Waking Up

This used to be a fairly tragic experience. In fact over the years, my ED has usually given me the worst start to the day.

In the beginning my eating disorder was intrinsically linked to my weight. I WAS A WOMAN OBSESSED.  I would wake up in the morning and rush to the scales with excitement, as I hadn’t eaten much the day before. I would then repeatedly weigh myself throughout the day. Looking back, I had been on a diet and viewed certain/entire food groups negatively. Like pasta and bread. I never thought I was putting myself on a diet for life, but looking back, that’s what was occurring. If you’re also doing that then STOP. I know it sounds hard. But really, are you trying to eat nothing for the rest of your life?

I was constantly trying to eat nothing to make up for a ‘bad day’ the day before. I used to con myself into believing that if I did a few days of eating nothing, then my body weight would be ‘right’ and at that point I would begin eating normally. This is the WORST thing you can do. No wonder I got to the point in a day (like any normal person that hasn’t eaten) where I felt so low physically that I was rushing to eat. And of course as soon as I had one bite of a forbidden food (which to be honest was nearly everything) I would forfeit all self discipline and think it was fine to go absolutely crazy and eat till my body literally couldn’t keep the food down and I could hardly walk to the toilet.

 It’s crazy, it’s shameful and quite frankly pretty disgusting but I learned to live with it. In fact more than that, I learned to feel like it was a normal part of my behavior and scheduled it into my daily routine. At the start I remember feeling happy if I woke up at 10/11 as it meant I’d already skipped breakfast for the day. However as time went on I became quite accepting of the fact that I would binge eat and purge that day. I remember once walking my boyfriend to work at 7:30 in the morning, knowing full well that I would return via the supermarket. That’s when my Bulimia Nervosa started to take a more dangerous spiral. I started having days where I would binge/purge binge/purge all day.

It sounds awful, and it was, it truly was. But the overeating and purging gave me such a high that I couldn’t seem to give it up. I felt all the problems of the world simply disappear as soon as I began shoveling food into my mouth.

An Introduction

Hi my name is *Lily, I’m 24 years old and I’ve had Bulimia Nervosa for just over 4 years.

I thought I’d start an honest blog regarding my reflections over the past 4 years as well as my journey towards recovery. It warms my heart to think that my words could potentially make someone feel better about their eating disorders or not feel quite so alone. As I think that’s where the issue stems from.

When you have a cold or you’re going to the dentist it’s easy to tell your friends, get help and recover. But my eating disorder has always made me feel like I’m completely alone and no one knows how I feel. I felt/feel shameful and disgusting and quite frankly embarrassed. I’m to this day mortified by my behavior and incredibly judgmental of myself. Yet I repeatedly make a conscience decision to buy large amounts of food, binge-eat then purge.

It has completely taken over my life and whilst it hasn’t’ destroyed my relationships and I’m luckily enough to not have had too many health problems it has still cast the most enormous shadow over my existence.

You must read this and think ‘four years! What were you thinking?’ but honestly the time has flown by. This is the problem. Because there were days where I ‘ate normally’ with relative ease I never really thought I had a problem. Until about 3 years into it I always thought I could stop if I truly wanted or if I fixed x, y and z in my life.

It wasn’t until recently that my life spiraled downwards and my Bulimia Nervosa completely took over my life. I felt that each day I lived purely to consume large quantities of food. It have me a high and made all the problems disappear from my life…. Until a few hours afterwards when I’d just feel worse, and then… guilty.

Over the years I’ve half heartedly attempted to ‘recover’ but it hasn’t been till the last month that I’ve made DRASTIC attempts to change. For one I’ve moved countries and moved back home with my mum to focus solely on it.

To someone that has never had a problem with eating I don’t think you can understand how hard it truly is.

But nevertheless I’m trying and here’s a blog with some of my thoughts.