(Part 2) Best products from r/EatingDisorders

None of us want you to be a 30 year old woman with BN, either. There are steps you can take now to prevent that. Recovery will be difficult and challenging, but not as difficult if you don't overcome the eating disorder.

Learn all you can about eating disorders. There is a lot of information in our sidebar. Eating disorders are psychological disorders. The mind is unsettled in a some way, and the disordered relationship to food is the way it manifests.

Some basic physiology, the body wants balance. Undereating leads to overeating leads to undereating, etc. If you undereat, then your body's hunger hormones start revving up and they will make you want to overeat, and overeat almost anything. The key is balance.

Therapists are very helpful, especially if you do your own homework, such as learning about EDs. You may want to consider beginning to change how you think about yourself with some of the ideas below. It's not a quick fix, but it's a start.

~Be clear about what you want with life (health, livelihood, friends, etc.) Set your intentions, and decide what really matters. Notice people you know that you appreciate and that their body size is probably not what makes them interesting.

~Learn to appreciate your inner qualities, such as your kindness, your sincerity, your creativity, your generosity. Train your mind to tie in a specific example of your actions showing this, such as. "I gave my dog attention and this is one way I am kind." "I spontaneously sent my aunt a postcard and this is one way I demonstrate my generosity," etc. A book, Reflective Journaling (free pdf version) has some good sections on learning to appreciate yourself. Also, Radical Acceptance is quite good, too.

~Consider there are a lot of mind games involved with maintaining an ED. Ask yourself how important it is that your friends are honest, then ask yourself if you want to live your life as a truthful person. Keep in mind one of the best parts of any relationship (friends, family), if not the best part, is honesty and trust. You have to walk your talk

Also, most people aren't informed about how eating disorders manifest over time. Our society is informed about how drugs, alcoholism, and cigarettes will affect a person over time. Clearly, they don't have obvious effects in the short term, but rather severe ones over the long haul. Know that it's the same with eating disorders. It will take you to the same places most addictions take people: loss of health and strength (physical and mental), and perhaps loss of friends and the trust of family.

You can change the way you think about yourself. The ED mind will have all sorts of slippery excuses to put yourself down. Learn not to listen to that.

You can accept yourself exactly as you are right now. It is possible. Society doesn't teach this very well, especially to women. Rebel against what society would have you believe!

Libraries are good resources for books on EDs. One that has helped many with BN is Brain over Binge, as well as My Life without ED.


You can do it.

edit: links

The Eating Disorder Sourcebook really helped me, particularly Chapters 5 and 10. It's nearly 20 years old but the info is still relevant.

I struggled with binge eating during most phases of my ED and recovery. Some things I learned: you can lose/maintain weight eating 3 solid meals per day. At this stage, a low calorie intake is bad news for both your body and your disordered brain. Rather than counting calories, perhaps start with a daily meal journal where you write down what you ate as well as the context of the meal and how you felt while/after eating it. Eating regular meals with friends or family helps too, if you don't already.

When I read your post it sounds so similar to what I have. I'm currently seeking treatment for my binge disorder. The treatment I'm getting matches a lot of what this book has to say. I recommend it if you can't get treatment due to insurance or what not. It really spoke to me.

Please message me if you need to speak about anything. I swear when I read your post I thought it was me.

You may want to check out Brian Cuban's book Shattered Image. He was bulimic for 27 years and has recently become very active in the eating disorder recovery community, especially advocating for education about men with eating disorders.

http://www.amazon.com/Brain-over-Binge-Conventional-Recovered/dp/0984481702/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

Our would values a skinny aesthetic, and I tried to match it, too. I wanted skinny to definitely a part of who "I am," and now that it's in the past, I see it simply as part of my naivete when young. I learned to not identify too strongly with labels of any sort, though, as I've gotten older.

I realized I was sick at around the age of 15, and people were trying to call me out on it, but I staunchly denied it.


What's wrong with being underweight? It demolished my health, it nearly killed me several times, and it really messed up everything from school to work to social life to my athletic and dance pursuits. It was a major negative force in so much of my life for so many years, it is hard to think of anything that it didn't touch.

Feeling light as air comes with a price, and it's only for a short while that that feeling lasts. Worse are the weakness and headaches and aches and pains that being underweight can cause. You're basing your ideal on a cartoon character :( Impossible!

I eventually was motivated to recover for a variety of reasons, mostly that I was exhausted of slowly dying all the time, and my eyes got opened up to the idea that I could have something better.

I read some self-esteem books (like this, but there were others) Self-Esteem Workbook from the library, and they really went against every notion I had that I was worthless. I gradually woke up. They made me step back and really consider trying something different for my life.

I had been in treatment for several years (yes, being underweight can lead to residential treatment, talk about interrupting your life, and my family didn't understand at all, ever over the years, either) but not making much progress. After reading about self-esteem and what it meant, I wrote a completely different recovery strategy for myself and ran it by my treatment team, who were willing to try it with me.

Please don't starve yourself. You hurt only yourself. You need your strength and health to be active, to live life. It has been many years now that I have been recovered, and I'm doing better than ever.