Guest author Lynn D.’s challenge with bulimia and weight loss shows signs of shifting for the better. She shares her story.
Last January I joined the forum here in a last ditch attempt to save me from myself! You see, I have always been my own worst enemy. From the time I could lift my hand to my mouth I have used and abused food to keep from feeling my emotions and in part to hide my body. By the time I was 15, I had already been on several diets in an attempt to get my body to conform to my and everyone else’s standards.
It was then that I saw my first movie that portrayed a young teen with anorexia. I vividly remember her going into the bathroom after eating and vomiting. I thought to myself, wow, I could do that and I would not have to get that thin. That was the start of a 30 year struggle with bulimia.
So, flash forward many years and many many pounds up and down. The year is 2008 and I am very overweight having been diagnosed with auto-immune illness and going several rounds with high dose steroids. I thought I had hit an all time high with my weight. Then I had eight surgeries in 2008 to revise the shunt in my brain. Several of those operations were near the end of the
year in November and December and the stress of all the surgery sent me on my longest sugar binge to date.
I dove in around Halloween and continued bingeing right through the Christmas holiday. I kid you not when I say I was consuming a diet that was probably 85-90% sugar. I figured why bother even eating healthy stuff, it was just a waste of calories.
Earlier in the year my neurosurgeon had told me that with a shunt I could expect to be in the hospital about every 2 years for revisions or other issues. I lay awake that entire night thinking about what that would mean for me as I age and how I would cope and heal from these surgeries with the added weight. What would happen if I developed diabetes or other complications. Would I even live? I vowed then to do something but I would get out of the hospital and start my plan and then end up back in the hospital and back to square one.
In March of 2009 I started a medical weight loss fast, I felt this was the only way I would be able to take any weight off with my limited ability to exercise. After 6 months I switched to the programs healthy eating program and I lost around 75-80 lbs total. I was still not to my goal weight but was starting to struggle near the end 2009 as more and more sugar started
creeping back into my diet
In January of 2010 I found this website. I knew at the time this is what I needed and that my biggest problem was sugar.
I invested myself in the sugar addiction program maybe at 25% and still was unable to kick the sugar. I kept thinking, “Just one more chocolate chip cookie, then just one more glazed donut, and then one more piece of pie.” And then I got back to cookies and realized it would never stop. By then I had relapsed into bulimia in a last ditch attempt to keep from regaining the weight I had lost
This was my first major relapse in probably 20 yrs. I started bingeing and vomiting once or twice a day and that continued for several months.
Then, one of my health care providers suggested I check into an inpatient hospital program which would have meant possibly one to three months away from home. I decided that I wanted to give Karly’s plan a chance first. I enrolled in the sugar addiction class and before it started I did a 2 week sugar elimination plan.
Now, I am several weeks into the class as I write this and I feel like for the first time in my life I am finally getting it. I participate in a weekly phone call and listen to tapes and work in my workbook. I even take my workbook to my therapy sessions so I can work through some of these things with my therapist.
I have made friends with people in the class and the online forum and have a great support system now of other people that get where I have been and understand the pain of food / sugar addiction.
What is MOST compelling for me is that just in the past week I have had one “aha” moment after another. I always knew my problem was more than any diet could fix, I just did not know how to fix it. I now have the tools and the forum to help me heal me, so that I am now learning to have compassion for the little girl inside me that is trying so desperately to get noticed by by being good.
Perfection used to be my goal in everything that I did, but now I am on a new quest, a quest to embrace my imperfect humanity!
