How To Break Free From Bulimia

By Jennifer Rollin, MSW, LCSW-C

On the outside, her life looks great. She can’t imagine how it would feel if people knew about her secret.

During the day she only allows herself small portions of “healthy foods.” She promises herself that she will stick to this plan. Yet, at night she finds herself standing at the kitchen counter eating globs of peanut butter from the jar, finishing off trays full of cookies, cartons of ice cream, and loaves of bread slathered in butter and jelly.

She emerges from a food daze feeling painfully stuffed, ashamed, and terrified. She purges-, either through vomiting or through self-punishing exercise. Afterwards, she feels a momentary sense of calm, followed by feelings of guilt and shame.

She promises herself that tomorrow she will stick to her “healthy diet,” and the terrible cycle continues.

Tips for Recovery

The diet/binge/purge cycle is exhausting. It’s also filling some kind of emotional need for you.

Through therapy, you can work to break free from this cycle and uncover the joyful life that you deserve.

The following are a few of my tips for breaking out of the diet/binge/purge cycle:

1. Get professional help in the form of reaching out to a therapist who specializes in eating disorders, potentially a dietitian who specializes in eating disorders, and a physician for a full medical workup. Eating disorders are the deadliest mental illness and it doesn’t matter what you weigh-you can have serious negative mental and physical health implications. Perhaps you’ve been trying to recover on your own and have been unable to. There is no shame in getting help, it’s actually a sign of true courage.
2. Ditch the scale. Try an experiment, where maybe you start by going one week without weighing yourself. Seeing your weight can be a big trigger for your eating disorder and may send you straight into using behaviors.
3. Work to normalize your eating patterns during the day. With the support of professionals, aim to get at least 3 meals and 3 substantial snacks per day-with the intention to be eating every 3 hours. Run your meal/snack ideas by your treatment team to ensure that they are adequate. This step is crucial because if you are restricting during the day, you are setting yourself up to binge at night. Your body thinks that it’s in a famine and will try to protect itself by loading up at the next moment that food is available.
4. When you are ready, gradually work to expose yourself to your “trigger foods." You might start by doing them out in public with a supportive person, but there are a few ways to go about this. Telling yourself that a food is “off limits” and avoiding foods that you view as 'trigger foods,' will only make you binge on it later (all foods truly can fit into a healthy diet-barring genuine medical restrictions). 
5. As you are increasing your eating throughout the day, work with your therapist to start to separate out “your eating disorder self” from “your healthy self.” Look at the lies that your “eating disorder self” is telling you and the needs that the eating disorder is meeting in your life.
6. Consider writing a goodbye letter to your eating disorder. Through this letter you can explore the “needs” that the eating disorder is helping you to meet. Once you are able to uncover this, you can work to find some healthier ways to get those needs met. For example, maybe your binge eating is giving you a sense of “comfort” and “companionship.” In therapy you can work to explore some other ways to get those very valid needs met.
7. Be patient and compassionate with yourself. Like a friend who you’ve ignored for months, it may take your body some time to trust that you will be regularly nourishing it. What’s so important is that if you do binge, work to be kind to yourself, explore your triggers and try NOT to engage in purging of any kind after or in any restriction the next day. Shaming yourself for struggling will not ultimately help you. Often eating disorder behaviors are a resilient attempt to try to cope with anxiety, intense emotions, and past trauma-and we know that they can get in the way of the life that you truly deserve. 
8. Take it one day-or even one meal (or one bite) at a time. Tell yourself that you can make it through this day, or even this minute without using behaviors. Practice reaching out to people instead of your eating disorder when you are feeling triggered.

It’s not your fault that you are struggling. However, you can choose to take the next steps in support of your recovery.

If you find that you hate your life in recovery, you can always go back to your eating disorder. But what if you gave yourself the chance to try something different this time?

Bulimia isn’t glamorous or cool. It’s swollen cheeks, teeth decaying, physical injuries from over-exercise, potentially losing your fertility (if you are a woman, however people of all genders can struggle), cardiac problems, depression, isolation, actual death, or living but feeling dead inside.

You deserve to find freedom.

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Looking for help?

Book your free 15 min consultation.

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The Eating Disorder Center is a premier outpatient eating disorder therapy center founded by Jennifer Rollin. We specialize in helping teens and adults struggling with anorexia, binge eating disorder, bulimia, OSFED, and body image issues. We provide eating disorder therapy in Rockville, MD, easily accessible to individuals in Potomac, North Potomac, Bethesda, Olney, Silver Spring, Germantown, and Washington D.C. We also offer eating disorder therapy virtually throughout California serving those in cities including Palo Alto, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Woodland Hills, San Jose, and Beverly Hills. We provide eating disorder recovery coaching via Zoom to people worldwide. Connect with us through our website at www.theeatingdisordercenter.com ​​​​​​​