Dear Anita,

I myself never thought of finding so much support and, unfortunately, so many people going through similar situations. I am very glad my words did not only lift up some of the weight I feel on my shoulders, but brought some light into your life.
As you said exactly, that is my way of taking some control over all that is going on inside my head whenever food comes along. It is knowing that life is great and full of many situations in which I will mostly have no control over (pregnancy here pops up as an amazing example). What I do control is my actions: and if I was able to stop smoking cigarettes (I was a 7 year smoker) in the most stressful situations, I will too control my feelings on this obsession with food and weight, no matter hiw skinny or fat I get.
Yesterday and I say this publicly, my boyfriend left the house. He packed a huge suitcase and he left, saying that he could no longer withstand living both with me and my anxiety, having “no room in the bed” for himself. Since last night, I’ve come to realise how empty I really feel and how I use food as a distractiom or cover up for it. Since he left I haven’t done anything but eating. I can’t entertain myself with anything or feel deeply his absense.
Today I realised finally, that I have to start filling up my own voids with me – finding things I’m good at, that I take interest in, I enjoy doing and redescovering who I am…

So I guess that we all have out mechanism broken Anita, and we might all work in different levels. What is important is that the solution you find fits you 🙂 and truly helps you in pursuit of who you are!

Mary K x

Dear Anita,

Thank you for listening and writing back!I have been feeling quite alone in this disease by myself and the country I’m from there’s not much explicit help in these matters such as group meetings or other things of the sort unfortunately… This is my way of communicating an SOS into the World, as were the professionals I decided to seek back then. To be honest with you, I don’t. EVERYTIME I eat, the thoughts come back. What eases them is the following:
1. Knowing I lost all notion of what is normal and what isn’t – when I gained a few kg’s, I really thought I was getting obese. That’s when I started wearing different types of clothes that wouldn’t be too tight (I am currently not very far away from a Gandhi type of fashion. When I went to my nutritionist she weighted me and said “Wow! Because of workout you gained 2kg of muscle alone!” Which first of all, is half of what I saw I had gained and second, there was a scientific evidence I was in fact as skinny as before, fat-wise.
So, everytime I have those thoughts I realize my self-imagine is entirely distorted and does not depict reality;
2. The professionals around me are of great help: good food habits aligned with good workout is the perfect way for you to be certain that you will gain/keep/lose weight in an healthy way – not something as random as “eat lots of cookies and you will be fine”. Trusting them and following their regimes will slowly take you back into place. This also answers your questions on restaurants and cafe stores: my nutritionist put me on a “gluten free, diary free, sugar free” sort of diet which will allow me to gain good weight and not fat, so I’m restricted from eating almost 90% of the bullcrap the offer me in those places, which helps A LOT;
3. This is the most important aspect for me: what if I ate too much? Will that give me an extra kg? I get very anxious when I have those thoughts, I won’t lie to you – I have an anxiety disorder related to the idea that if I get fat no one will love me anymore, starting with myself (although I suspect I didn’t before, to starve myself like I did and go through all the pain and illness it caused me). So I started realizing, with all my unhappiness, that being underweight and overweight both caused me a lot of pain and I was’t happy in any of those circumstances. Everytime I think those thoughts I try to realize this: “What if I gain weight? What if I gained fat? I cannot control all things in the Universe and if by any means I gain more fat than what I wanted, at least I can go to the gym, talk to a Personal Trainer and lose it back properly. I can rely on the professionals around me to help me go back to the weight I want, but most importantly, in the meantime, I have people who love me unconditionally of my looks and behavior (whether I decide not to work for months, not using the intelligence and capabilities God gave me or if I decide to dye my hair blonde, which would look awful on me). I just have to start doing the same to myself I guess…

I hope these ideas helped, share with us your feedback if you have tried them before and whether they worked or not.

Mary K x

Hey Katie,

It’s very difficult for me to hear other people suffer from the same thing, because I would never wish this to anyone, not even to people who have harmed me in all kinds of ways!
You too are not alone here and, just like you mentioned, we both have to keep focusing that we are worth all the positive things that happen in our lives, even the smallest ones like having washed clothes in our wardrobe and a ceiling covering our heads.
If you don’t mind me asking, what type of help are you giving back to the society? Volunteering directly with elderly and children, for instance? I have given this a thought and have considered it before, but was fearful of it no being helpful but rather even more self-destructive.

Again, thank you so much for sharing your personal experience and I hope that whichever Hell you’ve been through, diminishes with every sunrise!

Hugs from Portugal, both to you and to the UK, which I miss very dearly everyday of my life! :’)