months. I would also need to eat in a regular and structured way and trust that digesting normal amounts of food would not make my weight balloon. I suddenly understood that this was the final piece of the puzzle. For so many years I had tried to "treat" my bulimia by cutting things out. I could see now that food was not the enemy . The subconscious dieting mentality I had developed as a kid was to blame. It even makes sense from a scientific point of view... When you diet, you send messages to a primal part of your brain called the sub-cortex. The sub-cortex's job is to keep you alive through your basic fears. eg. The fear of danger. But most relevant to dieters, the fear of famine . When you diet, you send messages to your sub-cortex that there is a famine. It's response is to put you on the lookout for food all the time. Your binge urges are born. Now you may have stopped dieting long ago. But even the slightest restrictive thought can reactivate this primal fear. I talk about this in great detail in the bulimia recovery guide. (below) Anyway, back to the story. Trusting my body was a terrifying concept . I hadn't done that since I was 8 years old. The food that I was supposed to eat seemed like too much to hold down. But I had been watching normal eaters, so I knew it was the right amount. At