Dear Friends
Dr Irina Webster here. If you are looking for a proven reliable way
to cure an eating disorder, then you have come to the right place.
And here is why.
Many years ago I
was a sufferer myself just like you or your loved one and I
was also looking for help.
My eating disorder started when I was 13. It was probably triggered
by bulling at school: I was called “fatty” very often and laughed at
especially when I was at PE lesson running or doing exercises.
My parents also started to tell me that I was a bit “porky” and need
to lose some weight. I remember all these comments upset me so much
and I felt guilty for the way I was.
I started to hate myself.
I hated my own body and wanted to become slim as
soon as possible.
All through high school I had a lot of issues with my body, I didn't
feel like I fitted in and I always wanted to be like everybody else
and I didn't like who I was. I already had a negative view of myself
being bigger, but bulling made me feel a lot worse. So basically all
through high school I was just dieting, I suppose many people do.
After I left high school and went to university, then things started
to get pretty bad. I started to label foods as good and bad and I
refused to eat any bad food. I thought this was what every normal
healthy person did. But basically over time I really began to
restrict what I ate.
When I was at my worst, at my lowest, I probably would just have a
cup of black coffee, I would probably be sucking on some sweets and
if I really had to eat something it would probably be one apple and
maybe a carrot or two. The lowest weight I got to was 41 kilos.
I had a blinding revelation.
Then I had a blinding revelation that I thought I had invented.
I learned that if I ate a lot but then throw up – it gave me the
same affect as not eating at all. I was happy that I could now
pretend to be normal, eat a lot and then just run of to the bathroom
and throw it all up and I could do this over and over: I thought I was a
genius.
But of course in time I realized I was having a lot of problems,
always at the dentist because my teeth where being eroded away by
the acid from throwing up, I was always cold, my emotions were all
over the place, I could not handle stress without binging and then
purging to make myself feel better. Plus more and more things came
up health wise as time went by.
I thought my friends were telling me
lies.
It seemed like I was on a crazy swing
that I could not get off. At that time when I looked in the mirror I
could see just really big person standing there, but my friends were
telling me I looked too thin and scrawny: I thought they were lying
to me. I just felt disgusted looking at myself, I just thought I was
so fat it was just disgusting and I would remember crying in front
of the mirror because I hated the way I looked.
But then sometimes I could look in the mirror and I could see the
bones in my body, I could see that I looked really quite ill and
frail but in spite of this, to me I wasn't thin enough. I felt that I
needed to be thinner, so I would alternate between starving myself
and then binging and purging, I couldn't understand what was going
on.
Anorexia is a "clever" disorder.
You see Anorexia has the ability to distort the image you have of
yourself; it is really quite a "clever" disorder because it can
manipulate you and make you see what it wants you to see, not what
is real.
When I was in my starving phase I lost my sensations for food. I was
starving but I was so determined
that I was not going to be fat, I just didn't eat because I was
scared that everything I ate could put on
weight: this is another lie that the anorexia was telling me. It was
telling me that no matter what you put in your mouth you will gain
weight instantly, that I would turn into the Goodyear blimp
overnight if I ate anything. And I believed this because the
thoughts were just so strong in my mind.
Binging and purging stage.
Then I would enter a binging and purging phase and every time I ate
something I would have to throw it up. There was a time (in my
teens) when I was terrified to use toothpaste because I thought that
it
contained some magical sugar or magical fat and it could cause me to
put on weight, hence the trips
to the dentist.
The worst thing was when I starting to get afraid of drinking water
because I thought water could cause me to put on weight. It was like
there was a little person, or as I like to call it a little evil
creature, living inside my head and it would create all these
thoughts.
I didn't hear it
as a voice but they were like thoughts in my mind and they didn't
feel like they were mine, they felt like they were somebody else's.
This I now understand to be what I term "brain loop", thoughts going
around and around and never stopping.
I had no control.
I could not control them, I couldn't turn them down, like a volume,
I couldn't tune them out of my head. They were just constantly
pounding me with all these negative thoughts, making me feel bad
things about myself, making me think bad things and making me do
really horrible things: in the end I thought I was going crazy.
I went through normal counseling with therapists and doctors at the
time but it didn’t help me. When I
was a medical student I continued to diet and binge-purge at night.
I understood that what I was doing
was wrong but I also knew that I had no control over my behavior.
I could find no help.
I consulted my professors and teachers at medical school . They
offered me some sort of counseling
and antidepressants, suggested extended stays at clinics and that
was it.
I didn’t want to give up my medical school so just tried to live
with the disorder, I just focused on my
studies to become a women and children doctor.
But I also continued my education on eating disorders on the side ;
learning all I could about the brain
and how the mind works by myself. I participated in numerous
courses, seminars, workshops about
the topics and I talked to many famous people about it.
I finally came up with a
way to stop.
Finally I started to use the principles of the brain and mind I
learned and I came up with a way to stop
my erratic behavior. This interesting concept is I called
mindfulness (or mindful awareness) for
treating eating disorders.
It sounded simple and made sense to me. I started to follow it and
in a matter of weeks and for the first
time in my life, I started to feel better about myself, my body and
food. Mindfulness helped me to feel in control not being under the
control of my anorexia-bulimia.
The Neuroplasticity
Approach: Mindful Awareness
I now call it the neuroplasticity approach because science has
caught up with what I did back then and
proven the concept to be sound. You see Mindfulness is the
calm awareness of one's body functions,
feelings, content of consciousness but Neuroplasticity is the
ability of the brain to change itself and my book is about how to
change the brain and it works remarkably well.
I have to confess.
But I have to confess I did not share this with anyone for a long
time. I was too embarrassed to admit I
had an eating disorder, it was not a good look for a young doctor.
It took an episode a few years ago to make me see I should share my
treatment with others (see below).
But now I teach mindfulness to my patients. The results are
fantastic. Mindfulness training works for
nearly all the people who are willing to apply it correctly and
follow the 5 steps to health.
Let me clarify something.
Let me clarify
right here I did not use the same old treatment methods you get from clinics or
therapists, or
other doctors. I used a totally different way based on the science of
neuroplasticity. In fact no other
information books or e-books on the
Internet are like the proven methods I used.
Get Your Copy Today
Dr Irina Webster MD.
All rights reserved 2010.
dr.irina70@gmail.com
Ph: 61 2 62912904
http://www.eatingdisorder-institute.com
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