My Experience: I am ashamed to say it, but there was a while early in my first marriage where I became slightly bulimic. It wasn’t intentional. I simply was addicted to food and ate so much of it that I would throw up. After a few times, I realised that if I MADE myself throw up, I would save a lot of time. Over a few months, I started to specifically choose days to binge and purge.
I knew it wasn’t healthy, but I was so afraid of gaining weight that I couldn’t stop. And it wasn’t as though I was LOSING weight, either. I simply maintained. And sometimes I couldn’t even do that. Every so often that scale would creep up, and I’d feel like I was drowning. To perk myself up, I’d eat more.
My ex-husband became somewhat aware of my lifestyle, but he turned a blind eye to it most of the time. It even got to be somewhat of a joke. It’s not as if I would have let him stop me, though, even if he had made the effort.
In the end, I got it under control, though I would still occasionally make myself throw up even in the weeks before my surgery. I can’t imagine doing it now, but I also know how easy it is to convince ourselves that what we’re doing is beneficial.