Hi, new to this forum. I've suffered alone for a long time and I finally decided that it was time to reach out to speak to other people about my disordered eating.
I've always had problems with over-eating. From childhood I remember being a little chubbier. Needless to say, I was picked on and it did affect me, but I tried to be as comfortable as possible. It wasn't until I had an abortion at 18 and found out that my (now) husband was cheating on me. I started starving myself right before my high school graduation and I lost about 35 lbs over six months.
I would tell myself just ten more pounds, just five more, and I'd stop, but it became an extreme addiction. Every time I would get to a "goal" weight, I would binge on anything I could find. It would leave me feeling ill, with headache, bloated, and just disgusting. It was always some sort of punishment for being in this cycle. For years I have gone on like this...
How I feel is directly related to what the mirror shows me or how light the scale tells me I am that day. There are days/weeks/months that I'm stuck in a starve phase and it feels so good. My clothes fit loose, I feel like I can wear my tightest jeans and not worry about looking "fat" because my bones are sticking out. My spine is always protruding, but when I can see my ribs and hip bones jutting too, I feel satisfaction. 97/98 lbs is where I feel my "prettiest" and most comfortable. I have a love and hate for when people tell me that I look terribly thin or need to eat. It tears me up to hear but it feels incredible at the same time.
Then I get stuck in a binge phase from time to time. This might happen if I reach a goal weight, feel great that day, or have something stressful happening in my life. I'll sometimes smoke a little weed to make myself feel more numb to binging because I tell myself that I just have the munchies, so it's okay. I always feel bloated, I start to break out really bad, my heart and body hurts, and my energy levels are so low. The longest my binge phases last are a couple weeks. Currently, I am stuck in one. I don't even think when I'm doing it... I just grab for food and start eating and drinking a lot of water to make myself feel so full. It's been to the point that I've scraped together the last of my money so I can just go buy some food to binge on. Then begins the starve phase all over again.
Between these phases, I yo-yo about 7-9 lbs. Both of them give me such different feelings. I feel so in control of things when I'm starving and restricting, but then I feel out of control and horrible when binging.