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 🙂

Oh god. Yes. This a million times over. I'm so resentful about cooking everyone's good at the moment. I'm beyond bored of it and could quite easily live in toast and convenience foods.

*food

*on. Bloody stupid phone.

Would something like hello fresh or gusto help you? So atleast you’re getting some decent and nutritious but takes a lot of the planning and prep away?

I do wish I was one of those people who doesn't like chocolate!
Still no binging (by which I've realised I mean uncontrolled eating, generally quite frenzied) but I did eat a lot of ice cream last night and found a box of chocolates left from Christmas and am working my way through them.

I'd like to join please as a "recovered" anorexic who has been on a post-baby diet recently had had had an issue with BED now due to restriction. Looking for some inspo to break the cycle!

One really good bit of advice I got from a therapist on BED for those that struggle with the "oh, I've ruined it now, may as well carry on eating whatever I want" spiral was this: imagine you stole a pack of polos from a corner shop. You couldn't then think "well I've ruined it now, might as well rob a bank/commit murder". It doesn't HAVE to escalate, just try and take a step back and think rationally. Even if you feel like you haven't made a choice you'd like to, it doesn't have to end in binging or purging behaviour.

I’m really working hard to separate being a bit indulgent and enjoying “bad” food with binging. Had a glass of wine - fine. Down the bottle and start binging without control - not ok that’s a binge. My binges often start as a perfectly acceptable snack/item of “bad” food like a biscuit and escalate when I hit the “fuck it” button.

Just listening to The Fuck it Diet on my commute - struggling with it if I’m honest.

Im struggling with the lack of middle ground. I understand I shouldn’t be dieting or restricting but what should I do? In a world of addictive UPF I can’t believe I should be eating Chicago town pizza for tea.

I also know that there’s many things I find easier about being thin which aren’t just vanity. I like my thighs not rubbing together, I like that exercise feels easier and more enjoyable, I like that i feel more energised by not eating crap, I like that my prolapse feels better and my asthma is under better control (sorry for TMI). So I’m finding it difficult listening to “it’s ok to be obese” because for me, there’s many good reasons not to be.

@hippygirllucky welcome!

Your post illustrated perfectly what I was saying about how binges begin and why that’s nonsensical!

@Morningcoffeeview yeah it really put it into perspective for me :) it doesn't make any logical sense at all.

@Morningcoffeeview I’m also struggling with the Fuck It Diet. It’s all very well saying you should accept getting bigger, but if you’re already much too big and you know that every pound you gain will make your knees hurt more and your thighs bleed and make it hard to walk up the stairs then giving in to that is a scary prospect.
I have lost some weight this year and feel so much better physically. the thought of putting it on again is not tempting.
I looked at pictures of the author and she is fairly slim, and I think was fairly slim (and young) when she wrote the book. Although I could identify with a lot of what she said I am in a very different place to her in my life.

I struggled with the fuck it diet too but came to appreciate what she was saying more when I put it into action. I didn't binge on anything but I removed all restrictions. I said, okay, if I want pizza for dinner, that's fine. If I want cake I'll have it. I wasn't saying, go ahead and binge (although lots of eating disorder specialists do say that this can be a good exercise - to experience a binge more objectively? I've never tried it) but I just tried really hard to stop seeing foods as 'good' and 'bad'.

I don't know why it worked for me - because I was really panicking about putting on weight - but it did help me to stop binging. I think maybe it was removing the moralising, silencing that voice that nagged me constantly, that helped. Prior to this I was orthorexic as well as binging, as in, I wouldn't even eat a banana because I thought it was bad for me. I was trying to eat 'perfectly', starving myself, and then binging. So taking away the judgement on foods was really helpful for me. To say, there's no good or bad foods - only foods I like and make me feel good, and foods I don't like and make me feel bad.

Another piece for me was about how dieting and restriction had got me to a place of being overweight and unhealthy. So carrying on doing the same thing was obviously not smart. So for me, the fuck it diet was kind of a hard reset. Get rid of all restrictions - freeing. Stop going round in circles with diets/binges. Then I started on learning to eat more intuitively. So I'd say, yes, I can have this entire tube of gf pringles (an UPF) if I want it, but I'd also try to observe whether I did actually want the entire tube, and how I felt afterwards. I found it was possible to stop after just a few and put the rest away, as long as I wasn't physically hungry. I also found that I didn't feel good physically after eating them. So now they are not something I ever eat, but I'm not scared of them. If someone else brought them into the house and I had a handful, I wouldn't be worried that I'd eat the whole lot of them. But equally I could choose to do that if I wanted to. I just wouldn't want to, because I know how unwell they make me feel.

It took me a long time to get to that point, but the fuck it diet was very freeing for me. However, I did also grieve for the dream of being thin and perfect. I also agree that she was quite slim to start with and this did affect how I read the book. There are hardly any overweight binge eating coaches - which in a way feels like a good thing, because it suggests that people who overcome binge eating by removing restrictions do go on to settle at a decent size. On the other hand, it is probably healthier to be overweight and stable at that weight than it is to be yo-yo-ing up and down. I think for me, I was at the point where I was miserable and felt out of control of my life because of my eating disorder, and the most important thing at that point was to be able to overcome it.

I’m glad it’s worked for you.

For me, I don’t feel that intuitive eating can replace binging and think it’s disingenuous to say it’s ok to just be fat.

I feel like we’re in a constant conflict and almost age of information overload (and I’m so guilty of trying to digest it all) the diet industry, the food industry, body confidence.

I’m not overweight so I don’t feel I can relate to someone who is obese and tbh I think the same is true of the author. There’s some good content in there and I’ve only listened to an hour so far so might change my mind. But not sure I’m on board RN. I play with a stone that goes up and down. My real issue is binging so maybe it’s not the F it diet that’s right for me.

I didn't say intuitive eating can replace binging? That's not really my experience. IE is one of the (many) tools I use to overcome my eating disorder. I think I mentioned before that I do still have some 'restrictions' in place, and also don't have much intuition when it comes to food, but learning about which foods I actually like and dislike was an experience that really helped me. The bit of intuitive eating I find too hard is knowing my hunger/fullness cues. I've got better with that but still prefer to eat more mechanically and have some rules around my eating.

I also didn't say it's okay to just be fat - but of course it actually is. The constant fat hatred is a big part of the diet mentality. I know some women who have come to terms with being overweight and who are being as healthy as possible at the size that they are. That's maybe not as healthy as they could be at a smaller weight, but it's got to be healthier than battling an eating disorder for the rest of your life. But as you say, you are not overweight - an extra stone wouldn't make you obese or unhealthy. For someone who is bigger, it may be more of an issue, especially from a health point of view. I personally have lost weight recovering from my eating disorder(s), but I have also had to battle very hard with my fear of putting on more weight and the grief over giving up my dream of ever being properly skinny.

The fuck it diet may not be for you, but everyone I'm aware of who supports eating disorder recovery will follow the same principles of not restricting, and of encouraging eating intuitively. So I think you are going to keep hitting up against these ideas in your recovery. Maybe you could have a look at the original Intuitive Eating book? It does go into a lot of detail on the principles and it's basically the bible of eating disorder recovery so it's probably worth a read.

The Binge Eating Therapist has loads of videos on youtube about losing/gaining weight, and the podcast she does with Stefanie Michelle, Life After Diets, has also had some good episodes. When I did an online group session with her a while back, she asked the question of whether you would be happy to stay at your current weight if you had perfect health and everything else in your life was good. Most people said yes, but some said no, I'd still want to be smaller. She was really supportive of that and I think her resources on losing and gaining weight are very helpful. Most people who recover from BED do lose weight but it takes time and it's a bit of a fucker because as soon as you start dieting again, it all goes to hell. You have to trust the process when you've got no experience of it working yet, which is really hard!

I'm just talking about my own experience here, by the way. I'm sure you'll find a way that works for you, and it probably won't look like anyone else's recovery. It's so personal. I know for me the thought of giving up restrictions was incredibly difficult and took me a long time to get my head around, but once I did, I started regaining so much health and confidence and stopped binging. But I also know some people would rather keep on restricting and just try to control their binging - I guess that's the hope of all diets, but there must be ways to make it work? You might find that making sure you simply eat enough of all the (legit) food groups might be enough to stop you from binging - more mechanical eating rather than intuitive? Adding friction into your world, making it harder to get your binge foods, coming up with a set of tactics for when you get the urge to binge, joining overeaters anonymous? There are lots of ways and you can take a bit from anything you think might suit you.

Sorry for the long post!

Thanks @beastlyslumber I know you didn’t say those things. It was my interpretation of the author so far. Sorry if it was worded badly.

I think you suggested mechanical eating on the other thread and that’s what I’m doing right now - plan my 3 set meals and snacks for the day. If I’m genuinely hungry in-between I’m allowing myself to eat. I’m finding it helpful in that it’s focusing my mind on what I’ve planned for the day and not what I could be having. But I’m saying NO to binging. I’ve done way better than I ever anticipated and dare say it’s been 3 weeks since I binged (I’ve not been mechanically eating this long - I’ve introduced that in the last ten days or so). I have the fear that BoB discusses - is this forever? Who knows!

Intuitive eating a step too far right now but who knows how I’ll feel in the future!

That sounds like a brilliant approach, tbh. I find that it's so much easier to dismiss binge urges when I'm not hungry. Sleep helps a lot as well. And not being pre-menstrual/hormonal.

I feel like recovery for me has been very up and down but the overall trajectory is towards not binging. Some things have got easier, and some continue to be difficult but I've just kept going, trying different things, looking at different resources, and generally just sticking with it. For all the books I've read, I think the most successful way has been to build my own recovery programme - taking whatever works for me from various people and cobbling it together in a way that seems to do what I need it to do! Hopefully it will feel more and more easier as time goes on.

That long post was great Beastly -totally agree, for most people, each diet/binge cycle has led to more unwanted weight and more misery at the restriction and ‘loss of control’. Being heavier than is desirable but free of the constant judgement and unhappiness has to be better than continuing that cycle into the future?

I think it’s worth saying that maybe there’s a perception of IE as being a ‘perfect’ way of eating and people who do it, do it consistently and easily. I don’t think that’s true. If you work at it then it can become a normal way of being but that’s not to say you’d always be acutely attuned to your body and what it needs, or that you would never disregard it and eat something purely for pleasure. It’s a useful practice.

alongside that, on the topic of weight, for those who aren’t actually overweight but still struggle with BED and the diet cycle. If you’ve dieted hard and managed to get to some target weight at some point (possibly repeatedly), then chances are that isn’t where your body really wants to be and it’s pretty damn clever at getting back to where it does want to be, and gets even better at it every time you diet. Trying to achieve that ‘perfect’ weight is a path to misery. Also, we aren’t really meant to weigh the same at 40 that we did at 20 (for example), yet that often seems to be the aim.

I feel like recovery for me has been very up and down but the overall trajectory is towards not binging.

This is great. I love that we’re discussing recovering as a concept it felt like a pipe dream a month or two ago. I think this is the first time in my adult life I’ve not binged in a 3 week period.

how are you doing @BusterGonad we are here whether it’s to celebrate success or share in the dark moments. Xx

@sleepwhenidie

i remember trying to find my natural weight: but I was at uni surrounded by junk and booze. I wonder how much your “natural” weight is dictated by circumstance too? So maybe there’s always an element of environment in that.

@Morningcoffeeview I'm doing okay, thank you for asking, I've started HRT which is good. A few side effects, being bloated is one and feeling a bit like I'm due a period is another. Eating wise I'm just chilling out with it and trying to become neutral about it all. I can't worry too much about the HRT and the binging. I just need to rest up a bit.

I was actually pretty slim during my college days. I think I kept a lid on my eating as I wanted to look good for my nights out, I was also busy working when not at college so I didn't get bored and eat, I was either at college, working or going out. I had a good balance with my eating, and binging wasn't a problem at this time.

I just ate from the vending machine and we had a cafe with costa in the uni building. Was there for my extra shot lattes. To be fair my weight was mostly ok as I was at the height of my bulimia. I tried to recover at one stage and piled it on…! But it didn’t address my binges at all.

Taq how are you doing? I meant to ask about the bad day you described and that you can’t identify why. How was your eating in the days previously? And how are things since that day?

I mentioned their podcast but super excited to stumble across their brand new book - Ultra Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken. Another thorough examination of UPF.

Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop? Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop? https://amzn.eu/d/6ebiNyo

I’ve started listening (I don’t have time to read 🤣) and enjoying it so far. Again, all about UPF and the food industry. They’ve tricked us!

Hope you’re all ok.

@Morningcoffeeview what is the answer I just completely understand about so many things about feeling better I want good health I want to feel great in my body vibrant healthy not hating how I feel and look