Bulimia Help

Alright...so I'm not trying to trick myself into thinking I'm totally happy with my body image and am fine with any amount of weight gain, and so on.

I'm still struggling with my ED thoughts and my idea of the "perfect body" and desires to achieve it (although those thoughts and compulsions have lessened over the past few weeks, which is an amazing feeling in itself).

But I feel like I'm having little breakthroughs and it's making me really happy and helping me to believe in my own recovery more and more.

Yesterday I was alone in the apartment and was having a pretty good day - went shopping earlier and visited my sister and her dog, and was just hanging around until my boyfriend came back from out of town. Since I was bored, I thought

I'd go through my closet and play dress-up a little, just for fun. I was worried that it might make me feel depressed, because I've gained weight and bigger than even before my ED, since my body is at a high point of fluctuation as it re-balances itself, and I don't feel entirely comfortable with it. But I felt like I was strong enough, as I've done pretty well this week.

So I was trying on some dresses and heels and stuff and just playing around, and dresses that were once loose on me fit perfectly, which would've thrown me into a depression had this been a month ago.

When I tried them on at first, I had a little pang of "OMG...they FIT - OH NO!" but I managed to successfully ignore those thoughts and they went away pretty quickly - it felt good! Anyways, I have this one dress that's basically a "weight gain barometer" for me.

I bought it last year when I was probably 5 lbs thinner - I wasn't fully engaged in ED behaviour at that time though, it was during an "off" period (although I was semi-ana and weight obsessed, as was usual during those periods, just no b/p-ing).

I'm in a very strange place lately. I assume it's to be expected, since actively trying to recover is something I've never done before - instead of just trying to stop b/p-ing, I'm trying to change my whole perception on my body, my values, self-acceptance, the lot. I feel like I've made a lot of progress (I haven't purged in about three weeks, and I haven't had any MAJOR binge sessions), but I know that I have a long way to go. It's just so, so hard to try and transform your mind and the image you have of yourself. For years, I have been focused on weight and looks and seen myself in a certain way, aiming to be XX pounds underweight (even if I didn't consciously realize the entire time that I was striving to be underweight). I'm mad at myself for even having gotten into this stupid disorder and having ever dieted. I had a great body before all of this, and it was constant and predictable. If I ate a lot for a while, like if I went on vacation or just ate really, really badly for a couple weeks, then I would gain weight - but then I would just go back to eating normally, and my body would bounce right back to where it was supposed to be. But for some reason I decided that I would look better if I lost a "little" weight, "why not try?" And the rest is history. Now I've screwed my body up and have to go through this bizarre transition phase and all this work just to re-learn what I used to be like, naturally. I know hindsight is 20/20, but it still sucks. Don't you wish you could just go back to the first time you thought about dieting, and tell yourself "it's not worth it! Just stay the way you are, stay healthy". I guess this is all coming from the fact that I'm feeling really weird in my body right now. I've gained weight from a combination of my normalized eating, and the fact that my body is trying to get used to a regular, continuous amount of food, and random little binges that I've had over the past few weeks.

Sooo I'm not sure what it is but lately I have been feeling really positive and happy. The only thing I can think of that has changed is that my recovery is going smoothly and summer is starting (in Toronto it's the first week of summer and it's been 30 degrees all week! Aaaah summer is so short and sweet for us Canadians...). Other than that, nothing has really changed...except I guess that the fact that my recovery is starting to work is changing everything else. I'm so much more relaxed and happy, not stressing about things, confident, productive, etc. Not to mention my relationship with my boyfriend is getting better and we are so much happier as a couple, just in these last few weeks. We've been together for almost five years and he's stuck by me through this whole ordeal and seen my at my worst (and taken the brunt of it many, many times), and even he's seen the change in me - he says I'm smiling all the time and much more laid back and silly and carefree and seem like my old self again. Just hearing that makes me want to succeed in recovery that much more. I'm really pleased with how things are going, especially since I've had slip ups in that time and have moved forward without spiraling into that old familiar cycle and started to hate myself again for it. If things were going too perfectly then I would be scared that things were too good to be true and I wasn't properly dealing with why I b/p, but there have been ups and downs so far and things still seem to be moving in the right direction. I've never felt this way before - I'm actually accepting my body for the first time in years as a normal body with a few extra pounds - before, I had periods where I "loved" my body, but that was only when I was underweight and working out like crazy and undereating. So I thought I looked good but I wasn't loving or accepting my body in any way, I was hurting and controlling it.

Ughhhh.....so I know that recovery is full of setbacks but it still doesn't mean they don't suck any less, even when you know they're supposed to happen. I had a great week and was doing pretty well with structured eating and feeling like a "normal" person, then I went to my parent's house for the weekend (the house I grew up in), and went to a big bbq party at my friend's place. Needless to say, I drank a LOT and ate a LOT. And the next day I was feeling gross and fat and it was the first nice day in a while so I tried the whole bikini-by-the-pool thing, but I guess I'm not in a place to handle that yet. It threw me into a depressive spiral. I'm trying to appreciate my body without trying to mold it into this super-skinny ideal that I have in my head, and I'm certain that I don't even actually want that - because I know that to get to that point, I need to resort to extreme behaviour and dieting, which I know I don't want to get into again. But right now I've gained maybe 6-7 lbs from my b/p's (does anyone else GAIN weight when they're the thick of bulimic cycles?) and my body just doesn't feel like my own. It feels like one massive trouble spot instead of the little ones I was accustomed to before. SIGH. Just part of recovery, I guess. I know my body will change quite a bit and probably feel strange to me while I'm waiting for it to adjust to it's set-point weight. Anyways, I was also surrounded by tons of bad food since I was at my parent's place, and I almost associate that house with eating and bingeing and bad points of my ED from over the years, so it's almost like I got sucked right back into that mindset without even realizing what was happening. I purged a little bit, but stopped myself, which is good. But I didn't stop bingeing the entire weekend. This morning I felt really sick, and was up from being sick all night (actual sick, not self-induced sick), so i called into work sick and stayed home all day.

So far, things have been going really well. I'm not sure what it is, but this time (as in, time I've tried to become "normal" and start recovery) feels different than all the other times. Other times, I would still have the obsessive thoughts about hating my body and be fixated on losing weight, I would just resolve to stop the b/p's. But I wasn't really trying to recover, I was just trying to transition from bulimia to anorexia. Still calorie-counting, still criticising every inch of fat on my body, the whole lot. This time, I'm having extended periods where I don't think about food, or my body, at all. I'm not counting calories, I'm only focusing on eating things I know to be healthy, and not eating too little or way too much. I'm thinking of why I want to eat, and evaluating if I'm actually hungry, not denying real hunger, and eating things because I actually want to and not because they are "good" and I'm restricting or "bad" because I've decided to binge. Also, when I look in the mirror I'm seeing the big picture and realizing that even though I'm at the high end of my weight fluctuations (due to many binges and no exercise over the last few months), I'm still small and actually have a really cute body...and I'm starting to embrace having a little bit of pudge here and there (which used to make me want to go run 10,000 km just to burn it all away, or eat the world in food in an fit of depression). My first session with my therapist on Monday did wonders, even though we only covered the basics - it really, really helps to talk to someone who's objective, and seeing a therapist makes my recovery more "official" in a way. Which makes me more dedicated. I know that this has come really quickly and seems too good to be true, so I'm waiting for that moment when I decide I'm a fat cow and have been tricking myself this whole time, and the ED rears it's ugly head - it's coming, I know it is.

Totally exhausted. Had a bad weekend that started with getting way too drunk on Friday and coming home to a massive b/p session that I passed out in the middle of. Needless to say, I woke up feeling disgusting and hungover, both from alcohol and the massive amounts of food still sitting in my stomach. I was so depressed that it set the rest of the weekend for me...I ate everything in sight and spent the entire time in a dazed stupor. On the other hand, it was pretty rock-bottom and the last b/p in a seemingly endless string that has gotten especially bad since my boyfriend has been out of town and I'm alone and free to do whatever I want during the evening hours - it's a recipe for disaster. So it's made me especially determined to try and get over this, for good - not just to try and be an "occasional" bulimic, or transition to anorexic, like I've tricked myself into trying before, and thinking would actually work. My boyfriend is completely in on it now, he's known about this since it started and I let him know that it's gotten really bad again, but now he's active in trying to help me recover, so I'm held accountable for specific things and have him to lean on. I'm trying the "structured eating" starting today, it's not a total departure from how I used to eat before, minus the binges...but now I'm not counting calories and not sticking to an allotted calorie amount each day. I'm just going to eat things that I know are healthy, eat normal portions and eat at designated times, keeping it as simple as that. And since my bf knows what I'm doing, he'll be fully aware that when I'm eating something at 10pm, it's me doing somethign to hurt myself, not something I actually want. Today's been weird and a bit of a roller coaster of emotions though, already (and it's only noon).