[NightOwlFlying]

Hello… I’ve never posted on a forum for help, but I’m getting to the point where I don’t know what else to do. I was (slightly) sexually abused as a child, which led to a lot of self-hate, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts. I started to receive help with these things when my mom found out I was cutting at age 12. Although I stopped cutting around 14, I began eating a lot of food and it didn’t help that I was incapacitated at the time due to Lyme disease. My Lyme reared its ugly head when I had my nervous breakdown at 12 and it hasn’t completely left me alone despite the year of treatment I received. (i.e. my body still has lots of pain, atrophy, and other Lyme-related issues.) After being homeschooled in 8th grade I picked up the habit of skipping school. I graduated perfectly fin despite not attending half the school year and was attending college part time till recently. I continued to gain weight until age 18 where I was diagnosed with a new illness, caused by the medication I took to cure my Lyme. It’s called Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension and the only cure is to lose weight. If not, eventually, I can go blind. When I was diagnosed my retinas were so swollen they were bleeding. I was in denial for a long *** time until I finally decided to put in the effort to lose the weight. A certain number of pounds and you’ll see results, the doctor said. Well, it took me a year or less, but I lost the recommended amount of weight. I was given the okay to stop taking the pills that were keeping my eyes from exploding and everything was hunky dory until I got complacent and gained back most of it without even realizing it. And now that I have, I still can’t stop. I really wonder how I can get my life to turn around again. Will I gain weight every time I’m depressed and have to worry about whether or not I’ll be going blind soon every day? It’s really stressful, nothing has worked out lately (and never really has) and I’m really depressed and it’s hard for me to see the end of the tunnel because every time I pick myself back up I get crushed back down and it’s really hard to build myself up stronger. & don’t tell me therapy because I’ve been there and done that what feels like my whole life and pills don’t work and most worsen my condition anyway. I try to work out, but it’s hard to get into a routine when my entire body hurts the way it does. I lost the first weight with help from a physical therapist, but that’s no longer an option. Please give any advice or insight you can.

Tl;dr I have a lot of physical and mental illnesses that would be better if I lost weight, but I can’t stop eating. Help.

[pegasus]

Hello NightOwlFlying, welcome to Psych Central!

I don't know much about lyme disease but I'm thinking that gentle exercise would be ok with that and I would think finding the motivation would be the issue here. So, how about getting a dog to walk, pets are known to help our mental health and they have to be walked. Is this something you could do?

Hello! Binge eating is really difficult and you are not alone.

I've been binge eating for years and am only just now starting to get it under control. I remember at my worst, with an impossibly sized meal (or three!) sitting before me I'd just imagine myself going into some kind of diabetic coma and would actually smile about it. Because at least I'd be free from binging hell. But I'm doing better now.

The best insight I can offer, and this is only something that works for me and is admittedly difficult... it's that thoughts and feelings often follow action. So the "negative" action of binge eating causes negative thoughts and feelings. Landing us in a perpetual binge -> feel bad - > binge - > feel bad cycle. The best thing I've found for sticking a wrench in that cycle of negativity is stopping one binge here, one binge there and replacing what was going to be a negative activity with a positive activity. That could be as little as resisting the binge and eating something reasonable at home (still positive!) or as much as taking a walk. It's admittedly very difficult, I don't mean to make it sound like "well, stop eating, duh!", but positive thoughts and feelings often follow positive action.

I'm still working on getting off the weight I put on through extensive binging and though it will take time, I feel sooo much better. You can too! Just start with one binge impulse; one day at a time. Even if you do well two days and are bad one, that's JUST one day.

I don't know this will help... I know it's difficult. But you are not alone. And it is not impossible. Binge eating is, afterall, just a much a "routine" as healthy eating is.