[vanessa22]

ive been in recovery for about 2 years now, did well . I was diagnosed with Bulimia, I have not binged in 2 years over, and just started this year. -before this year though- I went through a great depression spiral into anorexia. I had physical and emotional/mental needs and voids that needed to be filled. Idk whats going on. Since then ive been stil up and down with the binging. Sometimes, I hate food, and I hate eating. Yet that is my weapon of choice I use to self harm. Maybe that's why.. maybe that's ed using food as a weapon against me when he makes me believe I need to self destruct. Because I am not a cutter, I have an ed and he is in charge of food and body and mind-so the weapon is food. I used it to not nourish me, and now using it to over fill me. I keep trying though to get over this slump, but how! ? I will be motivated one day, but then the next day when that moment comes, I always choose the food. Today- I TRIED so hard- I HAD such an urge to binge- and was physically hungry as well. Instead of risking eating in the house, or stayin inside, I suggested a walk with my roommate. I realized I did need some form of nourishment, and was ready and brave enough to go out for a walk- fufill my mental needs-and my physical needs - A smoothie from Mcdonalds.(my body was asking for this) And emotional by going with friend. and security .

She ended up not wanting to go. I got pissed at her. In my head I said how dare you jeopardize your best friends recovery and goals shes doing and steps shes making right now to avoid a binge. Outloud I told her - "Wow. Its always something with you. You never use to be this lazy." (in all honestly though its true. shes always been lazy, actually. its the truth. it needs to be told) Lazy people piss me off, and she has become a trigger now for my binging btw.
anyways, so now her laziness was gona affect her friends recovery. I could have went to mcdonalds by myself-but I wud look like a loser. And it wouldn't be fun for me- id be scared of being depressed by that then coming home and binging anyways. I needed her with me.. I feel more secure eating with people..

I thought id do myself some good by getting something... I got cookies instead. and made an effort to contact a friend to go for a walk, and kinda placed my bet on him. if he comes through, I wont binge. I also could have made a smoothie at home, but wasn't in the mood-and scared of eating at home- higher chance for binging. I got through dinner at home today ok which was a victory. but ruined it by binging at night. (well, I stil have that one victiory im not miscounting that) I chose not to even wait for my friend, I gave up on that, and I binged.

I could have walked alone with my ipod.. I chose food instead. I thought maybe I could have JUST the cookies to nourish me a bit, then go for a walk.
I didn't go for a walk. instead I binged enough so I couldn't physically go for that walk. I feel fat- I know ive gained weight and I guess sometimes its an exscuss to take me out of the game cus im tired of triing and failing all the time.
I feel to fat to even go outside sometimes. Its depressing, cus its finnaly my favorite season- summer- and I feel to fat to go out and enjoy it.

I guess this became more of a diary entry, im sorry.
main point is how can I stop choosing FOOD? How can I - save myself? And not have to relie on other people-ALWAYS? Or do we need to be saved? Is there a way I CAN be saved...?

[spondiferous]

Thanks for posting this, Vanessa.
You're right about giving yourself credit for every little victory. Even if you only have one victory out of a day full of failures or near misses or whatever you want to call them, it's still a victory. Recovering from Ed is difficult because Ed is cunning and baffling and likes to confuse and humiliate. It's how he maintains his authority in my life.
What you mentioned about wanting others to go on walks with you, etc, that doesn't sound like an unreasonable need to me. It sounds to me like you know what you need. It sounds to me like you've got enough awareness to know what your triggers are, to know what your danger zones are, and to try to avoid them. Even if you cave in eventually (binging at the end of the day after succeeding with dinner and not waiting for your friend before binging), you're still seeking recovery. What really helped me out was when two therapists from my eating disorder told us in Fundamentals, Recovery is hard, and it's not going to easy, and you're going to relapse. It's not a linear journey.
At first I felt hopeless. I felt like I had nothing to live for if it was going to beat me anyway, and to be honest I'm surprised I kept on going back. Ed got worse. I was engaging in behaviors I hadn't done in years and doing them at a rate I hadn't done in years. I felt like whatever progress I'd made was gone. I felt like there was no point to anything. But I kept going. I felt like a fraud. I was going to an ED clinic and I felt like I had no motivation to get better and like I was wasting everyone's time. But that's another thing they told us: there is a large amount of ambivalence in ED recovery, and that's perfectly normal - healthy, even.
I still don't really know how, but my thinking around it began to change probably in February or so. I realized that they were right. And I finally 'got it'. It's not about perfectionism for me. Perfectionism is what keeps me sick. I'm not perfect, and I can't do anything perfectly.
I started to put things and people in my life that would support my recovery. I started going to recovery meetings. I'm in a therapy group for people recovering from Ed and there's psychiatric support there as well.
I've been binge and purge free since April 9. This is not the first time in my life that I've been this far, and I feel nervous being comfortable with my success because I'm still waiting for myself to fail. I still obsess all the time about food. I still want to eat certain things that I know for me would trigger a binge. There's lots of things that still happen. I don't know if they'll ever stop. But I get stronger and I'm able to make different choices.
You formed your post as a question, so I will tell you what I think (read: I will answer your questions). Take what you like and leave the rest.

1.) At some level we need to choose food, and learn not to be afraid of it. It's learning how to discern emotional/mental eating from physical hunger, which is sounds like you are already capable of doing. We all need food to live and that's what makes Ed recovery so hard. We can't just put it down and walk away.
2.) That all depends on what you need and what your beliefs and values are. Some people believe they can't do it alone and attend programs like OA (Overeaters Anonymous) or ABA (Anorexics and Bulimics Anonymous) or other forms of recovery groups (SMART Recovery and Self-Management Training, Spiral Steps, 16 Steps of Discovery and Empowerment, etc). Some people find a spiritual path that involves more 'alternative' approaches, like yoga, meditation, naturopathy, acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, etc. Some people find themselves in a structured religion (Christianity, Buddhism, Paganism, Judaism, etc). Some people do any or none of this combined with therapy, and still others decide to go it alone and find the strength within them to 'just quit'. I use a combination of recovery groups (for me it's live OA meetings and online Spiral Steps), meditation, 'religion', and reading/researching. I try to figure out what works for me on a regular basis. Because the truth is that regardless of what you choose to do, there's very little chance that it won't require a certain amount of work, even if that work ends up being as simple as making different choices (though I've never heard of that working for anyone in recovery from Ed, but that's just me).
3.) I struggle with the idea of relying on others. Mostly that's because of my perception of what this means. What I've come to learn is that we all need others in our lives in some way. I think that people in recovery, for whatever reason, are used to being dependent on people (for money, food, drugs, booze, emotional strength, housing, whatever) in a way that is more power-over than power-from-within. What I mean is this: we're used to 'owing' people, being in their debt, rather than being interdependent - living together and finding ways to honor each other and meet each other's needs in ways that are healthy and respectful for all concerned. Boundary-setting is a big part of that, and one of the hardest things to learn in recovery. For me, anyway.
4.) Do we need to be saved? We need a change. I suppose in a way that means that yes, we do need to be saved. The thing is that it's up to us to save ourselves. We can have other people in our lives - professionals, family, friends, peers - to help us and support us in our journeys but it is up to us to do the footwork.
5.) Yes. Absolutely. You have to believe it. It doesn't matter if you doubt it sometimes, or think it's hopeless, or feel angry and hateful that this is happening to you, etc. What matters is that you believe you can recover on SOME LEVEL. Also - and this is imperative - take things one at a time. Take life one day at a time; if that's too big, break it down by hour, minute, even second. Do the same with your food if you have to. If taking it day by day with your food is too big, take it meal by meal, or even bite by bite. This has been CRUCIAL to me in the last month and a half.

In closing I will add something that's worked well for me, and that's reading literature on body acceptance. You mention that you feel too fat to leave the house, but you haven't mentioned whether or not you actually are fat (and I'm not asking you to do so). There's a radical notion out there floating around that we can be okay with the bodies we have, and that we're not required to live up to some kind of standard about what a body should look like. In other words, some people actually hold the belief that it's okay to be fat. And even if you don't think it is, what have you got to lose by opening your mind to the possibility that it's okay to have a body regardless of what it looks like? I still have a lot of issues with my body and body image. I'm fat, and I have been more or less since I was 13 or 14 (up and down through my teens and early 20s but upwards of 250 lbs since I was 25). I've always spent my life trying to lose weight, trying to diet. This time, in my recovery, it's not just my binging and purging I'm recovering from. It's the mind warp that exists out there in the media, perpetrated by health professionals and even people close to us (family and friends). The most important thing is health and it is possible to be healthy at most sizes, as long as a person is active.
Hopefully this has answered some of your questions, from one perspective. I realize that everyone is going to have something different to say and hopefully you get some help and encouragement from all of it. I wish you luck in your journey and if you EVER need to talk to someone about anything, please feel free to PM me. I will not ever judge you for anything.

[vanessa22]

Thanks a lot