Crawling out of my pit, depression and overeating. The new cycle of change and weight loss begins!

I am kitted out in gym gear two sizes too big for my liking, dimply theighs wobbling out of my running shorts in a painful visible reminder of my recent overeating antics. I have been pretty much housebound with depression and agoraphobia for the past week, comforting myself by overeating. I was in denial over the inevitable weight gain by avoiding mirrors, the scales and even dressing. During that week not once do I think I ever experienced true hunger, I simply didn’t give my body the opportunity to feel it as I constantly grazed, even waking every 2 hours to continue this over consumption. Actually I still have difficulty distinguishing what hunger feels like. My body has become so confused by years of eating disorders that I cannot, and do not trust its signals anymore. I no longer feel hungry or full. I could eat and eat and eat (and sometimes do) and still not feel satisfied. But sometimes, mostly when my mood shifts, I feel hungry ALL THE FUCKING TIME and there is no satisfying this insatiable appetite. It frustrates and angers me in equal measures. I become extremely angry at my abnormal body for feeling these sensations all the time, I shout and argue with my stomach, trying to silence its gurglings and yearnings. I am sure that no one else has this huge appetite, and it is particularly distressing to me as a recovered anorexic. Once upon a time I had perfect, accurate control of my body. I called the shots, I decided what it would feel, and when. Generally this meant not feeling an awful not.. shutting down emotions for fear they would make me hungry. Just distilling everything down to the bare essence. You wake, you weigh yourself, you go for an hour bike ride, you weigh yourself, you go to work, you have half a sandwich, you calculate the calories, you run up and down the stairs at work during your breaks, work finishes, you get the bus to the gym and run till they kick you out at 11.30pm, you weigh yourself, you power walk home, you weigh yourself and go to bed. But you cant sleep because your tail bone is sticking into the mattress and is so painful you have to switch position every 5 minutes. Repeat the next day. Anything less than this is not tolerated. Hunger is feared, loathed, repressed, denied. That sense of satiety that most people take for granted is an alien concept for me. The only time I know I have eaten enough is generally when I acknowledge that I have eaten too much.. the painfully distended stomach and sharp shooting pains in my sides, dull lower back pain and perspiration all reliable indicators that I have eaten past ‘normal’ and am now uncomfortably full.

When I am depressed I no longer have the energy, will power or motivation to resist my massive appetite. Unfortunately for me, unlike some sufferers of clinical depression, I do not lose my appetite when my mood lowers. If anything, it actually increases. I cannot be bothered to deny myself the food which will quell my hunger, but as I seem to be always hungry, so too do I seem to be always eating. And gaining. Oh the weight gain goes beyond the ridiculous. Up to 4 or 5 lbs in one day, and that can go on for over a week. I manage to remain in denial by not actually moving from my house. Up until yesterday I had not brushed my teeth, dressed or showered in a week. I cannot stand to be naked when I put on weight, and so refused to change out of my bed clothes. I couldn’t even bear to wash my face as this meant touching my puffy, swollen cheeks and becoming aware of the effects of my gluttony. Yet now I must confront my new, engorged body as I have reached the lowest point I can and got myself into some trouble with the police… I don’t know why but I always seem to have to crash to the lowest low before I start pulling myself together. Sick of being sick, the suicidal ideation keeps me awake for a few nights before kick starting a new drive in me to fucking do something about it. So yesterday, I did…

Rage

Fucking fuming, red hot rage saturating every pore and flooding my body, boiling beneath the surface with a steady, violent hiss.. threatening to boil over and decimate everything around me. I have such massive hatred for everything and everyone today. Hatred of the fucking mirror, I absolutely dispise myself and I do not care anymore what happens to my personal ‘relationships’. I am such a messed up bitch anyway I dont deserve to be loved and dont want to be.

I cant stand myself and cant stand you liking me. I dont want to be wanted. Just fuck off and leave me alone.

I will push and push and push you away forever. I cant stand to be with myself so dont want you in my presence, reminding myself of my existence. Cant bear my refelection, please look the other way. Too consumed by hate to feel love, too de-motivated by depression to make the effort, too blinded by rage and short sighted to envison the future.

Dont even want to envision my future, as bleak as my heart and empty as my soul which I contantly force feed, desperate to fill the void inside.

I feel a deep and penetrating loneliness and isolation which knows no bounds. Alone in the intensity of my feelings, I fester in my thoughts and am unreachable by friends and family, who are united in exasperation, frustration, disappointment and anger. They try and try, but fail, to understand. Fail to connect, fail to help, to change my one track mind from self destruction. The intensity with which I feel the world leads to crippling fear. Paralyzed to the spot I become housebound, defiantly protected from external stimuli which may further throw my unstable core off balance.

Out of control!!!

Shit I’m so fucking scared, I cant get my breath back and my heart is pounding in my chest. I have just been frantically binging in the kitchen, cramming in whatever I could find, standing at the fridge with the door open so long the temperature has now altered. Thick white bread and butter, slice after slice, jars open, fingers in, a whole box of biscuits, uncooked food, packets strewn everywhere, debris on floor, sticky cupboard handles, searching for more, no time to cook it, stood up with no regard to taste or texture, mixing foodstuffs and barely chewing down in a blind, frightening panic. The uncontrollable urge to overeat and binge took hold of my body until I no longer felt the ability to resist, like a force greater than anything imaginable I have the compulsion to do it yet the distress and fear afterwards is absolutely incalcuable. I am rendered paralyzed in my post binge depression, totally distraught and ashamed. I feel that my body has just been possessed by some savage, insatiable beast, used me for its own ends and discarded my carcass in disgust. My stomach is painfully distended, face bloated and brows furrowed up in acute dismay. This time I dont even rush to the bathroom to purge the sin out.. so much have I abused my body in the last week, and fallen into a deeper depression that the inevitable weight gain is merely totted up to my current total. Roughly one stone heavier at a rate of 3 lb per day, this gluttony causes guilt so deep it refuses to let me sleep. I am terrified of myself, terrified of being left alone yet also too embarrassed to be with others. Too scared to go out yet scared to be here. I need help. I am desperate for help. I feel like an addict, and I even wish that it was drugs and not food that was my dirty secret. I am seeking residential treatment. At £21,000 for 5 weeks, its not cheap but I feel I have no other option. I am broken inside and want to be fixed. Time hasnt mended my broken heart and its blood still pours all over the floor, staining my shoes. Every time I think I am getting better I relapse into disordered ways. I sometimes think it was better when I was anorexic and was numb to the world, at least then these damn feelings didnt propel me to binge and gain at this rate. I truly am a bitter disappointment to my family and myself. The shame I feel is so overwhelming, I think I may drown in it.