lot of the stress around eating and shopping to know what I would be eating for the week. But yes I hear you @Morningcoffeeview about the need for control, my husband also kept using up the mince on the wrong day!

The problem for me with eating in that structured way is that if it breaks down for any reason (late nights at work/unexpected social events/illness) then I find it almost impossible to return to it. I also start to rebel against the structure even though I know it’s helpful to me. And sometimes I have no energy to cook the designated meals and then everything falls apart.

And I wonder whether having these rules in place, even with no calorie restriction, are kind of a diet in themselves - if ‘diet’ means controlling our food intake? Not trying to be confrontational, just pondering on when our ‘guard rails’ become restrictions. Obviously this is going to be different for everyone.

@Helenahandkart i see what you’re saying and the all or nothing mentality is probably common among binge eaters and is what leads us to binge. I suppose when you start on that path it’s easy to add to it and get lost down a rabbit hole, finding yourself back where you started.

I need some structure as without it it triggers my anxiety, which triggers my binge eating.

Meal planning for shopping helps me as I know what I’m eating and it gives me some structure. My husband understands my anxiety now and so will ask what’s for tea and if he can deviate from it 😂 he doesn’t know or understand I have BED but knows enough about my anxiety and how he can support me. Also he really doesn’t give a shit aslong as he’s fed. He is an intuitive eater. I’m so jealous of his uncomplicated relationship with food.

I meal plan so I can shop though and shop with the family in mind. Not just me.