Causes of Bulimia

Years after I’d recovered from Bulimia Nervosa and had begun working as a life coach and mentor I got curious as to what had caused my eating disorder. What actually were the causes of bulimia – so I started to research and was amazed to find that no one really knew.

Everywhere I looked I founded different causes and theories such as a genetic predisposition, biological and chemical imbalances, environmental factors which branched out into family upbringing, past events and the culture of dieting amongst many others.

Some said it was all about food others said it was all about emotions or the inability to deal with them.

Further research revealed it was probably a combination but on a personal level – which combination? Who or what was to blame?

And many of these factors seem so out of one’s control? So what do you do if you have one of those ‘out of your control factors’ how are you ever going to recover?

Usually when searching for a solution to a problem, in this case how to achieve Bulimia recovery, you know how do you stop it, the obvious place is to look for The Cause but when no one seems to know what exactly causes Bulimia or any other eating disorder for that matter and with the likelihood that there’s a combination of factors associated with the development of bulimia, that it is multidimensional and complex, where do you start? What do you do?

Now life with bulimia is pretty tough and thinking that it is caused by something outside your control can make it seem like you’re living under a life sentence.

And the fact that it seems so hard to stop only compounds the idea that you’re never going to be able to stop, that you simply don’t have the will power, that you are somehow flawed and that it is really something outside your control.

I don’t know how many times I promised myself I’d never binge and purge again, that this was going to be the last time, only to do it again–and again. But one day, nearly 20 years ago I kept that promise to myself and never did it again.

Whilst at the time I had no idea exactly how I had stopped however during several years of studying, courses and training I discovered some interesting and amazing things about how we think and behave which coincidentally revealed to me the mechanisms and the underlying structure of bulimia and how I had been able to stop and fully recover despite having some of the so called ‘contributing factors’ that would have seemed totally outside my control.