E.D free?

Hello Just wondering how do you know if you've overcome your eating disorder? I have a history of B.E.D bulimia and ednos but now I think Im fine? I dont know I dont purge anymore however do still count calories, wouldnt mind losing a stone in a healthy manner,I do still get the whole body distorted thoughts at times though. Say if you wanted medical clearance saying you are free of bulimia how would you go about it?(nursing course means I need to get medical clearance before I rejoin it in sept 2010).

How do you feel emotionally?

Do you become upset about eating, eating certain foods, beocme upset about not being able to exercise etc. 

Do you have any of the ed thoughts?

I would like to say that ED's arent about weight, they are about something much deeper. Have you worked on the deeper issues that led to ED.

Are you using some other type of unhealthy behaviour to deal with emotions that isnt ED, but still harms your well-being? I know that before my ED i had a whole bunch of unhealthy coping mechanisms, i gave one up only to begin using another. 

As for needing medical clearance. I guess if you are able to truely say that you are no longer affected by ED then go to a GP and ask for a letter of medical clearance. BUT it seems surprising that someone can just be over an ED. Ive been sick for a few years now and i know it will take atleast that time again, and possibly more for me to be truely recovered.

Just a thought

Yea sometimes the thing is I just dont know. Like calorie counting and bingeing and dieting are in my terms the norm for me, as I dont know any different.But yet I wouldnt still classify myself as bulimic as I wouldnt immediately starve myself after a binge and wouldnt purge but would diet for a couple of days to make sure that my calorie intake would equal a certain number throughout the week. I would say at times perhaps I would get slightly anxious at eating things which I dont have a clue what is in them. I dont know currently im on a gap year as I refused to do therapy as I felt I would not do something just to please others and I wasnt comfortable with it and at the time I was a stone heavier and doing therapy meant maintainging what I was which I didnt want to doand I felt that it was myy thing nobody elses (if you get what I mean), So im kind of trotting along and praying that in a years time ill be fine, I did have self harming behaviour but that hasnt been an issue in a while.

I had a problem with binging, though I never purged regularly.  I think what helped me most was to write down exactly what I was thinking, when I got "hungry", while I was eating, and afterwards. 

It helped me figure out that I was craving "bad foods" when I denied them to myself, and then I broke and bought large quantities, and then I was ashamed of myself and didn't want anyone else to see the large quantities so I would bring them home in my backpack, sneak them to my room, and then finish ALL of it so that nobody else would see the crap that I was eating. 

So either using a diary, a therapist, or a doctor, try and find out the reason behind your binging.  You can treat the symptoms but you won't get rid of the disease until you know what's causing it.  Good luck!

If you are still binging and restricting, you still have a way to go in your recovery. If you restrict your diet after a binge, you are just setting yourself up for the next binge. Dieting is also a very destructive mentality as it usually involves deprivation and dividing food into good/bad catergories. Then you crave the forbidden foods and increase the likelihood of binging.

Instead of dieting, learn how to eat intuitively by listening to your body. If your listening, it will tell you when to eat and when to stop eating (of course this takes practice and trust in your body). Intuitive eating means you will naturally settle at your set-point weight and not have to diet, binge, purge or restrict again.

I have recovered from bulimia and I think that it's never really possible to recover while you hold on to the diet mentality.

As for therapy - despite it being suggested to you by others, you might still get benefit from it. Don't be so quick to dismiss the idea before you've tried it.

Hope this isn't OT and sorry for my ignorance... but do you actually need medical clearance to enter a nursing course/program??

thanks for the advice. Erm I think you do need health clearance, the main reason I had to take a year out(this was towards the end of my third year)  was because of self harming, which they i think assumed was linked with bulimia which wasnt the case as I had eating issues way before the s.h. But yeah you need health clearance for nursing course programmes