Too Fat to Be Bulimic

by Theresa J.
(Massachusetts, USA)

I used to have bulimia nervosa. Well I guess a part of me still is bulimic.

I was 16 when I decided that I wanted to throw up after every meal. I am not really sure what my motivation for it was. I had always been large, but it never really bothered me as much as most people would think. I had come to terms with it years before. Honestly I started throwing up because I just had this overwhelming need to have nothing in my stomach. It was almost as if food was a lead weight or an alien life form that I felt needed to be out of my body. Even when I ate snacks, I felt they had to come out too.

When I was 20, I started seeing a therapist who suggested I go to a group for women who had bulimia nervosa. I agreed, and I have to say, it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I was in a room full of thin women who looked at me and looked petrified. The therapist pulled me aside after the group and suggested I not come back. She said looking at all 300 pounds of me was messing up the perception of the other women in the group. So basically because I threw up all my food and had a purging disorder, but I stayed fat, I was like a carnival fun house mirror. She said other women would look at me and think that we are all the same size and it would make them worse. Trust me I never went back.

She suggested overeaters anonymous for compulsive overeating. That makes no sense because I do not really overeat much.

So here I am now at 30 and I try and control this purging disorder on my own. I try my best not to empty my stomach, but I still do it whenever I feel overstuffed. Sometimes it is months in between, but other times I will do it multiple times a day for weeks.

I do not really know how to stop, and honestly, I am not sure if I want to even though I know the risks - the effects of eating disorders and the medical complications of eating disorders. I do not want to hurt myself, but I cannot leave food in my stomach all the time.