Congratulations on getting it together. Yes, family and friends are the glue that holds life together when we can't. Sometimes the most difficult times in our lives become the times we learn the most and on looking back think; it was the best thing that could have happened because it caused change in us. I believe that some day, you will return to the university with more focus and determination that even you thought possible. You may even find your career working with persons with eating disorders.

Support from others with similar issues can make the difference in gaining the understanding that you are not alone and learning the skills to change your life. People also need professional help and I encourage people with eating disorders to see a psychologist and a Registered Dietitian. It takes both support from others and professional guidance.

Perhaps your parents don't know what to do or say. I would suggest that you ask your doctor for a referral to a psychologist who treats people with eating disorders. You could also ask your school counselor or school health service to refer you to someone. Then ask one or both of your parents to go with you to the appointment. If they don't go with you, ask a friend who knows your situation. It would be good if you had your parent's support, but if they are unable to help, ask a friend for support. You can do this.

You could also ask your parents to read my bulimia topic to give them some background information.

Bulimia's symptoms are food related, but the problem has its roots in your head, not your stomach. You are not crazy. I would suggest you go see a psychologist that specialized in eating disorders. Your behaviors aren't going to go away on their own. I'm sure you feel panicky with the thought of giving up these unhealthy behaviors because how else are you going to control your weight? Well, healthy foods and exercise do work to control weight.

The combination of compulsive exercise, taking laxatives and throwing up are unhealthy. You are going to get your body really out of chemical (electrolyte) balance and end up in a hospital. Go get some help now. Ask a trusted friend who knows your secret to go with you. Start with a school counselor or your family doctor that can refer you to a psychologist.

You will need to daily document what you eat, pills you take and how often you vomit. Don't beat yourself up with an "all or nothing" attitude. If you reduce these unhealthy behaviors each week to eventually stopping, you will succeed. It starts with asking for help. Now go do it.

Sounds like your friend may have the start of an eating disorder. Not eating in front of other people and then eating lots in private is one symptom along with a preoccupation with her weight and how she looks. Perhaps the best support you could provide is to tell your friend that what she is doing with food is not healthy and she should talk to a professional about it. Depending on her age, she could talk to her doctor or school counselor who could refer her to a psychologist who works with eating disorders before your friend starts throwing up. Keep encouraging her to go see someone and you could offer to go with her for support.

You deserve credit for recognizing that you need to gain control of your eating disorders. The issue is not food; food is only a symptom. Some incident happened to trigger a re-occurrence. So until you get through your issues with your counselor, make an appointment with Registered Dietitian to plan a healthy eating pattern for you.

A healthy weight range for your height is 113 to 137 pounds, so a 110 pound goal is not far off that recommendation.

Metabolism is the rate at which you burn the calories you eat for energy and absorb nutrients to build body tissues. Your metabolism is probably not screwed up because you are alive and breathing with enough energy to move around. You don't need to speed up your metabolism.

You are using vomiting to control your weight from the binge eating and it doesn't work. They support each other so both must be stopped together. Eating normally is scary because you are afraid the weight gain will get out of control. It won't with a healthy eating plan geared to your calorie needs and weight gain goals.

Meanwhile, I used Healthy Body Calculator to calculate your calorie needs based on your height and current weight of 100 pounds. If you eat 1240 calories a day, you will maintain 100 pounds. If you add another 500 calories (total 1740 per day), you will gain 1 pound a week, which is slow enough. Once you get to 110 pounds, you will need about 1284 calories a day. I did not make any calorie adjustments for your activity or exercise habits which could add 300 calories more just for daily activities.

FYI, a very low fat diet can trigger binge eating because fat is tied to satiety or feeling full. Try increasing the fat in your diet to 25 to 30% of your total calories. If you eat 1740 calories, you can eat 48 - 58 grams of fat per day. Read the new food labels as the fat grams are listed and keep track of fat grams you eat.

To gain control of your bingeing, remove foods that you have binged on in your home. Usual binge foods are high carbohydrate, high fat foods. Don't buy any of these foods either until your eating pattern normalizes.

Give yourself credit as your bingeing and vomiting reduces in frequency each day. Don't expect perfection - all or nothing. You did it once, you can do it again.

Binge eating is characterized by a very large intake of food in a short period of time as you describe, but usually high sugar, high fat foods are eaten. Usually people stop eating when feeling full, but bulimics continue eating even after feeling increased stomach discomfort due to distention. Vomiting may or may not occur after a binge. Excessive exercise or the use of laxatives are other behaviors that can be present. Your exercise program seems healthy and appropriate.

Food is not the issue. I would suggest you see a psychologist to discuss what episodes trigger your binge eating.

In the meantime, plan 6 small meals per day. Choose mealtimes and stick to those structured times. Remove any high fat, high sugar foods from your house that you have binged on in the past. Steamed vegetables are healthy foods so don't eliminate them. Ask your psychologist to see a Registered Dietitian familiar with eating disorders.

You are on the right track, but looking in the wrong direction. You are a survivor. I do not believe that food or diet is the issue, only a symptom of the real issues. Obviously, you don't agree with your doctor boyfriend that you are fine. It doesn't feel fine from what you are describing.

I would recommend you see a psychologist who is trained in domestic abuse and compulsive disorders. You have more work to do. There is a relationship between all your family issues including bulimia, alcohol, abuse, depression, death of a family member and compulsive shopping. Your father's rages of anger belong to him and are not caused by a sugar disorder.

Hypoglycemia should be diagnosed by a doctor and the diet does not have to be carbohydrate free, just sugar free with 6 small meals like a diabetic diet. Maybe you should see a Registered Dietitian who can help you with a healthy eating plan until you get the real issues dealt with. I don't know of any support groups for hypoglycemia, but you could ask the dietitian you see.

While at the doctor's, get the Candida infection treated as it is due to a fungus. Has an allergist tested you for specific allergies (food)? If so, what are they?

Chromium won't do anything for the symptoms you describe. Chromium is part of insulin, but if you do have hypoglycemia, then you are producing too much insulin. Excess chromium will not make more insulin or change the way insulin works. I wouldn't suggest chromium supplements at this time based on current research.

Lastly, your illnesses are probably not related physically.

You are pretty astute and you are right on track! The proper authority would be her doctor or therapist. Depending on your and her relationship to her family, maybe talk to her family also.

First, switch approaches and talk to her about how unhealthy throwing up is and that you want her to be healthy. She will not hear you that she looks fine. Second, her weight is not the issue and throwing up even once a week is unhealthy. Besides, the body can't be fooled into losing weight and bulimics soon discover that they maintain their weight even when throwing up. The problem comes when they cannot stop bingeing on food and alcohol. Food is not the issue. Your friend needs to see a psychologist to deal with her issues. A Registered Dietitian can help her with a healthy diet and meal plan to achieve a healthy weight goal.

You say that she is skinny. Is she also anorexic? This is a dangerous combination that can lead to depletion of electrolytes (sodium and potassium) in the body when starvation and vomiting are combined.

Use the Healthy Body Calculator to determine a healthy weight for your friend. If your friend is 5 feet 3 inches she should weigh 104 to 127 pounds. Again, when referring to her weight, if she is too thin, tell her that she looks unhealthy.

Your girlfriend's lactose intolerance and constipation problems may have nothing to do with a past history of bulimia. She can limit foods high in lactose and use lactase reduced milk (Lactaid).

Constipation can result from too little fiber or water in the diet. I would suggest your girlfriend gradually increase the fiber content of her diet (1 gram of fiber per 100 calories or 25 grams of fiber per day) by switching to whole wheat breads, cereals, rice and pasta, fresh fruits and fresh vegetables. This would be preferable to resorting to laxatives again.

To determine if she is drinking enough water, suggest she look at the color of her urine. If a person is drinking enough water, urine should be colorless and odorless during the day. An exception to this is vitamin C supplements will turn urine yellow as excess is excreted in the urine.

Does she get constipated more often just prior to menstruation? Just prior to menstruation, there is a physiologic reason to the constipation. Every month a woman's body prepares for pregnancy and starts resorbing fluid from the intestinal tract. This concentrates fecal material, makes it more hard and difficult to eliminate. I would suggest paying particular attention to increasing the fiber and fluid content of her diet during the week prior to menstruation.

Bulimia, anorexia and other eating disorders are best treated by psychologists. Suggest your girlfriend talk to her former therapist and ask that person to refer her to a doctor familiar with treating eating disorders.

Bulimia is an eating disorder that manifests with large amounts of food eaten in a short time, followed by vomiting. Anorexia is another eating disorder characterized by a preoccupation with thinness and often compulsive exercising. Some of both characteristics are present in your employee.

If she has a job performance that she is not completing in a timely manner, then you will have to make the decision to terminate her employment based on that. Seems like you have invested a lot of time documenting her performance as well as with previous employers. As her supervisor, you will have to decide whether to continue her employment or not. However, in the United States, you could not fire someone because of a medical or psychological problem as that would be discriminatory.

Bulimia is characterized by binge eating, which is eating a lot of food in a short period of time (usually less than two hours). Ninety percent of the time, a bulimic follows this with vomiting to rid herself/himself of the calories in the food. The vomiting does not result in weight loss as the bulimic expects. Yet, most bulimics are normal or slightly overweight.

Bulimia is not the same thing as anorexia which is self-imposed starvation. The anorexic is abnormally thin, has a distorted body image and has an intense fear of gaining weight.

Yes, a person can have both bulimia and anorexia. They starve and periodically binge/vomit. They are the most seriously ill, have the hardest time recovering and need the most help quickly.

Some common foods a bulimic will binge on are popcorn, ice cream, doughnuts, candy, cookies, cake, etc. Binge foods are usually high calorie/carbohydrate foods that can be eaten quickly. They also usually don't eat food in front of other people, yet seem to maintain their weight. Again, as with anorectics, food is not the problem, but a symptom.

A bulimic can usually remember when she or he started bingeing and vomiting. From my clinical experience, most patients remember their parents divorce or breaking up with a boyfriend as being the start of the binge/vomit cycle. They can remember overeating a "fattening" food followed by guilt from eating a "forbidden food".

In the beginning the vomiting becomes a way to rid oneself of excess calories. The bulimic then uses the vomiting as a means to control weight. Other diets have failed and vomiting becomes the weight control method. Vomiting becomes a life preserver that the bulimic can't let go of because they know they have lost control of their eating. If they let go of the vomiting, they fear their weight would drown them.

But vomiting does not control weight. What happens is that the body adapts. Food is retained longer in the stomach because the body doesn't think it will get all the nutrients out of the food. Digestion starts occurring higher in the gastrointestinal tract. Bulimics have thrown up food they ate more than 24 hours before. Usually, the stomach empties in about two hours.

Bulimics express guilt and shame about bingeing and vomiting. They usually have a limited number of trusted persons that they tell about their vomiting. In fact, most of the bingeing and vomiting happens in their own home when no one else is home. However, other family members notice missing food and the constant smell of vomit in the bathroom.

The typical bulimic is a white, single, female, high school or college student. The average age of a bulimic is 21 years. Athletes who participate in sports with weight restrictions, like gymnastics, wrestling, football and boxing, may practice periodic binge/vomiting to control their weight.

It is not normal to force yourself to vomit after overeating. If this happens at least once a week, you have one of the symptoms of bulimia.

One health problem that bulimics have is that by vomiting, they are losing a lot of water, sodium and potassium. Your body gets out of mineral balance quickly and you can become seriously ill. Dehydration is serious for bulimics.

Another health problem bulimics have is with their teeth. Because of repeated vomiting, the enamel on their teeth gets destroyed by the stomach acid vomited with the food.

How do you help a bulimic? First they need professional psychological help. Most can be treated in an outpatient clinic. Professional help is available at most mental health clinics. Also, eating disorder clinics usually advertise in phone books and newspapers. Most college campuses have support groups for persons with eating disorders. If the bulimic is someone in your family, remove any foods they usually binge eat. If you are not sure eliminate sweets, desserts, chips and any food frequently found missing.

A bulimic needs to learn other, more healthful ways to control weight. The bulimic needs to eat three regular meals a day and anticipate hunger. Bulimics also need to learn what situations set them up to binge eat and vomit.

Bulimics commonly use the phrase "I got sick" to describe vomiting after a binge episode. Vomiting for the bulimic is a means of ridding themselves of the guilt they feel by eating "forbidden foods". Vomiting for your friend is her means of controlling her weight.

Unfortunately, frequent and regular vomiting does not cause weight loss. Your body learns to adjust and starts digesting food higher in the digestive tract because it learns that it can't hold onto the food very long. Also, food stays in the bulimic's stomach longer because of the frequent vomiting. Bulimic patients have told me of vomiting food they ate almost 24 hours before.

It is not normal for persons to throw up on a regular basis, even as infrequently as once a week. The next time your roommate says she "got sick", tell her you think she vomits a lot. Ask her if she wants to talk. Express to her your concern and offer to help her seek professional help. Most communities offer psychological help and support groups for persons with eating disorders.

Getting up at night and eating frequently during the night is not a usual eating pattern. Since only you and your daughter have access to the food in your apartment, it is obvious who is eating the "missing food". Hunger is probably not the problem.

I would suggest you and she sit down and discuss the missing food. Accusing her of taking the food or threatening her with restrictions will only cut off her communication to you. Express your concern and desire to help her. Be prepared though, she may not be able to overcome her shame and guilt to tell you. She needs psychological help dealing with the "why". The eating is only a symptom and not the real problem for her.