Bulimia isnt just about purging, and it only takes one "experimentation" for it to take hold

So you've made yourself sick a couple of times? You don't have a problem. Its just once in a while. There's no harm that can be done. You could do with losing a few pounds anyway. So what if you do that by shoving youir fingers down your throat, puking up all of the essential nutrients your body needs, damaging your teeth, your kidneys and your heart in the process? It won't end like that for you. You have the control. You can stop whenever you want to.

But you see, that won't happen. Slowly, you'll become more obsessed with numbers, weights, calories, BMIs, amounts of sit ups, press ups, minutes of running... Because once the cycle starts, it won't stop as easily as you might think.

At first you'll purge once a week, then twice, then three times, until its a daily occurence, after every meal. There may be times when you keep your food down, but something inside you will make you feel so guilty that you'll do anything to get rid of it. Water retention tablets wil become a regular visitor to your shopping list. As will laxatives, as you take more and more to produce the effect you want. You sit on the loo for hours only to think at the end, "What if its not all gone?". You'll constantly check packets of foods, looking for what fat content is in there, how many calories, how easy will it be to purge. You will no longer be able to go to a restaurant with friends or family without knowing what the toilets are like, or whats on the menu, so you know how easy purging will be afterwards.

And if you think it stops there, you need to think again. As the purging slows your metabolism, as you deprive your body of the fluid it needs and as the laxatives stop working properly, you'll start to exercise. You'll go to the gym daily and find yourself constantly competing against the timer, the calorie counter, the other people, your own mind, to prove to god-knows-who that you're not weak. You will become obsessed with making sure you have burnt the right amount of calories. And then when you've finished at the gym, you'll go home and start the regime of sit ups, press ups, anything, just so that you know that the calories are gone.

Your thoughts will be controlled by food, purging, exercise, and you will have no social life. What started off as something that you do for control will leave you with less than you started with.

Then there are the binges. The feeling of "rebellion", of "freedom", and the pleasure that the food gives you because your body has been deprived of it for so long, will only be follwed by guilt and the cycle will continue ten times worse. Your life will become an existence, following the same pattern, the same routine, every day until you end up seriously ill or worse. Its not worth going down that road.

So please, if you are thinking about going that way, or you have only just started, don't think "It's only once - it can't hurt" because it won't only be once and it can hurt you. Talk to someone. Find a healthy way of achieving your goals. Find out if you even need to achieve them. Just don't make the misake that I did. That so many other people have made. Your life is worth more than that.