The Power of Positive Thinking

I am trying to be a bit more positive at the moment, and not let my binging get me down.  I am currently 4 days binge free :) and very happy about that. So I am going to share my theory with you all and hope that maybe it will help you overcome any punishments you have devised for if you binge. When I am having a bad day, I want to binge and then it becomes a downward spiral. I'm sad so I binge then I binge because I am sad.

I used to be really hard on myself if I binged. I would purge with use of diuretics, laxatives and vomiting. I have also been so tormented that I have self-harmed. It’s not something I am proud of. In fact my ED is not something I am proud of, it makes me do things that no normal person would do and makes me feel things that normal people don’t feel.  So I could never be proud of that.

But I am proud of myself at the moment, and this is why.

In the past, if I had binged and subsequently gained, I used to have this period of time where I would punish myself by “just giving in”. I would stop actively trying to lose weight, I would stop looking after myself (leave my hair greasy, not paint my nails, not shave my legs etc…) and I would also eat anything and everything that I thought I wanted (take-away, fast food, sweets etc.) and I would eat them in bulk. This is how over the course of 4 days ill I managed to put on almost 5lbs.

I have since last week (and I know it’s a short period of time) decided that I am going to look fondly upon my relapse last week, and use it as a motivator.  In the past, after a week like last week I could have gone months in that cycle, but I haven’t. By changing my outlook I have managed to shake off the negativity and lose over half of what I gained already.

Every day is a new day, some days I wake up and hate myself, some days I think my hair looks ok, some days I feel revolting. But regardless of those feelings, I know that if I take each day as it comes and try to look at things with a positive spin instead of a negative one, then maybe I will be more successful in my weight loss journey.

So, that being said, here are a couple of thoughts around things that are important to me, and that affect me on a daily basis.

Binging – I now look at a binge like this. It’s A binge. Just a binge. I will not let this binge beat me. If I let it beat me I will only let go of all the hard work I have put in.  I may have gained 5lbs, but I am going to lose more than twice that just to show the binge that I can. My advice is if you have a binge, be it a big one, a little one or one that spans a week. Instead of letting the negative swallow you whole (pun intended), break the binge cycle by reminding yourself of how amazing you are, how you will not let a binge define you, and that one blip does not change who you are. Write it down, close it off and start fresh from the next day.

Bullies/Cheaters and Bitches – A lot of my friends are going through problems with people in their lives at the moment, because people they love/like are being unfair, bullying them, or cheating on them and ultimately  it’s upsetting the people I care about, as they don’t understand how people can be so callous/cruel. My advice in this situation is that you cannot change another person. Everyone is different and your morals/beliefs are not the same as other peoples. Just accept the fact that if John wants to cheat on Jill with Julie, then he is going to, and if Julie is going to have an affair with John, it certainly says more about the type of people John and Julie are than the type of person Jill is. Surround yourself with the people you trust and care about, keep the John’s and Jill’s of the world at arms length. I can count my real friend, the people I trust with my life on one hand (and I am in my late twenties).  It’s amazing how drama free my life is because of this.