Does purging get rid of all of your food?

Research has shown that vomiting cannot get rid of all of the calories that you've ingested, even if you do it immediately after eating, some research suggests that vomiting can only remove up to about half of the calories that you've eaten, which means that realistically, between half to two-thirds of what you've eaten is absorbed by the body.

I was reading another really interesting study that noted that there's a limit to the amount of calories that you actually retain, and it's unrelated to how many calories you've ingested. So they had a group of people that ate over 2,600 calories and a group that ate fewer than 2,100 calories, and the amount of calories that the two groups, retained were almost equal, within about 70 calories of each other, and on average the groups RETAINED about 1200 calories. So what does that say? That says that regardless of how much these people ate, after vomiting, they still retained on average 1200 calories each, which is about two standard meals, which is probably not the effect that you're wanting. It certainly wasn't the effect that I wanted when I was doing that.

It's funny isn't it, purging? You think you're getting rid of all these extra calories, but you actually end up consuming more than you would if you just ate normally.

So the other problem with self-induced vomiting is that it actually has this counterproductive effect on your body that might actually result in weight gain instead of weight loss. The reason that happens is because your body starts to produce insulin right after you finish a meal. The insulin release kicks in so that the sugar from the food you've just eaten can be absorbed efficiently. So when you purge, you get rid of some of that food that went into your body, but your body has already signalled enough insulin production to cover ALL of the food that you just ate. So your insulin levels are high, and they're more than you need because you've got rid of some of that food, and so now it burns through all of the sugar much faster than it usually would. So then you experience a fast drop in blood sugar, which triggers your brain with a hunger alarm, which then causes you to get that urge to eat again. So then you might end up binging a second time, so what happens is the purging is actually leading to the binging, which then leads to more purging . So even though you've just purged to get rid of the food you've just binged on, you're now actually causing yourself to binge again, and you end up in this endless cycle of binging and purging and binging and purging.

So you've really got to ask yourself, IS IT REALLY WORTH ALL THE HEALTH RISKS?

So by binging and purging, you're actually consuming more calories than you if just ate normally. It's funny isn't it, purging? You think you're getting rid of all these extra calories, but you actually end up consuming more than you usually would.

Also, while purging may make you weigh less temporarily, it's most likely that that's from water loss and not true weight loss.

So the bottom line is that purging isn't effective at getting rid of calories, which is why most people who suffer from bulimia actually end up gaining weight over time. So you've really got to ask yourself, IS IT REALLY WORTH ALL THE HEALTH RISKS? The loss of self-esteem, the added stress and anxiety, the shame and the guilt. I don't think it is personally, in fact, I KNOW that it isn't worth it. Purging is not worth it.