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All Eating Disorders....

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  • wow, i never imagined there were so many raw foodists with present or former eating disorders! it’s nice to not feel like the only one. and i am glad we are all doing healthy things for ourselves. anorexia/bulimia here.. anorexic for several years, bulimia popped up only in the last year and was making me so so so depressed. i’ve never been so addicted to something as to binging/purging. and i hated every minute of it. it’s actually why i went raw – i knew i had to do something drastic to break the cycle. and it worked! i went raw july 1st and i’ve only purged ONCE this month, which is INCREDIBLE for me. i still compulsively eat too much sometimes, but it’s hard to feel guilty when it’s like.. 6 plums. i still want to lose more weight but at least this has kind of put a buffer between me and unhealthy habits. and i do feel so much happier and healthier.

  • I came to raw foods as a way to prevent the onset of diabetes(i was diagnosed as pre-diabetic),and sure, wanted to lose weight as well. I think a great way to look at it is that even if you changed your SAD diet to 75% raw, that is 75% better than what you were doing. I feel that no diet, or “lifestyle” will work if there is too much rigidity, or food guilt. Even now, if I want something that is non raw or what would be considerd bad for me, I will have it. I am doing great and am about 85-90% raw, so the occasional slip doesnt bother me. I feel this is what leads to binge eating. It is the denial. Embrace your craving, satisfy it, and move on.It is the repeated pattern of embracement that leads to going off the path. This is where a lot of the tips and advice given here in this post are sooo helpful!. Also, I have such negative reinforcement from eating anything bad that it is now the idea of feeling cruddy that beats the craving. I think this is what keeps a lot of raw foodists going. It is the knowledge of how you FEEL that is the motivator! Eventually, this defeats the cravings and even the emotional attatchments. On a personal note, best wishes and support to anyone out there struggling with any form of an eating disorder. I understand how personal and overwhelming they must be. I raise my green smoothie to your physical,emotional, and spiritual peace.

  • cherie03- I found this to be helpful:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_overeating

  • Lots of great healing energy in this thread!

    Raw Beginner….many thanks to your thorough and honest post. Your words have been extremely useful!

  • I, too, have struggled (and am still struggling) with anorexia, and a little bulimia along the way as well. I have found, though, that being raw makes it soo much easier to not feel guilty about eating, and the food keeps me satisfied so I’m not as likely to want to binge – which almost always leads to purging… gross! It is so nice to have this topic on the site and see that I am definitely not alone in this, and have a good place for support and release. Gosh, there are so many wonderful things that have come into my life since I went raw! I really can’t believe I didn’t find all this sooner!

  • Hello everyone!! I’m new to RAW (kinda). Meaning I haven’t been fully dedicated to the lifestyle for months. I am however more excited about being VEGAN!!! My life now as a Vegan has made me a happier more humble person. I’m very much thankful for the knowledge and inspiration that comes along with knowing Veganism. Don’t get me wrong, I love RAW and I have a goal to be 100% RAW. I’m starting a 100 day 100% RAW journey with a bunch of other people on the RAWFu site. it starts Aug. 1st :D i’m was excited!!! I’ve been struggling with eating disorders for quite some time (anorexia at first then bulimia). I’m for sure not proud of my past eating habits and am so thankful for having a close friend that is well into RAW/Veganism. She taught me all there is to know about great optimal health. I have thoughts in the back of my head to purge my food at times… but fight through it. It’s not me no more. And I refuse to give in!! My goal now is to help others with eating disorders and through RAW/Veganism I plan to help overcome the battles with ED’s. :) visit my site: http://newbeginningsthroughrawveganism.blogspot…

    Malynda

  • in the beginning it really did help me with the ed habits…but in the past couple months I have backslid – ok dove headfirst – back into it :( . I was tracking my calories and never eating more than like 7-800 a day while increasing my exercise more and more, and recently it’s been more like 600 which got so depressing I stopped even counting. and my stomach hates me…it won’t digest anything. I really thought raw would help me!

  • Debbie5125Debbie5125 Raw Newbie

    I was just thinking of this thread yesterday. I’m starting my second year of awareness and treatment of my eating disorder.

    I agree that an ED is never about the food. The end result is the food. Food is the control, outlet, behavior for something much deeper to deal with. When the ED starts to lose control, the issues surface, then you got to deal with those issues…without returning to the ED! Not easy at all.

    I’m a Mom of four year old twins and going through this.

    Regarding the raw food diet. It makes me feel great but it is not black and white…that eating raw makes the ED go away. My ED got worse at times while eating raw. Especially if I ate something cooked. I’d purge the cooked food in some way, or beat myself up emotionally for my weakness.

    BUT, when I eat to feed my body and soul I am able to enjoy the benefits of raw foods and not use it as a way to feed my ED.

  • LizK~ A RAW lifestyle will help you. Are you counting calories with RAW food?? It’s definitely unneccesary. I know that when battling an ED you don’t think about the benefits of the food that you are consuming (RAW food), you only think about the calories, or the amount in which you’re eating. But all that has to go. that old mindset has to be erased and you gotta start thinking about the NOW and your future. I know it’s not easy, I struggled with anorexia and bulimia for quite some time. I now live a 100% Vegan lifestyle and am trying every day to become closer to a 100% RAW lifestyle as well. I still have thoughts of purging when I eat a cooked meal or something unRAW. but I don’t purge. If I choose to eat shit, then I make myself go threw with the after math of it. You gotta find the point where are fed up with abusing yourself. you gotta find a time to just end it all and stick with it. it’s hard, but it’s doable. beleive me. take it one meal at a time. and once you’ve accomplished that, take it one day at a time. it will get better i promise you that :) life is precious and so rewarding, let’s live it!!:)) Big Hugs! Malynda

    Debbie~ I agree with you that when battling with an ED, and eating RAW, if you do slip up and eat something cooked, you feel ashamed and horrible, as if doing something so bad that you weren’t allowed to do, therefore you beat yourself up and purge your food. I’ve been there, done that. Now, you have to allow yourself to slip up. If you’re eating a High RAW diet and you do have something cooked, GREAT!!! so you had a cooked meal. move on. Start your High RAW lifestyle over from there. we are allowed to enjoy the food we eat, not beat ourselves up over it. having a cooked meal is not the end of the world. it’s better to eat a cooked meal than to starve yourself or purge it afterwards. it’s not a big deal. I know we have these trained minds, where we think everyone is critiqueing us when we eat, but no one else cares, we critique ourselves. and we need to stop. if we could just allow ourselves those few meals that aren’t “perfect,” then we won’t be so upset with ourselves when we eat them :) RAW/Veganism is the way to go for optimal health and healing. Don’t let any ED convince you that RAW is the reason you purge more because you ate a cooked meal. remember, you made that choice to eat what you ate. and it’s alight :D Big Hugs!! Malynda

  • hey superkat92, my name is Hannah im 19 years old and i turned to raw eating when my eating disorders became uncontrolable. I was hospitalized in 2007 for anorexia nervosa , binge eating and deprssion. the docters put me on a bunch of meds and i was drugged up all the time. i decided i wanted to become more in control of my life. i got off my meds and started eating 100% raw. i still feel the desier to eat untill i feel incedabbly sick and guilty but its somthing im just going to have to work on. being raw has made me feel more emotonally stable and more in control of my eating. i dont obsses over calories now… well not as much. its really hard to recover from an eating disored of any kind. im in the same boat as you.. just hang in there and if you slip up, start over best wishes

  • Dancin DurianDancin Durian Raw Newbie

    Hello beautiful raw people! I am so sorry that you are all suffering. I also am really having a heck of a time working my way through anarexia. It is so hard! Raw food has definatly helped, and I am just glad I had it giving my body nutrients, whilst I was starving it! I know how you all feel and I am soo sorry again, it is terrable.

  • i thought i was getting better… i thought it wouldn’t come back… i realized tonight that i wsa wrong :-( relapsed tonight… binged and purged.. i hate the feeling.. love the feeling.. i just don’t understand it. when i eat 100% raw i don’t feel guilty but when i eat 99% raw i can’t help but feel guilty. 100% just isn’t realistic for me. i don’t know what to do. help, anyone?

  • KathyKath- I wish I could help you… its been a battle for me but rawfoodism has helped heaps. The only time I break it really is my daily soy cap. All the foods are raw…and its amazing and healing.Raw food saved me, bulimia was seriously destroying me… I still feel guilt sometimes…overeat a bit…but I also know that mindful eating is the key…listen to your body…but be forgiving of yourself- be your own best friend and mother, hug yourself tight and allow yourself mistakes. You can do this, you can get right back on there. I find the more I eat raw, the less I crave food that would make me guilty anyway, I pretty much feel no need for cooked foods! I hope this happens for you too. I feel insane cuz i ate a heap today, but I know its good for me. I have to be careful with high fat raw foods, still healing from the ed, but I never thought I could stop and now I have :) The rawism has even somehow helped me to stop smoking this week- i just ran out of smokes and thought hmmm i will reward myself with a warm raw drink and dates in the evening instead then next i knew i did it three days straight! I hope I can keep it up! PS- Dates are my new obsession! They sure beat my old three hour-even full day binge/purges.And Im not afraid to socialise, to live, to go outside with my dates!!!

  • Debbie5125Debbie5125 Raw Newbie

    You have to give yourself some room to eat non-raw. I feel very strong about this. I drink soy milk or store bought almond milk. I had tofu and even mashed potatoes with my dinner last night!

    When I first went in for ED treatment I refused to admit I had an ED. And then my doctor asked if I’d eat oatmeal. I said nope, it’s cooked. I laughed to myself….what harm is in cooked oatmeal?! It’s warm and comforting.

    You like 100% raw because you’re following black and white rules. And yes, 100% raw feels great. But you must enjoy a balance.

  • itouristitourist Raw Newbie

    I think that eating dairy products and meat products can create imbalances in the body that lead to obesity or dietary problems.

  • angie207angie207 Raw Master

    Thank you all for your comments/stories/sharing your struggles & successes. Life is too beautiful to waste, and you’ve helped me face some of the issues I have had/stil have with food & eating. Or, rather, the emotional issues that manifest themselves in my relationship to food. I feel very fortunate. I did a research paper in high school about eating disorders, and I never went there, physically. I also feel grateful for that experience because it gave me awareness of some of the emotional/mental symptoms that are central to eating disorders. So even though I’ve continued to eat fairly normally, I know I have struggled with anorexia emotionally & mentally. I’ve also had periods when I hated the fact that I have to eat so much (I have had a super high metabolism most of my life except after my son was born until I went raw). I hated to look at food, or I hated being still hungry when I had already eaten a lot of food. This is when I was already eating mostly raw. Interestingly, I just realized it’s just a symptom of my feeling like I don’t want to ask for help, support, nourishment, etc. from anyone else. I feel guilty when people help me or give to me, and I feel bad when I have to ask for more. Thank you all for posting; you’ve helped me immeasurably. Can you help me some more? (Heehee, I had to practice :)

  • I've been reading through the ED threads on this site and they've helped tremendously. I joined the site just to contribute. :)

    I'm 24 years old, and have been battling bulimia/binge eating/anorexia for ten years. Bulimia has taken over for the last seven. I've hit my rock bottom. My life has been dedicated to this disease for far too long, and I'm just ready for it to be over. So I'm embarking on the raw foods diet -- I feel like I was kind of led here by a higher power. Raw Foods is something I considered to be a little extreme, even being a vegetarian/vegan (on non binge-purge days) for years. But now it feels right, and good, and I'm so grateful to find this community!

    So my plan is to coddle my body with raw nutrients, let myself eat whenever I want, and just note when it's a psychological meal instead of a hunger meal. Right now I'm eating bowls of cabbage and avocado, because I'm tired and distracting myself from some things, but it's hard to feel guilty about it, so it's nice to actually enjoy a meal for once. I also got a good organic multi and some veggie enzymes to aid the digestion. For the mental/emotional stuff, I'm finding a support group and journaling every day and doing yoga. So hopefully, I can commit to recovery this time around, and be all raw except for coffee and tea, which I'm not quite ready to cut yet.

    I agree that media can act as a catalyst or a "good reason" to the addictive mind to have an eating disorder, but personally, I don't think it can be entirely blamed. I can remember being four or five and sneaking down to the fridge in the middle of the night to scoop out butter or sugar, or stealing the ice cream gallon and hiding under my Playskool table with it. And I certainly wasn't feeling pressured back then by Jem or any of the Holograms to be pencil-thin. Food was my comfort, and when I hit my teenage years, self-consciousness and comments from my peers steered me towards an ED as a "solution."

    When I think of the time and money spent on this.... it just makes me really sad. I could have gone on a few wicked vacations with the funds that have added up.

    Anyway, I just wanted to join and share, and hopefully will be talking much more with everyone in the future.

    Good luck to everyone else traveling the same road. It sure can feel lonely, but this forum helps.

  • a few years ago i was a compulsive over eater bulimic the main reason i stop is i got save and God delivered me i do know a lot of people who say the raw diet has gotting them away from the urges though

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