Here you will find articles that address various emotional, physical, behavioral and spiritual symptoms that are often part of the eating disorder experience.
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- Category: Symptoms
Weight Gain and Artificial Sweeteners
Weight gain and artificial sweeteners are partners. The promises surrounding artificial sweeteners play into the false sense of reality that accompanies eating disorder thinking. You believe you can eat something sweet, not take in sugar, not take in calories, satisfy your cravings and not gain weight. But that belief is not the reality.
If you have an eating disorder you put thought and energy into how to outwit your body. Your goal is to binge eat or restrict and simultaneously have the body shape and weight you want while feeling good. To do this you avoid or deny solid information about what your body needs to thrive.
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- Category: Symptoms
Powerful and eloquent post in Voice of Recovery tonight. She hit a disappointment in her personal life that sent her into the closet to hide. She wanted safety. She wanted a drink. She was in agony and struggled against her cravings.
With courage and strength she pulled herself out of her darkness, asked for support and got it. She's finding her way and helping others as she goes.
The point I want to raise relates to one sentence she throws out with determination and passion. After describing the intensity of her feelings and cravings she writes:
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- Category: Symptoms
Relationships suffer when you have an eating disorder. Deep, valuable and sincere relationships may be difficult to maintain or even impossible to establish. You want and need people in your life to help ward off isolation and loneliness.
When a relationship ends or changes into something unpleasant you may wonder what happened. And, you may not be able to think clearly about what happened because the end or change triggers your eating disorder. So you feel great loss and sorrow, criticize yourself and act out by binging or throwing up or starving or all these behaviors in their turn.
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- Category: Symptoms
Watching a bright woman confidently search for a non existent method that will make her bulimia vanish is the saddest part of my work as an eating disorder recovery psychotherapist.
*pix Naive innocence is dangerous.
Today, in Los Angeles, I received yet another request for help I cannot provide. The woman asked for tips and a simple plan that would end her bulimia in a week or two. When I said recovery requires deep psychological work she responded with anger and disdain saying, "You have got to be kidding. I don't have time for years of treatment. I want something that will work now."
- Getting Unstuck
- Night time binge can fade by eating breakfast
- Can an anorexic woman lose weight if she's at a healthy weight?
- Why Should I Eat? More on Mediterranean Diet and Eating Disorders
- More About Sleep
- Sexual Exploitation of Adult Women with Eating Disorders
- Full Bulimia Episode Story in 5 Parts: Caution Could Be Triggering - Part 1