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From the moment Andrea Parmar woke up in the morning, she obsessively thought about food.

"I was clearly addicted to my eating behaviours as I was consumed by thoughts of my next binge. I craved the rush I got from planning and executing the process," she writes in her self-published book Alone in a Crowd, in which she chronicles her 16-year battle with bulimia.

"The only time I was really truly present was when I was working. I was able to put on my working cap and do what I do best: help people," she told The Current's Anna Maria Tremonti.

Andrea is a psychiatric nurse in Saskatchewan. She's the first to admit that she wished she could have healed herself, along with her patients.

"I was kind of preaching what I needed to practice for myself," she said.

A couple apples a day

Andrea's eating disorder started when she was in Grade 9, just before heading on a family vacation in Hawaii. She wanted to look better in her bikini, so she began to starve herself.

"I was eating like just a couple apples a day," she said. She lost seven pounds.

The National Eating Disorders Association estimates more than 750,000 Canadians suffer from anorexia and bulimia. (Desertrose7/Pixabay) Andrea went back to eating normally after her trip and gained the weight back.

In Grade 10, Andrea came upon a friend throwing up in the bathroom and asked if she was sick. Her friend confessed that sometimes, she purged when she ate too much. A year later, Andrea would be following the same behaviour.

Andrea's bulimia got worse over the years. Eventually, she was purging an average of 10 times a day.

Her illness forced her to come up with creative ways to binge and purge once she and her husband Mick Parmar moved to the small town of Langenburg, Sask.

The town had only one grocery store. "People know how much you're buying," she said.

"I would go to different towns, and I would be driving in my vehicle and have a big bag of chips and chocolate bars, and be binging while I was driving to get to the next town, use their washroom and come out and reload up on food in that small town."

This continued for several years.

At first, Andrea felt an emotional high with a sense of control over food. But immediately after binge-eating, she would be consumed by an overwhelming feeling of guilt.

She described it as a panic-filled need to get the food out of her system just as quickly as she ate it.

'I was uncertain if our marriage would even last'

Mick, who co-wrote Alone in a Crowd with Andrea, didn't know a lot about eating disorders before they met. He eventually grew suspicious of her behaviour and came to realize she was doing it every day,

When confronted, Andrea insisted she only did it occasionally.

Mick resorted to spying on his wife, pretending to leave the house and then peeking through the dining room window.

Living with an eating disorder doesn't just affect your relationship with food, it affects the relationship with your family too. Andrea and her husband share what that means for them in their book, Alone in a Crowd. (Submitted by Andrea Parmar)

He felt powerless to stop it.

"I was uncertain if our marriage would even last at times, to be quite honest," he told Tremonti.

In a moment he described as coming close to "the last straw for me," he found a bag of vomit that Andrea hid in a dirty laundry hamper. It was there because the water in the town was turned off and she couldn't flush the toilet.

"She was so sick. I guess what brings you back are those vows was when you get married: for sicker or poorer," she said.

"I just knew I wasn't going to be able to help her myself and that's when we really started talking about her visiting some inpatient facilities."

Mick Parmar watched his wife Andrea struggle with bulimia and admits he began spying on her. He reveals the ugly truth in this reading, that includes Andrea reading from their co-written book, Alone in the Crowd. 1:16

Andrea recovered after three admissions to the BridgePoint Centre for Eating Disorders in Milden, Sask.

Mick wrote that he became inspired his wife's bravery to be open and honest about her darkest secrets.

Life-changing hurdles

Andrea now calls herself a non-active bulimic, someone with no symptoms, but who carries the cosmetic scars of her battle with bulimia — she has veneers on four of her teeth. Bulimia can cause tooth decay, irregular heart rate, kidney failure, ulcers and esophageal ruptures.

Until Andrea's diagnosis with multiple sclerosis in 2016, she says bulimia was the biggest hurdle she ever encountered. She wants others to hear her story and get the help they need.

"I hope that by sharing my story that if I could change the life of one person I would feel like I've done my job," she said.

Listen to the full conversation near the top of this post.

Written and produced by CBC Winnipeg's Suzanne Dufresne.