I’m recovering from a 21 year long eating disorder. It’s been a slow process but I’m making progress. I’m 5 years sober from alcohol addiction but I’m just now getting help for my ed and I’m wondering if there’s anyone else on here who might be also? No one understands how hard this is so I have no one to talk to. 
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Welcome Arwen,
You are in the right place. The people here are full of love and some will understand what you are going through completely. I am so happy you reached out, I have no experience with ED but want to welcome you and say stick around until someone with experience stops by.
Best wishes on your road to recovery.
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Welcome! Many people on here struggle with alcohol and ed or disordered eating. Food was my first addiction for sure, and I binged and restricted as a child, then got into drinking as an adult and used the hangovers to purge and help restriction. It was certainly disordered eating, if not quite a ed. I spent a year focussing on sobriety, and my binging got pretty bad, and I gained a lot of weight, and then I spent a year focussing on not binging. Then a year trying to walk that tightrope of very careful dieting to get the weight off and not going back to restricting and binging. I was doing pretty well, but this holiday season has proved to me that I always have to be on guard around food. But the extremes of binge-restrict are so much less than they used to be. In some ways food is harder than drinking. I can’t be ‘sober’ from food, and triggering foods are in the house all the time (booze is not).
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Welcome to the community and congrats on your five years from alcohol. By using the looking glass icon you can search for threads specific to your needs. There have been / are now quite a few people who have struggled with disordered eating on this forum, and you may find some of the older posts useful for you.
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The recovery is so much different than alcohol. You’re so right, you can’t be sober from eating lol I’m starting to feel normal which is really nice but the weight gain is a trigger. Thanks for responding it means so much to me.
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I really had to start by accepting myself at the (heavier) weight I was. I was still a worthy person, whatever my weight. And because I was worthy, I focussed on putting whole foods in, exercising bit by bit, but not weighing myself or beating myself up if I binged. I also found counting ‘sober’ days, while it really helped with alcohol, didn’t help at all with food. I don’t know why.
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Hi Arwen 
Welcome here. You’re at the right place 
I was an alcoholic and suffered from bulimia for very long time. The bulimia got even worse after I stopped drinking because I replaced alcohol with food, mainly sweets. I got to a really bad stage and I ended up telling my boyfriend about my problem. I thought him knowing will stop me doing it, but it didn’t work. Eventually I found a professional help and I undertook online theraphy.
My theraphy took few months and tought me a lot. What was the most important thing for me was to 100% give into the theraphy no matter what. I was so desperate to stop this never ending cycle of binging and purging that I decided to do everything what I’m told to do and to trust the process. I’m very grateful I did this, even though it wasn’t easy at all! I gained weight and I was enormously bloated for almost a year!!! I even believed that it’s something I’ll have to learn to live with. But I rather accepted that I’ll be fat than to come back to binging and purging. I found freedom away the never-stopping thoughts about food. Before I couldn’t think about anything else than about food and what and when to eat 
After the year of continuing eating normally even my body realised that it doesn’t need to be scared of any sudden food deficit and started to come back to normal. Today, I consider myself a fit person with fairly good eating habits and healthy relationship with food. And I didn’t believe that it’s possible for me…
It’s not like an alcohol addiction. You can’t quit food. But you can take one step at a time. Don’t expect yourself to start eating healthy immediately. It takes time to adapt to new habits and to figure out that regular eating of enough food is good for our health and body image. I wish I knew this before. Instead I was restricting myself and yet never looked so good like today.
I recommend you to reach to a professional help if you really struggle like I did and just dive in without fear and doubts and do whatever it takes to get better and to gain your life back again
Crossing all my fingers for you 
If you have any questions, please let me know. I don’t mind to share anything if it could help to someone else.
Sending my love 
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I’m still getting use to this app so I didn’t read your response until just now but oh my goodness it sounds like you and I have such a similar experience. I have recently told my husband, I was at 10 days binge and purge free but then I relapsed 
I have never gone that long before and I keep getting longer and longer stretches of not engaging in ed behavior but the weight gain is becoming a huge trigger. I can’t even stand the sight of myself. I had no idea the weight gain would level out and your body goes back to normal. That gives me so much hope!! Thank you for sharing your story with me!
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Hi @Arwen
I know that gaining weight is probably the worst part because we have eating issues because of not liking what we see in the mirror. So it doesn’t really help when you’re trying to get better and it brings you extra kilos.
It’s at least my experience that my body eventually went to normal.
The best to prevent body gain and binging is paradoxically eating. You need to eat enough during the day. Try to have balance in nutritions. I had to learn eating breakfast. I used to skip them due to binging the previous night. So when I was forced to eat them, I was struggling, because I wasn’t hungry at all for breakfast. But once I taught my body that 8am is breakfast time, I started to feel hungry after a week or so of having breakfast.
From the beginning I was strickt and did my best to have my food regularly at the same time every day. E.g. breakfast 8am, lunch 12pm, snack 3pm, dinner 5pm. And I ate a lot and proper food. I figured out that if I ate bigger dinner I didn’t feel like eating tons of junk afterwards and so I didn’t binge at all. In the morning I then feel really good and am ready to have a breakfast on empty stomach. Which was something I didn’t experience for very long…!
Today, I’m still doing the same, justy food isn’t as regular, because it’s not always suitable in the day. But after I created the habit of regualr eating first, the adjustment is possible without trigger to binge. I just make sure that my first food is at 8am and last idealy before 6pm, max 7pm. But that’s something what suits me, some people prefer 12/12 eating/fasting window.
So the main things are:
- Eat regularly at the same time every day if possible
- Make sure you start with breakfast (don’t skip a course)
- Eat enough nutritions and proper food and portions
- Don’t restrict yourself at all and if you want something sweet, have that too (if you eat normal breakfast, lunch and dinner, you’ll find that you don’t feel like eating a bar of chocolate on the top)
Also, I used to write about how I feel after every food. It helped me to observe my feelings and thoughts. At first I was a bit reluctant to this exercise because of the time consumption but at the end it was very helpful tool because I indeed discovered feelings and thoughts which I’d otherwise pass by without even noticing. It does help. And in days when I didn’t have much time to do a note after ever food, I tried to at least sit and think what I’d write if I had time and then made a small summary at the end of the day before bed.
I hope your journey will be successful and full of enjoyment. It’s so nice when you get rid of the eating disorder and can have a normal nice relationship with food again. My whole life has changed and is so much better. I can go to places now without having to fear that I will binge there because food’s going to be involved there.
Let me know if there’s anything else you would like to ask or help with