Dear Readers, This is a truly inspirational recovery story from Marcy, from Bulimia Help. After suffering from bulimia for almost 20 years Marcy has been able to completely transform her life despite facing more adversity and sadness than most of us could ever imagine. I hope you will find this recovery story as inspiring as I did.
Marcy’s Story: “How I recovered after nineteen horrible years…”
I had bulimia for nineteen horrible years. I just turned 40 this year, and sometimes it’s so hard for me to imagine that I have spent almost half my life being bulimic. Before recovering, I had never experienced adulthood without bulimia!
I had always been kind of chubby kid. I ate a lot to deal with sadness. I was born with a port wine stain on half my face. Boys didn’t like me and I got made fun of a lot as a kid.
Around the time I turned 16, I decided to go on a diet
I lost a considerable amount of weight, and discovered that some people would overlook my face if I wasn’t fat. I maintained that weight for several years by restricting my diet and tons of exercise. A few years later, I got married. I was married for ten years and had two daughters.
It was during my first pregnancy that I developed bulimia
I was so intensely hungry, and now realize it was due to the horrible diet I had been on for so long.
But during my pregnancy I gained a ton of weight and my doctor wasn’t very sympathetic. I was told I couldn’t gain any more weight and that it was ridiculous for me to have gained so much in the first place. So I felt pressured to take control of my weight.
One night I was sooo hungry, so I ate. I actually got nauseous and sick. Somewhere, somehow, it occurred to me that if I threw up every once in a while, it would help keep my weight down and keep my doctor from yelling at me. I didn’t even know anything about bulimia- that’s something that I wonder about all the time. Where does that idea come from?
In any case, it spiralled out of control
I tried to get it under control as the years went by, but it was a problem that I hid until 1996. I was able to hide it pretty well, and not many people suspected it. Then something happened that totally blew all my control.
Both of my daughters were killed in separate accidents.
My youngest, at three months old, was killed in 96. My oldest was killed in 2001, just shy of her ninth birthday.
As you can imagine, my whole world fell apart. My marriage didn’t survive it. By 2002 I found myself divorced and alone and my battle with bulimia became a whole different ball game. I binged on everything. 6-8 times a day. All my money went down the toilet.
My health got very bad, very quickly. I held onto some kind of survival until 2010, can you believe that? I still worked, but all my money after paying rent went to food.
I tried everything I could think of to recover
I’ve been in therapy, tried online programs, tried OA. I was in the hospital shortly after my oldest daughter passed away and they actually did put me in the eating disorders ward. But even the inpatient CBT didn’t stop me.
My kidneys started to shut down and my doctor told me I would need dialysis if my bulimia continued.
In any case, I was surfing the net one day and happened upon the Bulimia Help Method. What the heck, I thought. I have tried everything else, let’s give this a shot.
I frequent some other boards, like somethingfishy.com, and while they are a great board, it somehow saddens me that a lot of the people there are feeling that they will never recover, that it’s just a place to try to cope with their ED.
Bulimia Help was different because everyone was so recovery-focused, although
I did NOT expect anything to change me
But then I read The Bulimia Help Method – Wow! For the first time in my life, I was told I am not a mental case! There is something very defeating in being told you have a mental illness. It takes away your confidence in yourself, you just write yourself off as a basket-case. But The Bulimia Help Method told me I was ok!
For the first time I was able to see the connection between that first fateful diet I did way back as a teenager and my battle with bulimia.
Are you serious, I said to myself…my diet caused all this?
As I read through the eBook, it started to sink into my head that maybe, just maybe, it was right. Maybe I COULD recover. Was it truly as simple as feeding my body the correct things, of letting go of my restriction?
I decided to give it a go, to trust the book and give it a chance.
That was last year, 2010.
I sit here now, and I can’t believe I have energy. I can’t believe my face isn’t bloated. I can’t believe I am strong!
I thank God EVERY day that I happened to come across BulimiaHelp.Org. It worked when nothing else did.
It is an on-going battle, I’m not going to say there is a magic cure. But the information in The Bulimia Help Method gave me the power and confidence to recover.
I’m amazed at how my body has forgiven me and is healing as time goes on
I have been a member of Bulimia Help for over a year now. I have had tremendous success with it. I truly cannot express how much of a lifesaver the program has been for me.
After years of being told I was mentally ill and that I would never recover, it was a breath of fresh air to find a program that said, no, you CAN recover.
So where does this leave me? I feel the urge to want to share this information with other people struggling with bulimia and I’m hoping to start a support group based around the Bulimia Help Method in the future!
