I think I have BED. What now?

(Ooh, I just started writing this and my heart is already racing. What the hell?)

I have a long and complicated and overwhelmingly negative relationship with food and exercise and my own body image. I was a chubby kid in elementary school, and tall and smart and just weird. It wasn't a group of mean girls or boys who made me feel self-conscious about all of this. It was my best friend. It was my mom and my sister and my younger brothers, for whom "fat" was a favorite insult. Going into middle school, I came up with all kinds of diets and exercise regimens that I hoped would finally win me the approval of my size-zero friend and the male attention that I really craved and had been taught should be the ultimate desire of any teen girl. By the time I hit high school, I was doing some dangerous calorie restricting, and then I met an abusive man for whom even that wasn't enough. He used shame to control me, forcing me to get up at 4 am to exercise, literally taking food out of my mouth as I was chewing it because it wasn't acceptable to him. When I finally broke up with him, I decided that I just wasn't going to give a shit about my body anymore-- that I would eat what I wanted to eat and move only when I wanted to move. I thought that that would give me my life back. I was wrong.

Now, I'm safe. I'm in college after taking some time off, pursuing the career of my dreams. I'm in a very healthy relationship with a man who adores me and makes sure that I know it. I have supportive friends and family. It's been difficult, but it's been fulfilling. This last week, though, I was crushed by the reality of my own body.

I don't have a car which means I walk thirty minutes each way to campus every day. I've been a size 16 since I graduated high school three years ago, and my thighs touch. Last week I had to throw out two pairs of jeans and three pairs of leggings because, with all of that walking, I had rubbed holes in the thighs of my pants. That's fine. I could deal with that. That's happened to me before. But then I went shopping for some new pants and-- nothing fit. Nothing in a size 16 fit me. Not a single pair of pants. So I tried a size 18 and those were too big; I guess I'm in between sizes. But I couldn't get a single pair of size 16 jeans past my hips; the only reason my pants still fit me is because they're so worn in. I was crushed. It took all I had not to burst into tears in the middle of each of the three stores I visited looking for pants. I came home with two pairs of new leggings because I was sure that at least those stretchy, thin things would fit me, and one of them doesn't!

I know that I have to do something. It's been feeling more and more urgent with time, as I've had more and more health issues that I can trace to my weight. The day after I went shopping for pants, I bought a new outfit to work out in and a pair of comfortable tennis shoes. I figured, maybe this is the push I needed to finally take my health into my own hands.

Today I sat down to journal about it and wrote down what I had had to eat. I wrote down the shame I had felt when I ate lunch outside at school today, how I felt everyone must have been looking at me even though I know that's not true, how I felt like I didn't deserve the admittedly modest lunch I was eating-- a turkey sandwich on wheat, a small bag of Cheez-its, a mango Snapple. When I got home today, I warmed up leftovers from yesterday and ate three bowls of it, with six pieces of bread smeared with butter, and two huge glasses of chocolate milk. I ate way past feeling full. I ate so much I had to sleep it off. And then when I woke up, I ate two more bowls of cereal. I feel sick as a dog and heavy and exhausted. I realized as I was journaling that this is my way of overcompensating for my own self-image and that I do this almost every day. I feel like I don't deserve food, like I shouldn't be eating it and like everyone around me knows it, so when I get home from school and have a few hours of privacy, I eat massive quantites of food. And this is why I have gained 50 pounds in the last two years.

I think this is binge eating disorder, which is ironic because when I was a kid with borderline-anorexia, I thought I was better than people with binge eating disorder. (Of course, for years now, I've known that this is the kind of thing that can happen to anyone at any time and that it doesn't make any of us better or worse than anyone else.) I just never thought that this could happen to me.

I guess I'm here to find out-- where do I start? I know I have a ton of shame and fear and self-loathing to unpack. I'm used to doing emotional work on myself, so while that's scary it's not the most off-putting part of the healing process to me. I simply have no idea how to get a handle on my eating and exercise habits. I've tried making safe and healthy lifestyle changes before, and it always goes very well during the day-- until I get home and at about 8 o'clock every night eat twice my calorie goal for the day. And I spent all this money on exercise attire, and I'm terrified that it's all going to go to waste because I have no idea how to commit to an exercise regimen. I don't know what kind of exercise I like, how much my body can handle, how to motivate myself to get up an hour earlier in the morning to go and actually do the exercise. I'm hoping some of you who are further along the healing path can shed some light on this for me. Where did you start? How did you nurture your sense of self-love and self-control? What are some things I should try? What should I avoid?