I Used to be Bulimic, And Now I’m Not.
Food, body image, and disordered eating no long rule my life.
For six years I was bulimic. It was an over-arching, grueling theme in my life. I consider myself lucky to have recovered as young and early on as I have. The shame surrounding bulimia and what we do in our eating disorders often keeps those afflicted suffering in the shadows, hiding in secrecy. I hit a rock bottom when I was 20 and decided to enter recovery. If you’re in the grip of bulimia or one of its complements (binge-eating, orthorexia, anorexia-bulimia), it can feel like there’s no end in sight. I want to tell you that full recovery is possible; there is life on the other side and it can be a life without obsessing over food, your body, and your weight.
Here’s a little background about my story: I did not have a totally healthy relationship with food as a kid. In fact, eating was my favorite sport, pass time, hobby. I was always a chunkier girl, bordering on overweight. I did not have the innate ability nor was I taught to eat only when I was hungry and stop when I was full. With that being said, I was 15 when I decided I wanted to lose weight and that’s when I threw up for the first time. At 16 I began experimenting with substances, and by 17 I had a full-blown eating disorder.
I won’t get too detailed about my story, but a long-winded, vivid account of it already exists on a former blog on mine.
When I entered recovery, the decision came quite naturally after doing some research. I started looking into what bulimia was and started watching videos of people engrossed in the life or talking about their recovery from it. It was incredibly helpful to see that I was not the only person immersed in binges and purges all day. During my research I started hearing the word recovery and one day the sentence came out of my mouth, “I’m in recovery”. Somebody asked me what I meant by that and I couldn’t even explain it, but intuitively I knew.
You are in recovery for an eating disorder the moment you make the decision to enter recovery, the moment you decide to start moving towards a life without an eating disorder.
Going into recovery doesn’t mean you’ll never engage in eating disorder behavior again. If you never do, that’s great. Jane Fonda was bulimic for 25 years and quit cold-turkey one day. She took Prozac and did who knows what else to recover. People’s recovery will look different, but the point is, in order to get to a place where your eating disorder no longer dominates your life, you have to make a decision that you’re done. For me I had to realize my life was unsustainable. And in my first couple of months of recovery, I felt worse before I started feeling better. My first year of recovery still included binging, purging, obsession over food (How much was I eating? Am I eating enough?), and the vain need to lose weight. But throughout my induction and slip-ups in recovery, never did I consider myself not in recovery just because I wasn’t perfect.
Recovery is a full-time job. It takes work and effort to actively NOT engage in disordered eating habits. You’re essentially rewiring your brain and changing the way you’ve lived for, I’m assuming, a very long time. If you can dedicate a significant amount of time to your recovery and nothing else, take it! Early in my recovery I considered and wished I could go to an inpatient treatment facility. A lot of us can’t check ourselves into inpatient treatment, and that’s O.K. What nobody tells you about undergoing an eating disorder is that it’s traumatic, and it’s going to take time to heal. Your recovery deserves to be first and foremost in your life. Putting recovery first changed my life.
You will learn a lot about yourself. In recovery you will learn what function your eating disorder performs for you and why you have this need to control your food intake and body. I honestly thought my eating disorder centered in my lack of control around food. Therapists have told me it was a mechanism to exert control in my life. But after finding an approach to recovery that truly helped me, I learned that my eating disorder thrived and sprouted from my fear. Bulimia acted like a coping mechanism for crippling fears I developed in childhood and never addressed. It was my escape in life, something to exert my attention on so I would never have to deal with life’s responsibilities. In a sense bulimia was something I created to feel some sort of control, so I could know where my life was going. In finding the specific root of my ED, I was finally able to address my emotional, psychological, and spiritual shortcomings. I was finally able to grow as a person when I stopped running away, fighting, and drowning harsh realities and emotions with food.
I wouldn’t be bulimia free if it weren’t for honesty, honesty from myself and others. Because other people online were brutally transparent with their ED experiences, I was able to learn that recovery was possible. Some people suffer from eating disorders for decades or for the majority of their lives, and maybe I would’ve been one of them too if I didn’t have internet access and if people didn’t come forward with their stories. Other people sharing their stories is what prompted me to share mine in order to give back to the online ED/recovery community. This also compelled me to be honest about and apologize for all the shitty things I did in my illness. This happened naturally, without anyone telling me to, and I suppose it did because once you start properly nourishing your body, your brain has enough nutrients to operate at optimal levels. I really started to see the damage I did to myself and others, and I couldn’t block it out anymore. Admitting my mistakes and sincerely apologizing for them gave me a sense of spirit, and it felt like I could really live being me.
Like many other people who suffer with an eating disorder, I was dealing with comorbidity (when a person experiences two disorders at the same time). Bulimia nervosa was not my only problem; I also developed a substance abuse problem. After I addressed the bulimia, I soon found I had to address my alcohol and drug use, and I failed to reel back my substance abuse on my own. (Of course, not everyone with an ED deals with comorbidity) Just as I could not live with and contain any form of bulimia in my life, I learned I couldn’t use substances safely and in moderation. I had to approach my recovery from the standpoint of an addict, and I learned that bulimia was an addictive trait of mine. When I entered recovery a second time around for substance abuse, I realized that recovery for substance abuse looked almost identical to the process I underwent for bulimia. It took a while, but everything eventually leveled out. I cried the night I realized I was finally O.K. I was free.
I made many mistakes in my first stint of recovery, and that’s O.K. Events in my life would not have gone so far down a bottom had I learned to learn from my mistakes. I didn’t even know how to identify and move past my ego during that first year of recovery, and I know if I had maintained a level of honesty and ego-deflation as I had first done to initiate recovery, I wouldn’t have hit a second rock bottom. To fully recovery from an eating disorder, you must maintain your recovery, and for me that meant consistently being honest with myself and others. A lot of the things I was doing in that first year of recovery were based in fear and ego, which lead me to feeling miserable. Now I can see my intentions behind my actions, progress as a person, and consistently admit my fuck ups. It’s freeing.
Throughout my experience I learned that maintaining my recovery is essential for my success. And I need accountability outside of myself. Some people aren’t like that. Some people can learn from their first error and solemnly swear an oath to change themselves and keep it. If therapy, medication, self-help books, religion, and/or philosophy help you find stable recovery, then keep doing and discovering what works for you. One book that helped me immensely was Brain Over Binge, and the author has a different recovery than mine. For me, I had to get help for bulimia and substance abuse before I could truly enjoy and lead a sane life.
If you have an eating disorder, know that it’s not something you have to struggle with for the rest of your life. You can develop trust with yourself, your body, and food. Sometimes things get worse before they get better, and this is often the case with recovery because destructive habits feel worse when they no longer align with your changing mental state. It will definitely sometimes feel and be easier to remain sick. But be patient and compassionate towards yourself on your healing journey. Recovery is always worth it and you will get better.
