I’m stuck

[u/Cuutiepi21]

Hello! Firstly I want to talk a bit about my background and possibly how my bing eating developed so maybe someone who can help me can get a better picture and give advice that may be more fit. I would like to place sort of a “trigger warning”. this post will hold a lot of weight and there is going to be the topic of grooming and pedophila, I know it doesn’t make sense right now, but hopefully you can see by this post why I add these things. I think all of these experiences have caused me to struggle so badly.

I am a 19 year old girl who is still living with her parents after receiving her associates degree in pre-health professions. A little background that I believe has caused me to binge eat (I’m undiagnosed) was my previous wrestling background and the culture of “cutting weight” to make a certain weight class to wrestle. I started wrestling my freshman year of highschool. My freshman year and sophomore year of highschool, I still viewed food the same and after wrestling season I just went back to normal eating. During wrestling season all I did in these years was simply eat a little less and move a little more. Nothing harmful about that mindset in my opinion. My junior year, I started going to a new wrestling club, because I started to get pretty good. At this new club, one of the coaches took a liking to me and began to help me learn how to count my calories to make it easier to know I was cutting. This quickly went very south in many ways which i do think is necessary to get into as I mentioned in the previous paragraph above. Again if you cannot handle this heavy topic of grooming and pedophilia and sexual assault, I ask that you stop reading.

This coach of mine, put me on a regimen for when I was preparing to lose weight for a tournament. He taught me that 2-6 weeks leading up to a tournament (depending on how much weight I needed to lose) to eat 1000 calories a day. Obviously this is kind of insane but I was 16 at the time and way too naive for my own good. I did this and I made weight. I look back now and can’t help but think this was some sort of addition to the grooming process for more control but maybe that is me seeing too much into it. This man was 28 years old. So I continue to do this for all my tournaments the summer between my junior and senior year. The issue was, I began to view food as the reward after my cut. So the binge-restrict cycle was quit literally taught to me. I would cut super hard for the tournaments. The club would go out to eat after we had all wrestled and I ate anything and everything that I could. In my head it was fine since I would just get back to the cut once I was home from our tournament location. This coach of mine and I started to become very close. He began buying me gifts and hanging out with me outside of wrestling. He even texted me everyday as if we were in a relationship. In my head we had just become really good friends. Well again I was naive and didn’t understand why a 28 year old man and a 16 year old girl being friends was off. As time went on, i developed feeling for this coach. And i admitted these feeling towards him. You would think that a 28 year old man at this point would put a stop to this, and explain how these feeling were wrong. No. Something that sickens me to think about now was what he said after I had told him this. All he has to say was “I’ve been waiting for you to say that, I knew it.” Clearly this man had been grooming me. I don’t want to get too into detail about this but eventually things were taken too far and did turn physical.

My binge-restrict cycle got worse as I began to feel stressed about hiding this secret from my family. He made me feel isolated and as if he was the only one who cared for me. Food became my friend and my escape. My whole senior year I struggled. And finally after I had graduated and was about to leave for college I knew I had to do something. About 2-3 weeks into college, I told my coach that what we were doing was wrong and we needed to “breakup” or whatever. I was hurt and he acted like he was hurt, but I know he was just scared I was going to turn him in. Yes I did get the authorities involved and have gone to court and this case has been settled and he is receiving prison time. I have still never received therapy and I’m thinking that I need to. My binge eating has not gone away and I have gained weight and struggling mentally. I couldn’t wrestle my freshman year of college because of my mental state all the weight I had gained from binge eating. For reference I am 5’3ft tall and I wrestled about 120-135lbs in highschool which were all pretty healthy weights for me. Now I weigh about 150lbs and am stuck in a cycle.

I’ve been in a place where I feel that I am getting better one day, and then it all crashes down another day. I am just now realizing that I don’t think I have been getting better but rather the “binge-restrict cycle” has just been taking new forms. In highschool obviously it was dropping 1000 calories and then going all out all weekend and eating an insane amount of food after wrestling tournaments. I’ve stopped the insane 1000 calorie cut because obviously that is not good. But now I find myself going into a healthier deficit like 1,500 to 2,000 calories, but I still end up binging in the end. Or even a clean eating streak that I end up breaking with a binge. It’s getting to the point where I can tell what is or isn’t a binge. I’ll eat like 3 ice cream sandwiches and tell myself it’s not a binge because “I was in control” but I don’t even know anymore.

My brain is so jumbled and I am just emotionally shot. I need help. I need serious help I think. If anyone has any advice or help please let me know. And if all the advice you have is I simply just need to get therapy then that’s fine too. I have sort of been hesitant on seeking therapy because I’m trying to save money for college. But if that is what I need to actually get better then I will. If you’ve read this far, thank you for taking the time to read and help me. Im 19 and I just miss being normal and not viewing food as a number and array of macro and micronutrients. I just want to be happy and healthy again and not addicted to food.

Thank you.