Bulimia Help

I B/Ped last night but the binges are getting significantly smaller every time, so things are ok. I WILL BEAT THIS I WILL BEAT THIS I WILL BEAT THIS. I WILL BE NORMAL AGAIN. I WILL BE HAPPY AGAIN.

I WILL BE MY NATURAL WEIGHT WITHOUT HAVING TO STRUGGLE.

I am completely exhausted and frustrated. Every time I think I'm doing great, I am and then I come crashing down and it gets easier to pick myself back up, which is the positive part-- but I just wanna be there. I just wanna be done with this I've been suffering for 8 friggen years now I've had ENOUGH!!!

I b/p last night after doing so well and feeling on top of the world and losing weight easily and healthfully. And as soon as I binge I feel like crap because my teeth are gonna rot, I gain weight, my skin looks awful, I am unfriendly and angry at the world, insecure, stressed, the list goes on and on! I literally feel like there's hatred in the form of fat clinging to my body and I just need to let go of this f*cking problem and the weight will melt off but I get so impatient waiting for it to happen!

Sorry if this is an angry rant I just am so fed up.

Things are looking really up. I feel so balanced. It's wonderful how focusing on recovering from bulimia makes all the other "problems" in my life disappear. I'm a happier, more friendly person. I'm better at my job. I no longer look at things in my life and think they are horrible. I'm so at peace with the moment and with the way things are.

My only fear is that at some point I'm going to come crashing down. It's as if it's too good to be true to be losing weight slowly and easily (I carry excess weight because of my ED rather than the other way around) and enjoying life so much. Before, I always felt like I had to work hard to lose weight and then once I lost the weight THEN I could do X, Y, and Z. Now I have all this energy that I use for other things - energy that was all spent on TRYING (and failing) to lose weight.

Bulimia for me is the biggest paradox. In order to stop bingeing, I had to stop purging first-- you would think it would be the other way around. In order to lose weight, I have to stop trying to lose weight. In order to pull myself out of depression, I have to FEEL my feelings, not subdue them with bingeing and purging. All the things that help me are the exact opposite of what seems rational. And I can't believe it's taken me 8 years to realize this.

So how do I go forward and never look back? I'm so in balance right now, how can I avoid spiraling downward? How can I make this the home-stretch? I feel like I'm on third base and I just want to run straight home, but something is keeping me from leaving the plate.

I guess I'll figure it out... does anyone else feel this way?

"98% of the time dieters end up putting on more weight after a diet has ended." This is one of the quotes at the top right-hand corner of the website. If that's isn't enough motivation to just stop dieting then I don't know what is.

I don't have much time to blog right now, because I have to get ready for work. But I have to say that my progress lately has been absolutely wonderful, in part because of this website and a lot because of journaling. Journaling helps sooo much.

I've been doing yoga, doing some very moderate, non-obsessive cardio at the gym, and eating foods that I am craving and I'm slowly losing weight so easily. And really, it's not about the weight at all, because I'm noticing my mood changing dramatically since I feel so in balance. I'm trying to simplify my life as much as possible. I go to the gym because I feel like sweating a little bit and I want to read my book - NOT because I need to punish myself and lose weight. NOT because I need to make up for a binge. NOT because I want to be thinner than so-and-so. I feel like my weight is a protective cushion that I'm slowly shedding as I'm allowing love and fun enter my life.

I've also noticed that there's no wonder I binged every night, since I wasn't eating real meals and I wasn't eating enough before 4pm every day. I'd eat JUST enough to not be hungry all day until 4 and then my hunger would end up catching up with me so much that I spent the rest of the day bingeing knowing full well that the next morning I'd eat like a bird again.

So much more to say later but I hope everyone is doing well and know that every day gets easier and better.

So I've definitely come a long, long way since my bulimia was at its worst. And most of the time I feel really positive about my recovery and I eat normally. But at least once a day I get a strong urge to binge. Most of the time I fight my way out of it, but it's getting exhausting. When is it going to go away? When am I going to just be normal like everyone else. It's literally an addiction just like drugs, cigarettes, or alcohol. And the worst part is, it's socially less acceptable to be addicted to bingeing and purgeing than any of aforementioned! It's so weird to be addicted to such strange behavior and I keep asking myself, How did I ever get this way?!

And one of the hardest things to come to terms with is that I have to give up the fight to lose weight, because ultimately it's what's keeping me from going down to my natural weight anyway. But it's so hard to stop wanting to try to lose weight in order to have a normal relationship with food so that I lose weight. Also, I know that what's best for me is that I do moderate exercise about 5 times a week. But this is difficult because exercise itself can be a trigger since the only reason I ever exercised in the past was to lose weight and it always accompanied a diet. Now I need to find a healthy relationship with exercise so that I can be healthy without over-doing it.

I started to write this blog to fight off an urge to binge, and it definitely worked. It's amazing how hard it is to fight off habits that I've had for 8 years now!!

I have been reading The Only Diet There Is by Sondra Ray (would HIGHLY recommend it to everyone!). It's not a "diet" book it's all about compulsive overeating and dieting and how we eat our feelings, etc. I wanted to quote a part that I really love:

"The first fashion models of women's clothing were very curvy, voluptuous women. These women had bodies that were getting more attention than the clothes! to end this problem very slender, even skinny, women came to be chosen as models. These models got people to look at the clothes, rather than at the bodies in them. As a result, yesterday's female body type, chosen because it would be ignored, has become today's ideal!"

I know a lot of people talk about how models have gotten thinner over the years, but I always thought (in my ED mind) this was more because the standards for beauty went HIGHER and Sondra Ray's quote makes me realize that the standard actually went LOWER so that the clothes became the emphasis rather than the bodies. I have a Scarlett Johannsen sort of curvy body with a tiny waist and thin arms and legs and have always struggled with my curves as something that is bad. I have recently started to accept my curves as an asset!

If you notice, even today there is a difference between fashion models and "glamour models". Glamour models are photographed in sexual poses (think Playboy), and most of the time they have more realistic bodies than the fashion models. I dunno - just an ah-ha moment for me.

Can anyone think of some other past and present voluptuous models/celebrities we can look up to? Marilyn Monroe is the most obvious... Scarlett Johannsen is my inspiration...

Okay so lately I've been doing okay - I've been positive about my recovery and being really kind to myself. But last night I drank wayy to much, woke up extremely hungover, and had to go to work tonight (I'm a waitress). The urge to binge was really strong today. I felt extremely fat and depressed. I ate my way through the day and finished strong with 6 cookies and finished the bag of tostido chips, tried to throw it up but couldn't really. Now I'm feeling soooooo depressed like there's really no reason to go on. I'm so frustrated, I'm crying - I need HELP!! I don't know what to do. I hate my body. Tomorrow I'm supposed to go on vacation with my family to my cousin's house who lives on a lake. I don't feel comfortable in a bathingsuit and I won't be able to go to the gym.

What do I do? Please tell me there's hope of recovery - I just can't take it anymore I want to be happy and I'm sick of carrying all these extra binge pounds on my body it's killing me. This feels like rock bottom.