Breaking free from bulimia Part One

Breaking free from bulimia is difficult and can take a long time, so I thought I'd share a few ideas that have helped me. They may not help everyone because everyone's different, but if you suffer from bulimia, search for your own tools to escape this disease.

Avoiding binges

Stopping binging is really the key factor in recovery, because this prevents the guilt and dangerous purging methods. Binging can be caused either by emotional factors or by physical ones. The physical causes are much easier to deal with than the emotional ones.

The human body has had billions of years of evolution go into its creation and in most of that time, food was short so we have evolved instincts for avoiding starvation. Your body doesn't want you to die. So, when you restrict too much or exercise far more than your consumption, these starvation instincts kick in. You start craving sugary and fatty foods. This is a natural response that almost everyone has (the ones that don't are probably diagnosed anorexics). When you deprive your body of food, you will feel an overwhelming need to eat. Your body has evolved in times of little food so that when you see an availabilty, you will stuff your face because your instincts don't know when you'll have another opportunity.

This is a perfectly natural response that can be avoided. Never let your body get so hungry that a binge is instinctive. Eat regular meals and light snacks between them. I always have a supply of carrot sticks and dried fruit so that I can have something to eat if I get peckish and never get starving hungry so that I end up eating half the contents of a vending machine in one go.

Another method of avoiding binges is to remove the opportunity. Don't keep binge foods around. If you don't have any in the house, this puts an obstacle between you and the binge and can make it easier to resist.

Whenever I went to the supermarket, the temptation was there to fill up my basket with all the fatty sugary junk I used to binge on. So I never went to the shop on my own. Persuade a friend to go with you. If they know about your eating disorder, explain that it's to make sure you don't end up buying binge foods. If they don't know, then presumably you don't want them to know so it will be easier for you to resist buying all the things you know you shouldn't. Another possibility is ordering food online. I get most of my weekly shopping delivered by Tesco. It's much easier to resist a picture on a screen than a packet of biscuits within easy reach.

Someone on a forum mentioned a time locked safe. She puts biscuits and things like that into a safe that she can only get into once a day. When it opens, she can take out a couple of items, but for the rest of the day she doesn't have the ability to get in so she can't end up binging on whatever's stored in there.

Find whatever method is right for you, but make it hard to binge. If the nearest shop to you doesn't accept cards, make sure you never carry cash around. That way, you'll have to go further to buy supplies.

If you do feel the need to binge, go somewhere that doesn't give you the ability. Go into a cafe and order something small. You will be able to eat and get rid of any physical hunger, but you won't be able to binge.

Just keep putting hurdles between you and the binges and eventually you'll be able to resist them. Find whatever method works best for you.

Try and avoid triggers. What makes you want to binge? Are there certain places or types of events that make you feel the need to binge?

For me, loud parties with lots of people getting drunk always make me feel out of place, awkward and antisocial. I get miserable and feel like a freak for not enjoying myself. Then I go and eat. I've learned to politely turn down invitations to these events. It means I feel antisocial when I reject the offer, but I don't have a miserable evening that makes me go to the nearest late night shop or vending machine and stuff my face.

If there is any event that almost always makes you binge, don't go.

If you struggle to resist temptation when there's a large availability of food, don't go to places that offer a free buffet or eat anywhere that sells all you can eat.

Triggers are different for different people. Try and work out if there are factors that link your binges and then try and work out ways to avoid those factors in future.

That's not enough to be free. You will still struggle and binge and hate yourself for it, but if you can reduce the number of binges, you'll reduce the self-loathing and that will reduce the desire to binge again. There will still be the emotional factors affecting your desire to binge. It may be that the best way to deal with those is to talk to friends or see a therapist. Because the contributing issues are a varied as the sufferers of this disorder, I can't give a list of ways to make them go away. You'll have to deal with those yourself or get professional help.

What I'm offering is just a couple of tools. You'll have to built your own toolkit that helps you fight back against this disease.