I’m 21 and have been constantly dealing with the pressures and desire to have a “prefect skinny body”. It doesn’t help that I’m very self-conscious and also a perfectionist. I work out roughly five days a week and enjoy going to the gym but I struggle with food. I feel like I’m always hungry and thinking about food to the point where I want food not because I’m hungry but because it just sounds so good.

I try to eat healthy and eat small meals but it never goes according to plan. It either turns into a lot of small “healthy” snacks, which does nothing to help eating less, or it starts off eating healthy but then I get super bad cravings for junk food especially peanut butter (my one true weakness).
Because of my love of food and strong desire for a good body I have fallen into a vicious cycle. I try to eat less and won’t eat even if I’m hungry, but then sometimes I become so hungry that all I think about is food and end up eating a large quantity of food, usually super unhealthy. After I gorge myself in unhealthy food I feel so bad and ashamed of myself that it usually ends in me purging in attempt to feel better about myself.

This cycle has been going on for a while but now I’m living on my own and has gotten worse. Since I am so self-conscious, I limit eating, and snacking especially, around others because of what they might think and also with people always around it’s hard to go to the bathroom to purge.
Now living on my own I have an endless supply of food that I can eat when I’m bored with no judgment from anyone and when I feel bad about it, it’s easy to head to the bathroom and purge.

I’m caught it in this and have no clue how to get out because I am young and do want the good body and want to appear attractive to guys. Ill change my mind set about body image but I’m so self-conscious that it always goes back to this.