Seems like, if I'm interpreting things correctly, that the times I get more involved in the b/p cycle, and trying harder to control my eating, I actually struggle MORE with weight gain, and even maintaining a weight that I can live with and be comfortable.

Is it some kind of cruel joke, and I'm just not getting it? Why don't I believe it?

Didn't notice this until spending a good year eating normally....and was actually very happy with my weight and everything.

Now, over the past several months, in response to noticing a weight gain, slowly have slid back into watching carefully what I eat, exercising, and also doing more and more purging, but I can't get back to that comfortable weight. I am slowly gaining. Which feeds the cycle even more.

But I can't seem to convince myself to do the eating normally thing again, even though it did seem to work before.....maybe.

hey, i know you've been dealing with this for a long time, have you ever tried therapy? or if you have tried before, what about giving it another go? i really think it would help or at the very least, what could it hurt? just a thought and i'm always here to listen!

Hey, I don't post here that much, but your title caught my attention, because I was JUST thinking today that what has happened to me is like some kind of cruel joke. A cruel cosmic joke on me. I am anorexic, have been underweight for several years, and then last year I started restricting a LOT worse, barely eating anything, and you know what happened? I blew up like a BALLOON and gained over 50lbs really fast. It was massive edema from starvation. The same thing that sometimes happens to famine victims. How unbelievable is that. Of course this made me even more obsessive and I ended up almost killing myself with multi-week fasts and severe water restriction and so on. Anyway, I am happy to report that I am now 5 weeks into a normal eating pattern and the edema has just started to improve a little bit. I think your weight will probably normalize too with resumption of normal eating and no purging. It might go up at FIRST though, so it is scary beyond belief but you have to have trust... and throw out your scale for the time being.