Sinking deep into binge eating/rapid weight gain/help :(
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breakingbinge
Posts: 1
Hi everyone,
This isn't my first time on MFP, I spent a solid 14 or so months on here before deleting my account. In the first 3-4 months of that time, when I was 18, I lost about 35lbs, going down to about 155 lbs and staying at the lowest I'd ever been since puberty, pretty much. I developed BED after that 4th month, and I started gaining a bit of weight back but a vacation in the middle of winter set me back on track and I kicked the binging habits for about 2 months. Some rough patches in my life put me back into binging, and I maintained my weight for about 6 months after that (it'd be like I was eating at a deficit 6 days a week and binging 1 day, so i'd just maintain).
Around August I moved away from home and into my own apartment with 3 roommates on campus. Since then I gained back *ALL* the weight and then some. I weight 155 on Aug 1st. and I was 195 the other week. And I'm only continuing to binge. I was in therapy for a little while, that was slightly, but I only could afford the counseling center on campus and I was seeing a grad student who didn't really know what she was doing, so I felt too uncomfortable in our sessions to continue going (although in hindsight I was binging far less around that time).
I'm sure it was a combination of the environmental stressors and screwing up my metabolism from restricting that brought me here, but now I've sunk into such a dark spot that I have no idea what to do with myself. I've let my grades fall a little bit this semester because I spent so much of my free time just depressed and laying in bed and eating and feeling HORRIBLE about myself. I lost so much motivation and self-discipline over the course of just a few months that it makes me want to cry all the time. And now that I've reached this point, so few of my clothes still fit (mainly pants, so i wear leggings, but I feel too fat to wear leggings). I'd bought a bunch of jeans when I was a size 8 (for the entire year) and I wore them all and now NONE of them fit.
I also visibly feel so much bigger and a lot of the weight has went to my torso area, so I'm CONSTANTLY aware of the fat rolls protruding from my bra and when I sit down and the extra thigh chub rubbing and how much bigger I look in photos and it's crippling. Like I sit at work or in class and all I can think about is how fat I feel and how disgusting it is and I look back at pictures of myself from over the summer or back in March (when I was at my slimmest) and it just makes me SO anxious. But all the while, I can't stop binging. And the vast majority of it is at home; I'll buy groceries for a week and they'll be gone within 3 days. I even steal some of my roommates' food in secret (usually quickly running to replace it before they notice) and any day that I don't have work or school or definitive plans I just stay at home and stuff my face until I want to cry.
The one thing I'm still happy about is that all this time I've continued going to the gym. I still lift weights, and do cardio. I try to go at least 3 times a week, and it ranges between 1-4. But the weight gain is even hurting me there, as I've developed ankle and shin pain when I run and I'm pretty sure it's because I've gained weight so rapidly my joints just haven't had time to adjust. It sucks.
I'm out of insurance right now and I had a bit of a fallout with my therapist/grad student so I can't go there but I *know* I can't fight this on my own. The more I've tried, the worst it's gotten. And for a while I was almost at the point of apathy but now that I feel this disgusting in my own skin I *know* I need to do something about this. I'm so mad at myself for continuing to try to lose weight when i was in the 150s. I knew I was still suffering from BED and I still pushed myself to undereating (most of the time) and it just brought me back to my worst.
I don't know what to do now
I'm back on MFP, indefinitely (I don't know if calorie counting is the best thing for me, but I don't know too many alternative routes) and I would *LOVE* for any support from anyone out there! I'm really good at providing support, too, so it would be reciprocal. If anyone has suffered from BED or any type of overeating and would like to, please add me. Even if you haven't but you'd like to be friends on here, please add me!
Edit: I've been logging/calorie counting since I began losing weight a year and a half ago. I laid back for a while with hand-written logs and less calorie counting but I'm hyperaware of what, and how much of it I eat on a daily basis. Food scale and all. I guess this is a bit different from weight loss.. it's eating disorder recovery (which i still hope will lead to weight loss).
This isn't my first time on MFP, I spent a solid 14 or so months on here before deleting my account. In the first 3-4 months of that time, when I was 18, I lost about 35lbs, going down to about 155 lbs and staying at the lowest I'd ever been since puberty, pretty much. I developed BED after that 4th month, and I started gaining a bit of weight back but a vacation in the middle of winter set me back on track and I kicked the binging habits for about 2 months. Some rough patches in my life put me back into binging, and I maintained my weight for about 6 months after that (it'd be like I was eating at a deficit 6 days a week and binging 1 day, so i'd just maintain).
Around August I moved away from home and into my own apartment with 3 roommates on campus. Since then I gained back *ALL* the weight and then some. I weight 155 on Aug 1st. and I was 195 the other week. And I'm only continuing to binge. I was in therapy for a little while, that was slightly, but I only could afford the counseling center on campus and I was seeing a grad student who didn't really know what she was doing, so I felt too uncomfortable in our sessions to continue going (although in hindsight I was binging far less around that time).
I'm sure it was a combination of the environmental stressors and screwing up my metabolism from restricting that brought me here, but now I've sunk into such a dark spot that I have no idea what to do with myself. I've let my grades fall a little bit this semester because I spent so much of my free time just depressed and laying in bed and eating and feeling HORRIBLE about myself. I lost so much motivation and self-discipline over the course of just a few months that it makes me want to cry all the time. And now that I've reached this point, so few of my clothes still fit (mainly pants, so i wear leggings, but I feel too fat to wear leggings). I'd bought a bunch of jeans when I was a size 8 (for the entire year) and I wore them all and now NONE of them fit.
I also visibly feel so much bigger and a lot of the weight has went to my torso area, so I'm CONSTANTLY aware of the fat rolls protruding from my bra and when I sit down and the extra thigh chub rubbing and how much bigger I look in photos and it's crippling. Like I sit at work or in class and all I can think about is how fat I feel and how disgusting it is and I look back at pictures of myself from over the summer or back in March (when I was at my slimmest) and it just makes me SO anxious. But all the while, I can't stop binging. And the vast majority of it is at home; I'll buy groceries for a week and they'll be gone within 3 days. I even steal some of my roommates' food in secret (usually quickly running to replace it before they notice) and any day that I don't have work or school or definitive plans I just stay at home and stuff my face until I want to cry.
The one thing I'm still happy about is that all this time I've continued going to the gym. I still lift weights, and do cardio. I try to go at least 3 times a week, and it ranges between 1-4. But the weight gain is even hurting me there, as I've developed ankle and shin pain when I run and I'm pretty sure it's because I've gained weight so rapidly my joints just haven't had time to adjust. It sucks.
I'm out of insurance right now and I had a bit of a fallout with my therapist/grad student so I can't go there but I *know* I can't fight this on my own. The more I've tried, the worst it's gotten. And for a while I was almost at the point of apathy but now that I feel this disgusting in my own skin I *know* I need to do something about this. I'm so mad at myself for continuing to try to lose weight when i was in the 150s. I knew I was still suffering from BED and I still pushed myself to undereating (most of the time) and it just brought me back to my worst.
I don't know what to do now
I'm back on MFP, indefinitely (I don't know if calorie counting is the best thing for me, but I don't know too many alternative routes) and I would *LOVE* for any support from anyone out there! I'm really good at providing support, too, so it would be reciprocal. If anyone has suffered from BED or any type of overeating and would like to, please add me. Even if you haven't but you'd like to be friends on here, please add me!
Edit: I've been logging/calorie counting since I began losing weight a year and a half ago. I laid back for a while with hand-written logs and less calorie counting but I'm hyperaware of what, and how much of it I eat on a daily basis. Food scale and all. I guess this is a bit different from weight loss.. it's eating disorder recovery (which i still hope will lead to weight loss).
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Replies
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I don't have your troubles, but feel free to add me. Logging the food helps. Alot. Once you see what you've eaten and how much you can get a handle on how to change it. Remember, you can have everything your want.....as long as it fits in your weekly calories.0
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I would add you, but the reason I have this account and not my old one is that I had to stop counting every calorie obsessively and logging in every day and being accountable to anyone or worrying that if I wasn't around for awhile I was letting some people down. It was getting a bit out of hand. I'm a perfectionist, and it has its downside.
But as for your situation, I've suffered from it ever since I got a say in what I was allowed to eat. So since my teenage years.
I've always had the sweet tooth, always been able to shovel in amounts of food that would make many other people physically ill. Ever since I can remember. Add to that the common issue of finishing up a diet more hungry than when you started, and it's a perfect yo-yo diet storm.
Are there any nutritionists or dietitians on your campus that you could speak with about a meal plan and maybe supplements to help? Or are there classes you can take yourself?0 -
Your days seem carb heavy (just my opinion) ...... I'm sure you can make better choices ...... plan & focus on healthy eating & fitness ..... if you hit a plateau, stick with your plan and you will get past it.
Make small changes each week. Don't do anything "drastic" ...... you are changing for life, not just the short term. I looked forward to my new food choices, never saw them as a punishment.
Portion control ...... get a food scale & use it !
Appreciate what you have, don't feel sorry for yourself ....... others have it worse .....
Be positive !
Smile !0 -
My wife agreed about the calorie counting - definitely made her obsess over it, and not in a good way. She realised that when she didn't want to have a banana after dinner because it had too many calories that she wasn't going about it the right way. I wish you didn't *have* to track calories.
Anyway, it works for me - but you always have to keep in mind that these things aren't absolutes. You can't stress or five or ten calories. If I'm under for the day by several hundred, I know that's pretty accurate. If I'm nearly dead on, I know I could be either over or under by a bit, especially if I exercised.
But actually TRACKING is the best. Even just to get you thinking about what you're eating, when you're eating, and why you're eating. So now my wife doesn't use the site, but she does write down all her meals and I check them over and make sure she's eating enough, balancing it out, and not overeating the bad stuff.
They say it takes 21 days to form a new habit. I think a lot of us jump in here expecting to change instantly. Just getting used to tracking is a habit. I gave myself 2 weeks of writing everything down without changing my eating habits much. Taking the stairs every day is another habit. Having a salad with dinner, even if dinner is McDonald's. Baby steps.
And everyone gets to cheat! Weight loss does not hinge on the "success" of one day. Yes, two days ago I ate most of a pizza because I was stressed and upset and Shark Week is imminent. Then yesterday I shoveled snow for an hour and had a salad for dinner instead. I didn't let the pizza stress me out and make me go "Screw it, I guess I failed, what's the point now I WILL EAT ALL THE THINGS." Even if I wanted to.0 -
Maybe you could take a year off uni and just work while you get your binging under control. Having your grades suffer because of depression is the worst and it'd be easier for you to just focus on one major thing at a time.0
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I'm sorry you're in distress. However, reading your post-it strikes me that first and foremost you have a lot more than a weight problem going on. Please--for your own well being call your grad student therapist. Despite any falling out she has an ethical obligation to help you. Tell her you are in crisis and need help. Ask her to get another therapist involved if you don't want her specifically. If you are so depressed that you're reluctant to leave the house and spend your days crying you need help as soon as possible. If you can't bring yourself to call the grad student therapist, go to the student health center and see a doctor there--a medical doctor can evaluate whether you need to get started on medication and help refer you to services on and off campus.
Are you going home for the holidays? Is it possible your family could be a source of help?0 -
I'll suggest professional counseling or Overeaters Anonymous. OA is free.
Why be miserable one more minute if you don't have to be?
You can ask for a different therapist. They can't force you to stay with one you don't click with. It happens all the time, a lot of people have to see several therapists before they find one that clicks for them.:flowerforyou:0 -
All of what GRUNO said - please go see someone - especially this time of year. It can take years to recover from binging if you do it by yourself. It has taken me most of my life. If I had the support in my 20's and the knowledge I have now there would be many different choices in my life. I regret that. Please go talk with someone at the campus health center.0
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You are 19 unhappy and a little scared, tough spot to be in right now with school obligations, career planning and relationships possibly. The one thing you need to do is put yourself and your well being above all other things. If you don't kiddo in the blink of an eye you will be 30 and things will have gotten even worse.
Everything else can wait right now, you are the number one priority and you need to have a sense of urgency. Spring semester is gonna be your time to shine. Just eat the things you like within your calrorie range and lift maybe try stronglifts. Lifting got me out of an epic state of depression. Make it part of your day and keep a schedule so you are not home so much stressing and vegging.
Take advantage of that 19 year old metabolism while you still got it. It's a domino effect depression it will make you binge, slack in school, give up home avoid family and friends but it also works the away when you find a way to have little victories each day the dominoes turn in your favor....ride those dominos like a tidal wave.
You can do it, you don't have to be better than everyone else, you just have to be better than YOU ever thought YOU could be.0 -
My suggestion, please give it another try. Sorry, but tracking your calories is the only way. I struggled with mindless eating for a long time, making all things of excuses for myself. But one day I realized I really had to change my lifestyle. I had to focus, stop and think about I was putting in my mouth. If I hadn't counted the calories, I wouldn't have known that I was consuming way too much. It is a slow process for me, but it is working.0
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The fact is your binging because your body is lacking something its out of balance. I found this out one day that was my problem. I now find it a PITA to take time out of my day to eat, no im not annorexic or anything I just get annoyed because we all gotta eat I just know that I found that what I eat I am satisfied but I know that i need to keep eating before I get hungry. You have to feel neither bloated or starved.Hi everyone,
This isn't my first time on MFP, I spent a solid 14 or so months on here before deleting my account. In the first 3-4 months of that time, when I was 18, I lost about 35lbs, going down to about 155 lbs and staying at the lowest I'd ever been since puberty, pretty much. I developed BED after that 4th month, and I started gaining a bit of weight back but a vacation in the middle of winter set me back on track and I kicked the binging habits for about 2 months. Some rough patches in my life put me back into binging, and I maintained my weight for about 6 months after that (it'd be like I was eating at a deficit 6 days a week and binging 1 day, so i'd just maintain).
Around August I moved away from home and into my own apartment with 3 roommates on campus. Since then I gained back *ALL* the weight and then some. I weight 155 on Aug 1st. and I was 195 the other week. And I'm only continuing to binge. I was in therapy for a little while, that was slightly, but I only could afford the counseling center on campus and I was seeing a grad student who didn't really know what she was doing, so I felt too uncomfortable in our sessions to continue going (although in hindsight I was binging far less around that time).
I'm sure it was a combination of the environmental stressors and screwing up my metabolism from restricting that brought me here, but now I've sunk into such a dark spot that I have no idea what to do with myself. I've let my grades fall a little bit this semester because I spent so much of my free time just depressed and laying in bed and eating and feeling HORRIBLE about myself. I lost so much motivation and self-discipline over the course of just a few months that it makes me want to cry all the time. And now that I've reached this point, so few of my clothes still fit (mainly pants, so i wear leggings, but I feel too fat to wear leggings). I'd bought a bunch of jeans when I was a size 8 (for the entire year) and I wore them all and now NONE of them fit.
I also visibly feel so much bigger and a lot of the weight has went to my torso area, so I'm CONSTANTLY aware of the fat rolls protruding from my bra and when I sit down and the extra thigh chub rubbing and how much bigger I look in photos and it's crippling. Like I sit at work or in class and all I can think about is how fat I feel and how disgusting it is and I look back at pictures of myself from over the summer or back in March (when I was at my slimmest) and it just makes me SO anxious. But all the while, I can't stop binging. And the vast majority of it is at home; I'll buy groceries for a week and they'll be gone within 3 days. I even steal some of my roommates' food in secret (usually quickly running to replace it before they notice) and any day that I don't have work or school or definitive plans I just stay at home and stuff my face until I want to cry.
The one thing I'm still happy about is that all this time I've continued going to the gym. I still lift weights, and do cardio. I try to go at least 3 times a week, and it ranges between 1-4. But the weight gain is even hurting me there, as I've developed ankle and shin pain when I run and I'm pretty sure it's because I've gained weight so rapidly my joints just haven't had time to adjust. It sucks.
I'm out of insurance right now and I had a bit of a fallout with my therapist/grad student so I can't go there but I *know* I can't fight this on my own. The more I've tried, the worst it's gotten. And for a while I was almost at the point of apathy but now that I feel this disgusting in my own skin I *know* I need to do something about this. I'm so mad at myself for continuing to try to lose weight when i was in the 150s. I knew I was still suffering from BED and I still pushed myself to undereating (most of the time) and it just brought me back to my worst.
I don't know what to do now
I'm back on MFP, indefinitely (I don't know if calorie counting is the best thing for me, but I don't know too many alternative routes) and I would *LOVE* for any support from anyone out there! I'm really good at providing support, too, so it would be reciprocal. If anyone has suffered from BED or any type of overeating and would like to, please add me. Even if you haven't but you'd like to be friends on here, please add me!
Edit: I've been logging/calorie counting since I began losing weight a year and a half ago. I laid back for a while with hand-written logs and less calorie counting but I'm hyperaware of what, and how much of it I eat on a daily basis. Food scale and all. I guess this is a bit different from weight loss.. it's eating disorder recovery (which i still hope will lead to weight loss).0 -
sent you a message. add me if you like, i know exactly what you're going through and am in a very similar situation right now, im sure we could both use the support!0
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So sorry you're going through this. I am in a therapy group with people with BED (although I do not have it). The number one thing they told us is that many binges can be removed by diet stabilisation. When you have gone through many months severely restricting food intake, the backlash can be horrific. I myself gained over 20kgs weight restoring from an eating disorder. I ended up 10kgs heavier than I had been to begin with.
If you can, find another therapist (ask your uni for a different one). As far as I'm concerned, an undereducated therapist is worse than nothing.
We were told in our group to work out how much we needed to maintain our weight. For me, this was 1900-2100 calories a day depending on activity. We were then told to split this up into three meals and three snacks a day. This will allow your glucose levels to remain stable throughout the day and will prevent your body from panicking and causing a physiological binge.
Within a week of starting this, my physiological binges had completely disappeared. I was never overly hungry or desperate for food. It didn't remove my psychological-related binges, but it was a good place to start and I think it will be for you too.
You have the rest of your life to slowly and safely lose this weight. But the sooner you take your emotional and physiological problems in hand, the better off you will be.
Look for resources online about mindfulness and BED. I think that will also help.0 -
Another plug for Overeaters Anonymous. Check out their podcasts and a meeting. Several cities have great podcasts online.0
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Please check out the book by Marianne Williamson called " A Course in Weight Loss." It really helped me realize that this journey is not just about the Weight! I turn to this book again and again and it really helps!0
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First off your brave for reaching out for help. I struggle with Binge eating as well and it just seems to be getting worse as I get older. I'm currently pregnant so i just have excuses coming out my ears for why I do it. I gained 75+ lbs with my first child while already over eating due to binge eating.
OA is a great resource. you can google groups in your area. You can also cool low fee counseling centers in your area. These are usually already licensed therapist working to get there hours for further education ect. It can be a great resource low fee or free does not mean bad quality.
A book that has really helped me has been Unlimited by Jillian Michaels. It really helps you look at the bigger issues behind the eating. It's not a book about just weight loss but about getting out of your own way and realizing where the underlying issues are coming from.
I would reach out to a new therapist or OA and every time you feeling like binging get on here and reach out for help for some one to talk to you off the ledge. It has been invaluable to me to find blogs to help me through the binges. If it is at all possible when you feel like one is coming on I will leave the house. ( i live a good ways out so theres no food options readily available) But if you can find a safe spot like that to clear your mind it might help.
While tracking your food can be helpful and keep you mindful of what your eating I would suggest a journal for more than your food but your emotions during before and after these binges. I would also start making grattitude lists. This has been very helpful for me although very hard at first find 5 things each day you are happy about and really hold on to those during your times of sadness. Some times its so much easier to just dig our selves deeper in a pit of depression than to look up to the light.0
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