Hi OP, I think that (understandably) you’ve had replies so far from people who don’t have experience of an eating disorder, and in particular no experience of a laxative addiction in that context. I had many years of an ED (now recovered most of the time) and a crippling laxative addiction for many of those years.
Like you I’ve seen all the stuff about weight loss injections and the old ED bit of my brain thinks “yay! Completely allowed drug that could strip weight off”. It’s what I LONGED for in my laxative abuse days. My BMI is a steady 24 now so the recovered part of me obviously won’t take weight loss jabs but, as you will know, the ED part thinks I’m huge so it’s tempting.
For you I think the first thing must be to tell someone that you’re tempted to go back to laxatives and (this is true regardless of weight) therefore having ED thoughts so need some support to keep on track and away from the pills and the other ED behaviours. That is, I know, a hard thing to admit to …
I’ve been in your shoes of being overweight post ED and it’s very challenging because yes, you do need to lose weight objectively BUT, as I think you’ll know, the very act of losing weight is highly likely to trigger your ED thoughts and behaviour and, without support, losing is very likely to become addictive and cause unhealthy behaviours even if the initial weight loss is done in a healthy way.
For someone with your / my history, my instinct is that weight loss have are highly likely to become an addiction (ie replace the laxatives in terms of behaviours). That’s certainly what I think for myself…. If, which outside the ED contact is totally fair enough with your BMI, you conclude you do need to lose weight and want / need to do that via jabs, I really really REALLY urge you do do that alongside counselling to avoid the jabs being tied up into the same old ED thoughts (ie to avoid them being the addiction that the laxies were) AND I’d suggest you need the support of a nutritionist to ensure that while having the jabs and losing weight you maintain a grip on what healthy eating looks like. I’ve certainly experienced losing weight both during ED and in recovery and, because the losing weight is so beguiling and addictive for me, losing all sense of what normal eating looks like (eg I’ve previously in recovery, but really in a resurge of ED behaviours, but all carbs and thought that was very normal).
I think there’s nowhere near enough talk about weight loss jabs in the context of disordered eating, so feasibly with the right support, perhaps the jabs might actually help remove the ED “noise” (I’ve heard those sorts of descriptions from overwaters), but I think specifically with a laxie history, you need to be very alive to the potential addiction and therefore seek sone quite heavy duty ED support while you take the jabs.
As I say, I think (totally understandably) lots of the people raving about the jabs don’t understand EDs!
I really feel for you, I found dieting (where my BMI was genuinely high) post ED a very, very challenging thing. For me, it did re trigger my ED (and I lost way too much, despite having recovers from the ED and laxative abuse first time round 10 years before and had three children since then), but I then sought help yet again and am now on a more even keel. For me, I had counselling which in fact focussed on not restricting at all (so eating only 100 calls for me is restricting and is triggering) and having permission to eat what I want but without binging and knowing what proper nutrition looks like (eg having plenty of animal fats and allowing carbs etc).
Please be careful xxxx