Hello.
I'm Button and I'm new to this forum. I'm an 18 year old student from England.
I've looked around the forum a little bit and it looks like a supportive place, which is excellent seeing as support is what I need right now.
I've struggled with disordered eating since I was 13. I gained a lot of weight and struggled with the way in which people responded to it. I felt unhappy and began to make myself sick after meals in the hope that I could lose some weight. Soon afterwards, I realised that by doing that, I could eat vast amounts without gaining weight - and so the binge-purge cycle began. I was stuck in the cycle for three years, and finally emerged from it when I left school.
I then had a happy period, where my relationship with food was comparatively normal, and the weight fell off due to my generally healthier lifestyle.
Unfortunately, things came crashing down last October. I started university in September, and the pressure and workload of it all quickly became too much for me. I’ve always binge-eaten in response to feelings of inadequacy, so it’s no surprise that I began to gradually eat more and more. I’d tell myself that it wasn't a problem: that I was in control. Needless to say, I wasn't.
By Christmas things had worsened considerably. I was very depressed - I was under an immense amount of pressure due to the vast workload of my degree (I'm a first year student at a top law school). The binges got more frequent until they were occurring daily.
When I moved back to university after Christmas I made a decision to sort myself out, but I had exams and was still stressed, so things simply got even worse seeing as there was no one to watch over my eating habits.
That’s pretty much where I am in the grand scheme of things – and where I have been for a little while, for that matter. But it’s time to change now. I’ve now got the exam results which caused me all the stress, and ironically I did really well. So now that the panic is over, and I feel slightly more like I deserve my place here, I’m determined to cut out the binges.
So there we go. Apologies for the essay, but it’s sometimes nice to vent. If anyone wants to say hi, or ask questions etc, I’d be more than happy.
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This is a very supportive place..I have made some of the best friends I've ever had here! My fingers are crossed for a binge free day for you! Hugs, Lauren