BEGGING FOR HELP, PRETTY PRETTY PLEASE HELP ME STOP!!!!

sugaspice999

First off: THANK YOU for even opening this, seriously. Truly grateful

I'm currently completely out of control. I've been this way for the past three days and haven't worked out and have probobably binged on more than 20,000-30,000 calories over my maintenance for the past three days.

I KNOW I have an eating disorder, it's obvious. NO ONE in their right mind would eat this much. I'm stressing out about an exam and applications for grad school and I'm eating anything/everything in sight until no more can fit, then eat more once I can take another bite I'm helpless, and I have no idea what to do. I could probably eat another 4-5,000 calories tonight (and so much halloween candy) and I have a class I MUST go to tommorow at 7am. I look really scary right now, really bloated, I can't even recognize myself anymore. My stomach won't fit into my clothes, and I'm wasting time at fast food places or making food to eat.

I was 116 pounds (5'6'') and my goal is just to tone up (lower bodyfat, keep muscle). I lift 5x and week and 5x cardio for 30-40min. I eat relatively healthy, around 1700-1800 calories a day.

PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME. Should I go to the gym tommorow morning before class at 2_30am-4_30am? (I usually go at 4:30am) but I feel so sick that I almost cannot move. What should I eat tommorow to not look super bloated/sluggish for the next couple days.

The class is going to be hell tommorow (as well as the next 2/3 days in general) but any tips would reallly help.

*I WILL seek help for the eating disorder, I'm not denying problems. I know I'm feeding my lack of self esteem, stress, and confusion with emotional eating. But what can I do to minimize the harm until I do so?

I feel like I gained ~20 pounds in the past 3 days. I'm not even exaggerating, serious. I listed the foods below that I ate OVER (ON TOP OF) my maintenance (1700/1800) calories. Will I lose muscle if I don't lift for four days?

PLEASE HELP me, I really need it. I don't know what to do, and appreciate any help.

Day 1 10/29/13
-1/4 salted caramel chocolate lindt bar (100g)
-3 slices pumpkin bread, with sunflower seed butter and pumpkin butter
-greek yogurt with protein powder, banana, hemp seeds, dark chocolate, sunflower seed butter
-goat cheese, egg, marinara, pesto Panini
-1 cup cream coffee
-1 cup protein pudding
-2 pieces chocolate
-2 lara alt protein bars
-1 rise protein bar (more than 280 calories)
Day 2 10/30/13
-oatmeal w/ zucchini, sunflower seed butter, greek yogurt, chocolate, maple syrup, chocolate chip peanut butter lara bar
-1 whole strawberries and cream 100 g lindt chocolate bar
-1/2 lindt orange dark chocolate bar (100g)
-1 cup greek yogurt with 1 scoops protein powder, 2 tbsp peanut butter, chocolate, 1 banana, protein bar
-udi’s gluten free chips
-bowl of udi’s granola and post greek yogurt cereal with almond milk
-bowl of cheese vegetable quinoa with two corn tortillas
-robert irvine’s protein bar
-egg, goat cheese, vegetable stirfry with 4 slices of pumpkin protein bread, 2 tbsp pumpkin butter, 2 tbsp sunflower seed butter
-coconut lunabar
Day 3 10/31/13
-1 bean and cheese half pound burrito from del taco, with tons of hot sauce
-1 jacked up rice, bean, cheese burrito from del taco, with tons of hot sauce
-half a strawberry premium milkshake
-1 premium vanilla root beer milkshake
-1 mcdonalds pumpkin pie
-1 ½ mcdonalds egg sausage biscuits with strawberry jam
-strawberries n’ cream white chocolate shake: pomegranate, berries, beets, protein powder, banana, ice, stevia, 2 giant pieces of white chocolate, 0% greek yogurt, grapefruit, 2 tbsps peanut butter, coconut
-slice of bread with apricot preserves and peanut butter
-oatmeal in a jar with cream of wheat, almond milk, sunflower seed butter, coconut , peanut butter, maple syrup, chocolate peanut butter lara bar, 6 snickers bars
-12 snickers bar
-lemon pound cake lara alt bar
-2 fried eggs, goat cheese, pesto paniniwich
-1 whole avocado with udi’s gluten free chips
-3 coconut macaroons
-1 bowl vegetable ramen
-2 cups cream vanilla coffee

theopenforum

First off: CALM DOWN
Second off: CALM DOWN
Third off: Stop stressing you are missing the point, its not the food its the stress that is causing your issue which brings me back to my first and second point. CALM DOWN

Now: If you can get it in, then yes going to the gym will help but your issue is psychological. That much stress is going to do you in, try to pace yourself and take deep breaths.

Hope that helps,

Tof

sugaspice999

Also, I wanted to mention that I was 116 before the binge. I'm scared to weight myself now, but I'm just feeling really horrible because I was so close to my goal before this binge. My abs were beginniing to show, as well as some definition.

I feel like now, I'm atleast a month behind. How long do you think it'll take to look "normal" again?

GiftedHealth

I am doing the same thing. I feel your pain.

sugaspice999

Thank you so much for your response! Really really appreciate it. I'm trying to calm down, and also have my books open (need to study) but will try not to keep thinking about it because that way I'll both fail my test/class and also keep binging again.

SherryTeach

Three days of overeating will not radically change your body. Drink lots of water, get some sleep, make an appointment to see a professional.

kimosabe1

eat until u are done and don't be fat-simple enough.

PikaKnight

If you aren't in counseling, have you thought about seeking professional help?

sugaspice999

Thank you, I'm hoping it will not but I already feel flabbier, love handles are coming out and butt has definitely gotten bigger. Not even going to mention swollen face (but I know this will go away when I stop).

Successhere, I'm really sorry you're going through this to. Truly the worst feeling ever.

serialmahogany

Just grab a big gallon of water. Study for a little while longer, and drink. Hit the bed early, get a full 6 - 8 hrs, wake up like 5 am, and study/refresh and get all your notes together you can take to class. Eat breakfast. Pass your tests, that comes first. Take your water in ac cup/straw with you. Hit the gym, run to distress then go home and hit the bed! Call your close friends and get them to help you distress...I used to write poems about what I was thinking about, and when it hit the paper, it went away kinda. Good luck...School first!

sullus

I'd handle this by not eating tomorrow. When I have a day that's way over, I simply will not eat again until I feel truly hungry. Like stomach growling for an hour or 2.

sugaspice999

I havent I used to be bulimic but developed binge eating disorder when I "recovered".
I gained around 30 pounds from it, but through eating well and exercise for the past 4-5 months was able to go down from 160 to 116.

Clearly, I'm still not mentally there yet. This was bound to happen eventually and I guess now is the time. But the possibility of grad school and the required class for it is on the line this time.

I'm trying so hard to study (I'm behind because I missed class today) but can't focus because I'm so full.

sugaspice999

Wow, I dont know what I would do without your help. The tests are next wed/thurs, so I will sleep early but I guess I'll go to the gym on my way back from class if I'm not feeling sick. Or I'll just do cardio at home.

Thanks again

NRSPAM

Don't freak out, and don't beat yourself up over it, the damage is already done, but it's not like you're going to gain 20lb's overnight. Don't weigh yourself any time soon, because you will probably retain water, since you probably consumed a lot of sodium. Also, you may want to correct your post in the beginning, you put 20,000 calories consumed, and I'm sure you meant 2,000. Typically, not always, but typically when I overeat, it's because I have been too strict with my calories. It's as if it's my bodies way of saying, I need a break, and if I just go with it, and don't freak out over it, it will usually pass. Remember, it takes 3,500 calories to gain or lose 1lb of fat. Sounds like you've been exercising a lot lately, and you probably needed the calories to refuel. Granted, you may have overdone it, but my guess is your body wanted extra calories for all the demands you've been putting on it. Stressing over this will only make things worse. Get a grip, and take control. You can google ways to cope with emotional eating until you can seek help, if it is truly an issue, and is ongoing. I am a big time emotional eater, and I think I've pretty much got control over that now, atleast for the most part. I tend to exercise when I'm stressed out now, rather than eating. My biggest trigger is boredom, and I'm almost always bored, even with all the chaos in my life. Good luck to you OP. Only you can change your behavior. We can't do it for you, although I sure wish we could. )) :flowerforyou:

lafilledelarue

Sending you a private email. Please check it when you can. :-)

Donna_Renae

The first response you got, was the best advice anyone could give you. Calm down. Do whatever you've known to help you calm down.Take a walk, throw that Halloween candy OUT, take a break from the studying, meditate or pray. You're not only affecting your body physically from the bingeing, you're affecting yourself emotionally as well. In the morning all of those problems will still be there, don't add to them by adding this unnecessary food to your body!

NRSPAM

Ok, I just saw your day 3. Day 1 and 2 didn't really look that bad, but day 3 was crazy! If you don't get a hold of this soon, you better hurry up and talk to someone. Have you sought help in the past? If so, what helped you then? Maybe you can try the techniques you've used in the past to help for now.

Alta2000

You are 19 yrs old, what graduate school applications are you stressed about?

LifeJacketWaterJogger

GO TO YOU TUBE LISTEN TO SOME RELAXATION MUSIC! MEDIATION MUSIC CALMS THE MIND!

sugaspice999

You're right, Day 1 wasn't that bad, but everything started getting progressiely worse from then because I actually drove to fast food places to order junk I didn't have at home. I've never done that before because I've always been too slef concscious to eat in front of other people when overweight. Even though I'm at a healthy weight now (though 20pounds over what I was, and people probably thought I'm pregnant because of my huge stomach (or that I was a binge drinker or something) when I was sitting there in mcdonalds eating the food barely able to eat. I can't believe I ate all that food by myself, alone, in front of people. There were two cops sitting in front of me too

I threw out the candy, but its proving to be really difficult for me to not go down and eat it. Or make another cup of cream coffee to "study" (excuse for another macaroon). I keep thinking about it, but think of the comments/advice here, definitely helping.

I will mention that the not eating for a day after a binge didn't work for me. I wasn't expecting it to either, but I tried it this morning and it led me to where I am now. I've done intermittent fasting before, and it just occured to me that it might also have increased my ability to shovel food in my mouth for a really"full" feeling (but this time it was on junk instead of eggs and vegetables and a treat). This morning I was planning on just drinking vegetable juice (beets and carrots) to detox then I ended up adding peanut butter and all the other junk in my log. such a fail

pitbulllover

If you've been losing 10 pounds a month at your size, that's pretty extreme for a small girl. And a little too fast. You have to learn to eat healthy, and in moderation. It's not an all-or-nothing thing, and it sounds like you tried restricting yourself too much until you ran out of willpower and just ate everything in sight (I'm still trying to learn the whole moderation thing myself, it's really hard after a life yo-yo-ing between restriction and excess). But honestly, the guy that said to calm down had the best advice. This was only 3 days, you didn't let it go on that long. And with you being so restrictive for the last 4-5 months until the other day... I'm guessing that all of a sudden putting all those extra calories in your body today will make you sick. So don't stress yourself out, focus on school, and don't even work out tomorrow. Let all those calories go through you (I would bet money that you'll spend a lot of time in the bathroom tomorrow). You'll feel better in a couple days after eating your maintenance calories, lose the bloating, and then weigh yourself and see what the damage was and get back to working out. (Don't weigh yourself now, wait a couple days because you have a few pounds of food just sitting around inside you right now). But also please seek professional help.

jimmyjavon

Keep us posted on your updates. I will be tracking ur weight

sugaspice999

Thank you so much! Yes, I sgree I was probably being a little too restrictive during those couple months.

Today I woke up feeling super bloated, my body looks bloated, but mostly my face. My family said I look the same though, but to me my eyes look swollen and I have the chipmunk cheeks. I thought about skipping breakfast or drinking a detox smoothie for breakfast but didnt, simply because I didn't want to go through the same thing again.

I'm not really that hungry but eating some oatmeal, w/ almond milk, hemp seeds, raisins, 1/2 banana, protein powder, and some fennel. This way I'll hopefully not be tempeted to binge because I'll be so full

I'll keep you updated

Pinkranger626

Ok here's what you need to do. I went through a particularly bad semester my senior year and put on about 15 lbs in that one semester.

1. Take a moment and take a deep breath.

2. Take 20 minutes (yes I know it's a lot but you'll feel better once you do this) and make a list of everything that needs to be done. Put it in the order of most importance and give yourself a timeline. I found scheduling myself regular breaks gave me a light at the end of the tunnel. Decide what needs to be done at the best of your ability and what you can sort of throw together and just give your minimum effort (I'm a control freak so this part was really hard for me as I felt like everything had to be perfect.) In the end if you get an A+ or a B- or hell, even if you barely scrape by with a C it doesn't affect whether you get the degree or not. your mental health is way more important than getting a perfect score on an assignment that won't even have any affect on how the rest of your career or life goes. Everyone gets the same degree and one or two less than stellar grades will most likely not kill your average that much (unless there's only two tests for your grade or something like that)

3. Give yourself a time limit- map out what you're going to do that day and give yourself say 4 hours to complete said task. After the 4 hours is up go workout, have a snack or meal (give yourself a limit on that as well maybe an hour) then return to the task for another block of time... or move onto the next task if you've finished.

4. If you're studying for a test- as soon as you start to jumble things up in your head, find you're not remembering anythign you just read, or it's the day of the test.. STOP studying! If you push yourself to keep going over stuff you actually start to second guess yourself and start confusing the stuff that you already knew. If you've been doing the work throughout the semester and showing up to classes you actually know more than you think you do. I never allow myself to even look at anything once the day of the test is there, if I don't know it now cramming it in as I'm walking to class is not going to help me.

5. Food- Don't skip meals because you feel guilty about the last few days. Do what has worked in the past, plan your meals out ahead of time, throw out junk food if you can't have it around you without feeling tempted, go study somewhere that doesn't allow food (like the library) so you can't mindlessly snack while you study.

6. Schedule in time for your workout. non-negotiable... period.

7. Go to bed early

8. The semester will end, and the world will regain it's homeostasis.

Hope this helps, I'm a bit of a control freak and I found when I was feeling like that when I took the time to map things out and have a plan I was much calmer, I had an easier time getting through everything that i needed to get done, and I felt more like myself.

As fr the bloated puffiness, that will go away after a couple days of cleaning up your diet and drinking more water. Three days is not enough of a binge to put on more than a pound or two and if you can get it under control now you'll be fine.

calliekitten9

I havent I used to be bulimic but developed binge eating disorder when I "recovered".
I gained around 30 pounds from it, but through eating well and exercise for the past 4-5 months was able to go down from 160 to 116.

Clearly, I'm still not mentally there yet. This was bound to happen eventually and I guess now is the time. But the possibility of grad school and the required class for it is on the line this time.

I'm trying so hard to study (I'm behind because I missed class today) but can't focus because I'm so full.

I truly think therapy would help....because this isn't just an issue with food but how you see yourself. I used to be anorexic and it was all about trying to control the one thing that I felt I had control over...which was what I put into my body. I can still get that way if I don't acknowledge that that is the true issue for me....trying to exert control over my life when I don't feel like I have control in other areas. I have to work very hard to remind myself that being that focused on food won't solve my problem and has, in the past, caused me great health issues. I wish you well on your journey.

sugaspice999

*Update in this post (see below)

But first, I really appreciate the time you guys took to respond to this. I would write more, but I'm in a time crunch at the moment. Once the exam is over, I will definitely post photos and actual stats, update profile and track my food on here. I'm so thankful for the support, and probably wouldn't have made it binge-free today without you guys (still 4 hours left haha, knock on wood).

One of the saddest things I dealt with today was grocery shopping with my mom. I felt miserable the entire time (b/c I was bloated) but felt really bad when she said she was "proud" of me for changing my liftestyle and she wishes the rest of my family would do the same. She even said she's so glad and thankful I'm not overweight anymore (from bingeing) but that I might be losing too much weight. Every time she asked me about whether we should buy "" or "" product, I felt bad because she was trusting me so much and thinks I know everything about eating right. She'll quote me to other people for workout/eating advice. I was SHOCKED. I look atleast 10 pounds heavier than usual, not to mention my eyes are so swollen they look closed, and my mom just said everything that I wanted her to tell me when my bingeing started a couple months ago and I was gaining weight in the first place. I just said thanks and let her know I appreciate it, but I didn't tell her that she kind of contributed to my image issues/disorder. My family has always been extremely focused on weight and image, and you guys would be shocked if I told you what I've been through. (My mom used to LOCK our fridge at night with one of those gate locks so I couldn't eat anything, she now still writes our names on jars of peanut butter/granola/cereral etc, there are INVENTORIES in my pantry to make sure entire boxes of food don't go missing, and not even going to mention the things she's said to me.) My sister is going through the same thing I was going through my mom (she's normal weight but binges every so often) and I try to be there for her as much as I can, but I want to recover myself too so I can be there for her. I wish I could be more open with her and tell her about my bingeing, but I know all that is going to lead to is the fridge being locked again Maybe even a lock installed on the pantry.

UPDATE:
I ate around 1700 calories, got in the 115 grams protein I need:

-oatmeal w. stevia, 1/2 banana, hemp seeds, almond milk, protein powder, cinnamon, fennel, 2 egg whites
-fat free plain fage greek yogurt w/ 1/2 scoop protein, 1 mini guava, 3 dates, 1 tbsp amaranth, stevia, granola
-egg whites, 1 egg w/ kale, braggs aminos, nutritional yeast, tomatoes, zucchini, squash, red/yellow bell peppers, asparagus, and some goat cheese on top
-clif builders bar
-lara alt lemon pound cake bar
-green tea
-coffee
-gallon + water

Didn't weight myself

I did cardio at home for 35 min (500 calories burned) and did three sets of 12rep deadlifts (50lb), 75 squats (15 lb) and 25 (25lb) squats. (I'm starting the squat challenge today, finally) I bought some yoga pants that I'll hopefully look better in, but they're size xs! Pretty sure the sizes are messed up haha. Thank you for suggesting to workout though, I was so close to skipping it but feel really good about it. The day after a binge at the gym is horrible and I feel like everyone knows and they're like "oh look, she binged! Look how tight her gym clothes are :O " But I know its in my head, no one cares about other people at the gym, they're doing their own thing. And I also didn't want to deal with everyone that tries to talk to me there that find me "inspiring", would feel like such a letdown (cant think of a better word), but everyone slips up once in a while right? I'm going to go tommorow morning for sure though!

Will keep updating you guys

Alta2000

After your exams next week I would suggest that you go and see a therapist. You appear to have underlying issues related to your family and you should try to resolve them as early in your life as possible so they wont snowball.

1ZenGirl

If you aren't in counseling, have you thought about seeking professional help?

This. I got therapy 2 years ago and it changed my life.

sugaspice999

Yup, definitely in my plans for the weekend. I'm hoping it'll allow me to be more open with them too, and maybe they won't act so negatively towards my sister. Or atleast encourage a healthy liftestyle the right way.

dfcdiva514

I am so relieved to see that today was a better day for you. I sent you an email last night and you were on my mind today. Continue to stay focused and seek wise counsel. Peace and blessings.

jackielou867

I used to be a binger. If I was buying fuel or groceries I would buy chocolate at the counter, and because I couldn't choose which one I would buy, and eat, at least 3.
I reached goal recently and am on maintenance now.
Now I tell myself it is a circle, eat sugar, blood sugar goes up, blood sugar goes down, crave sugar/carbs. So if I just don't take that first step I will be fine.
If I do feel a bit "hungry" I treat myself to a milky decaf coffee. It takes a while to make cool, and drink. If that doesn't work I make another. In a half hour I have had 300 ml of skim milk. I can live with that. Sometimes I can get by with a peppermint tea, its good for digestion too.
But the last couple of times I have felt really hungry, were while still dieting, I can honestly say I was not maxing out my calorie allowance, so after a few days my body says, screw this, feed me, feed me now. On these occasions I switched on to maintenance, and finished the week with a bit more food.
Good luck with it all. I am off to make some peppermint tea