I think I'm becoming bulimic..:\

xoTalim

I keep snacking late at night out of boredom or just cause I have a craving at the time, and end up eating a ridiculous amount. Tonight is the 4th time in a week that I've made myself throw up. I feel like it's my way of punishing myself for having gone over on calories. I hate doing it though. I don't wanna continue on with this. I really need to stop but I have no idea how. Please help!

xoTalim

Some replies to this would be really great right about now.

ThisGirLIsOnFireeeeee

i use to do this aswell but i stopped long ago.
you have to go to an phychologist becoming a bulimic has serious sode effects landed me in hospital many times cos of imbalance in the body

EyesOnSize8

I don't have ANY medical training in this regard, but I think you are smart to see that what you are doing is not safe or healthy. Now be brave enough to seek help from your doctor. You can do it, Talim. The long term effects of bluimia are really scary and you don't want to go there. Be well - that is the goal!

xoTalim

I'm just absolutely terrified of going over 200 pounds again. I've done so well this past year. I've stuck to my diet a lot better than I thought I would when I first started. I did have a few hiccups in the middle when I went on a cruise, but I worked hard to overcome the 10 pounds or so I gained from that. But lately I've been overeating SO much and I don't know why. And I'm so scared of gaining enough to put me over 200 again and I don't want to be there ever again and I don't know what to do..

kjimmie4848

Keep apples, melons, celery sticks in the fridge for late night snacking. Or even chocolate protein or granola bars. Then you won't have to feel guilty.

And see a doc.

777Gemma888

I keep snacking late at night out of boredom or just cause I have a craving at the time, and end up eating a ridiculous amount. Tonight is the 4th time in a week that I've made myself throw up. I feel like it's my way of punishing myself for having gone over on calories. I hate doing it though. I don't wanna continue on with this. I really need to stop but I have no idea how. Please help!

How many calories are you targeting daily? I do apologise for being so blunt, your diary in inaccessible. )

ThisGirLIsOnFireeeeee

so avoid late night snack attacks makesure ur eatting well during the day and getting proper balanced nutrtion, if ur not then it causes cravings and another tip at night excersize then u wouldnt want to riun the effort u put in ur excersize so u wouldnt eat
also do something fun for excersize otherwise u will eat instead , try out turbo fire its fun and distracts me from eatting late at night

carolinehowells

You've done so well so far, please try to address this before you go too far I've been there myself and the consequences are huge. Try keeping lots of healthy snacks at home for when you feel you really have to have something. Find something to do at night when your bored maybe reading or crafts.
Take care of yourself.

neandermagnon

Eat enough during the day to avoid feeling the need to snack excessively during the night

if you do start snacking in spite of eating enough during the day, go for a walk or something, to take your mind off the snacking.

you need to overeat by 3500 calories to gain just 1lb of fat, so you're not going to suddenly end up over 200lbs, fat gain happens slowly and you have plenty of time to change your behaviours and prevent it, if your weight does start creeping up again. One day or one night does not make or break anyone.

Also, overeating isn't a crime or a sin, so you don't need to punish yourself for it. Find ways instead to be kinder to yourself and other ways to treat and comfort yourself than food (e.g. hot bath, beauty spa treatments, reading a good book etc) and deal with overeating by being kind and forgiving to yourself. This will put you in a much better mindset whereby you have the motivation and self-respect to make positive, healthy changes for yourself. Self-punishment is a horrible and unhealthy mentality to be in.

if you can't stop this by yourself, then see a doctor ASAP because it's extremely unhealthy to keep on making yourself sick.

nami_cat

Please see a therapist or a doctor. Someone who has professional experience with this will be able to help you the best. I think it's really brave and important that this is something you're recognizing now. The next step is to find a doctor or psychologist and they will be able to help you get through this and to a better place.

Myhaloslipped

Eat enough during the day to avoid feeling the need to snack excessively during the night

if you do start snacking in spite of eating enough during the day, go for a walk or something, to take your mind off the snacking.

you need to overeat by 3500 calories to gain just 1lb of fat, so you're not going to suddenly end up over 200lbs, fat gain happens slowly and you have plenty of time to change your behaviours and prevent it, if your weight does start creeping up again. One day or one night does not make or break anyone.

Also, overeating isn't a crime or a sin, so you don't need to punish yourself for it. Find ways instead to be kinder to yourself and other ways to treat and comfort yourself than food (e.g. hot bath, beauty spa treatments, reading a good book etc) and deal with overeating by being kind and forgiving to yourself. This will put you in a much better mindset whereby you have the motivation and self-respect to make positive, healthy changes for yourself. Self-punishment is a horrible and unhealthy mentality to be in.

if you can't stop this by yourself, then see a doctor ASAP because it's extremely unhealthy to keep on making yourself sick.

This. Also, I started eating more during the day, and I have done any night time snacking in weeks.

xoTalim

I keep snacking late at night out of boredom or just cause I have a craving at the time, and end up eating a ridiculous amount. Tonight is the 4th time in a week that I've made myself throw up. I feel like it's my way of punishing myself for having gone over on calories. I hate doing it though. I don't wanna continue on with this. I really need to stop but I have no idea how. Please help!

How many calories are you targeting daily? I do apologise for being so blunt, your diary in inaccessible. )

1200. Not very much..

Moosycakes

Please, please talk to your doctor or a therapist about this. Bulimia is deadly serious, and it's really important to catch it before it starts. For one thing, it doesn't help with weight loss because you can't get enough calories up to be properly effective. It's also so, so horrible for your health- rotting teeth from being bathed in stomach acid, heart attack risk from electrolyte imbalance, digestive issues, tears in the esophagus, even stomach rupture is a possibility. It can also ruin your social life.

Sorry if that was graphic, I just wanted to illustrate the seriousness of bulimia. Please talk to a doctor or therapist, and lose weight the healthy way

meeper123

Eat more calories trust me you WILL lose weight if you workout and eat a balanced diet. Changinb the way you think about food will really help. I use to demonize certain food and deprive myself constintly. After becoming less strict it really helped with the binges. I also found out that part of my unending hunger was a side effect of a vitamin D deficiancy.

Side effects of a vitamin D deficancy:

1) depression or mood swings
2) cronic fatique
2) headaches
3) increased appitite

There are more but those were mine. Go to the doc and get some help. You are ruining your body.

VoodooAborisha

Please see a doctor, it is an emotional issue. You gotta love yourself enough not to do that to yourself.

I played around a bit with trying to make myself vomit several years ago when I was in a bad place, but then I realized, it's better to be fat than to ruin your esophagus and teeth and possibly lungs with all that stomach acid. If you vomit enough for long enough, you can get to the point where you ruin your esophagus and the boundary between your stomach and esophagus won't close anymore, and you'll have a lifetime of acid reflux causing pain and worse things, and when you lie down to sleep at night, the acid actually comes into your mouth and erodes your teeth, and into your sinuses and gives you sinus problems; if it gets bad enough the acid can make its way to eyes and ears through the sinus and lacrimal ducts, affecting vision and hearing, as well as into the lungs through the trachea, and you don't want that. stomach acid can burn through metal.

I'd do what another poster said - get some healthy snacks like veggie sticks and snack if you have to! But please treat yourself better - you deserve better. When we are young we think we can do anything to our bodies, but there comes a point when things don't go back to normal after we have mistreated our bodies. Think of the future. You don't want to be dealing with esophagus surgery later to be thin now.

cafeaulait7

I was bulimic for a couple of years in my mid-late teens. What an awful time

The first thing I suggest is upping your daily intake. The easier it is to keep to a daily goal you can do most often, the better it will be. I was one of those who restricted to very low calories levels for as many days as I could and then ate a lot more calories out of hunger eventually, so the restriction part can really set you up for a high day.

And don't give yourself permission to binge because you are going to throw up. I never even binged until I started throwing up to 'help lose weight'. My binges while fully bulimic were pretty insane, and they were a combination of 'freedom' and self-punishment themselves. Then the purging was the full-on punishment, for everything bad in my life, basically.

I needed and got therapy. I needed an antidepressant, personally. I can't tell you what an enormous difference that made for my whole life! A lot of my self-destructive thoughts were biochemical depression, and fixing the wiring just changed everything Whatever the root of yours is, it's probably not really food exactly, so consider that, too. Best of luck.

neandermagnon

I keep snacking late at night out of boredom or just cause I have a craving at the time, and end up eating a ridiculous amount. Tonight is the 4th time in a week that I've made myself throw up. I feel like it's my way of punishing myself for having gone over on calories. I hate doing it though. I don't wanna continue on with this. I really need to stop but I have no idea how. Please help!

How many calories are you targeting daily? I do apologise for being so blunt, your diary in inaccessible. )

1200. Not very much..

that's nowhere near enough for most people. there are a small minority (e.g. sedentary, petite, older women) who genuinely need to eat that little to lose weight, however you're clearly not eating enough as the desire to keep on snacking and uncontrolled overeating is a normal survival response to eating too little for a prolonged period.

The Harris-Benedict calculator gives you a BMR of 1605 calories a day.... Mifflin st-Jeor gives you a BMR of 1521 calories a day. Your BMR is the number of calories your body needs simply to keep your cells alive and your organs running properly. It's how many calories you'd need to be fed if you were in a coma. It doesn't include the number of calories you burn moving around and doing things. Depending on how active you are, you probably need to eat more like 2000 calories a day.

You can raise your calories by a lot and still lose weight, but you'll feel a lot better, have a lot more energy, and won't have this urge to constantly snack all the time. I'd suggest raising you your calories to at least 1600 calories per day. You may see a weight gain from this, but it'll be water and glycogen, not fat. (this is normal when eating more calories, and it's actually healthy as more glycogen = more energy... glycogen is your body's short term energy reserve while fat is your body's long term energy reserve. After you raise your calories, give your body time to settle down, i.e. replenish its glycogen stores, and once that's happened, you should start losing weight again, because you'll still be in deficit. Also bear in mind that 1600 cals/day is a bare minimum... I would expect that you can still lose weight on 1700 and 1800 calories a day, or even more if you are more active.

Seriously, the snacking is a direct result of, and normal response to eating too little for a long time. It's a basic survival response. The trick to long term fat loss is to find the ideal number of calories where you're still losing weight slowly and steadily, but you're not triggering these kinds of survival responses that totally screw up your diet.

xoTalim

I was bulimic for a couple of years in my mid-late teens. What an awful time

The first thing I suggest is upping your daily intake. The easier it is to keep to a daily goal you can do most often, the better it will be. I was one of those who restricted to very low calories levels for as many days as I could and then ate a lot more calories out of hunger eventually, so the restriction part can really set you up for a high day.

And don't give yourself permission to binge because you are going to throw up. I never even binged until I started throwing up to 'help lose weight'. My binges while fully bulimic were pretty insane, and they were a combination of 'freedom' and self-punishment themselves. Then the purging was the full-on punishment, for everything bad in my life, basically.

I needed and got therapy. I needed an antidepressant, personally. I can't tell you what an enormous difference that made for my whole life! A lot of my self-destructive thoughts were biochemical depression, and fixing the wiring just changed everything Whatever the root of yours is, it's probably not really food exactly, so consider that, too. Best of luck.

The problem is, I find that I gain weight very easily if I eat more than 1200 cals a day. I have a VERY slow metabolism. So if I were to eat, say, 1400 cals a day instead of 1200, I'd probably have gained weight at the end of the week instead of lose it. I really hate seeing that number on the scale go up. I need to exercise more. That's really what it is. I get so bored of my treadmill though. I'm looking into getting a membership at the YMCA across the street. It's so bloody expensive though..

xoTalim

I keep snacking late at night out of boredom or just cause I have a craving at the time, and end up eating a ridiculous amount. Tonight is the 4th time in a week that I've made myself throw up. I feel like it's my way of punishing myself for having gone over on calories. I hate doing it though. I don't wanna continue on with this. I really need to stop but I have no idea how. Please help!

How many calories are you targeting daily? I do apologise for being so blunt, your diary in inaccessible. )

1200. Not very much..

that's nowhere near enough for most people. there are a small minority (e.g. sedentary, petite, older women) who genuinely need to eat that little to lose weight, however you're clearly not eating enough as the desire to keep on snacking and uncontrolled overeating is a normal survival response to eating too little for a prolonged period.

The Harris-Benedict calculator gives you a BMR of 1605 calories a day.... Mifflin st-Jeor gives you a BMR of 1521 calories a day. Your BMR is the number of calories your body needs simply to keep your cells alive and your organs running properly. It's how many calories you'd need to be fed if you were in a coma. It doesn't include the number of calories you burn moving around and doing things. Depending on how active you are, you probably need to eat more like 2000 calories a day.

You can raise your calories by a lot and still lose weight, but you'll feel a lot better, have a lot more energy, and won't have this urge to constantly snack all the time. I'd suggest raising you your calories to at least 1600 calories per day. You may see a weight gain from this, but it'll be water and glycogen, not fat. (this is normal when eating more calories, and it's actually healthy as more glycogen = more energy... glycogen is your body's short term energy reserve while fat is your body's long term energy reserve. After you raise your calories, give your body time to settle down, i.e. replenish its glycogen stores, and once that's happened, you should start losing weight again, because you'll still be in deficit. Also bear in mind that 1600 cals/day is a bare minimum... I would expect that you can still lose weight on 1700 and 1800 calories a day, or even more if you are more active.

Seriously, the snacking is a direct result of, and normal response to eating too little for a long time. It's a basic survival response. The trick to long term fat loss is to find the ideal number of calories where you're still losing weight slowly and steadily, but you're not triggering these kinds of survival responses that totally screw up your diet.

I do live a pretty sedentary lifestyle when I'm not working. I'm a waitress so I'm always on my feet at work, and according to MFP, I burn anywhere from 700-800 calories a day while at work. So I'll usually end up eating back some of those calories, which is nice. it's when I have days off(like today), that I end up binging, cause I get bored from having nothing to do.

xoTalim

Anyway, I need to get to sleep. Hopefully there will be more responses to read in the morning. Any support and advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you guys. Goodnight.

geekyjock76

I think you need to realize how weight fluctuates within the body. You likely are aware that the first few lbs people lose when reducing calories comes from water weight. Similarly, when you increase calories closer to maintenance, you are simply replenishing the water weight you previously lost. Thus, you shouldn't think of this increase in calories as "gained" weight at all. The only time a person truly gains weight is by eating above their maintenance intake.

If you are eating out of boredom, then you may want to consider finding a hobby.

dianamatienzo

You should seek professional help. I know what it's like, but you have to remember it's all within your power and control, sometimes we just need guidance and of course support. Think of your HEALTH rather than how you look. You are stronger than you think, and throwing up will only hurt you. Remember that every time you do, your teeth decay from the stomach acid attacking them, your internal organs are tightening in a way that's not meant to be done often and also getting damaged. Your skin and hair will suffer, and you won't feel/look any better. It can become an obsessive cycle of compensation and you'll only reach more negative results, causing your habits to worsen. You are worth more than that Here's a channel that helps a lot: http://www.youtube.com/user/YourBulimiaRecovery

I would strongly recommend you see a professional if you feel like it's nearly impossible to stop on your own. You're early and can save your own life

pinkiemarie252

You really need to see a therapist to help you sort through your emotions, and checking in with an MD wouldn't hurt either to make sure you don't have any medical problems such as a thyroid issue that makes you gain weight so easily. Try to get more exercise too so you have more calories available to eat.

dianamatienzo

If seeing a professional isn't something you'd do, or can do at this point, the second best advice I could give you is don't weight yourself and don't track food! It can be a huge trigger to see how much you're eating and weighing. Personally, I developed binge eating habits years ago, but due to tracking my food intake on here and weighing myself I developed binge eating disorder. Not that everyone should stop tracking! My boyfriend tracks his macros every day, but some people just have more eating disorder tendencies; tracking works for a lot of people. I'm in recovery right now, and I can honestly tell you that not tracking my food has saved my life and sanity. Also, don't weigh yourself. Ever! Until you feel like you can handle it (maybe a few months from now, or even years). Personally, I don't think I'll ever look at my weight again, but that's just how I feel at this point in my recovery. Hopefully one day I can,\ and it won't trigger any eating disorder tendencies.

So PLEASEEEEEEEEEE stop tracking your caloric intake and weight. Don't even look! Just trust yourself and go by what you feel. And I know it can be tempting to do mental math and try to track food in your head, but don't even look at the nutrition facts in food. Hope this hepls!

likitisplit

Here's the article on Bodybuilding.com about how under-eating can slow a metabolism and what to do about it: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/core_march_8.htm

Here's Amber at Go Kaleo, who has the healthiest approach to food that I've seen in a long time: http://gokaleo.com/

Be good to yourself!

CaptainMilda

As a nurse student who did an internship on the psych-ward for eating disorders I would recommend that you go to your doctor... overeating is also an eating disorder... Your doctor should be able to help you get in contact with specialists who can help you with a diet plan, fitness plan, support groups etc...

YoungIronG

youre gonna rott your teeth out doing that.

then youll really have a self image issue

LishLash79

Talk to someone. I speak from experience. I was Bulimic for years and the last long term effect is not good. I wish, when I was younger, that someone would have taken me aside and cared enough about me to help. Back then (not THAT long ago) there was a huge stigma attached to it So I think people were afraid of dealing with it. I also think, its not always about food like people think, for me, it was a way of dealing with stress in my life, and, in some ways, feeling like I was in control of something, which I clearly was not.


Please Please Please, go talk to someone. YOU ARE WORTH IT.

I also want to add. That, like a drug, once you get into the groove of doing this, it becomes too easy, and is hard to stop.. So please talk to someone.

SimplyDenyse

I used to do this in my 20's.. All I can say is what realizations helped and stopped me.
1) Realizing I would NEVER want my daughters doing that.
2) Realizing how disgusting it truly was. Your hands smell of vomit, your mouth is gross and your putting your head down in a toilet that others sit on. The stomach acid eats at your teeth. The more I thought about that the more it grossed me out.
3) I believe it ruined my metabolism (that just now I feel like is getting back to normal)
4) My face and eyes looked horrible. bloodshot, pale...

There was a point where I decided to stop. But the then not thinking and having a binge moment. It nearly felt like impulse to go a vomit it all out because I felt sick to my stomach. So I had to force myself to either hold it in even though I felt like vomiting or stop binging.
Now when I eat I ask myself IS eating this going to get me to where my goals are? If in my head I think I’m going to be angry at myself for eating it then I don't eat it or just eat a little. Meaning a few are ok but the whole box not so much... So it took a lot of self-control but with time it gets easier.

For me it’s been about 6 years since I stopped. I no longer have those urges to throw-up after eating (thank goodness) Try to stop before it becomes a habit. Get help if you think it already has gotten that far.

1princesswarrior

I agree that you need to talk to someone trained in eating disorders and probably a nutritionist or dietician to help you with your nutrition. I know you said you gain easily but the simple truth is you are also probably not eating enough, especially on the days that your work if you are not eating those calories (or at least half of them) back.

You can also make sure you are eating a balance diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables, lean meats, fiber and protein. A balanced diet will help you feel full for longer. If you open up your diary we could help you more. I know when I start eating a lot of processed sugar and carbs I start to get more hungry than usual and start craving more processed sugar and carbs (candy, cakes, cookies, etc.).

I've never suffered from an eating disorder but I am bipolar so I know what it feels like to feel out of control and it's really scarey, especially if you feel like you have no one to talk to. Find someone, a friend, clergy, parent, neighbor, or anyone if you cannot or do not have the means to see a doctor. You are strong and brave to reach out to this community.