The Worst Week

This has been my worst week for a long time. I’ve binged and purged nearly every day this week, and usually multiple times a day. For me, this is a lot, since I can usually contain my urges for several days out of a week. I feel powerless to the urges of the disease. I don’t want to eat that tortilla slathered in peanut butter and chocolate, but I feel like I have to. No matter how much I try to reason with myself, the disease always wins out in the end, and it usually stuffs my face before I even get a chance to talk myself out of it.

I’m not sure what the worst week in my illness was. Maybe when I went on vacation and we only got prepared, calorific food that I felt I had to splurge on. It could have been the week during school where I bought a jar of peanut butter and nutella and three pasta meals and ate them all within two days. (I continued in this manner the rest of the week)

One thing I do know is that while I have not been binging on whole jars of peanut butter, this is the most days in a row I have binged and purged. 

Reasons to Not Purge

1.     Tooth decay (caused from acid from vomiting)

2.     Heart problems

3.     Bloating- doesn’t this go completely against what I want to gain from purging?

4.     Tears in the throat, which is certainly not good for someone who likes to sing

5.     Heart attack

6.     Stomach rupture, which usually results in…

7.     Death

That being said, none of those reasons have been enough of a deterrent to purging for me to stop. I don’t want any of those things to happen, and I do worry about those things happening to me. Maybe it does keep my purging somewhat more in check than if I didn’t know about the potential side effects, but it would never serve as aversion therapy. 

(http://www.timberlineknolls.com/eating-disorder/bulimia/signs-effects)

(http://bulimia.emedtv.com/bulimia/effects-of-bulimia.html)

(http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/bulimia-nervosa/bulimia-nervosa-what-happens?page=2)

The second image is one of a gastric rupture. 

Not Ready for Cake

When I came home from college one of the first things I did was bake a cake. It was a chocolate cake with buttercream coconut frosting (my favorite) topped with strawberries and chocolate ganache.

I bet you can guess what happened.

Most of that cake ended up in my stomach and then regurgitated in the toilet or the shower or bundled up in swathes of Kleenex to keep it from dripping vomit smell all over the trash can.

I knew that I would binge and purge on that delicious chocolatey treat. I know from experience that when I bake most of the batter goes into “tasting,” and I know that I can’t refrain from eating melted chocolate when its scent is wafting up my nose.

So why did I bake the cake?

I don’t know. I didn’t want to binge or purge, especially since I’d been doing pretty well beforehand. And I didn’t really want the cake. (well, that’s a lie. I did want the cake, but only the first slice. Not the entire thing) I guess the only explanation I can give is that I wanted to binge.

To me, that motivation makes sense. It had been so long since I’d done it that the pressure in the back of my mind was building up, making me feel obligated even though I wasn’t hungry. In addition, I’d been restraining myself for two whole days before that, since my parents made me go out the restaurants to eat and I usually binge there. My depleted supply of self-restraint was fated to give out soon.

Still, I hated every minute of the binge. I don’t understand why I did it. It would have been so much less work to sit there lazily on the couch doing nothing or watch a movie rather than make a cake. It would have caused so much less pain, and I would have felt drained but not self-loathing afterwards.

One way I binged on that cake was when everyone else was asleep, I snuck pieces of it to my room to scarf down without a fork. My mom has seen me on binges before and knows that I tend to eat a lot if I’m left alone around food, so she tried to stay awake with me and make sure I didn’t raid the pantry. I understand that she did it out of love, but the thoughts running through my head were: “Why can’t she let me have this? I just need to binge!”

And I really believe that I needed that binge. I don’t want to have the option of throwing up my food removed, because it’s such a psychological crutch. Of course, I’m still trying to not throw up, but it’s soothing to know that if I really need it, the coping mechanism will be there.

These actions and motivations show that I’m not ready for cake. I shouldn’t be baking, and I wish I could remove all desserts from my presence. Who knows if keeping that thought in my head will teach me a lesson though. It hasn’t before.

The Point of Therapy

Something that came to mind recently was the fact that even though I’ve been going to therapy every week, my binging and purging wasn’t incredibly affected. Yes, it decreased for a while, but once I got used to the fact that someone knew about my illness, it didn’t serve as enough motivation for me to stop. I’d tried everything. Therapy was my last resort, and I only called the counseling office when I felt like the despair might just eat me alive.

Going into therapy I made myself believe that it could offer me some magic cure. Like I would see the counselor and she would know exactly what to do, and do it quickly enough that I would never have to let anyone know I’d even struggled with a problem.

Obviously, that was not the case, and I doubt it’s the case in any treatment method. Basically what I’ve learned through therapy is that I have to do the work myself. That was kind of a disappointment when I realized it, because I’m tired of dealing with this eating disorder and it’s a nice idea that someone else could take care of it for me.

So what was the point of going to therapy for the last two and a half months if it didn’t resolve my symptoms?

I think one thing therapy did do is it gave me someone to talk to about my illness. That was immensely relieving, and for a few days it gave me a feeling of accountability- now I have to tell someone when I throw up, so I’d better not.

The problem was that after a week I started getting a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that made it almost impossible to resist binging. Since I binged, I purged, and the cycle started once again.

I guess the only other thing therapy helped with was getting me to tell other people. I can’t say exactly how, but maybe it was a feeling that since after I told a therapist she still didn’t hate me for it, other people would not hate me either. Because of this, I told some of my closest friends and eventually my parents, who responded with support. Their support is currently what’s keeping me from having to binge multiple times a week. The therapy is almost useless now.

Who knows if my experience is shared. I’m not in an eating disorder specific treatment program yet, so once I sign up for one of those I’m sure I’ll find it more helpful.

But I guess the point of this post is just to say that therapy isn’t helpful in the ways you might think. But it’s still helpful. 

Gaining Weight

Even though I’ve stopped counting calories, I can’t bear the idea of gaining weight. Gaining weight means that I’ve failed. I’ve failed at controlling myself and I’ve failed at looking the way I want to look. I suppose this is partly true, because usually whenever I gain weight, it’s from a binge. Recently, I binged over the course of one day. I was stuffed the entire day, but I made myself keep it all down because I didn’t want to feel the shame of throwing up after I’d been so good.

However, it did have consequences: later that day and the next morning, when I got on the scale the number was up two or three pounds. Immediately I felt like crying, and of course I had the urge to eat and eat and eat and throw up and not care.

When I see how quickly I can gain weight, I start believing that if I let myself eat whatever I want, I’ll balloon. I know that it’s quite possible for me to become obese. And I know that being around the food at my house could make me obese. Thus, I go too far in the other direction.

I know from experience now that eating whatever I want will not necessarily make me gain weight. If I can just stop when I’m full, I’ll probably lose a little bit of the extra stuff I put on from binging. However, thinking about the fact that I may have to accept myself as being a little heavier does not sit well with me.

It really comes down to: Would you rather be dead than be fat?

For me the answer is to be dead.

I’m getting treatment so I won’t have to be either. 

The Cloud of Binge

I binged today. For breakfast I ate two bowls of cereal with skim milk, m&ms, and oreo topping. I added a lot of candy.

Then I came back for lunch and ate two pieces of pizza and two full bowls of ice cream with candy toppings.

For dinner I had indian food, a bowl of icecream with a sliver of chocolate cake, a snack bag of cookies, and two mini candy bars.

When I’m in a binge it’s like I’m inside a cloud. My only thought is how to get whatever food I want to taste into my mouth. I watch myself eat and eat and eat from a distance, and even though I know not to, I feel no need to stop. In fact I don’t want to stop. I just want to keep the taste flowing into my body.

When I’m alone and in the cloud I feel numb. My head is lined with cotton and I can’t register what I’m doing to my body. When other people are around I feel overly happy from the extra energy I get from my binge.

It’s only when my stomach hurts later that I feel the dread and despair from the binge. And usually I never get to that place because I have the option of throwing up before my stomach starts hurting.

Today I made myself keep it all down. I hope it’ll teach me a lesson.