Mild eating disorder - how can I recreate the terror that worked so well last time??

[Celerysalz]

Sorry if that sounds flippant and I hope it's ok to post on the MH board - I appreciate there are so many with worse problems than this. Have NC'ed anyway ...

I've always been a bit of an erratic eater, since my teens. Never actually became bulimic, though I tried several times, and it has caused me a lot of upset and despair over the years.

At uni, in my second-to-last year, I was eating so much crap - whole packets of biscuits, tins of condensed milk, blah blah, the usual script - and I was so preoccupied with food that it was affecting my marks. My degree was going to be awarded mainly by continuous assessment, and that year I did lots of crap assignments and ended up with 2:2 marks - due, frequently, to not being able to concentrate while writing an essay at 9pm, knowing that I could nip down to the corner shop at any time to get a family-size bag of Minstrels. Fighting a constant mental battle with myself.

I was totally determined to get a 2:1 and, indeed, was genuinely terrified at the prospect of not - it was always what I was aiming for and would have felt I'd let myself down not to get it. So I knew I had to come up with a plan. I'd tried totally going cold turkey with sugar, etc, before, but I knew that was far too extreme and it had to be something realistic that I could actually stick to. So I determined to eat 3 meals a day, no more, no less ... and that was it, basically. Really, really simple. At the beginning, there was the odd day where I'd eaten all my meals by 1pm and had to wait till the next morning to eat, but things settled down really quickly, and it worked wonders - it was such a huge relief not to have to think about food every minute of the day, not to have to agonise over whether I should have that donut or this chocolate bar, because I knew I just wouldn't (unless it was part of a meal). Yes, it was motivated by terror of failure, but the regime totally freed up my mind, my marks started getting better and hey presto, I got my 2:1. Great, mission accomplished. The next few years I was a lot more relaxed about food, though I didn't carry on the 3-meals thing after a while.

Fast forward to now. (Thanks if you're still reading!) I have still always been prone to binges, and just to eating crap I knew I didn't really want to eat. I've always more or less got away with it though, in terms of my weight as I've always done a lot of walking. I've still not been happy with my lack of control, though.

In the last year or so things have been getting worse. I eat so much cheap crappy kids chocolate - 8 creme eggs for £1 or whatever, and they're gone in a day etc - and if I bake with the DC or whatever, which I love doing, once they've had a cupcake each I can't stop myself hoovering up the rest later. I'm starting to get pretty dumpy and flabby - over 10st now - and the last 6 months or so I've been picking up all manner of little bugs and colds etc, because I think my immune system has been lowered by the lack of vitamins etc. Find it hard to eat fruit and sometimes I realise several days have gone by since I did.

I suppose that's all a longwinded way of saying it's a bogstandard willpower/motivation problem ... but does anyone have any advice on how to get myself under control again? The situation I had at uni was so unique that obviously I don't have the same motivation going on atm. I would love to have that feeling again, though, I'm 40 in 4 months and I'm determined to sort it by then somehow ... but then I was determined on my 39th bday, when I still had a year to go. And then again when there was 6 months to go etc. But my determinatino just falls flat, when I can add a kingsize twix onto the bill at the petrol station and eat it in the car going home ...

Sorry it's all so long, I'm really grateful for you reading.

[BabyRuSh]

Have you considered weight watchers? It may be a system that works for you as you can work out what you're going to eat that day (based on the points) and then you have to stick to it. I think it's a great eating plan. You don't have to go hungry, and can eat lots of fruit and veg..

[HungryClocksGoBackFourSeconds]

No I didn't know that, sorry!

[celerysalz]

I'm sorry to take so long to reply to this.

HungryClocks, I do appreciate your link, but did you know that Overeaters Anonymous's solutions appear to centre round turning your life over to God??!

Atheist here, I'm afraid.

But if anyone knows any similar sites for heathens ...

[HungryClocksGoBackFourSeconds]

this might be of use