Expert: Joanne - 7/24/2008

Question
I've had trouble with not eating and being bulimic for a couple years now and it got pretty bad when i went to college. I was overweight and lost about 20 pounds while at school but it was in an unhealthy way (over exercising, bulimia, anorexia, ect). Now that I'm back from school I'm trying to recover but I still want to lose more weight. The problem is that it is extremely hard to eat healthy while living with my parents. I only have a month till I go back to school but I'm so worried about putting on weight and being healthy. I'm at a point where regular meals make my stomach hurt terribly and its hard not to throw up. Should i be worried about my stomach hurting almost every day? I plan on getting help when I go to school for my ED but right now I need to prevent my parents from finding out so I'm worried about seeing a doctor for stomach pains. Do you have any advice on what's going on with my digestive system right now? Thank you!

Answer
Melissa

I'm glad to hear that you intend to get some help for these issues.

I think that you need to just be honest with your parents, even if you don't feel you can tell them the whole truth.  Explain that your eating patterns were different at school, so are struggling with their meals now.  Try to eat smaller more regular meals rather than 3 big ones and see if that makes a difference.  Your digestive system may be struggling to cope if it has become used to not having to process too much food.  This can be remedied by eating smaller amounts more regularly as your body becomes used to digesting the food again, and has plenty of time to work on each meal before the next one is here!

I think that you shouldn't be focussing on losing weight at this point, but on trying your best to overcome your eating difficulties, and deal with any issues you still have with your weight after dealing with the issues that led you to an eating disorder so that any future weight loss is done safely and for the right reasons!

Joanne