Bulimia Help

Structured eating is HARD.
It takes so much concerntration. IT'S BORING.
And it's really hard.

I'm only on day 5 and I'm already bored with the rigidity of it.

I don't want to give up but I wish it was easier.
I can't do anything when I'm eating other than think about what I'm eating. I have to keep reminding myself to eat slowly and really chew my food and really think about what it is I'm eating.
It takes me ages to decide what it is I actually WANT to eat because I'm scared of eating something I don't want and feeling guilty about it.
IT'S REALLY FUCKING HARD.

Please tell me it gets easier?

Woke up at 1:30 pm.

[2:00 pm]
Coffee with cream/sugar

[3:00 pm]
Tuna sandwich with onion, lettuce, and pepper rings
10 Cherries

[5:00 pm, go to work]
1 Nectarine
1 Granola bar

[9:00 pm, get back from work]
1 Italian sausage
1 Piece of pizza
Salad with walnuts and cashews

[11:00 pm]
1 Bowl of cereal with hemp seed

I’m feeling pretty mixed up at the moment. I’ve started and discarded countless journal entries this week because my mental state right now is such that I can’t seem to make myself concentrate on any one thing for more than about 5 minutes.

Mentally, I’m not sure if I’ve ever been in worse shape. It’s probably because I just don’t have enough to occupy me at the moment to take my mind off the constant niggling thoughts about food, weight, body image ect. Every single day I take a ridiculous amount of photos of myself in various outfits to “see what I look like to other people”.

Speaking of which, I’ve completely forgotten how to dress my body. It’s changed so much in the past year or so that I just don’t know which ways up anymore. Last April I was severely underweight & steadily gained a total of 30 lbs by January of this year (I know that I need to gain weight but this was almost completely through bingeing which completely destroyed my confidence and caused by to tip into the binge/purge mentality - how I wish someone had taught me how to gain weight slowly and healthily....) and had then lost 2/3 of this "recovery weight" by March.
And, am I the only person who is a bit daunted by the fashions at the moment? It’s all so overwhelming and COMPLICATED. An outfit has to have all these kooky accessories thrown in. Why can’t I do this! There is also no way that I can afford to buy any new clothes at the moment which is horrible as all the new summer clothes are gorgeous!

I haven’t worn proper make-up in an age too so that’s another thing I’m going to have to re-learn. Every morning I wake up and just slather on some tinted moisturizer and a lick of mascara & that’s it.

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to share a new strategy I've been using really successfully recently. As most of you know I'm a massive fan of structured eating, even though I'm not as strict with it anymore because it's pretty natural to me I still make sure I eat every 3-4 hours and have three meals and one or two snacks a day.

But there are two main times when those cravings to overeat and binge are still around.. 1)When I have a hangover 2) just before my period is due.

Firstly and very importantly I've really learned to accept these feelings, I know they will happen, I know that it doesn't mean I will relapse and I know that I don't need to be so afraid of feeling this way.

So when I have these days I've started to adapt my structured eating so that I can eat every 2-3 hours. It's really working for me and I imagine it might be beneficial to others. For example rather than having my usual breakfast I will split up the food, have half of it at 8am and then eat again at 10am. So say if I was going to have some porridge (oatmeal) with a banana and a glass of fruit juice for my breakfast I might just have the porridge and then eat the banana and fruit juice a little later. I also usually add an extra snack in on these days.

I'm finding it really beneficial so I thought I would share. I really wouldnt want to eat that regularly most days as I find the 4 hour gap is perfect, but on those handful of days each month it seems to be a really effective method.

So it's been nearly eleven months of recovery for me now, but I know alot of you really struggle with structured eating at the start so I wanted to share how I personally took it on. I must stress this was my own approach, some may not find the methods I used helpful at all but here we are...

*Structured Eating is when you eat every 3-4 hours through the day, usually three meals and two or three snacks, eating foods from all the food groups, not banning anything and trying to make sure you get a healthy amount of calories every single day*

For the first few weeks that I used SE I was really strict and almost obsessive, at times it felt like I had replaced one obsession with another but I had faith that soon it would come naturally to me and I wouldn't have to be thinking about food and meals and how I was eating every second. This did happen, things get much easier I promise. It's hard to know what we should be eating, how much etc so I did as much research as I could, found out about the benefits of good nutrition, read about different foods, where I could get carbs, good fats, protein and fiber from etc. I knew a lot of it already but it really helps to read some of the benefits. The somethingfishy website has an excellent resource for reading about vitamins and minerals from foods too. With as much knowledge as I could find, I started my plan.

Please help me find the tips on structured eating on this site or can some one explain it to me in detail.

Hi everyone! Often I have people asking me how on earth I made it so far in recovery, how I started, what helped the most and so on, so I thought I would write a new blog about it. Apologies I know this is old ground for a lot of you, but if it can be helpful to anyone I thought it would be good to share. Looking back I will say that there were/are six main things that have helped and continue to help me through.

1) Hitting rock bottom.
It's sad that it often takes feeling like you've hit rock bottom before you want to get better, I see a lot of people mention this phrase and it was really true for me too. I was bingeing and purging continually, multiple times every single hour of every day, I couldn't sleep at night because I was so scared I wouldn't wake up again, I had pains everywhere, it was the worst time in my whole ten years of bulimia.

2) Wanting recovery more than ANYTHING and accepting that changes will happen.
This is a tough one. On my day one I must admit I was more like 80% committed to this than 100%. But I did want to get better more than anything, I told myself that no matter how scary it got, how much my weight changed, how hard it was to feel emotions without being able to binge and numb them - anything had to be better than the life I had been living. Luckly I soon found out this was true and I'd say within the first few weeks I completely talked myself into being committed to recovery 100%.

3) Finding this website
Speeks for itself really! This website played a very large role in saving my life.

4) Using structured eating

Hi everyone,

I'm new here... I've been reading the blogs for a few weeks now to try and help myself and just recently made an account.
In any case.. I'm like all of you doing my best to recover. I went to school counseling for the first time a week ago, it was so hard and scary to walk in there.. but because we are getting out soon they said they could refer me to someone by my home, which entails telling my family about my problem and I'm terrified of that.
So, I"m doing my best to read tips online and "recover myself" with the help of my boyfriend who does his best but let's be honest he doesn't quite get how I think..
Anyway.. does anyone feel that when they do structured eating they are more prone to a binge? I had been doing good having breakfast, lunch, a snack and then dinner and a snack afterwards if I was hungry. But, today, I tried a snack between breakfast and lunch and well, that just went way wrong.
I've also been trying to re-introduce my trigger foods in small amounts to teach myself that is normal, but I"m having so much trouble, I think because I still have it so engrained that once i have one piece, I just should have it all... it's tough and I'm just so confused trying to find something that's "right".. I know its different from all of us but anything that's worked for you please please share!

So it's nearly my favourite time of year again, festival season where I get to spend five days of bliss out camping, drinking and partying and seeing some of the best bands! BUT

This is my first year taking on these things as a recovering bulimic. I'm trying to put together some kind of meal plan that will stop me from random binges, but it's hard. I won't really have cooking facilities just a little heating stove thingie and I'll need things I can pretty much eat on the go, that don't require storage and are okay in the heat etc.

So far on my lists of foods to take all I have is some nakd bars (they are raw fruit, nuts etc really nutritionally good but calorie wise only count as a snack) and some porridge (oat meal) that I can heat up in the mornings. I might grab the odd meal there, I don't do the whole avoidance of 'bad' foods because I don't consider any foods as bad, but I'd like to keep things as good nutritionally as I can so I'll be able to resist b/p better when I'm drunk (which will be a lot of the time).

If anyone can think of anything else I could take I would love your ideas!x x

in crossfit nutrition is paramount. you can bust your ass on the workouts and after a certain point stop making fitness gains and plateau or even reverse...this is called "failure to thrive" and is exactly what i have been doing of late b/c of b/ping all the time. they basically suggest a paleo/zone diet along with the workouts to attain wellness + fitness. meats and veggies, some fruit, little starch, no sugar. for me, the no sugar thing is the key as ive identified that as what drives the b/p cycle. i've set a goal of three wks. so far that has really helped. i got a care package in the mail today of easter treats and i put them in my drawer at work without even cracking them open. In 3wks (assuming no fuck ups in the mean time) I will re-evaluate. I can live 3wks without my tigger foods. I can do this.