Ask me Anything

I am struggling a little at the moment to come up with some good ideas for post topics so I would love any suggestions. Whether you just want to ask me a single question, multiple questions or if you have a particular post topic you would like me to write about, please just comment below and I will answer it/them as soon as I possibly can. It feel as though it is getting harder and harder for me to think of good post ideas now that I have already published so many posts and I don't want to get too repetitive. But I know that the possibilities really are endless, I just need to be a little more imaginative and creative. 

Is my one month without the scale a bad idea?

I am starting to feel a little worried that my one month without the scale could be a bad idea. To be perfectly honest, I love not weighing myself as I have not been worrying about the amount my weight at all. Afterall, my weight really is only a number and it really does say anything about me in the ways that really count.

However, it is starting to worry me that I could be losing weight without even realising it. Looking back, it was probably a bad idea to start this challenge just as I was starting to make some changes to my intake and exercise. As now I really dont know if I have cut my intake back to much, considering I am exercising more now too.

I have worked so hard to get back to a healthy weight and I would hate to wait for another two weeks before weighing myself again, only to realise I have lost a significant amount of weight that I will then have to try and regain. Now I can see that it probably would have been better to check that I had managed to maintain my weight for a while before stopping weighing myself all together.

I have felt so free not weighing myself for the last 2 weeks and eventually, I really would like to throw my scales out and not weigh myself at all. People are so terrified of gaining weight and seeing the number on the scale increase even a little bit but what does that really matter, so long as you are healthy and happy. Chances are, if you gain a kilo no one will be even able to notice, in fact if you hadn't weighed yourself you probably wouldn't notice either.

It is times like these that I wish I had someone close by who I trust to blind weigh me, so that they could tell me whether or not I had lost weight without telling me anything else. I probably have nothing to worry about at all, it is only my anxiety making me worry that I am perhaps losing weight. Or maybe, in some twisted way, it is actually my anorexia that wants me to weigh myself, because it hates me not knowing exactly what I weigh.

My main concern is that I have lost weight but what if my anorexia is actually just concerned that I have gained more weight and it therefore is almost tricking me into weighing myself. I am feeling so confused about what I should do. I hate it when you cant distinguish which thoughts are your anorexias and which are actually your own.

I have such mixed feelings about this, all going through my head and I honestly dont know what to do. I would love any suggestions or advice, Please?

Get help before its too late

Something I cant stress enough is how important it is to get help if you feel as though you may be developing anorexia, before it actually happens. Nothing positive at all comes out of developing an eating disorder like anorexia. I can guaruntee that fighting for a healthy relationship with food will be 1000 times easier from an almost anorexic state, then from a completely anorexic state. The only way you can avoid the awful pain of recovery and survive, is to never become anorexic in the first place.

While my illness was developing, I was in denial about what was happening to me but deep down, I still knew that what I was doing to my body and my relationship with food wasnt healthy. I was restricting what I ate and making myself vomit after eating anything that was unhealthy. If I had known what my unhealthy behaviours were going to lead to, there is no way I would have continued them. Anorexia is the most painful thing I have ever experienced and while I have never seriously thought about ending my own life because of it, I can definetely see why so many anorexics do.

I did not know such a pain existed as what I have experienced because of my anorexia. I am not telling you all of this because I feel sorry for myself, or because I want others to feel sorry for me because I dont. I only want others to realise just how awful anorexia is, so that they can avoid it at all costs. It makes me so mad when people talk about wanting to be anorexic, so they can be thin. I know that if they knew the actual pain involved with anorexia, they would never even dare to say this type of thing, even as a joke. 

I would not wish this illness on my worst enemy, I would not even wish it on a murderer. No one deserves anything as cruel as anorexia. So please, if you feel as though you may be developing anorexia, get help before it actually happens. Unfortunately so many people lose their lives to anorexia and if you dont get help before its too late, this could be you. And if you dont die, you will have to put yourself through a lot of horrific pain, in order to actually recover and get your life back.

Recovering without professional help

I have tried to get help in the past for my anorexia but I never found any of it helpful at all. I honestly think that this is because there really is no one specialised in eating disorders in the state that I live in and no one really understood how they could help me. 

While the staff at the hospital I was an inpatient at forced me to eat and gain weight, no one actually tried to help me with what was going on inside my head. The whole time I was in hospital I was secretly exercising and planning how I could lose the weight again when I got out. I have spoken to psychologists but found that they were not able to offer any real advice either. While it was good to talk to someone and get everything off my chest, it wasn't really helping me in terms of recovey.     

One person I went to who claimed she had dealt with anorerxics before actually told me after a few sessions that there wasn't any point in going back if I wasn't willing to fight my anorexia. The thing was, It wasn't that I wasn't willing to fight my anorexia, it was that I didn't know how. No one had ever actually given me any advice about how to be stronger then my illness and I felt like I had no choice but to listen to my anorexia.

So for me, recovering without professional help has really been my only option but I wouldn't reccommend it. Perhaps recovering without professional help wouldn't be so bad if you had a really supportive family that were able to help you but unfortunately my family were not able to help me. I didn't even have close friends that I could rely on for support as I was so socially withdraw and the friends I did have didn't know anything about eating disorders and had trouble understanding.

The best thing that ever happened in terms of my recovery was that I started reading recovery blogs online. Seeing other peoples achievement and recovery journeys has shown me that recovery is possible. The advice and support that I have been offered through reading other peoples blogs has been so helpful for me and there is no way I could have made the progress I have without it. I also think that starting my own blog has been a wonderful motivation for me in my recovery.

There are a few things that I really don't like about recovering on my own. One of these is the fact that I still need to count calories. If I had a professional design my meal plan for me, I wouldn't even know how many calories I was eating and therefore essentially would not be calorie counting anymore. It was obviously necessary for me to design my meal plan around a specific number of calories so that I could be sure I was eating enough to gain weight. My first goal once I am weight restored is to stop counting calories all together and to learn to eat intuitively.

Something else I wish I didn't have to do while recovering on my own is weigh myself. While I am gaining weight, I honestly would rather not know how much I weigh as it makes me feel so anxious. All of this week I have been too scared to weigh myself as I am scared to see the weight I have gained. I know that I need to weigh myself this wednesday (in two days time) so that I make sure I have gained enough weight since last wednesday when I weighed myself. I know that this is essential as it is the only way I can tell wether I am eating enough to gain the weight I need to, but I would much rather to a blind weigh in with someone if I could. 

I know that different methods of recovery are better for different people but I would reccommend accepting good professional help if you can. Recovering on your own is really hard and will probably take longer than recovery with profession help. 

What does everyone else think? Have you found recovering on your own or with professional help easier for you? 

Anorexia and Anxiety

Like lots of others who suffer from an eating disorder, I also suffer from anxiety. I do not believe that my eating disorder caused my anxiety as I was very anxious and insecure as a child, long before I developed anorexia. If anything I would say that my anxiety contributed to me developing anorexia. While I never considered myself to have anxiety when I was younger, looking back I know that I definetely did.

I hated going to bed of a night when I was a kid as I would lay there for what felt like hours, terrified that something bad would happen in the night. I was frightened the house could burn down, a murderer would come or someone would try and break in. I was a frequent sleep walker and my mum would often find me sobbing and very distressed in the hallway in the middle of the night. When she asked me what was wrong I would reply through tears 'I don't know.' Mum would try to calm me down and put me back to bed but I never remembered it in the morning.


Numerous times throughout my life I remember going into a strange state that until now I was unable to explain. Sometimes it would happen while I was laying in bed trying to get to sleep, other times it would happen while I was at school in stressful situations. All of a sudden the world around me would go really quiet and all I would be able to hear is my heart beat pulsing loudly and ringing in my ears. I would feel really confused, disorientated and scared while it was happening and had no idea of the amount of time that was passing. Now I know that these little episodes were in fact panic attacks but at the time I had no idea what they were. I never told anyone about it when it would happen as I couldn't explain what was happening I thought that something was wrong with me.

It wasn't until I got to college and was placed in various stressful situations that would bring on these attacks that I realised it was some type of panic attack. I knew that something was wrong when I could barely read a page out of a novel in front of year my 11 english class without feeling as though I couldn't breathe and that my heart was going to beat out of my chest. My voice would quiver and shake which was really embarrasing and made me even more anxious about public speaking.

As well as being party responsible for the development of my anorexia, I also think that my anxiety has prolonged the amount of time I have been sick. I feel as though I would have been able to recover much sooner if it wasn't for my anxiety. The reason I listened to my anorexia for so long is because I felt as though the anxiety I would feel if I went against my anorexic thoughts was unbearable.

I wish I could say that I was able to overcome this anxiety on my own but this is not the case. The truth is, I have only felt as though it was possible to fight my anorexia since going on anti-anxiety medication. My doctor has wanted me to take medication for my anxiety for years but until a few months ago, I had refused. I felt like taking medication would be a sign of weakness but now I know that I was wrong to feel this way. There is nothing weak about accepting help when you need it. Accepting that I was not going to recover on my own and doing what I needed to do in order to recover is one of the bravest things I have ever done.

Please, if you suffer from anxiety and are trying to recover from an eating disorder, don't completely eliminate the idea of taking anti-anxiety medication. I know that it feels like a big deal but it is honestly one of the best desicions I have ever made in regards to my recovery. No, taking medication doesn't make the anxiety go away completely, but it does make the anxiety more bearable. I don't think I would have been able to progress as far as I have without it and haven't regretted my decision to take the medication for a moment.

Why I can't study

Lately, alot of the posts I have been reading have been from other bloggers who are studying either at school, college or university. As I read about what others are doing in terms of studying, it makes me feel like a bit of a failure as I wasn't able to continue studying. While I always did well at school, studying is not something that is good for my health and happiness which are what I should be focusing on right now. As a perfectionist, my body is not the only thing that I always wanted to be perfect. I also expected to perform perfectly academically. Through out college and also while I was at university I got wonderful results but this was not due to natural ability. It was due to me spending every minute of every day studying.

Last year I started university in a challenging Bachelor of Biotechnology and medical research course. I loved what I was learning and I got high distictions and distinctions in all of my units but I was very unhappy. I had no balance in my life and would feel extremely guilty if I ever did anything except for study. I stopped going to my lectures as I preffered to stay home and work through the recordings. This meant that I could take more detailed notes. It would take me atleast two and a half hours to get through a 45 minute lecture and I had like 12 lectures a week to get through so obviously this took up alot of my time. I also had 4 three hour laboratory practicals that I was required to attend on campus at the university each week. Besides this I obviously had assignments and tests/exams to study for as well.

I was so obsessed with studying all the time that I even did voice recording of me reading out notes so that I could listen to them when I went for a walk each day as otherwise I would feel too guilty about stopping studying for a hour or so. I would wake up at 5:30 everyday and study from 6:00 am until like 10:00 each night. I was absalutely miserable and barely had any contact with other people at all. I was living at a university 'college' where I had my own tiny room with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities but I barely ever left my room. I had to move to a city to go to university but never made it home to see my family as I always felt as though I had too much studying to do. I suppose it was a combination of both my anxiety and perfectionism that made me take such an extreme approach to my studies.

Occasionslly after a full day of studying on the weekends I would reward myself with watching a movie before bed and at my meal times throughout the day I would always stop studying to watch a little bit of television to give myself a little break but I really didn't have a life. I barely enjoyed these breaks I would give myself though as I would feel guilty for not studying the whole time. I wasn't really losing weight but I was underweight and had lots of anorexic thoughts and behaviours. I was extremely lonely and unhppy living that way and decided that I couldn't go on like that. I decided to try teaching as I knew I could do this university course completely online while living at home with my family. I thought that if I was living at home I would be able to have a more balanced life and I also thought that as Teaching is a less demanding course, I would have more time to to do other things besides study.

For a while I was happier doing my teaching course but eventually I found myself in the exact same position I was in earlier that year in the harder university course. I soon realised that it didn't make any difference what I was studying, I would still put the same amount of pressure on myself. I stayed in my room almost all day everyday studying, just like I had when I was living in the city studying and had no interests or hobbies besides my school  work. I ended up really depressed and unhappy and had a bit of a breakdown. I wanted my life to change but didn't know how I could make it happen. My parents both encourages me to keep going with university but the thought of living the way I was for another 4 yeas until I graduated made me feel sick.

I went to my local GP and explained to her how I was feeling and she said that it seemed quite obvious to her that I needed to stop studying. She explained to me that just because I was 'good' at studying, didn't mean I should stay doing it if it meant sacrificing my health and happiness. It was scary for me to be stopping doing university as I didn't really have any other plan about what to do with my life and had never considered not going to university to further my education while I was growing up. Originally, It had been my dream to study Veterinary Science at university which is one of the hardest courses, along with human medicine, to be accepted into. I guess that having such high dreams is what initially made me put so much pressure on myself in highschool so that I could become a vet.

I was actually accepted into veterinary science the year after I finished college, based on my college results but I decided not to accept the offer. I had only just been discharged from hospital a few months earlier and my mind was not in a good place. I would have needed to move to a whole new state which scared me and after working so hard in years 11 and 12, I didn't feel as though I could go straight back to studying so soon. I was now having doubts about whether Veterinary Science was actually what I wanted to do anyway so I decided to take a 12 month gap year so I could take some time to think about what it was I wanted to do with my life. I never even considered the prospect of not returning to university. Not because I desperately wanted to go to uni but more because I felt as though it was an expectation everyone had of me.

I was terrified to tell my parents my desicion and I was worried about dissapointing them but I couldn't continue living the way I was just to make them happy. My GP could see that I was worried about telling my parents my decision and offered to have a talk to my parents with me. She explained to them that I was not just giving up or choosing to stop studying, but that I was no longer capable of studying. We agreed that while it was possible I would be healthy enough to study sometime in the future, I simply could not cope with study at that time. So I did not complete the first semester of my teaching degree. It was now September 2014 and I decided to apply at university to do nursing the following year just so that I could keep my options open. I had been very interested in nursing ever since spending 6 weeks as an inpatient on the childrens ward and I was excited that it could lead to a career where I could help people suffering from eating disorders one day.

My parents weren't thrilled about my desicion to stop uni, especially my mum but I needed to start looking after myself. I started working at the local IGA full time which I knew did not have the best career outlook. I saw it as a temporary job that would allow me to earn some money while I thought about what to do next with my life. It was good for me to work as it got me out of the house and socialising with lots of people. I felt the happiest I had in a long time and started to look after myself better in regards to my eating. When I was acccepted into uni to do nursing, I hoped that I could do uni part time so that I could continue working as I thought that this would allow me to continue living in my home town and to have a healthier, more balanced life. Unfortunately part time uni was not an option for students enrolled in a bachelor of nursing.

I talked to my dad first and he instantly said that I wasn't ready to go back to uni and that it would be such a shame to see me unhappy again after me finally getting back on track. He said that I should deffer uni for another 12 months so that I could make sure I was ready before going back to studying. I really appreciated the fact that my dad was being so understanding and supportive and it made my desicion so much easier. I have so much respect for my dad and I would have found it very hard to not go along with his wishes if he had told me he though I should go straight back to uni. I explained the situation to mum and she was surprisingly understanding as well and was just happy that I had some type of plan for my future.

After working for a few months at the IGA, I was approached by a member of staff at the local community bank who told me about a job opening for a trainee. I was very interested as I thought that it could be the perfect job for me so I dropped my resumee into the bank. What excited me about this job is the fact that it would allow me to have a good career without having to study at university and without having to move away from my hometown. The bank were very impressed with my resumee and after a quick chat I was offered a traineeship with them which I accepted with no hesitation at all. While I still work a little bit at the IGA, I work three days a week at the bank. So far I am loving my job and still have so much to learn but I am becoming more confident everyday. I just need to remember to believe in myself and to try not let my anxiety take over which results in me doubting myself.

So while I may not be capable of studying at university right now, I am the happiest and healthiest I have been in a very long time which is great. I have just started a new job which will eventually lead to a great career, which allows me to stay in my hometown with my family for the rest of my life if that is what I wish to do. The option of studying will always be there in the future if  I ever feel as though I want to go back to university, but for now I am doing what is right for me.

For all of those getting stressed about their academic assesments at the moment, I want to say congratulations for having the strength to continue studying even though it is hard. As long as you believe in yourselves, I am sure you will be succesful in anything you put your mind and heart into. Im not encouraging you to give up when things get hard at all but always remember that there are other options besides studying. Studying is important and a great thing to do, but only if you are well enough to do it. If you are like me and can't cope with the stress of studying at this time of your life, don't feel guilty about considering a change from studying, sometimes you need to put your health and happiness first. The option to study will always be there in the future, when you are ready. :)