It has been ____days since I purged.

Back to the drawing board. It feels like an overwhelming itch that absolutely has to get scratched. It is all consuming. If I just give in then it is over and done and I can think of other things. If I fight it then I spend my time consumed with the urge and thoughts. I can't focus on anything else. Like tying the hands of a person, with OCD, behind their back so they can't keep washing them. It is maddening.

1 day here.

16! Really proud of myself, even though to be honest, I have been restricting instead.

Ten days so far...

If you are still a member of this group, I hope this means that you are okay.

Back to zero. I have decided that binging and purging is just a reenactment of what happened with my ex-t. First he cared about me, and provided me with what I much needed. I was so hungry for love I ate up all he gave and wanted more more more. (binge). But he took back his love and took back all the nourishment (purge).
So tired of this. :/

I binge and purge about once every two weeks but purge about twice a week. This is as good as it gets folks. Fully recovery is not possible. This is what recovery looks for me. What does recovery look for you?

3 days for me

0 again. One would think if I could learn to not eat then there would never bea reason to have to purge. When will I learn????

Hello everyone. I'm uplifted to see that most of you are trying your level best to stay free of binging/purging. It doesn't matter how many days/nights it's been, every hour that passes free of our hellish disorder is a victory. MoxieDoxie, I too believe that how I am right now is the best it's ever gonna get, more than 30 years on from the initial symptoms and it all keeps reoccurring time after time. Yes, of course some folk DO make full recovery but I'm not one of them, I'm just not as totally extreme as I used to be.
Please please continue in your strides to recover, angelicgoldfish, Shattered Sanity, Tamarkirk, MoxiDoxi and Starthrrower ~~ Just do your best because nobody can expect more than that, it's your disorder, you hate it and don't want it but still strive.
Take care, HUGS and LOVES, as ever. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thanks Waggiedog... It has gotten worse for me of recent. 2 times today. 2 times? yesterday (at least... can't remember)... So Idk where it will go from here. Or even where I would want it to go....I hate it when I do it. I hate even the feeling like I have to do it. But I want to lose weight :/ I know it is harmful to my body. But that is not as important to me, which is probably sad. I only care about one thing atm and it is not about control or anything I don't think. I really do think it is just about weight loss. What a stupid way to try and lose weight.

Anyhow, thank you for your comment. It is good to have support here.

Hello again everyone ~~ Angelicgoldfish thanks. My reasoning about these ED's, and everything/anything related to issues around eating/starving/restricting/binging and abuse of meds (prescribed or otherwise) is, all we appear to want/need and obsess over is, weight loss by any means. In my book it's as simple as that! I've passed through a mass of Psycholigists, Psych Dr's, specialists in ED's, GP's, One to one and group CBT/DBT courses ~~ opps, not a lot more I can add to that is there!! Actually there is, another minefield, meds whether OTC (over the counter), prescribed and some of the 'street drugs'. I'm not wanting to exclude anorexia completely, even though I've been hospitalised for that over 20 years ago BUT, in my general experience most of the anorexia sufferers had never actually been overweight, or certainly never 'fat'. Please PLEASE, if you are a sufferer reading this, don't take offense (please add your voice) because anorexia can be, and IS without doubt, a killer.

Personally my fight over the last 30 plus years has been totally and absolutely about loosing weight, trying to get slim, though THIN would be better. Being thin is NEVER MINE for long, as yes, I can rid the weight, but it comes back on quicker than it ever falls of!! I'm obsessed by checking myself in the mirror, any mirror, anywhere!! My day is only gonna go by what I weight that morning, a pound this, a pound that way makes a huge difference.
The fact that I'm diagnosed with BPD IS def linked but it's not the cause, the symptoms of BPD are close to the symptoms of other disorders. I was the fattest kid in my class at school and I KNOW that's partly where my weight obssessions began, my worth is my weight.

I'm sorry if I've rambled here, or muddled you all up by my writing, it's just it's difficult to know how to put my thoughts into words, and to let you know your thinking isn't unique to you, others share this daily grind, but we just can't forget it, doesn't work that way!! OK, I'm off now, thanks for reading. xxxxxxxxxxxx

No apologies necessary for the rambling! It's great to hear from you. It truly is an obsession about weight isn't it? I had THE hardest time getting rid of my bathroom scale. I moved from place to place with it, always telling myself I should toss it and try to end the addiction. I did even put it in the trash once but pulled it out again. I think it eventually met its end (don't know cause I'm living in someone else's house right now and all my things are packed up in boxes still). The place I'm at now, they have a scale though. So I've began to get back into my routine with the morning weight thing, and then before and after purging. Mornings I have to get the same number 3 times or it doesn't count. But I never really like what number it is. Could probably drop 10 lbs overnight and think "that is not good enough yet". I don't know what number would be. It's just not realistic for me anymore I don't think. Like it is totally distorted over the years... Know what I mean? But I don't think it is about control. The docs, they always seem to think that is what it is about. I think for me, it gives me something to think about and focus on instead of a million other worries or negative $h|t. It is also a structure, a routine. Weight every morning. X amount of calories each day. Purge if you eat too much. Etc.

It somehow boils a complicated life down to very simplistic measures. Not sure why that is important. Things are so overwhelming for me. Maybe I just get overwhelmed easy. But at the same time, I like it and am addicted to it. To stress. And I'm dealing with this stupid loss but it's been almost 2-3 years now. How did I ever trust another person again with my heart. Stupid stupid stupid. Never again.

At least I have a new counselor appt next week at the school counseling center. Yay for that. I am having a good day so quite hopeful. No purging today. I need a break from it. And it wasn't making the numbers drop on the scale anyways. Pathetic.

So how are you all doing? Do you go to groups or therapy or anything. What meds have you tried and did any of them work?

Hows everyone doing? 3 days since last purged!! Yay! Thing is... now i'm just not eating. Which is just fine by me. Still drinking booze and that will be where most my cals come from. Drinking vodka with emergen-c haha.. Get my vitamins and my feel good on all at once! Only had a rice cake and 1/4 of an apple today, with coffee and a lil bit of milk... I feel great! Yay for no purging!! This is so much better than even needing to in the first place. It totally compensates for the loss I have gone through also... I will never get over ex-t... It has ****ing almost killed me for god's sakes! But still I stay strong and persevere. Even if I tend to try and match the emptiness I feel inside about it all with my food intake. I will survive. I will still be just fine. It can't go on like this forever I understand... Even though I want it to cause I feel so good! Hope you are all doing ok too!

4 days wahoo. I am on the mend. And even eating like a normal person and trying to get a bit of exercise too. I really want to get the nutrients my body needs. It is a good thing to be healthy. So thanks all for your support. It has really helped being able to let my crazy side leak out a little (or some might say a lot lol) here... Don't know why. But it helps. Maybe it is the being able to say whatever and not feel judged and then still have at least a few people support with a comment or hugs or whatever. I always feel a lot of shame after posting though (well, a lot of the time). But I think that might be borderline normal. We all have a lot of shame don't we? Part of why the eating disorders... Anyhow guess I'm going to try and write "normal" sounding posts now so I don't always feel the need to go and delete them... Hooray for recovery. xoxo

(((((angelicgoldfish05)))))

So glad I'm not the only one trying to hack at it like this!

I left day treatment back in 2014 and once I left I really pulled out all the stops to do what I could to stop binging (and purging- it was the binging which upset me the most though as it costed me money/put me in debt, created a huge mess emotionally as well as practically and just made me feel disgusted with myself and wanting to or needing to restrict the next day in utter terror at anything that I might not have gotten rid of).

I was on about 5 days a week when I left- having not managed more than one day a month for 3 months before leaving treatment (it was treatment for anorexia; I couldn't do gaining weight AND stopping purging because I felt so awful for eating during the day- something I'd strived hard to not do for a while. We'd be send home in the afternoon after a day of eating and I'd do the gym them go home and x,y,z...I only managed to curb that the final 3 months and it was because I had a few days off to reintegrate myself back to daily life which were days I did not eat or ate less than I would have done had I been in treatment, so cutting the bulimia was easier to hack those days- not easy, but easier.) but things got bad- my mood got bad and after about 3 or 4 months it dropped to 2-3 days a week, then by a year later I was struggling to get 1 day a week.

The last 2 weeks I've some how managed 4 straight days over a weekend twice! (a double huge deal because weekends are a huge problem for me; free time, nothing to do/no one to see and no motivation to do anything anyway) but going on my past experience, I'm so scared I'm going to lose what I have.

I get to Monday (after 4 days) and look at my weight (I can't not do this) and it always *ALWAYS* jumps by at least a kilo and a half (I think this is the same as 3-4 pounds?) though today it was 2 kilos (nearly 5 pounds...) It normally jumps day one then drops day 2, goes up a fraction day 3, but day 4 it just leaps and I can't justify keeping anything down. I feel disgusted, all I see is fat, all I feel is fat and somehow it makes sense to binge as well as purge. I'm not sure how to get my head around this.

I did stop bulimia twice before- the first time when in hospital my weight went up so fast I was accused by the staff as binging whilst in hospital! (I was not!!) The second time I recovered alone but again, my weight rocketed- I was so naïve back then, just kept telling myself if I eat healthily and "normally" and exercised well I could maintain a weight I wanted to (well within the lower end of the healthy BMI range was fine by me and what I was aiming to stick to at the time) and just ate proper clean food but cut the simple carbs and refined stuff (protein rich, no dressings, sauces or bread or pasta or rice, no sugar, junk food, no crisps, nothing that I couldn't understand the ingredients or how it was made or if I couldn't make it myself it wasn't allowed....etc) and ate fresh fruit and steamed veg, everything was calorie counted to be less than the advised "norm" for the average woman to be on the same side and I took up the gym big time. Every single day I was there doing cardo, yoga, the odd spinning and circuit class...but my weight was still going up and up and The more my weight went up, the more I exercised, keeping my food the same, walking loads, starving hungry all the time and going crazy.
I then cut out foods again and my weight went down- only cutting back to just over half of what I had been eating back when I started was too much and I relapsed...to bulimia and anorexia. I had by then cut back on the gym the same time I cut out food types one by one, oddly despite the thousands of calories my heart rate monitor was telling me I was no longer burning (because I was not physically able to) I was losing weight and going on the pinch-an-inch mentality, I do not think it was only muscle I was losing- I still do not understand this even today looking back at it. I exercise less, I lose weight? How the h*ll does that work??!

So as you may imagine, I'm pretty scared each time my weight jumps that it wont go back down again, I know for sure that bulimia makes my weight go down, if it would just stabilise with what I am eating (1200) it would be fine but I seem to be gaining despite being in a healthy range -there is no need for it to jump like this!

Has anyone else who has issues with anorexia gotten around this? Or am I the only one with a weight which seems to want to be as high as it can possibly be as soon as it can possibly be?

I am just fed up with living like this- I actually get past day 4 and although I am hungry and tired and feel physically drained, I could do another day...if my weight had just not jumped so high! I even thought this week if I look at the scales, I could manage 0.1-0.3 as a gain, it wouldn't be easy but I could hack it. But it was as if someone was looking down at me and laughing in my face, "0.3? HA! I'll show you 0.3- here's 2.3!!) I totally spent the entire day wanting to tear my skin away so I could scrape off my own body fat. Every glass that reflected me I saw fat, my shadow looks fat, I just feel horrible. And not looking at the scales is not an option- I know I'll just imagine and fear the worst if I don't look because that is what I have done before and it ends up with a "I can't cope" last minute dash to the shops somewhere around midnight. Worse than a planned shop because I tend to spend more and am less likely to sleep.

I decide to quit drinking (again) and it is day 2 for that. Except now I'm day 0 for Purging. What the hell am I running from?

Tabbycat, I relate to a lot of what you wrote. I've never really struggled with anorexia stuff though. I don't really have the will power to control what I eat I am finding. So yes, the weight is going up and really, shocking, but I would like it to go down. I'm starting to get active again (depression sucks the will to do much activity). So this is good. Maybe it is only a matter of time, persistence, determination, as to when I will be able to build up strength, discipline, and self-control. Why is the little kid inside (the child within) so lost. Why can't I just grieve the loss of her never having what she needed in her childhood and then learn how to just reparent her myself? If I knew how, I would surely do this. Why does therapy take so long to work? Once a week, then limited sessions, change therapists... Nothing is consistent. There is no stability. Had hoped to find stability in a therapist. Hell, I'm even paying for this. But it is not enough and I still have not found this. The great thing about working with a therapist is that they teach you and guide you how to become a stable person and find stability if that is your goal. I could easily just go out and get married (yes, could be easy for me 2 guys seem to be quite interested), except I do not want to be co-dependent like my mom and depend on a man for stability. I want to be able to have this within myself. How will I ever raise kids or teach them how to be independent if I am just co-dependent like my mom? I know it is a lot of hard work up ahead for me. I may not make it in time to actually have kids. Why is change so hard and take so much time? Why can't therapy work faster? Maybe it is a simple matter of motivation. Surely if I were motivated, I would go out and interview tons of therapists - every one in town (except at the one major behavioral place I can't go to). Surely I would find the one I could work with and see him 2 or even 3 times a week if need be. Finances be damned. Who needs a car in winter time anyways. I should walk the 3.2 miles to and from the bus stop every day in the snow when winter hits. Cause at least I would have something real to struggle with - and I'd be getting exercise. As of now, there is nothing tangible for me to complain about. All my physical needs are met and then some. My mind has needs being met through school. So is it just the emotional needs that are lacking? I know I never really got that from my dad. But surely it could not have been the cause because we can't blame anyone but ourselves. So I am the one to blame and I need to just find a way to move faster. To have discipline. To accept that needs were not met that I needed when I was a kid.

Maybe that is a little bit what I am running from. That and also that I just cannot do the things I want to do like I want to do them. I aim high but only reach a fraction of where I want to be. High expectations and good intentions and low on the follow through. After so long of having high expectations and not meeting them, is it normal to start to give up? Some people are born with inner drive, with high energy, and probably better genetics than others. But that is still an excuse. I guess the question is, how do you find that inner light again - that energy, drive, even joy about life and experiencing happiness on a regular basis - when it has all but burned out, or has at the very least, dimmed considerable and even been almost snuffed out by others who have done harm? Oh yes, and another thing I am running from: A man who I trusted, more than anyone else - even with my life (never ever trust anyone else with your life unless they are a medical doctor) - completely failed me. He was not there when I needed him. He left me and abandoned me and deserted me and rejected me. He is never going to be there ever again. I will never get another drop or ounce of his love ever again. Who wants to face that?

angelicgoldfish- thanks for your reply I don't think you should feel that it's all about lack of will-power- it's about the mentality of fear- I don't eat certain things because the idea of eating them is so tied to weight gain and that totally freaks me out-if I knew and could trust my body to not balloon the way it always seems to when I eat, I'd not be so focused on fearing everything I eat.

I totally get what you mean by the feeling of instability- but I really think a lot of that has to do with our own stuff- I am extremely lucky as I've not only seen the same Psychiatrist for over 18 years (despite her curtailing things about 2 years ago because she is pursuing other things I can ask to see her any time) I also have had the same therapist for many years too- yet the one thing constantly on my mind is "when is it going to end"? which transfers to being anything from worrying about my therapist having died between sessions to imagining and having nightmares about her vanishing-don't get me wrong; I've had experiences of both frequent changes of therapists (please don't ask me to count how many I've been through!) and having the same person I can see and build a relationship with yet it seems the more time I have the greater my fears and I have in the past even been unable to leave my home because I am physically shaking because I'm so sure something bad will happen very soon and I will be alone and though I know that wont kill me, I don't think I can see a way through the sheer weight of the feelings and intense feeling of not wanting to carry on. I know it wouldn't kill me, I'm not so sure I wouldn't... (that isn't something I feel brave enough to tell anyone because I'm worried it would feel like some sort of emotional blackmail.)
But I'm going off on a tangent! I just wanted to say that although I see your worried about the constant changes and insecurity; it may not be just the reality of the situation -there could be more to it than meets the eye.

It doesn't sound so much as your running from something than your trying to face-first throw yourself into a mindfield of stuff which has no answer- there is no right time for kids, no right time for marriage, no right time for anything, as people we never really feel complete, we can know our issues and what to do about them, but still never actually feel able to pull it all together and take a firmer grip to move forward. I am at the point in my life where I start to realise, I'm unlikely to have kids. I've been so overwhelmed and suffocated with the stuff of my mental health (eating disorder aside, my anxiety and depression issues are far harder to grapple with; hence the ED as a coping strategy...) you seem to have put an adult mind on your life but not given yourself to breathe- as if by ruling your life with discipline and will-power (I can see it even if you can't) and a correct focus you will push your life forward when actually maybe the part that you want to move forward doesn't get a look in because your too busy placing your focus elsewhere.

But that's just what I pick up from your post here- you seem to explain where your at really clearly from where I'm sitting anyway!
I totally get what you say on the "low on follow through"- depression does that to you and IMO depression can often come from trying so bloody hard, only to feel like your still struggling to get to the end of the day- there is no let up. Your own high expectations no doubt also make it feel like anything you've tried is of no big deal and it can feel like you have no follow through, but unless you have someone tell you to type all that, the fact your acknowledging all that, trying in any way to do battle with it (many wont and don't bother and instead pass it on to their kids or project it all on to their partner in some sort of abusive relationship) I'd say your possibly not recognising what you have done and are doing and just because it's not reaping such clear benefits, doesn't mean you should ignore it.

IMO, that inner light gets clouded when the rest of our lives and head problems block it. It's still there even if you can't reach it, don't give up trying to get it back- many never even realise it is there at all.

Your head seems to be working at a million miles an hour- either your at a point of utter desperation trying to think your way through this or you are struggling with trying to block out everything that really matters because you can't cope yet with the stuff that really hurts. I don't know- it's just what I pick up and can relate to! Keep a diary, work on putting things to rest and try to focus on the real stuff and not the imagined future, fears you don't have answers for and pressures you've picked up for yourself. Today is what matters, tomorrow is tomorrow- it's a hard thing to do, but if you can start to work on what is actually with you, it makes getting to the root of the problems a whole lot easier; as one very intelligent ED nurse once told me; it can be a smoke-screen for what is really there, in order that we can block out what is really there.

it's been 8 days