No more exams

Today, I had my last exam at university. This is a wonderful feeling.

I hate exams. I feel I have to get perfect marks. I'm terrified of doing badly. So, I eat. That's how it's worked since GCSE. Even since recovery, exams = eating. I eat more than is healthy, sometimes picking at food when I'm not hungry, sometimes eating quite large amounts in one go. It's as though for the length of the exam period, I acquire the symptoms of compulsive overeating disorder.

I know I don't have this disorder, but exams make me act like I do.

I don't purge anymore. I don't fast or skip meals. I exercise a healthy amount. I don't swallow loads of diet pills daily.

I worry more about purging techniques than I do about binging, which means that the week or so after exams, I feel horrendously guilty about what I've eaten, but don't get the satisfaction that always used to come with over-exercising or skipping meals. I eat way more than I should for the week or so that I have exams, but I don't burn it all off the way I used to. It means that weeks or months of being healthy get undone in a few days as the fat piles on again.

The worst times during my disorder were when I had exams. The times I've come closest to relapsing afterwards have been during exams. Today, after I've gone so long without a real binge, I went to buy something for lunch and ended up buying:

• A pack of sandwiches
• Two mini apple pies
• A snack-pack of biscuits (two biscuits)
• A packet of jaffa cakes
• Two bottles of fizzy drink
• A packet of crisps
• And a huge, huge bag full of pick 'n' mix

Compared to binges in my past, that list is very short. The fact that some of the food remains uneaten is a sign of how far I've come. It was helped, no doubt, by the fact that I met a friend soon after buying all this. I could have gone and eaten it all in one go. Instead, with little difficulty, I stayed and ate some of it in a large, but not binge-like lunch. The rest stayed hidden in my bag.

I didn't binge today. I ate more than I should and this food, combined with dinner, have left me feeling fuller than is comfortable, but I didn't binge.

It doesn't change the fact that my reaction to stress is to go out and buy food. Even if I don't eat it all, that habit still lingers from my disorder. I haven't acted in a way that would classify as bulimic for years. So why can't I be rid of this need?