The main symptoms of bulimia are binge eating and purging (ridding your body of food by making yourself sick or taking laxatives).
Binge eating
Binge eating is repeatedly eating vast quantities of high-calorie food, without necessarily feeling hungry or needing to eat. The urge to eat can begin as an attempt to deal with emotional problems, but can quickly become obsessive and out of control.
Binge eating is usually a very quick process and you may feel physically uncomfortable afterwards. When binge eating is a symptom of bulimia, it happens regularly, not just once or twice.
Sometimes, the binges are spontaneous, where you eat anything you can find at that moment. Binge eating episodes can also be planned, where you make a shopping trip to buy foods specifically to binge on.
For more information, read our pages on Binge eating.
Purging
Purging is a response to bingeing. After you have eaten lots of food in a short space of time, you may feel physically bloated and unattractive. You may also feel guilty, regretful and full of self-hatred.
However, the main impulse to purge is a powerful, overriding fear of putting on weight.
The most common methods of purging involve making yourself sick or using laxatives to encourage your body to pass the food quickly.
Less common methods of purging include taking diet pills, over-exercising, extreme dieting, periods of starvation or taking illegal drugs, such as amphetamines.
Cycle of guilt
Bulimia is often a vicious circle. If you have the condition, it is likely that you have very low self-esteem. You may also think you are overweight, even though you maybe at or near a normal weight for your height and build.
This may encourage you to set yourself strict rules about dieting, eating or exercising, which are very hard to maintain. If you fail to keep to these strict rules, you binge on the things that you have denied yourself. After feeling guilty about bingeing, you purge to get rid of the calories.
Other signs of bulimia
Other signs of bulimia can include:
- regular changes in weight
- an obsessive attitude towards food and eating
- large amounts of money being spent on food
- disappearing soon after eating (usually visiting the toilet to vomit)
- episodes of over-eating
- periods of starvation
- scarred knuckles (from forcing fingers down the throat to bring on vomiting)
- depression and anxiety
- unrealistic opinions about body weight and shape
- isolation
