One Interested Person wrote:
This blog is making me want to be bulimic. I need to lose about 5-10 pounds and I cannot seem to do it through training or diet.
Honestly, are there any girls out there who are bulimic and would recommend it? We are all anonymous here and I would like to know some of the pros and cons.
I might start a new thread about it.
I hope this is trolling, but if not: I would never recommend it. I don't have an eating disorder, but I've gone through periods of really disordered eating for years (as I'm sure a lot of people on this board have). Sometimes I'm completely normal and relaxed about food, sometimes I'm extremely restrictive, a few months ago I went through a period where I actually did start purging for the first time in my life, which lasted for about three weeks until I realized it was doing absolutely nothing besides give me "permission" to eat unhealthy foods and feel like more shit about myself. And I'm definitely not fast. I'm also not overly thin or anything.
EDs are MENTAL DISORDERS. You don't just 'pick up' anorexia or bulimia like a diet or something. Adopting behaviours like restricting or purging can certainly trigger you into developing an ED, but that's a slope you realllly don't want to go on. It will not help your running. However, I definitely agree with an earlier poster who said that for girl runners, their EDs or adopting of disordered behaviours usually has very little with actually wanting to improve as a runner.
And I hope this doesn't sound enabling or encouraging, but generally the only bulimics you see that are actually very thin are also restricting their food, not going on crazy binges and eating normally the rest of the time. Maybe the girl (Jessica?) in the story stays extremely thin through her training, but if she's bingeing that much, I dunno.
I'm thinking that if you don't lose weight through heavy training and proper diet, it's not really there to lose in the first place (even though you'd like to, which I understand).
I agree that the parents sound unbelievable -- it makes me think this is (at least a large part) fictionalized (plus, all these conversations recorded verbatim... creative license I know, but...). The scenarios she lays out obviously ring true to a lot of people though, and this stuff definitely goes on. But her parents are MESSED, if they are actually behaving like that.