Help Needed

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carnacionedmondson1212
carnacionedmondson1212 Posts: 1 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I have a severely bad relationship with food. I suffered with anorexia and bullimia in high school, and wasn’t aware of it until I spoke about my eating habits with my therapist. I currently realized I’ve been binging again and will sometimes rush to the bathroom to throw it all up. I was 120Ibs about 3 years ago and started to rapidly gain weight out of nowhere and was soon diagnosed with PCOS. I currently weigh 224ishIbs. I have been trying to lose the weight, but no matter what I do I can’t lose it, every time I work out it’s as if I gain more. And I almost use binging to self sabotage or as a stress coping mechanism, like just now I ordered way too much food for somebody who is 5’1 and petite, it was enough for like 4 other people, and ate all of it and feel really upset over it. I got this app to help maintain the binging or overeating, but I’m having a hard time. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

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  • corinasue1143
    corinasue1143 Posts: 7,467 Member
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    I don’t have much advice. But I hope you get some control. Life is too short to fight with yourself.
    As for feeling like exercise just adds pounds, I hope you do realize that exercise may very well cause some water weight hanging on for a day or three.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,902 Member
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    I'm going to assume that you're not still in therapy, or you'd be discussing this with your therapist. I suggest you get back into therapy, and specifically with someone who does Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

    While you get the ball rolling on that, you can check out this book on CBT for overeating. It was available in my library system, so maybe yours too.

    The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person

    Can thinking and eating like a thin person be learned, similar to learning to drive or use a computer? Beck (Cognitive Therapy for Challenging Problems) contends so, based on decades of work with patients who have lost pounds and maintained weight through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Beck's six-week program adapts CBT, a therapeutic system developed by Beck's father, Aaron, in the 1960s, to specific challenges faced by yo-yo dieters, including negative thinking, bargaining, emotional eating, bingeing, and eating out. Beck counsels readers day-by-day, introducing new elements (creating advantage response cards, choosing a diet, enlisting a diet coach, making a weight-loss graph) progressively and offering tools to help readers stay focused (writing exercises, to-do lists, ways to counter negative thoughts). There are no eating plans, calorie counts, recipes or exercises; according to Beck, any healthy diet will work if readers learn to think differently about eating and food. Beck's book is like an extended therapy session with a diet coach. (Apr.)
  • ChickenKillerPuppy
    ChickenKillerPuppy Posts: 297 Member
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    It is near impossible to lose weight in any sort of maintainable way while you are struggling with an eating disorder. My two cents would be to work with a professional or coach to get your eating disorder and relationship with food under control, and then you can work on losing weight. Because even if you lose the weight, if you haven't addressed the binging (and purging), you're not just going to magically keep it off and live a "normal" life.

    If you think about it, it's just too much to expect from yourself - that you can create healthy habits to eat within a calorie range while you have disordered eating. I know it won't be satisfying because you are just thinking "lose lose lose" but you need to take care of the more urgent problem first. It's like having a broken ankle and trying to increase your pace while you run. You need to heal what is broken so it is strong and solid and then you can work on improving.

    My heart goes out to you and wishing you the best of luck.
  • LifeChangz
    LifeChangz Posts: 457 Member
    edited December 2022
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    Waves hello

    just to add to the information on the Beck book - I think it has a warning that the book encourages people struggling with bingeing/purging to work with someone who can help create a plan and suggest skills that will help improve this.

    sometimes as I ponder... kind of a chicken and egg thing... which comes first weight loss (a weight loss goal), maintaining weight (also a weight management goal), stabilizing eating (an approach/method that supports our other heart desired goals) compared to weight loss eating plan (cutting calories way below what we have been eating). There are so many different approaches - but important to find ones that help you, right now, today, just where you are and go forward.

    so for me personally, it helps me to focus on ways to eat that help me, nourish my body, are emotionally satisfying, emotional compromises, baby steps forward with stabilizing and normalizing helpful eating patterns that provide my body with enough food, but not too much. I like calorie counting because it helps me understand how much is enough and not too much and helps me design how and when to eat with foods I enjoy that are helpful for my body.

    what i find crazy making is going from 6,000 cals in a meal to a 1,200 calorie a day diet - so pondering how, what, when, why, where we are eating - making choices for each meal and snack just about that particular meal or snack - eat when we need to eat more for our body. If our body does not need food and we need something emotionally, do something that soothes the emotions and stress instead... I think this is where it can really help to work with someone who can help rebuild our eating approach... and/or sites like this and various books can help....

    best to you - the important thing is to not quit. Choose to believe that things can and will get better - you're not a failure - you have more meals and snacks ahead to practice, explore and try new2you things.... that will be helpful for you... Shift your focus from the past to today and explore forward... find ways to encourage yourself and when you hear yourself beating yourself up - stop. Find ways to encourage yourself - like you would encourage a toddler learning to walk - because this is what you are doing - relearning ways to eat that will help you and nourish you both physically and emotionally :)

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