day 21: What was your 'rock bottom?' how did you overcome it?

This is my first diary entry that I wrote just after I reached my 'rock bottom'. After hitting rock bottom I managed to get myself to a half recovered state whereby I stopped drastically losing weight, but I didnt really gain any weight for a long time and was still calorie counting and restricting what I ate. It wasnt until another one and a half years went by that I actually really started recovering (in early 2015). It wasnt long after this that I started blogging.

Diary Entry

15th August 2013 

I am calling this my recovery journal and I intend to use it to document my recovery from an awful illness that I have been battling with for a year now. This illness is Anorexia. 

I completed my first journal only last night which I started when I was hospitalised almost 12 months ago, shortly after being diagnosed with anorexia. Although I found my last journal helpful at times (as writing is the best way for me to express how I feel), I would not have called it a recovery journal. It was really more like an ankorexic maintenence journal.

The truth is, over the past 12 months I haven't recovered recovered at all. In fact my anorexia has gotten stronger if anything. This is because deep down I didnt want to fight my anorexia. I was relatively happy to live with it as it helped and allowed me to achieve the things that I longed for more than anything else in this world, to lose weight and be thin.

It was only about a week ago that I realised just how sick I was and that I had my 'breakthrough'. After seeing I had reached my lowest ever weight and taking my pulse one night to find that it was barely existant (only about 30bpm), I knew I was going to die if I didnt change. It was only once I realised I had to change that I also realised I wanted more in life then what I would be able to have while I was anorexic.

Besides becoming scared about my health, I dont really know what caused me to start thinking in this new way but suddenly everything seemed so clear. Finally I started to actually want to recover and for the first time recovery seemed possible. this doesnt mean that eating new foods, breaking rituals and gaining weight arent allabsolutely terrifying for me, because they are. Now however I just feel as though getting better is worth the pain of making these changes.

Up until now I havent been truly ready to recover but now I am. I feel so positive and excited about the future and this new found hope I now have makes me believe I can do this. Now I feel as though I have something worth fighting for, now I am going to make all my dreams come true.

So this is how I felt when I hit my rock bottom. I gradually increased my intake from about 5000 kj with exercise to about 8000 kj while still exercising. To begin with I gained a tiny bit of weight back but my weight stayed relatively stable as I still obviously wasnt eating enough. My heart rate increased to about 60 beats per minute and I was no longer at as much of a risk physically.

I hit a second rock bottom when I finally realised I didnt want to go on living in this half recovered state. Shile I was managing to survive better then I had been in the past, I still was not really living. It is only since I have become really dedicated to my recovery and increased my intake significantly (over the last few months) that I have been able to make and see real progress.