Water Fasting to Overcoming Binge Eating and To Regain Self-Esteem - Support Wanted!

by Nina
(USA)

Hi,

Throughout my whole life I had issues with food because I used food to solve my issues. During my teenage years I suffered from anorexia. It took me 3 years to fully recover, but I did--or at least I thought I had.

For the first time in my life I started relaxing about food and what I was eating, until I became too relaxed. Every time I felt lonely or overwhelmed I turned to food for comfort. I have been binge eating at least 2 times a week for the last year, and I can't deal with this anymore.

I gained a total of 12 lb (the days that I would not binge, I was dieting so the weight gain does not reflect how much and how frequently I actually binged), but is still enough to make me loath myself, and want to binge even more.

I feel that there is nothing good in my life anymore or at least nothing that I can enjoy because I feel so guilty all the time or I am so upset and ashamed of myself that I don't even want to go out.

I can't even recognize myself anymore. I know that for many of you a weight gain of 12lb seems minimal, but for a person whose body imagine was the content of each and every thought, this difference is very significant.

Actually it is not the fact that I gained weight, but the fact that I can't lose it--despite feeling disgusted with myself I am incapable to stop binging. I lose one, two pounds, and then I gain everything again...and the cycle continues...

So I want to break it. I want to break from my addiction. Food has been my drug of choice; It has ran my life for way too long (5 years at least). I am tired to be its slave either because of fear or comfort.

I hope that water fasting will help me break this cycle, and finally force me to deal with life without using food (or the lack of it) to numb the hardships of life. So I plan to water fast for 10 days (until the end of the month). However, there is a catch: I always fail either on my 2nd or 3rd.

Always on the end of my second/beginning of my third, there is a voice in my head saying that I don't need to water fast; that I can do it like everyone else does; that I can just have one meal a day; that I am already skinny and I will just lose the extra few pounds cutting the carbs;

that water fasting won't help because my problem is not not eating, but eating badly when I eat so instead of fasting I should be focusing on eating better; that water fasting is insane; that I could die; that I wont have energy to do well on a test or finish my research;

that I could pass out at any moment; that is just not healthy, because if it was every doctor would recommend it and I would be able to talk to people about it without them saying I am crazy... anyway there are so many things that pop in my head and then I give up.

But, I know that that is not my rational mind thinking, but my brain trying to trick me into getting food. I know that I need this fast, not because of the weight lost, but because I need to break my addiction, and in order to break an addiction there needs to be a withdrawal period.

Indeed, I can't complain about losing those 12lb, but what I really need is to break the pattern, and that has proven impossible with diets, or by trying to follow a normal eating pattern. So a raw food diet, or a juice fast is out of the table for me.

I need to learn how to live without my drug (any of it). So far, I have probably completed 5 one day fasts and another 5 2-3 days fasts. I can get through the hunger pains just fine, and I don't have a very fast metabolism, so I can function reasonably well without food.

Aside from the binges that I have gorged myself with for the past year, I have always eaten pretty healthy, no fast food/fatty foods (even when I binge), no cigarettes, minimal amounts of alcohol, and virtually no sugar.

Even my binges are reasonably healthy in nature, but the problem is not the food that I eat, but the quantity. Thus, I never suffered from any extreme detox symptom. What really throws me off the fast is not the effect of the fast on my body, but the lack of will power of my mind.

Therefore, any support that you can give me is GREATLY appreciated, and please share anything that you know that can be good rebukes to those questions that pop in my mind (specially 2 days from now ;) )

Thank you for reading this and I wish you all good luck with your fasts..

Nina