[recovery girl]

Hey everyone!

I'm new around here, so I thought I'd introduce myself! I have a feeling this is the forum I will hang out on the most (even though I have a serious problem with the word 'control', lol!) If I'm posting my intro in the wrong area, please let me know! I'm still kind of confused about how everything is organized here.

A little about me:

I'm a 28-year old 'chick' living in Vancouver, BC, Canada with my husband of 2 years and our silly Pit Bull and crazy Chihuahua. I'm a web specialist by trade.

I've had disordered eating since I was a very young age. I have had all three eating disorders at different stages in my life; bulimia, anorexia and compulsive eating disorder. I didn't even know I had an eating disorder until I was diagnosed at the age of 25. I always told myself it 'wasn't that bad'.

I have now been in intensive psychiatric treatment for my eating disorder for 3 years. I'm also a member of OA, and I've been going fairly consistently for the past year or so. Since entering treatment, I have stopped gaining weight. This is huge progress for me as I was gaining 30 to 40 lbs per year previously. If it wasn't for my treatment and OA, I know without a doubt I would be at least 420 lbs and wheelchair-bound by now; if not dead.

Thankfully, that isn't the case, and I am well on my way to achieving emotional, spiritual and physical recovery from my illness.

I have made a couple attempts over the past three years to follow a food and exercise plan, but didn't have the ability to keep it up at the time because I found myself still falling into that 'diet' mentality. For me, when I start thinking about dieting, I have already set myself up for failure before I have even started.

The reason why I wanted to join this forum is for support on some changes that have been happening in my life. Over the past couple weeks I have found a new level of willingness to follow a food plan and incorporate deliberate exercise into my life in a non-obsessive, healthy way. I got tired of feeling like my mind doesn't match my body, and that seemed to give me the willingness and ability to achieve some abstinence from the foods that make me crazy. Thank God for that!

So I'm glad to be here, and I hope to meet a few buddies here who I can share my successes and failures with to help me stay accountable for my physical recovery from disordered eating and obesity.

Talk to you soon!

[happydaisy]

Welcome recovery girl! I don't post much in this forum, though I probably should since emotional eating is my biggest obstacle to weight loss. I wanted to ask you how you fond a counselor that specialized in weight issues? Good luck and congrats on your progress so far!!

[recovery girl]

Hi happydaisy!

I was referred to her by another psychiatrist I was seeing for another mental illness I was diagnosed with back in 2000 (bipolar disorder). It turns out that bipolar disorder was a misdiagnosis for me, I was put on a myriad of medications for nothing, and it was an eating disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) the whole time.

The psychiatrist I see now though is great, she is doing some really revolutionary work in her industry by using an addiction model to treat obesity. She does all kinds of addiction therapy, but her focus is on eating disorders and the emotional and physical symptoms associated with them. She also used to have an eating disorder herself, and she has been in recovery for 19 years, so the best part is that she uses a lot of her personal experience to help her patients. She's awesome!

[ellis]

Recovery Girl, welcome!! I love your "name". It's very positive.

What a terrible thing to be misdiagnosed. Your new psychiatrist sounds wonderful though! I'd love to find someone like that, too. My own psychiatrist (I've been seeing him for two years) is really good, but he's not overly "interested" in helping me to address my eating disorder.
I love what you said about being tired of feeling that your mind doesn't match your body. I can relate to that all too well.
I hope that you find the support here that you need. We're all this together.

HappyDaisy, welcome to you, too!!