I don't know how to stop

Well, hello everyone. I guess it’s time for me to tell my story. I’ve been meaning to for a while, but I never found a place where I could. Sorry, this’ll be long. (Warnings for suicide mentions, if that sort of thing triggers you. I’m not actively suicidal, don’t worry, but it just comes up.)

I’ll be 24 by the end of this month. I was a thin child, but I’ve struggled with my weight since puberty. Actually, not really – I mean, I always thought I was fat, but I was actually in what the doctor would call healthy range. The rest of my family, at least my mother’s side, is superskinny and very pretty, though, so I always looked like the odd one out in the family photos with my stepsister, half-sister, mother and stepfather. My mother was very insistent on my losing weight as well, from when I was 11 years old or so, and... well let’s say she’s never been a very gentle person. She’ll tell you the truth straight to your face. I’m not blaming her at all, she’s had a difficult life herself and she’s always been a good mum, but I just wanna catalogue how long weight loss has been a part of my life. I don’t know what else could have caused this. I’ve never had any of the textbook traumatic experiences in my life; I’d at least have a reason if that was the case.

I think I purged once or twice when I was younger, but I realised that it would be very easy for someone to find out about that. It’s better binging, you know? People will judge you for being fat, but at least you won’t cause everyone to worry. I wouldn’t want my parents to think they are responsible. I wouldn’t really want anyone to notice at all. I lost weight at the end of high school, then chose the wrong bachelor and slid into a really dark place – which meant I lost weight. But I gained a lot through the last 4 years of actually studying something that makes me happy and working fun jobs. It’s so strange, when I’m really, really depressed, I don’t want to eat. It’s almost like I should keep myself on that level where I barely want to stay alive because that seems to be the only surefire way of losing weight. I’ve been really binging regularly since about two or three years, on and off before. It makes me sick to think about the amounts of food I can eat. It’s like I have no limit. My stomach must be the size of my whole torso or something, it’s straight-up ridiculous.

I’ve thought about therapy, but it feels like that would be the ultimate capitulation. By the way, I’m not judging anyone for going to therapy. Hell, one of my best friends is a therapist – it’s a necessary, good profession. But for some reason I have completely different standards when it comes to me (just like with weight – I think many overweight women are heartbreakingly beautiful and it never bothered me with the boyfriend I had, who was overweight, but I can’t get past it when I look at myself). Telling someone about my problems without the anonymity of the internet as a smokescreen would feel terrible. I would feel like a complete attention-seeking failure. I know I would pay them, so it’s not like I’m stealing their time, but I can’t help but think they’d consider me an absolute clown with no willpower. I feel like one.

The greatest thing about this all is that I’ve been born with several severe internal mutations. My liver has been operated on twice and now I have a liver bypass. It’s working for now, but I’m not exactly doing it any favours with the way I’m eating. Even better, the bypass was taken from my leg and the veins never regrew right so that I now have permanent blood circulation problems in my leg which are exacerbated by every pound of weight I put on. I know all that, but it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes it even kind of encourages me. Then all I think about when I’m eating is how I’m slowly pushing my body closer to the brink until it’s finally over. It feels like such a terrible thing to do because my parents had to work so hard when I was a baby to even find someone who knew what was wrong and the doctors did a great job patching up a body that was never meant to survive more than a year and I’m just ruining everyone’s work. My mum flat-out told me that she wouldn’t have made the effort back then to save my life if she’d known how I’d turn out.

I think I’m not such a bad person otherwise – this semester I taught a class at university, I have near-perfect grades and am currently finishing my Masters, I play several instruments, I draw and write on a passable level, I speak four languages and am currently learnig two more, I have amazing friends... but even as I write all of that, it doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t signify at all if I can’t get my eating under control. Hell, I know for sure most of my family won’t respect me unless I’m thin (and that is important to me because I love them). It’s all they ever comment on.

Thank you for reading. I could never tell anyone who knows me about this in a million years. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, check-up about my liver issue. If he asks about my weight (which... well I don’t know how exact I’m allowed to get here, but I’ve gained 20% of my complete weight in the last year), I don’t know what to tell him.

Bottom line is, I need to stop or I’ll probably die a very long-winded, very painful death of liver failure. I thought I could perhaps document my struggle here. Maybe someone else wants to share their experiences as well.

Hello there anotheruser,

I'm replying to your post because I understand (partially) what you're going through. I've never had so serious health issues, but I do understand how it feels to have a perfectionist mind and high standards when it comes to self-evaluation.

Back at elementary school, even thought I thought it was ok for other children to have C-s or D-s, it wasn't ok for me. Every time I got something different than an A (even a B), I would go home crying. And it wasn't so much about my parents. It's not like they expected me to be the best student or anything. It was just about me wanting to be perfect.

The same thing happened with my weight issue. I've never really been fat. I ended up having this disorder simply because I wanted to be perfectly thin. Now I see how wrong it was. Human beings are not meant to be perfect.

I'm not saying that it's wrong to have high standards for yourself (as long as they're feasible and as long they don't make you feel depressed).

My advice for you is to try focusing on being happy instead on being perfect. You only have one life and it's not to be wasted. If you don't take the chance and enjoy life now while you're young, you'll definitely regret it later.

King regards and best of luck!

Anastasja

"My mum flat-out told me that she wouldn’t have made the effort back then to save my life if she’d known how I’d turn out." : That is a horrible thing for a mother to say. Everyone deserves to be loved unconditionally, and usually its the parents who provide that. I can related to parts of your story. I also have very high standards for myself. My day has to be perfect else its not worth it. On top of that i have no self control either. I have been binging for 10 years now and I don't know how to stop.

Now I have started focusing on the positive things - focus on eating right (and not on "not eating wrong things"), acknowledge that I am not perfect but I love myself. I have some limitations like not having control over binging, especially tendency to be chocoholic. So now I am trying to actively stay away from these things. Not that i am succeeding but i am trying and that gives me some hope that one day things will get better.

You have some psychological problems. And mostly I think because of your mum. For instance I, took *mod edit- link removed* to loose some weight. But all my relatives and friends helped me. And it helped more that drugs. Good luck outthere. Find people which will love you.

Dear anonymous,

I wanted to reply to your story because I can really relate.

First of all I want to tell you that I'm very sorry for the situation you're in. When issues with food/weight control your life it is not a happy life (although there are probably lots of happy moments). Especialy when the problem also involves family/health issues . I think it is great that despite the problems you manage to have such a rich life, in terms of education, hobbies & friends. To me that shows a lot of strenght!

I graduated a few years a go and I'm currently working at a university in the Netherlands. I have a great job, a live in a beautiful house, have a boyfriend and a few good friends.

I struggling with BED as well. It started when I was about 10 years old. I have a mom who was still recovering from anorexia when she was parenting. In the end of primary school (in the netherlands you are around 12 yo then) I had some bad experiences wirh a teacher (sexual) and had to move to another school. I lost a lot of friends by then, got bullied and felt extremely weird and alone. It definitely has been a traumatic experience.

I've always loved food as a toddler/child (i could eat about anything, was a little overweight) but around 12 it became an obsession. I was crying almost every at school, which of course other pupils found rather strange, and when I got home I started eating and just didn't stop. My mom locked the candydrawer but I always found a way to eat. I was extremely depressed, scared and even slept for a year in my parents bedroom. I can still remember I told my mom it felt dark inside and that I didnt't want to live.

I got bullied at secondary school (from 12 yo-15 yo) as well and I was very unhappy. At sixteen I started to use antidepressant and that helped a lot. I lost # pounds and it wasn't even a lot of effort.

My life changed signficantly, I made friends, became attractrive and got a lot of male-attention. However the problem with food didn't really go away. I still was obsessed with food, weight etcetera.

Now I'm a weird situation. Like i said, I have a job, boyfriend, friend and a house but the struggle with food consumes me every day. I'm currently overweight and I canot get out of the spriral. Unlike you my family, boyfriend and friends know of my struggle. For my boyfriend it becomes even really annoying because I'm coming up with new food plans every week I never follow through, at least for more than five days. In that way it really puts pressure on my relationship. In addition, I skip work now and then because I feel so sick of the food I ate the night before or I decide that I need time to make a new food plan (which doesn't work anyway)

In my family there is a lot talking about feelings. My parents send me to a psychiatrist when I was 10 and I think I've already been in 6 therapy programmes. My parents want me to start another program but I don't think that will help. In addiiton, my boyfriend gets angry of the fact that I'm talking a lot about my feelings/problems but I don't take responsibility to DO something about them. For him therapy will give me another excuse to talk a lot but not actually DO something.

In addtion I'm having a lot of doubt about the actual 'ilness'. Is it indeed something that needs to be 'treated' or is it just a consequence of some problems with impulse-control / laziness. My parents are from the illness interpretation, my boyfriend from the laziness and I'm somewhere in between.

In the past few months my food issues have become larger. Because I'm overweight I really want to lose weight and look normal again. The extra weight is detrimental for my sex life, I have no stamina, i get sweaty and sometimes stink in bed :S

It is really weid because on the one hand I really don't want to do this anymore, but on the I other hand, the feeling that I cannot binge anymore is also not pleasant. It is something that I've been doing for such a long time and something I cannot really let go of. (at least not 24/7)

For now my new plan is to focus on the stopping with binging, not on losing weight. I bought a new book about it with exercises as well so hopefully that wil help a bit.

If you need someone to talk about your food issues you can send me a private message! I think this BED-journey is very lonely (especially if you haven't told anyone) so I'll be happy to support.

Lots of love!