Feeling Defeated. Who can relate?

Thanks legged egg! I think that looking at this as my new lifestyle from now through the end keeps me positive. I definitely overate today but I realized the junk food hardly tastes as good as it used to so I'm right back to healthy tomorrow cause all week it has made me feel better x100 :) have you found changes you plan to make permanent? What do you find works 4 you?
 
Last edited:
Wow browsing the forum + speaking to you all in my diary has made me realize how common bingeing is. For one reason or another we sometimes give up control and surrender ourselves to food. I wonder if this is fairly new among our society? Is it cultural?? Hmmm even eating disorders in general, I wonder how prevalent they are across the globe
 
Last edited:
Fair enough if you don't want to weigh yourself every day. And judge your weight loss by your clothes.

But i find it hard see how you could not be losing weight if you are only eating 1200 calories a day. Is that just a guess. It seems very unlikely.

Is keeping a food and exercise diary like i do so risky for you. That's all i am recommending really.

Would it be easier if you told us which eating disorder you had? I worked in an eating disorder clinic for a year. If you have been anorexic in the past, i think i would be just a lot more cautious about advising you on anything than if you were bulimic. In fact, i would be reluctant to advise you at all on anything re food and just recommend you work with a dietician.

I use to have a friend who had been bulimic. She used to be a model. Was a really stunning woman. Even when i met her she was skinny but she told me the industry led to her having the disorder. Anyway she manage to kick it and remain skinny. She always ate really good food i noticed. And had been doing yoga religiously for years. She still had some emotional problems but seemed to have beaten her bulimia. I thought her emotional problems seemed very hereditary given what she said about herself and her mother. She looked like Helena Christensen.
 
FortyFour... I was thinking you are most likely right that on 1200 calories I probably did lose a couple pounds especially going from the week before where I was probable eating 3000+ calories everyday! Last night I was looking in the mirror and I noticed my face is slightly slimmer and my last week my back had a slight roll but is now tighter with no rolls :) Oh and about the eating disorder, I was never bulimic and by the time I started intensive outpatient, it was when I had gone from bingeing after a period restricting my calories very low for years. I voluntarily went to treatment because the loss of control with the bingeing terrified me. Although I restricted my calories low and was scared to gain weight, along with other characteristics that pertained to anorexia, I was never extremely underweight enough to be diagnosed as so. Lowest I ever was 113 pounds at a height of 5'5. Im intrigued by the fact that you've worked in eating disorder place! If there comes a time down the road where I feel Ive conquered mine, I'd love to do that! what did you do there? any advice you see fit for me, I absolutely welcome!


oh and about the food diary, I haven't done yet because I mainly eat the same things every day unless I happen to be craving something else so I don't right anything down. But, like I said I ALWAYS have the running scroll of calories in my head. So, if weeks were to go by with no changes I know it has something to do with the amount of calories.
 
I wasn't discouraged from eating lots of stuff and in fact in my house if you didn't eat it soon it was most likely gone so I usually ate it all in a small amount of time. Everyone thought it was funny as I was a tiny girl.

My fiance has a healthier attitude where he eats the good stuff but over a much longer period of time. He doesn't binge at all but I have known people who eat lots for a long time but I never met anyone who could eat as much as I could.

My poor sister eats way healthier then I ever did but because my metabolism was much higher she was always the bigger one. Anyways I am taking my fiance as a fine example and trying to follow that instead :)
 
@tally are you saying that contributes to your bingeing? Cause if so I also believe that the foods we have access to and the amount we are allowed definitely comes into play! I've known ppl who grown up never being given junk food therefore they don't care for it! What I would give to be that way! Hahaha but at least I don't have a distaste for the healthy stuff so I can make the switch ;)
 
They now sometimes give a diagnosis of bingeing eating disorder. Certainly to be diagnosed with anorexia you'd have to be underweight. I don't know how many calories i ate every day but when i ate 2 litres of icecream i know that was 8000 kilojoules (divide by 4 so i guess that's 2000 calories right there) I didn't do that every day though.

I was only a mere receptionist at the eating disorder clinic, but the only one. And i used to take the phone calls from the patients during the week. Often they would tell me all about their stuff, because they were scared of coming for treatment and i would have to encourage them. Usually they were very depressed at the time too. The health professionals were a psychiatrist, a registrar psychiatrist and two dieticians. There was also a psychologist student (probably masters) who was doing a study with cognitive behaviour therapy and she was trying to run a group. She was lovely. She would take some of the patients who were considered suitable for this treatment. I don't know how they went. Most of the patients had other stuff going on. But the clinic was essentially to get people accurately diagnosed and then if they wanted treatment they could continue. Most people dropped out. But they will probably go find treatment somewhere else. Some anorexic patients went to hospital. But there weren't many beds available so that was always difficult. I suspect that the best sort of treatment for bulimics and binging disorder would be DBT therapy followed by a combination of CBT and talking therapy. I think DBT therapy sounds really good and if i was a student i would specialise in that after finishing my training as a clinical psychologist. I would never be interested in scentific psychology though that is probably easier work than being a therapist. For the anorexics, well they are just notoriously difficult to treat because they usually have a personality disorder as well. Its such a difficult disorder and frankly i think very few are curable. I"ve spoken to some over quite a long period of time on my depression website. There is some deeply disordered thinking and its so ingrained. Its strikes me as having similarities to the worst sorts of anxiety disorders in the character of their thinking - given how irrational it is. Its really a terrible disorder.

I think dieticians would be an important part of the treatment plan for any eating disorder. And you need to be a warm, sensitive type of person for the patients to want to keep working with you.
 
@forty four. Full blown anorexia for sure has to be nearly impossible to recover from. The patient needs incredible staff and they have to be able to put their trust in the treatment. many are so out of touch with reality that they barely recognize the seriousness of illness or they can't help but do it anyway. I guess I'm lucky that the fear of being very ill never kept me from going to the furthest extremes. My brain just isn't wired that way. Even being a secretary, that's cool your worked there! Have you ever heard of the renfrew center?
 
This weekend was horrible for me food wise :( I have to get it together this week I can't afford to dwell on it cause ill spiral downward again, exactly what I don't want!
 
Not heard of the renfrew centre. I live in Australia.

Good idea. Don't dwell on the weekend. Live in the present and do the right thing right now. That's all you can do. I'm just warming myself up to go walking. ACtually i want to try a bit of running today. I didn't go yesterday but i had better get out there shortly.
 
Awesome!! hope you had a wonderful walk/run!! I had no idea you were in Australia, I assumed you were in the states.. haha how do you like it over there?? I love to travel across seas, but the only place I've been so far is london. I love learning about culture of other countries :)
 
I totally love to travel as well. Been to Europe, the Caribbean and Africa :) We (my husband, son, and I) were going to go to France this year, but since I'm going to school this summer we decided to go to Jamaica :D
 
Whoa xenon it'll be a while before I catch up to you! Thas so wonderful youve ventured so many places! This summer I'm going to a cruise and it stops in Pureto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and St Thomas. I loved London when I went and I plan to study abroad there next spring. Of the places you've traveled, which is your favorite?
 
lol do i like it in Australia? Definitely. I've got a travel bug too. My plan is to go to France on a gourmet cycling tour in 2013. Its a long time to wait but it will take me that long to save up. In the meantime I will travel on my bike in Australia. I am heading off soon to the outback for two months.
 
thnkpositive said:
Whoa xenon it'll be a while before I catch up to you! Thas so wonderful youve ventured so many places! This summer I'm going to a cruise and it stops in Pureto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and St Thomas. I loved London when I went and I plan to study abroad there next spring. Of the places you've traveled, which is your favorite?
Click to expand...

That is so great! I have always wanted to go to Haiti. There are two places that are equally favorite for me: Jamaica and Morocco :) for some reason they remind me of each other although they are totally different. Maybe the people, I have no idea! I would actually live in Morocco though, so maybe I like it just a tinge more lol.
 
forty four...The bike tour sounds awesome, definitely take advantage of that opportunity!! What exactly is the outback?

Xenon- Sounds like you like it where the weather is warm....me too!! :)
 
This cant be real life... after an awesome 6 days last week. I messed on the 7th day and have bingeing every day since. Today was day 5 of bingeing and I don't have any clue why after a few steps forward I am still pushing myself back. I cant understand myself. I absolutely know what Im capable of so why cant I just do it? why do I keep continuing the cycle I absolutely hate and makes me so sad? Im starting to get scared now. IM eating food I dont even like and its not making me feel good and yet I feel that Im going to start my diet all over again and then be back in the same spot once again. I missed class this morning because the bingeing last night made me feel sick. All i did was stay home and cry. THis time last year I had already given up on school and work and I felt hopeless, so I don't want to give up on school and my job again now that I have both back but I do feel hopeless. Will I be ok? I hope so, Im holding onto a the slightest bit of faith that there must be a reason I keep picking myself back up. I must have the strength in me somewhere to conquer this overeating and weight problem. Hopefully sooner than later :(
 
Hi thinkpos. Sorry to hear that things have not been going well for you. Listen i really think you should do two things.
1) get a counsellor
2) get antidepressants. At least talk to a gp about it.

I sort of know what you may be going through. Been there before too, plenty of times. It sounds somewhat hormonal to me and this can be connected to your seratonin levels. I am making this up. There is no actual study that I know of that explains it this way but you know i've been on the planet for quite a while now and I have a lifetime of experience to look back on. And i've been analysing things more objectively in the last 14 years since i started my own therapy.

Unless you've had a disappointment that caused some emotional crisis (however minor) what other explanation can there be?

Otherwise, maybe you know what triggered this. Could it be lack of sleep? Could it be going without food for a bit too long and you got hungry and a low blood sugar level which triggered the binge? But then why have you felt it necessary to keep going. I think the fact that you needed to keep binging must be connected to something harder to pinpoint - something chemical and out of sight such as a hormone.

Well we know there are all sorts of hormones. They also know there are hormones that trigger appetite. It's these hormones i am talking about. I think these hormones must also be connected to depression because its well known that many people who suffer depression also experience an increase in appetite and eat more than usual. I have also noticed that when i am happy i need to eat less.

So at the very least, if you are not getting any treatment for depression, i think now is the time to start. I know many psychology students are resistant to getting treatment. Its a great shame. I think its a type of defense so you need to override it. Depression and psychological are not thing most people can fix on their own. You may not feel particularly depressed right now. But you know about cyclothymia don't you and you would also know about dysthymia. Both are milder than Major depression. But in my view still warrant the use of meds when they work for you.
 
looking back to my journal last friday when the bingeing started, I think I was setting myself up for a binge subconsciously. The self fulfilling prophecy continues; I was starting to expect failure and of course it happened. The only good thing I take from my failures is that I look back and can tell each time where I went wrong, which should help me as I move on. I dont like taking medication and I would hate to have to depend on anti depressants for the rest of my life, however I am still considering because Im getting to a point where Ill do anything to feel better. I agree I should see a doctor and hopefully if its hormonal I can take proper steps to get them back in order.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top