Trying to stop an 8 year cycle.

gettingshrunk

I binge when I am depressed. I become depressed every fall when the school year starts (I am a teacher). I end up gaining between 15-20 lbs before Christmas break (in a 4 month time frame) which only worsens my depression. I've been lucky enough to have external motivators in the past 4 years so that I've been successfully able to lose the weight but I am so sick of this cycle. I'm at the weight I was at before I ever became anorexic (I was anorexic for 1 year and lost 60 lbs. Then I managed to gain 80 lbs in a space of just a few months, through binge eating.) It is just so frustrating to feel amazing for a few months a year and spend 7 months in agony and binging my way through depression. I am lucky that I have a few months of freedom from body image issues every year, but it makes the collapse that much harder. I'm a mountain climber, so when I fall into depression and lose all my strength and gain weight it becomes so demoralizing to start from square one when I used to be able to fly up mountains not a few months before. It is incredibly difficult.

I started making a concerted effort a few weeks ago to get back on track, but I ended up binging 4 out of the last 7 days, all because I bought butter to bake for my students. I just want to break my all-or-nothing thinking but nothing has been successful in the past 8 years. I'm so frustrated. I'm somewhat suicidal. And all this time I'm clinging to a "normal" weight range but it makes little difference to my mind. I just want to get, and stay, healthy.

Anyway any encouragement would be helpful! I just needed to vent.

tiggerhoneypooh

Urghh, I relate to this so much, I just want to be able to eating without being scared of losing it. Don't worry, and try to remember the binge eating is not who you are but a symptom, all illnesses have symptoms and we don't blame ourselves for it. please don't dispare *ehugs* (I don't know if this helps at all)

chr1st1na6464

I'm a teacher, too. For years I would lose 60 lbs every summer, then pack it all back on plus more during the school year. Like you, I would start bingeing at Christmas time...it was like clockwork. I realized that I was suffering from anxiety--and that work gave me lots of anxiety. Being around lots of adults is hard for me--funny that it took so many years to figure this out. Looking back I can see that I would have been healthier in a career where I could have worked without being part of large groups of females (elementary is so out of balance, it's like being in high school). I also stopped being around people who eat foods that trigger me. Binge eating is all about being triggered...at least for me. Kind of what it must be like to be an alcoholic and see someone drinking...I won't binge in that moment, but something gets set off in my brain and it is what I want to do when I'm alone. I'm working with a nutritionist who is helping me to eliminate processed sugar and get my body stabilized on a healthy diet. She's hopeful that at some point in time I won't want to binge if I see someone eating a cookie. Losing weight is a lonely endeavor when you take yourself out of all of the social situations where food is in the centerpiece, but that seems to be what has finally helped me. This was the first Christmas that I didn't start bingeing and gaining weight again...in many years.