Reddit reviews Food: the Good Girl's Drug: How to Stop Using Food to Control Your Feelings

A book that really helped me is "Food: The good girls drug"

https://www.amazon.com/Food-Girls-Using-Control-Feelings/dp/0425239039

The binge purge cycle is totally detrimental. That's something I deal with as well. I'm not technically bulimic, but it's the closest clinical term.

I have also used laxatives as a tool for losing weight (we don't keep them in the house anymore). Not only is it extremely dangerous for all the reasons you listed, but the laxatives also become less and less effective over time. My issues came when I could no longer actually have normal bowel movements, even with a large dose of the laxatives.

It was an incredibly embarrassing situation that I don't ever talk about. I put my body in so much jeopardy. I'm sure that it impacts my ability to lose weight now, too.

I also deal with dysmorphia (the clinical term for distorted body image). I've pretty much come to terms with the fact that what my head sees and what the mirror shows and what pictures show rarely match. I also have the added bonus of a weird weight distribution. I'm one of those people that when someone hears how much I weigh they say, "that CAN'T be true!!!" and I'm like, "bitch come over here and I'll show you..." According to BMI (which I do realize is not a great measurement, but does provide a benchmark) I am obese. I ran a marathon 26 days ago, though.

Agh, I also can't remember where I was going with this.

Give your wife a hug. Let her know she's not alone. Let her know that you're so glad she's getting help and that you're proud of her for being strong today.

I definitely recommend that you get a good night's sleep. That will help the world seem a little brighter <3

As for reading material, Food: The Good Girl's Drug is the book I had my mom read to help better understand where I was. It's a little playful, but it covers some of the distorted thinking and patterns that you likely see in your wife.

I wish you the best of luck. <3

A great book that's helped me recently has been this: http://www.amazon.com/Food-Girls-Using-Control-Feelings/dp/0425239039. It's Food: The Good Girl's Drug. It helped cement in my head that what I was doing was actually disordered eating and not just laziness, and helped me sort through my thought process.