photo for illustration
I feel very stressed every time I try to study and my coping mechanism is snacking on sugary food and snacks to stay alert and stay on track. I’m not sure if my case can be considered as binge-eating. I gained about 12 kg in close to 3 years…
Recently, I started to feel very insecure about how I look and I don’t think this is very healthy for me either. Even when it’s not the stressful periods, I still feel like snacking/over-eating as I think my body is too used to eating a lot. I know this is very unhealthy and it makes me fat too and people around me criticising me for gaining so much weight does not really help. I have stretch marks all over me too. Now, I don’t even dare to shop with friends because I feel so embarrassed about the sizes I have to try on. I’m not sure if it’s worth it?
I used to be the last few in my cohort and now I’m above average. I know I need to find a better coping mechanism as this is really affecting me. I went from a size S to L and I can no longer fit into a lot of the clothes that catch my eye and I don’t even dare to buy clothes online or wear denim shorts anymore. I fall sick a lot more often too, and especially when I am stressed too. I could stay healthy for 2 consecutive years in the past but now I’m like falling sick 3-4 times a year. Every time a friend is sick, I would be very prone to catching it from them even though my immunity used to be very strong.
I used to not care about grades but something suddenly made me realized a need for me to do very well, it does or die for me now. My carefree life with horrible grades was not exactly carefree because I was failing everything but at least I was slim and healthy?
I’m at a lost now. Can I lose weight but still study hard and get good grades? I mean maybe my coping mechanism sucks but one of my friend’s is worst like smoking. (ok sorry, just needed to comfort myself) But how? What should I do? Just fail and be slim and healthy? Get a nice cert and be fat? I used to think that I could just focus on grades first and be fat. Then after I grad, I slim down since I already have the cert. However, now, it seems much harder than what I thought as I gained way too much weight. How can I find a better way to cope? 
:'(
(P.S. I gained 18 kg in 5 years and 20 kg in 6 years, those stated above were mostly about myself gaining 12 kg in close to 3 years. For context, I have always been at moderate weight in the past so I wasn’t underweight and my BMI is 24 now.)
I’ve thought about vomiting out my food before but I haven’t done that successfully before because I couldn’t, I know it’s damaging and I was afraid of being found out. And even with the snacking and over-eating, sometimes the stress is still too much for me to handle and I end up giving up on one or two assignments which I will end up flunking real bad. Although I still do ok for the rest, so overall gpa is still ok.
Another thing I used to do when I wanted to run away from all my issues was skipping school by getting an MC. I wasn’t ‘sick’ but I felt very mentally and physically drained. I didn’t really have an issue trying to ‘keng’ because somehow I always ended having a low-grade fever (like 38 degrees) on those days I felt very stressed, tired and drained. My friends said looked like death/very pale too so probably I looked sick to the doctor. But I stopped doing that because I realised that I was wasting money and valuable resources and it doesn’t help anything in the long-term although it gives me a short-term escape from my problems.
Another issue is that I think I may have delayed sleep phase syndrome? But then again, sleeping late is very common for people around our age so I’m not too sure. Basically, my life is a mess.
If you don’t have anything nice or helpful to comment, I would really rather you not comment. Thank you and I hope your life is not a mess like mine is
Source: Nuswhisper