Getting obsessed with eating loads of food one day then starving myself the next.

[Catnip88]

I have depression, I have a full time job and generally manage to hide the sad and hopeless person that I feel like alot of the time. When I'm at work and it's a bad day I find myself getting stressed and heading for the chocolates and crisps always available at my work. I can't do moderation.it's all or nothing. Sometimes my stomach is so painful from me gorging on food.
The next day I will be full of remorse and feel guilty and stupid and try to avoid any food at all. I'm not overweight, I do exercise, but I can't break the cycle of binging out and then feeling horror and shame at my behaviour. It's like I have no control. It has affected my body shape as I was quite an athletic build but now I feel untoned and too many curves. Does anyone experience something similar? And how do you cope?

[Paxiled]

I go through this.  Partly with me it's family history -- My Dad only ate two meals a day and we ate a very big dinner, especially on the occasions we went out to eat.  As I grew up, I've gone through different stages, but when I started suffering anxiety and depression, I got isolated and ate a lot.  I also exercised a lot so like you I didn't get fat until medication made me gain uncontrollably.  Some of us can eat a ton without gaining a lot at least until we get old.  So at least for me, eating became something to do that was intense to replace all the intense things I was passionate about that I started avoiding because of anxiety and depression.  I call it now a kind of bulimia, in a way -- you eat, then purge by not eating or perhaps forcing yourself to go the bathroom or exercise compulsively -- lots of things we can do besides vomiting to sort of purge.  I guess the cure is, to not feel or be so isolated because of your illness, which is hard because it means tackling your illness head on which is the very thing anxiety and depression push us to avoid.  I would recommend, if you haven't done it or aren't doing it now, that you get into therapy and try to figure this thing out, and in the meantime, try and keep yourself absorbed in things the way you probably did before you became depressed -- in short, try to end the isolation and avoidance that is the essence of your illness through sheer will, if you can.  What you don't want is what happened to me, which is a body full of pain as I'm in my Sixties and all that exercise and lack of sleep caught up to me and a lot of teeth problems.  Good luck.

[pootles]

Thank you for your answer, I'm Catnip88 now known as pootles as for some reason I couldn't log back in under Catnip88. I can completely relate to your answer. For example today I haven't eaten a thing yet, it's my way of trying to control my eating. I will try and use your advice to help change my mindset about my eating habits. Depression and anxiety sadly go hand in hand don't they. Lack of sleep through anxiety often sees me reaching for the sugary high caffeine energy drinks, another thing I need to stop! Thank you for replying, I very much appreciate it. My very best wishes to you x