I know I am being irrational and illogical... but this has gotten so far that I feel like I am losing myself in it. It's really killing me inside. I guess this is somewhat of a rant just not an angry one. It's kind of downer post because I am at the end of my rope so if you don't want to read you are forewarned.
I have gotten to the point where I don't ever want to leave the house. I mean, I really want to, so badly, but I don't want people to see me and it hurts. I just cry whenever I get dressed cause my clothes fit tight and I can see the rolls, I can see how big my legs are. I cry when I look in the mirror, yet my comfort is food and bulimia. I know I need to stop that but I just don't have the money to get help. I have tried to stop on my own before on multiple occasions, but I just can't do it. It's my drug of choice.
I can't even talk to people anymore, because I feel like I am not good enough to talk to people who are thinner than me, like they are looking at me and thinking how enormous I am and how I should just stop eating, how I don't deserve to even socialize with them. I know that they are probably not actually thinking this, but when I see pictures of celebrities online who are not even big, and people posting comments about them saying they are fat pigs and they need to lose the weight, I just think... Wow these are real people saying these things, these are people I interact with everyday at the store and in school. I am a woman, and I am expected to be thin in order to even be considered beautiful in this world.
Friends and family are the hardest on me. I grew up with bad friends who I considered my best friends... yet they always put me down for my weight and made me feel like I was not good enough. They are finally no longer my friends but I think it made such a big influence on me, they were part of my life for a long time. Also, in my family, appearance is so important and eating disorders are common. Again I was put down a lot by them, especially extended family excluding me because I was not thin and popular like my two cousins my age. My mom at one time threw a plate of food I was eating against the wall because she didn't want me to eat it. All these people have had such a big impact on my self image and I hate myself.
I feel like if I'm fat I don't deserve to be alive
Hon, print the post. Then give it to a your parents, grandparents, aunt, uncle, a trusted teacher, your doctor, minister whomever.
Check out www.something-fishy.org for pro-recovery info. Try your best to get help. To start hanging out with more positive people.
I feel your pain, and I feel bad for you, but it it hard for me to give more advice than that. I haven't experienced ED / body image stuff like you seem to be.
For what it is worth, I don't think you are morbidly obese at 140 lbs. I think the ED/self esteem stuff is the big issue, and your social circles the second issue.
It is very brave of you to be honest with your feelings! I think you are beautiful, and when i was big, i had road blocks and people who weren't really supportive of me either. It really takes a toll on a person's self esteem. But eventually, you just need to say "I'm doing this for me, my opinion is the only one that matters, and I love myself for how far i've come" There is free help available out there. I know you will be ok! You are much too pretty to be sad!
The overwhelming theme I hear in your post in "awakening". YOU are realizing that some people / some things in your life are not right. So, the question is... where is help? new friends are plentiful here on 3FC. good starting point!! Now, family-- you can't change them, but maybe come up with something you can tell yourself (in your mind) when you are around them... "I am OK where I am at." OR "I love myself" OR "I am beautiful" OR "I am growing and learning how to care for me"
Buy new jeans!! One size up. Maybe stay away from the tight stuff now-- you need to love yourself where you are at right now. in the present.
Finding yourself being illogical and irrational AND wanting to not live anymore are large red flags that are telling you that YOU need to take care of YOU!!! So find that trusted teacher, pastor, parent of a friend, or coach, and tell them your feelings and ask for help.
You are beautiful. You are needed in this world. You are strong. You will get through this.
I can't give you self esteem, but your weight isn't really the issue here. You've been told you're worthless so often that you believe it, but you're not. If you weighed 600 lbs, you still would be worthy of true friends and respectful treatment from others and from yourself.
By most BMI standards, you're barely in the overweight category. It would only take 4 or 5 lbs to put you in the healthy weight category.
Even if you consider yourself 20 lbs overweight, it does not take stupidity to be 20 lbs overweight. I qualify for mensa membership and taught myself to read before kindergarten. I got through college and graduate school with very little studying (for most subjects I only had to pay attention in class OR read the material the night before the test). I've almost always held more than full-time responsibilities (two jobs or school and jobs), but I've never been able to master my weight.
Weight loss is tough. Most people can't do it. Don't judge your worth based on your ability to lose weight easily. There may be a lot of factors involved in successful weight loss - genetics, environment, finances, hard work - but not intelligence (maybe not even motivation). You can do everythig right and still struggle.
You are not, and never have been your weight. I've always made friends and enjoyed my life, even though I've weighed more than twice what I should for most of my life. I'm a great person. I'm funny, I'm smart, I'm kind, I'm generous, I'm loyal, and I'm fat - really, really, really fat.
I've never felt unworthy of friendship (though I've met people unworthy of mine. People who can't see the goodness in me, don't deserve my time or concern).
You have a lot to offer the world, with or without weight loss. Weight loss will make you a thinner person (some will say a more attractive person), and a healthier person, but it will not make you a smarter person, a nicer person, or a person more worthy of love and respect).
Weight loss should be something you do to reward and pamper your wonderful self, not a means of punishing yourself to worthiness. You're worthy now. You're worthy of loving yourself and worhty of treating your body with the respect and love it deserves.
You are a worthwhile human being, and you have a lot more to offer the world than an acceptably slim package. Weight loss is important, but it's not what makes you worthy of basic human dignity. That is due to you, just by being born (that you're not getting it from the people you're surrounded by is sad, but you can find people who will treat you with dignity, but often the first step is realizing that you deserve it).
If you can get counseling, please consider it. Having an objective person telling you that you have worth, and helping you learn to see it, can be extremely helpful.
You should really look into getting unpaid help for your bulimia sweetheart, the sooner you do it the sooner you can get back to enjoying a much higher quality of life.
Thanks everyone. I really want to get passed all these roadblocks and am finding it extremely difficult so thanks for the support. Where exactly can you find free treatment for bulimia? I didn't know there was such a thing as free treatment for eating disorders. The cheapest I have found were 55 a session.
Thanks everyone. I really want to get passed all these roadblocks and am finding it extremely difficult so thanks for the support. Where exactly can you find free treatment for bulimia? I didn't know there was such a thing as free treatment for eating disorders. The cheapest I have found were 55 a session.
If there's a local chapter of the United Way, they usually will have a hotline number or a resource person who knows the free resources in your area. You can also call the local mental health center, or the nearest hospital and ask for the community resources person, and ask about free or sliding scale community mental health resources (sliding scale means they determine the cost by your income, and it's usually very affordable). Also, if there is a college in your town, some colleges provide cheap or free counseling services.
Also, don't just ask about treatment, ask about support groups and other free resources. Support groups don't replace treatment, but they're often very helpful (and usually free or they pass a hat for donations to cover coffee and bottled water or rental of the meeting place).
Thanks everyone. I really want to get passed all these roadblocks and am finding it extremely difficult so thanks for the support. Where exactly can you find free treatment for bulimia? I didn't know there was such a thing as free treatment for eating disorders. The cheapest I have found were 55 a session.
If there's a local chapter of the United Way, they usually will have a hotline number or a resource person who knows the free resources in your area. You can also call the local mental health center, or the nearest hospital and ask for the community resources person, and ask about free or sliding scale community mental health resources (sliding scale means they determine the cost by your income, and it's usually very affordable). Also, if there is a college in your town, some colleges provide cheap or free counseling services.
Also, don't just ask about treatment, ask about support groups and other free resources. Support groups don't replace treatment, but they're often very helpful (and usually free or they pass a hat for donations to cover coffee and bottled water or rental of the meeting place).
Overeaters Anonymous is a free support group, and encompasses binge eating and bulimic behaviors. It's modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous.
But, before you seek Eating Disorder treatment, I'd make a suggestion that you first discover whether your eating disorder is physiological rather than psychological. This might seem odd (especially coming from a person with a bacehelor and masters' degree in psychology who does believe in the value of counseling), but from personal experience I learned that my binge disorder was caused by hormonal and carbohydrate issues, not mental health issues.
I'm not saying that's true for you - or that free or cheap counseling (on ed or just general) wouldn't be a great benefit. But I spend decades trying to address my mental health issues (to discover my binge eating wasn't being caused by emotional issuess - the emotional issues and the binging were being caused by hormonal issues and what I was eating). I don't regret counseling, because it helped me manage a lot of areas of my life - I just couldn't manage the disordered eating until I addressed the physiological factors (for me hormones and carbohydrates).
If you only gain weight or cannot lose weight during TOM or PMS - consider a hormonal component. Birth control can help (but it can also make it worse, so you have to have a doctor that is willing to work with you to find a birth control that helps). Even without bc, it at least helps to know your obstacle. Before I was on bc, I would mark my problem week on the calendar in bright yellow highlighter, to remind myself I had to be extra vigilant "that week."
Lower-carb dieting (at the very least removing as much processed sugar and starch from your diet as possible) can help. It's possible that you don't have to cut back very far. The less weight you have to lose, the less insulin resistant you're likely to be. When I eat low-carb my binge-eating magically disappears. When I eat more carbs than I should, I get hungrier faster. And if I eat actual sugar (HFCS, regular sugar, honey or any concentrated sugar), the bingeing returns full force.
I'm not recommending you start with Atkins, rather cut the highest carb foods from your diet, and see if that helps reduce the severity or frequency of bingeing.
Many Overeater's Anonymous groups encourage members to consider food addiction and binge disorders to be carbohydrate-addiction and will recommend abstinance from "white" foods (sugar, flour, rice, white potato). Other groups encourage each member to create their own definiton of abstinence.
I am not sure where in the country/world you are, but I know that I was able to find free support groups for bulimia in two cities that I have lived in. There are also a number of websites where you can chat/post about issues with eating disorders:
pale-reflections.com/
recoveryourlife.com/
bulimiahelp.org/
something-fishy.org/
The first 2 listed have actual chat rooms. I think the 2nd two are mainly for posting/discussion boards.
I hope this helps.
I had to leave out the www because I haven't posted enough to leave website links apparently...
Wow, I saw this a little late, but the OP made me cry, literally with tears streaming down and everything. I too have suffered with binging/bulimia, but I am too ashamed to tell my family.
I completely feel the same way about social situations. Going out, I feel as though the thinner girls are always judging me and whispering about me. Boys that flirt with me I think are a)on a bet or b)drunk and desperate. Why would someone want to get know me? Getting ready is a chore in itself going through everything I own so I don't look like a sack, but not the michelin man either. It's tough...
I have had issues with having a healthy relationship with food as well. I hear where you are coming from. I am rather new here and have seen several posts relating to eating disorders but there is no specific forum to those of us who are clinically overweight, or obese and do struggle with an eating disorder and yet do "need" to lose weight. In the sites that I mentioned above, most of the people on the sites are not actually overweight....a doctor would not recommend that they lose weight...however, I know in my case, many doctors DO recommend that I lose weight. I know that the binge eating is a eating disorder, and I guess that is somewhat common on this site, but the other issues of bulimia or anorexia are not addressed as much.
Anyway, I hope that the sites that I mentioned might be of help. Feel free to get in touch with me privately. I am not sure if starting an ED thread would be appropriate, but I do think there are many of us out there.
BTW, 140 is a great weight....don't be knocking yourself!!!!!
Peachy.. It's sad but relieving at the same time to see someone else is struggling with the same feelings. You know you are not alone but yet you know how destructive it is, and so much more people are feeling the exact same thing. Thanks for responding, btw I think you are really beautiful in your picture, you are stunning!!
And Jenny I am working on finding a local group to go to. However I also just got my insurance back, so I will be seeking medical help as well as dental health, due to the extensive erosion I've afflicted on my teeth. I feel very hopeful about it and am excited because I feel like a good change is about to come : )
Awwwh, good luck with your teeth!
I actually go to the dentist tomorrow because I have some wobbly teeth. I think that is caused from my teeth being moved around too much with braces though.
I feel so stupid for being fat.
to you. 140 is incredible! You're doing great! <3
