A woman asks: Would a boyfriend be a good support system or do you recommend that I find a female to confide in? I'm ready to finally get over my bulimia."

Answer:

A support system is more than one person. It's a whole system of people, activities, classes, treatment professionals, spiritual centers, etc. who support your eating disorder recovery.

Sometimes people get confused and think that support means agreeing and supporting whatever they think or want or whatever their perception is in the moment. But if you have an eating disorder, sometimes your perceptions are distorted. Your emotions can go haywire. Your thinking can be confused or unrelated to reality.

The people in your recovery support system will support your efforts to get clear and reality based. Yes, they will help you with structure when you are flailing emotionally or mentally. They will do their best to help you find a way to experience soothing so you can learn to soothe yourself.

But you might not like what they say if you are in the grip of eating disorder thinking or emotions. A good support system will be clear and firm about healthy and necessary boundaries, reasonable expectations, honoring commitments, following through on your word, being honest and perhaps most difficult, postponing immediate urges.

A good supportive system will offer you alternative explanations and perspectives on an issue that you feel is black or white and requires your immediate reaction. A good support system will give you a safe place to go, healthy activities to do, learning and creative exercises to grow by.

A good supportive system will tolerate you when you are in an irrational state that you believe is rational. Yet that support system will not be pulled into your unrealistic passions that you believe are completely justified. (You are most likely to feel this kind of unralistic passion when you are slowing down and finally stopping your eating disorder behaviors.)

A good supportive system does not support your eating disorder or your e.d. thoughts and feelings. A good support system supports the genuine you and supports your health and recovery.

A boyfriend or a girlfriend or a relative can't do this. They can love you, but they don't know about the real experience of living with an eating disorder. They don't know the suffering, pain and creative defenses you experience when you are doing your recovery work. In fact, they may try to help you by soothing you and, without realizing it, offer you suggestions that lead right back to your eating disorder. If you accept this help you move back to your eating disorder life. If you recognize the dangers of their suggestions you may get angry with them. Either way leads to pain and suffering where everyone involved can be hurt and bewildered.

So, building your support system requires that you begin to learn what recovery means to you and gather people around you who support that recovery.

A psychotherapist who knows about eating disorders can be a positive bases where healing begins and where you can learn to build an authentic support system beyond your therapy appointments.

Overeaters Anonymous and eating disorder support groups can be part of your forming support system. A spiritual practice with people who may know nothing about eating disorders but who do know about honoring body, mind and spirit can help.

So can a yoga class and other classes like art, writing, gardening, sculpture. They give you a place to go and put you in contact with people who are working to develop their skills and talents. Such activities can provide you with much needed structure and foster development in the right hemisphere of your brain.

A good support system does not give you a place to hide. It does give you a place from which you can grow and heal.

Creating your genuine eating disorder support system is a wonderful and necessary endeavor to help you on your recovery path.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joanna_Poppink

It was in the news a few weeks ago that moves were afoot to stop laxatives from being available off the shelf in pharmacies and, presumably, supermarkets.

Apparently, as with paracetamol-based products and cough medicines, we need to be protected from ourselves and our addictions.

I fail to see how taking it off the shelf and making it dispensary-only is really going to stop people from using them for nefarious purposes, specifically those suffering with eating disorders.

What we really need is for more information to be available on the subject. For those of us who have trodden this well worn path over many years to educate those who follow in our footsteps. And, hopefully, to prevent them from making the same mistakes and suffering the same long term health consequences.

For anyone who thinks that laxatives are a good idea for dieting, the many years of intestinal difficulty that I suffered as a result of taking that route to facilitate my own eating disorder should provide a stark warning.

In my late teens and early twenties, I was both bulimic and anorexic. Mostly, I would eat nothing and use the laxatives to lose more weight but, if I did binge, I went through purging myself by putting my fingers into my mouth and activating the gag reflex until I vomited.

This is a totally disgusting process, which rots your teeth and just makes you feel permanently nauseous.

After several months of this, I could bear it no longer and moved onto laxatives to do the job more discreetly.

As a result, my poor bowels never really knew where they were.

Sure, it seemed to work for a while but then my system just became totally confused.

I was either completely constipated, with the waste building back up through my system and causing terrible bloating which only added to my distorted perception of my own body.

Alternatively, my stools were so loose that I was terrified to go out for fear of soiling myself.

However, my body dysmorphia meant that I persisted in this ridiculous routine of starving and purging myself.

Then followed the worst symptoms. The acute stomach cramps every time I did try to eat something. These were so painful that I couldn't walk. My gut would go into spasm, causing my belly to distend. I wanted to be sick and to defecate to ease the painful swelling but was unable to do either.

Although I only used the laxatives regularly for a year or so, these problems continued for decades afterwards, even during the time periods when I thought my anorexia was under control.

IBS and Crohns Disease were all suspected at various times, but now I know that a lot of it was triggered by my reliance on laxatives.

The damage this did to my intestinal walls was exacerbated by my predominantly bread-based diet and stressful lifestyle. The candida (gut bacteria) proliferated and leeched through into other parts of my body, causing thrush and other yeast infections.

After suffering with this for many years, I have chosen to try the anti-candida diet for the last few months and start making my gut more healthy by taking probiotics.

I haven't used a laxative for over twenty years, but only now that my diet has improved have I actually started to recover from the damage that my prolific use of them caused.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joanna_Cake

During puberty, physical and psychological changes occur within the body through the activation of the hpothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis, that induces and enhances the progressive ovarian and testicular sex hormones to which teenagers are subjected.

Teenagers explore and easily attract towards the changing trends of life- styles of the society.They provoke and imitate to the elegant images of models and their favourite movie characters with adorable body figures, hair cuts, and dressing sense. Some of them prevail the issue of body image to an extent,that it accomplish to psychiatric disorder known as anorexia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa represents with eating disorder, often inadequate eating rather than loss of appetite.Those predisposing to such an illness, usually suffer from low self-esteem. They have poor opinion about themselves. They desire to have slim body, and so in order to maintain low weight eat less, than they would normally do.They have urge to eat,however suppress the hunger and undergo starvation. Some even follow weight control methods, such as, inducing vomiting,use of laxatives or diuretics to reduce body weight. Some believe doing excessive exercise, burns off the calories.

Anorexia nervosa is more commonly seen in females, almost 95%,than males.The effect of this condition manifests on psychological and bilogical constituents. Psychologically, they have difficulties in dealing with emotional issues,and try to cope by avoidance,or not interacting with others.They get easily irritated and upset. They show other psychological disorder problems, such as, mood disorder, anxiety disorder, and personality disorders.

Eating less have adverse effect on the body functions. Low haemoglobin and low count of calcium attenuate defensive mechanism of the body,and increase risk to infections. Abdominal pain and constipation are common complaints. Due to use of laxatives, and frequent vomiting,there is high risk of electrolyte imbalance.Sleep disturbance results in fatigue. Amenorrhoea is the cause of low levels of pituitary hormone, luteinising hormone,and follicular stimulating hormone required for normal menstruation.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vidya_Sankanna

One of the problems with food addiction is that it is a very personal compulsion. Unlike drugs, alcohol, or even cigarettes, food is necessary to the body's survival. That makes it unique in the world of addiction.

Cravings for any food can start at any time at any age for any reason. One thing holds true for everyone though. The cravings are real and there is always stress involved.

Which foods do you turn to when you get stressed out? Is it candy or chocolate or a bear claw or potato chips or ice cream? These are among the top choices for immediate relief from a food addiction assault.

But this is not the time to fight fire with fire. Whichever foods you crave when you find yourself unable to soothe your stress by any means other than eating are the foods you'll want to avoid.

What do I mean by avoiding them? Do not keep them in your house, or your car or some hidden spot where you can get to them in a hurry. Do not worry about substituting something healthier unless it is an activity not related to food.

Unlike with other addictions, food cravings pass eventually. If you have to drive to a store to buy the food you crave instead of reaching in the glove compartment or a secret compartment in your purse or briefcase, the craving will often pass before you can give in to it.

After all, it is the stressful emotional tension that creates the food cravings. When the tension lessens, there is an excellent chance that the food cravings will also weaken.

When an emotional trigger event strikes and the addictive feelings overwhelm you, you won't have time to think about what you should do next. Don't panic. If you have prepared a Food Addiction Rescue Plan and have it in place, you'll know exactly what to do.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bernadette_Greggory

Emotional eating or eating with your feelings will hinder your weight loss management. People who are trying to lose weight need to get to the root of why they are prone to emotional eating. If they can get passed this urge, they stand a better chance of losing the weight and keeping it off.

Most of the time, the urge to eat something has little to do with being hungry. And with emotional eating, those urges are cravings for foods that do little in the way of adding nutrition. They are comfort foods like potato chips or ice cream. When emotions take precedence, no other food will curb that need. It doesn't take much to trigger the urge either, and this is what makes losing weight so difficult.

Emotional eating adds pounds which only causes more emotional eating, and if the person doesn't get to the root of it, she will never be satisfied with her weight. Self-esteem will drop and she won't like herself very much. The feeling of guilt after every piece of cake will only bring on more emotional eating.

Emotional eaters need to get to the root of their problems. They need to discover the reasons for those urges. And those reasons vary from one person to another.

Keep a diary that includes how you feel that day and why you feel that way, as well as what you've eaten. In time you'll notice on good days, your food intake may be less. Or the bad food intake may be less. The pattern it reveals will help you recognize your urges.

Once you've recognized when those urges arise, you may be able to find another way to relieve it, like taking a walk, deep breathing, drinking a glass water. Do something that involves working with your hands. Anything that will divert your attention from the need for food.

Keep healthy alternatives in your food pantry. Don't shop on emotional days or on an empty stomach. If you do, your cart will be full of comfort foods.

Don't feel guilty when you slip up. It happens to everyone. Focus instead on a thinner, healthier you. Stay positive. Smile and stay active even on days you don't feel like smiling or moving. Don't validate the emotions with food, but validate them by working through them. Know they're there and you'll have a better chance of losing the weight and keeping it off.


Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eric_L_Knouse