A bit of background: for most of my life, I have been overweight. When I was young I used to get made fun of in school for it. I weight much more than the other females in my family and it's always been hard not to compare myself to them.

When I was in high school I finally had enough and decided to start losing weight. At first I just started eating smaller portions and exercising a few times a week, but before long I was barely eating anything and exercising hard every day, sometimes burning more calories than I would eat in a day. My family started to get worried about how much weight I was losing. I was having health problems- muscle spasms, amenorrhea, and dizzy spells. I ended up gaining weight back when I went on a new medication. For a while I sat at a healthy weight, but in college I started eating poorly again. I would consume way too much sugar and large portion sizes. I got heavier than ever before.

At present, I don't dislike how I look. I find myself attractive. But I am pre-diabetic and I decided that cutting sugar and losing weight would help prevent diabetes. A few weeks ago I switched from eating two big meals a day to eating four or five small ones. I started exercising again. I've seen progress in weight loss so far; I've gone down a dress size.

But I've noticed something: anytime I deviate from my self-imposed diet, I get anxiety. I'll start feeling physically ill and beat myself up. I will go to the gym as soon as possible to "work off" the "bad" food I ate. But that's not what's worrying me most of all. Last night, I ate "too much" again. Really what all I ate that day was not unreasonable, but I ate past the point when I was full. I immediately began to think unkind thoughts towards myself. Finally I couldn't take it anymore; I jumped up, rushed to the bathroom, and tried to make myself throw up. I didn't succeed, and because I couldn't succeed I ended up crying in the bathroom. I felt awful knowing that I'd just tried to do that, and because I knew that my body was going to absorb all those calories. I'm really close to breaking my first weight goal and I felt like I'd undone it all. It didn't help that my best friend said, "Well, I guess you blew your diet, huh?" He didn't know I'd just tried to throw up in the bathroom, and I started sobbing.

This behavior worries me. I don't think I'm bulimic or anorexic, but based on my history and last night do I have ED tendencies that I need to watch out for? How can I do weight loss without getting too caught up in judgments that push me to make destructive decisions?