I still cant believe I recovered

Tonight I watched a documentary on anorexia and found myself thinking about my time whilst I was sick. I try not to think about what life was like for me when I was at the grips of Anorexia as it was so terrorizing and painful but at the same time I think it is so important not to ever forget just how awful it was so that I never fall back into my old ways. I also feel as though I have a responsibility as a recovered anorexia to share my story to raise awareness and also help others who are suffering. I feel so incredibly grateful that I managed to defy the odds and recover from the killer illness that had me totally consumed for over 3 years of my life. Even now I find myself totally amazed that I actually managed to recover, it is by far the hardest thing I have ever had to do and I am sure the hardest thing I will ever have to do.

I think what society fails to realise is just how traumatising it is to have an eating disorder like anorexia. I remember hating my life so much but feeling as though trying to get better would be so painful that it would be easier just to die. I didn't like the way I looked, I knew I was too thin but for some reason gaining weight scared me more than anything else in the world. I hated counting calories and obsessing over food but still, I allowed this things to control my life. Fighting my illness seriously felt more frightening for me than it would have been for me to be thrown in a tank with a great white shark or jump off of a 100 story building. Which is why I still cant believe I actually managed to take on my anorexia and recover.

Not only did I manage to recover, but I  managed to do it completely on my own. My family, doctors and friends had all given up on me and when I told them I was going to try and recover, I knew they didn't believe me. I don't blame them for not taking me seriously. They had heard so many false promises from me and knew what kind of hold my illness had on me. It had gotten to the stage they didn't really even talk to me about trying to get better anymore, everyone just believed that it was who I was and that I would die with my illness, whether it was in 12 months or 12 years. And if I am completely honest, that is what I believed too.

I still don't really know why I started to truly try and recover when I did or why I finally found the strength I needed to fight my anorexia. It wasn't the fact that I was miserable with my life as I had been miserable for years and still hadn't managed to recover. I think my break through moment was when I started believing that I was worthy of recovery and that I did deserve to be happy, which before then I hadn't believed. So that was why I started my recovery but as for how I managed to recover, I owe that completely to my Blog. I have no doubt that if I didn't start my blog when I did I would still be living with my illness, or worse still I wouldn't be living at all.

When I made the decision to truly try and recover, I was living alone and had no one around me to keep me accountable. I had no one telling me what, when or how much to eat. I had no one telling me I wasn't allowed to exercise or that I needed to gain a certain amount of weight in a certain amount of time. I had no doctors or specialists giving me advice, I just had my blog and my readers who kept me 100% accountable. Before I started my blog I would set goals for myself and make meal plans for myself in attempt of making a recovery however I never managed to see anything through. Once I wrote goals or plans down on my blog however, I always managed to stick to them 100%, no matter how hard it was.

Not only did I feel as though I had to stick to my recovery plan for my sake anymore, but I felt as though I had to do it for the sake of my readers. I felt as though I needed to show them that it was possible to fight their eating disorder thoughts and that if I gave into my anorexia, I was letting my readers down. Every time the temptation arose to burn some extra energy or eat a little bit less, I never let myself do any of those things as I didn't want to have to write about giving into my anorexia on my blog. Instead, I wanted to be able to write about my victories and how even though it was hard and the temptation arose, I never gave into my anorexia or gave up.

Some nights the guilt and pain I felt over the food I had eaten or the weight I had gained became so overwhelming that I would just go to bed and cry myself to sleep. It was so hard to put myself through that kind of pain, especially when I didn't even know if I would ever recover. But I knew that if I gave up I would be showing all my readers who believed recovery was impossible, that they were right. And I couldn't live with myself knowing that I could play a part in preventing another person recovering from their illness. I was completely honest on my blog about my achievements and progress and writing each day about how I was feeling was like therapy for me.

People from all over the world started emailing me and through helping those people, I was able to help myself even more. I didn't want to be a hypocrite, so any advice I gave to others I always made sure I followed myself and through motivating others to get better, I found that I was also encouraging myself to keep moving towards recovery. I had people messaging me or commenting on my posts telling me that I was helping them in their recoveries and this was possibly the biggest incentive for me in my own recovery. This made me want to win every battle I had with my anorexia so that I could write about it and inspire others to do the same. I didn't only want to get better so I could live a better life anymore, I wanted to get better to prove to other sufferers that it was possible.

If you have never had an eating disorder yourself, I cant even begin to explain how hard it is to not only live with but also recover from. And if you do have an eating disorder or have had an eating disorder then you will understand exactly what I am talking about! I never thought I would be able to recover and still cant believe I actually did. I honestly feel as though I have achieved the impossible and that I will be able to overcome anything I am ever faced with in the future. My only hope now is that I can make as many sufferers as possible believe that no matter how sick you are, you can always get better. You just have to believe it is possible, believe you are strong enough and believe you are worthy of a recovered life!

Happy and healthy with my boyfriend and sister vs underweight, sick, alone and unhappy

Take the plunge

I know exactly what it feels like to try and gain weight when you are underweight and have an unhealthy anorexic mind. Even if you know you need to gain weight in order to get better, that doesn't mean you actually want to go through the process of weight restoration. These are the sorts of thoughts that I was having for the majority of my recovery (just for the record, they were all untrue)......
'If I get any bigger I will hate myself even more'
'I will never be able to accept my body at a healthy weight'
'If I go back to the size I used to be before I got sick, I will be unhappy again'
'I want to get better, but I wish I didn't have to gain weight to do that'

Despite all of these thoughts, I managed to do what was necessary for me to gain the weight I needed to gain. I honestly don't think would have been able to do it if it wasn't for my blog and my readers, as I wanted to lead by example and show everyone that it was possible to recover from anorexia (even if I didn't entirely believe it was possible myself). Even though I had my doubts about how I would feel when my weight started to increase, I listened to the advice of other bloggers and took the plunge anyway... and I am so glad I did! I could have so easily stayed underweight and anorexic for the rest of my life, due to the immense fear of weight restoration. After all, at the time that seemed like a much easier option then fighting my anorexic thoughts and doing the one thing that I feared the most, which was to gain weight.

So please trust me when I tell you that if you allow yourself to gain weight, your mind will eventually repair and you can be recovered one day. Better still, you can actually like your body and accept it completely. I know that you think it is impossible for you to do this but it really isn't. It is totally possible and with some hard work, you can get to where I am today. It was about 2 years ago I started my blog and my true recovery and since then, my life has been totally transformed. I have gone from a miserable, sick, underweight, lonely and anxious girl to a confident, happy, energetic, strong and empowered young woman. I can honestly say that I now love my life and I also love my body. I am now healthy and energetic enough to live the positive and fulfilled life I truly love and deserve!

And I only have all of this today because I took that plunge, despite the fact that I thought recovery was impossible, despite the fact that gaining weight scared me more than anything else in the world and despite the fact I thought I would hate myself if I gained weight. So please, do what I did and you can have what I now have. And the strength you will gain through facing your fears will make you into an unstoppable person in all aspects of your life. I believe that recovering from anorexia is the hardest thing I will ever have to do and it wasn't until I went through that process of recovery and came out the other side, that I realised my true strength and potential. Now, anytime I am faced with a challenge I remind myself of what I have overcome and I really do believe now, after recovering from my eating disorder, that I can do anything I set my mind to!

The Long-Term Effect Of Eating Disorders That Nobody Talks About

I found the following article really interesting and thought it may interest some of my readers as well. All of my organs became very weak when I was unwell (particularly my hear) and I often wonder about whether or not those organs have repaired fully yet or not.

This is why I think it so important to continuing nourishing your body, even after you become weight restored as a lot of the damage that you do to your body during starvation may not be reversed even when you are weight restored.

The Long-Term Effect Of Eating Disorders That Nobody Talks About                  

by Dr. Ashley SolomonMarch 2, 2017 5:22 AM         

With Healthy Heart Month in full swing, you might be hearing advice everywhere from your family doctor to your favorite newsletter about what to cut out of your diet to keep your heart strong. Ditch the soda! Cut the carbs! Skip the butter! Oh, wait, butter's back in! But maybe olive oil is better?!
While most of us can take this influx of diet advice in stride, those at risk for eating disorders are vulnerable to this deluge of information. In many cases, the eating patterns that eventually precipitated a full-blown eating disorder started with the intention to be healthier and feel better—both physically and emotionally. In a sadly ironic twist, those behaviors have likely contributed to the serious decline in health often associated with eating disorders.

Eating disorders are more than just a psychiatric illness.

In fact, eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness (or behavioral health disorder). So not only do they lead to a host of social, mental, and physical problems, but they actually put someone at increased risk for other health problems. Cardiovascular complications are one of the biggest risks for those struggling with eating disorders. The heart is made of muscle and basically functions as a pump that moves blood first to the lungs to pick up oxygen and then out to the extremities to bring oxygen and nutrients throughout the whole body. Our hearts are clearly key to our ability to live and function normally, and eating disorders put strain on the heart in a number of ways.

1. Weaker heart muscles

First, when one does not take in enough food to support our level of activity, the heart rate slows down as the body tries to conserve energy. Also, blood pressure will drop due to dehydration or because the muscles of the heart weaken. When blood pressure is low, it's harder for other organs—like the kidneys, the brain, or the liver—to receive the nutrients and oxygen that the heart usually pumps in their direction.
People with low-weight eating disorders actually lose cardiac muscle mass. All muscles of the body are subject to wasting away if we aren't nourishing them. Heart muscle is no exception. Underweight patients may develop mitral valve prolapse due to shrunken heart muscle cells, or they can develop heart failure due to a weakened heart that can't pump well.

ADVERTISEMENT

2. Shifts in the heart's chemical environment

A second concern is the development of abnormal heart rhythms, which happens frequently when someone is suffering from bulimia nervosa. The behaviors of binge eating and purging (which can involve not just vomiting but also laxative and diuretic use), can lead to dehydration and dangerous shifts in electrolytes in the body. When the chemical environment of the heart is abnormal, the heart is at risk for arrhythmias, which can cause heart palpitations, fainting, and even death.

3. Cardiac disturbances

And thirdly, there are a host of cardiac rhythm disturbances that are directly caused by weight loss and malnutrition. These are undoubtedly causal in the heightened risk for sudden death seen in people with anorexia nervosa.
Despite these very serious cardiac concerns, many people with eating disorders are reluctant to get help. The disorders themselves are marked by a brain-based type of denial that can make even seeing that there's a problem very difficult. As a clinician, I find that sometimes the presence of these heart issues can help someone see just how high the risk to their health really is.

Healing your body from an eating disorder

But even those who begin the process of recovery have to be very cautious about their heart health. For someone who has been eating very little, starting to eat more can cause its own dangerous shifts in electrolytes called refeeding syndrome, which again puts the person at risk for cardiac complications. Thus, some patients will need to be very closely monitored by a medical team during this process.
The heartening news is that most of physical complications of eating disorders are reversible with good nutrition. Once the body and mind are recovered and a knowledgeable support team is in place, the person has a great chance of living a long, healthy life.

If you've suffered from an eating disorder, keep the following in mind:

1. Take any cardiac event very seriously. If you experience any chest pain, are getting dizzy when you stand, have a fainting episode, or notice your heart rhythm seems off, get to a medical provider as soon as you can.
2. Enlist the support of others. We know that eating disorders thrive in isolation, and recovery thrives in community with others you care about. Let someone close to you know that you're worried about your health.
3. Know that recovery is always possible. Even people who lived with an eating disorder for a very long time can expect a full and lasting recovery. It's not easy and can't be accomplished alone, but EVERYONE suffering from an eating disorder can be helped.

The recently deceased George Michael once said, "You'll never find peace of mind until you listen to your heart." Listen carefully to the messages your heart is sending you. And with the right treatment, you can find peace from the burden of eating disorders.
For additional information about the Eating Recovery Center, call 877-789-5758, email info@eatingrecoverycenter.com, or visit www.eatingrecoverycenter.com to speak with a master's-level clinician.

Weight gain is not negotiable if you want to recover

In order to recover from a restrictive eating disorder, you WILL NEED to gain weight (especially if you are currently underweight). As much as we would like this to be untrue, if you are not willing to gain weight, you will not recover as this just shows how unhealthy your mindset is. It is only when you challenge and overcome this type of unhealthy mindset, that you will be able to continue making recovery progress and actually make a full recovery. As well as needing to reach and possibly exceed a healthy weight in order to recover mentally, you need to do this is order to recover physically too. Whilst starving yourself, your body weakens and stops functioning as it should in order to conserve energy. Your energy reserves run dangerously low and all of your internal organs and bones are at risk of severe damage also. The following article explains the toll that anorexia or other restrictive eating disorders have on your body due to starvation. 

(http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/eating-disorders/anorexia-nervosa/features/anorexia-body-neglected#3)


What happens exactly? Here's a look at what anorexia does to the human body.

The first victim of anorexia is often the bones. The disease usually develops in adolescence -- right at the time when young people are supposed to be putting down the critical bone mass that will sustain them through adulthood.

"There's a narrow window of time to accrue bone mass to last a lifetime," says Diane Mickley, MD, co-president of the National Eating Disorders Association and the founder and director of the Wilkins Center for Eating Disorders in Greenwich, Conn. "You're supposed to be pouring in bone, and you're losing it instead." Such bone loss can set in as soon as six months after anorexic behavior begins, and is one of the most irreversible complications of the disease.

But the most life-threatening damage is usually the havoc wreaked on the heart. As the body loses muscle mass, it loses heart muscle at a preferential rate -- so the heart gets smaller and weaker. "It gets worse at increasing your circulation in response to exercise, and your pulse and your blood pressure get lower," says Mickley. "The cardiac tolls are acute and significant, and set in quickly." Heart damage, which ultimately killed singer Karen Carpenter, is the most common reason for hospitalization in most people with anorexia.

Although the heart and the bones often take the brunt of the damage, anorexia is a multisystem disease. Virtually no part of the body escapes its effects. About half of all anorexics have low white-blood-cell counts, and about a third are anemic. Both conditions can lower the immune system's resistance to disease, leaving a person vulnerable to infections.
Anorexia Damage Starts Early

Even before a person with anorexia starts to look "too thin," these medical consequences have begun Many young women who begin eating a severely restricted diet stop menstruating well before serious weight loss sets in. Since so many people with anorexia are teenage girls and young women, this can have long-term consequences on their ability to bear children.

Gaining weight will allow your body to function more optimally again and to reverse most of, if not all of the damage you inflicted on it whilst your were starving yourself. Even if you manage to partially recover mentally so that you can live like a relatively normal person, if you are still underweight your body will not be able to function properly. The chances of you conceiving a baby are reduced if ever you want to become a mum and you are more likely suffer from illnesses or infections as your immune system will not be as strong as somebody who is a healthy weight. Also if you are underweight, this indicates that you are still not eating enough  (as otherwise your body would return to a healthy weight) which suggests you are probably missing out on particular nutrients and minerals that your body requires. This puts you at risk of things like Anemia (due to lack of iron) and osteoporosis (due to lack of calcium).

In my experience, I was not able to make any real recovery progress until I gained a significant amount of weight. The hard thing about gaining this weight is that you need to do it when your anorexic thoughts are still incredibly strong and overpowering. It isn't until you get closer and closer to a healthy weight that these thoughts begin to fade and are replaced with healthier'and more normal thoughts. There is no real secrets or techniques to making these thoughts go away. As hard as it is, you just have to push through them and remember that by fighting these thoughts you ARE getting closer to having the life you want and deserve. I suggest trying to stay busy so that you have other things to focus on and just have faith that if you continue fighting your anorexic thoughts, in time they will fade. And how do you gain weight? You basically just do the complete opposite of everything your anorexia tells you to do. You limit or stop your physical activity, you eat more then you ever have in your life and you stop doing all of those destructive things that you have done in the past.

I remember some nights my thoughts would be so strong (in regards to the fear of and actually gaining weight) that I just had to go to bed and cry myself to sleep. But I never gave into my anorexia and always just woke up the following day and ate everything on my meal plan, limited my exercise and went against everything my anorexia told me to do. I knew that I couldn't give into my anorexia by listening to its demands as this would be like giving it ammunition it needed to beat me. Once I gave into my anorexia once, I knew it would be so easy to continue giving into it and this would not allow my thought processes to change. So I stuck to my guns and consistently beat my anorexia and that is how I got to where I am today. So no matter how hard it may seem, just remember that it is possible and you can do it. No matter how loudly your anorexia screams at you and how bad it makes you feel, it cant actually hurt you. That pain is just temporary. And by enduring that pain now, you will be able to have a lifetime of happiness in the future.

I know that gaining weight as slowly as possible seems like the best way to gain weight to someone with anorexia but from my own experience I do not think this is the best thing to do. To be honest, gaining weight incredibly slowly just draws out the painful process of weight restoration and means that you are just inflicting extra suffrage on yourself. I was gaining about 500-700g per week when I was actively recovering and I found that this was a good rate to do it at. I feel it was a good rate of weight gain as I could adjust to my physical changes without relapsing while still keeping a good momentum. Gaining weight at this rate also made it obvious to me whenever I needed to increase my calories (due to my weight gain stopping). If I was gaining less then this per week, I think I would have been more likely to just brush off failure to gain weight in any particular week which would have stopped me from moving towards my goal of complete weight restoration and recovery. 

I believe that gaining weight is not the only thing you need to do in order to recover, in fact it is only the beginning. But it is one of the first essential things for you to do before you can make any other type of real recovery progress. So I highly encourage you to start doing it as soon as possible. As you do manage to gain weight, your body will start functioning properly again and you will also start thinking more clearly too. And I know it probably feels like accepting your body at a higher weight is impossible but I promise you its not. I am currently about 15 kg heavier than my lowest weight (which I couldn't bare to leave at the time) and I love my body more now then I ever have before!  The truth is you will never feel ready to start gaining weight so you just need to make the decision and start. I promise you it will be worth it!

Not being the skinniest anymore (article)

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hunger-artist/201306/not-being-the-thinnest-any-more-how-adjust

 When you’re recovering from anorexia, it’s one of the most frightening things in the world to realise that you’re no longer the thinnest person in the room. And for it suddenly to be true not just once, but usually. After years of starving yourself, followed by months of regaining the weight you lost in anorexia, there comes a point where you realise that your body no longer looks anorexic: your bones aren’t visible as they used to be, you don’t look brittle enough to break in two, your muscles aren’t wasted away right down to the bone, your face isn’t any longer remarkable mainly for the hollows round the eyes or the concave lines where your cheeks try to connect up with your chin. Maybe you loved those things, or thought you did; maybe you knew you hated them, but you loved and needed what they represented: the illusions of control, strength, and purity that felt so special and precious to you. In any case, when you decided to get better, you decided to obliterate them: to let a protective layer of fat cover your bones and organs again, to let the muscles rebuild themselves, to become again someone that people—and you yourself, in the mirror—can see not as just a sick person but as a person with other, more interesting and less saddening qualities.

But having decided to let, and make, these changes happen doesn’t mean you’ll find it easy when they do, so I thought I’d offer a few thoughts about how to make it a little bit easier. My thoughts split into two strands: the strand that says be gentle and patient with yourself, and the strand that says simply stick rigidly to your plan (i.e. keep eating). They can require somewhat different attitudes, but they come together in the importance of just waiting it out, and waiting for it to be better.

I’ll begin with a diary entry from Christmas Day of 2008, which was a day I remember vividly as one when my new body (I’d been eating more since mid-July, and I weighed about 52 kg, with a BMI of about 18.5) felt very alien to me. The things I wrote then bring together some of what I want to talk about now.

Thursday 25th December 2008, 11:56 pm

Difficult. Lovely food, & I’ve eaten too much—i.e. the right amount, a good amount for Christmas; but the aftermath—or rather, the lull between dinner proper & the leftovers I ate more ravenously & uncontrollably—was difficult, & D [who would soon become my boyfriend] had to help me through it. Or rather, he didn’t have to—but he was able to; & I feel calmer & better for his having rung & texted. I was captivated by one of the awful Corfu photos of me & Sue [my mother], comparing it with those taken on North Sands this morning. I looked deathlike then I know; but can’t help staring, & longing with a great insidious part of myself to be her again. That other sexless joyless creature. D was shocked—had tears in his eyes, he said, when he saw it; a concentration-camp survivor; someone he’d never dare touch—nor one, I said, who would want to be touched by him. I feel again I’ve burdened him with my past; but it’s felt real today, the fear, as I see my fat puffy face in photos where my bones used to give it definition. But he says he likes curves not angles. And Tom [my father] has given me a beautiful dress—yet another long sleeveless thing, wine-coloured silk […]; & I could try on the dress & parade around in it without embarrassment about my arms [being too thin]—even if the photos I thought appalling.

The first thing to be aware of is that everyone in recovery has moments, even whole days, when they feel disgusted by their new, bigger body and long for their former smaller one, when however often they recite all the good reasons for regaining weight, and all the things that this process is and represents besides gaining fat, none of it has any force against the sheer overwhelming feeling of being fat, ungainly, in the wrong body. Sometimes, the only thing to do is cling on to those mantras you should have developed for yourself—all the reasons why anorexia made life intolerable, and all the physical and thereby psychological restoration that the higher numbers on the scales or the tape measure represent—and to wait for the awfulness to pass, which it will, as everything does.

Five months into recovery

Source: Emily T. Troscianko

That’s for the worst times. For the rest, and to pre-empt those, a few other thoughts might help. Perhaps most importantly of all, be patient. This all takes time. The early stages of rehydration and restoration of fat deposits may be uneven. You may have a slightly bloated looking face, as I do in this photo, which in my diary I called ‘fat’ and ‘puffy’, and which now looks terribly terribly tired—illness was exhausting, and recovery was even more so—but with a light of hopefulness in the eyes. Fat may also be deposited preferentially around your middle to begin with, to help protect vital organs. This is perfectly normal, and with time everything will even out, as long as you continue to be strict with yourself, and eat as planned. Remember that the body dysmorphia that often goes with anorexia—hich seems to manifest itself not just in explicit body representations and perceptions but also in automatic motor behaviours (Keizer et al. 2013)—won’t instantly be cured. But it will, with time, and consistent eating and consistent efforts to address its explicit aspects.

At an explicit level, articulated aesthetic ideals will take time to shift from their anorexic incarnations (staring enviously at catwalk models’ upper arms or whatever) to the acknowledgement of beauty in different, healthier kinds of bodies. While your articulated values still lag behind how your body looks, there’ll be all the discomfort of cognitive dissonance as you work towards a kind of body that you’ve spent so long finding reasons to reject—but it’s very important not to attempt to reduce that dissonance by eating less again, and instead to work on reducing it by seeking out and acknowledging alternative, more real, forms of beauty in people whose bodies support rich and varied lives rather than crippling them.

article continues after advertisement

The more you can be patient, and take the long view, the more you’ll be rewarded in the end. My body four years ago, at (or just over) a healthy weight, was nothing like how it is today; part of this is due to the barbell training, but much of it is just time: time for fluid and fat to be redistributed, time for muscles and tendons to grow and be used and further strengthened, time for you to learn how to be at ease in your body and to get to know what it can do and what it can’t (yet). Nothing stays quite the same, ever, whether we want it to or not, but in the years following the restoration of a healthy bodyweight after anorexia, this constant mutability can be a source of delight, manifesting the human body’s miraculous ability to restore itself from the lowest point of deprivation. This depends, again, on bravery and strictness in resisting the urge to restrict and lose weight again because everything isn’t instantly how you’d like it to be. Give your body time, but also give it the best possible chance.

And it sounds awfully clichéd, but try not to fight against how your body is changing; embrace the changes. This is a mental attitude, but it’s one (like all mental states, indeed) that can be nurtured through specific actions. For example, don’t keep trying to wear all the same kinds of clothes you used to when you were ill; lots of them won’t suit you any more (though some may now look much better on you), and clinging to the old styles won’t help you move away from your anorexic body. Enjoy, ideally with other people, the journey of finding out what works for you now, but don’t expect everything to. Another thing that applies specifically to women, and which I found easy to embrace but which for others can be very difficult, is the newly feminine quality of your body, and – as noted in the diary entry – its now potentially sexual character. This was something that I’d completely failed to think about before I began to eat again, so consumed was I by worries about my tummy getting bigger, but the fact that I now began to have breasts again was actually quite a delight. Getting hips again was more difficult, but seeing that side of myself come back into being, and seeing others’ reactions change accordingly, made leaving skeletal behind much easier.

Stopping fighting your body by feeding its appetites again should go hand in hand with a willingness to be kind to it and to relearn how to listen to it. Obvious ways of doing this are things like massage, which can feel wonderful when your body is in the midst of such profound structural change. Slightly further along the line, yoga as part of outpatient treatment for adolescents with eating disorders seems to have beneficial effects on ED symptoms including preoccupation with food and anxiety and depression, with no negative effect on BMI (Carei et al. 2010). I’ve recently taken up yoga again—the last time I tried it I was still very ill—and it’s lovely to feel how it instantly attunes me more delicately to the capacities and limitations, in strength and flexibility, of all the parts of my body, and how it gives a calm context in which to stretch myself, literally and figuratively. Later still, strength training can have similar benefits, along with the added one of making you significantly stronger, with all its attendant benefits for cardiovascular health, bone and joint health, and metabolism. For women, post-anorexic or not, I think that getting physically strong can be a very potent way of declining to buy into anti-feminist equations of thinness (and hence weakness) with beauty, and for men recovering from anorexia, getting strong can be a way of reasserting your masculinity in the way that weight gain more generally naturally re-emphasises femininity. It shouldn’t be done too soon (maybe not till your bodyweight is healthy or close to healthy), and should be done with supervision, but for me, barbell training was a crucial factor in coming to understand, not just in the abstract but through the whole of me, that regaining weight was not just getting fatter, but was a fully constructive process of creating a newly beautiful, capable, dependable body for myself.

article continues after advertisement

Remember that just as you have to contemplate constructing a character for yourself after anorexia, you have to construct a body for yourself too, one that will be what you need it to be for the adventure of being more fully alive in the years to come. Neither your character nor your body can be created from a blank slate, and especially after the control obsessions of anorexia, waiting and seeing what happens can be as empowering an attitude as taking things into your own hands, but the possibilities for what you can now let and help your body become, now it’s no longer trapped in the dangerous tedium of being skeletal and weak, are exhilarating. Enjoy them, with that mixture of strictness and openness which above all says: there’s time.

My thanks to the reader whose question prompted this post

Surviving christmas with an eating disorder article

15 Helpful Tips for the Holiday Season

1. Think about what might trigger you over the holiday season, and plan some coping strategies in advance. Identify a support person who is available to listen to you if you feel overwhelmed.
   
2. If you are travelling away on holidays, take some resources that will support you while you're away – e.g. books, phone numbers or helpful websites.
   
3. Try to find out beforehand what food will be served at an event, if that will help to reduce your anxiety. If appropriate, you could offer to take ‘safe’ food to share so you will feel comfortable that there is something you can eat.
   
4. If you don’t feel comfortable eating at an event, have something healthy and delicious before you attend to help you to avoid feeling hungry or overeating later.
   
5. Remember, people are usually too busy enjoying their own meal and chatting to be focused on watching what and how much you eat!
   
6. Many people overeat on Christmas Day and often comment on the quantity they have eaten. Remember their comments are not aimed at you.
   
7. Consider using some Mindful Eating techniques to reduce the likelihood of bingeing during the day.
   
8. Plan and discuss family visits and what may happen, especially with people you haven’t seen for a while. You can think of what they may say, and what responses you might give them. Practice saying these out loud.
   
9. If someone makes a comment about your appearance, remember that you don’t have to take their comments on board. Let the words wash over you.
   
10. Remember that the urge to binge or purge is just that – an urge that will come and go. Give yourself permission to acknowledge the urge, and let it go.
    
11. If you are expecting to be part of a large family gathering, plan what you will do to give yourself 'time out' from the crowd.
    
12. Give yourself permission to experience your own emotions on the day. Remember you don't have to be happy and smile all the time - no one expects it.
    
13. Over the holiday period you may have some time off from school, work or university. This provides a great opportunity to engage in some activities you haven't tried before – or if you’d rather chill out and do nothing at all, that’s fine too!
    
14. If you are receiving results from school or university, or applying for further study, remember that your grades do not define your worth.
    
15. If you are struggling and need to chat, call your local eating disorders helpline. If you are in Victoria, contact 1300 550 236 or help@eatingdisorders.org.au

My Herbalife Program

I thought I would do a post about my Herbalife program for anyone who may be interested :) all of the products are herbal and therfore safe to use by children, adults, pregnant and breastfeeding mums. Although daily dosages are recommended, you cant over dose on the products. They are literally just like food but in another form.

Firstly, the two core products are the f1 nutritional shake mix and the f2 multivitamin. I have either 1 or 2 shakes per day as well as a multivitamin with each main meal. The shakes come in lots of flavours but my favourite is vanilla. As well as providing all of the nutrients and minerals your body needs each day in perfect balance, these products also work to cleanse the villi in your intestines so that you can properly absorb all of the nutrients you consume throughout the day.

I also use a supplement called cell-u-loss which helps your body and cells to maintain perfect water balance. This therefore reduces unhelthy water retention and keeps your kigneys functioning optimally. Another product I take twise daily is, NRG or Natures Raw Gurana. This supplement helps enormously with energy levels as well as alertness and concentration so I have found it very helpful whilst studying at university. I also take a probiotic complex which helps to restore and maintain the perfect balance of healthy bacteria in the gut.

I use both Mango and mandarin Aloe concentrates which literally cleanse your insides and assist in digestion as well as drink up to 5 cups of peach herbal tea most days which is full of antioxidants, gives me energy and keeps my metabolism running FAST! There is also a apple flavoured active fibre complex which I have occasionally to keep me regular and to keep my digestive system functioning optimally. Lift off is another great product I use which is like a caffeinated powder that you add to water to make an energy boosting delicious fizzy drink.

Two other supplements which arent includes in my ultimate program but that I opt to take anyway are joint support and tang kuei plus. I find the joint support really minimises my joint pain sue to my ligamentous laxity and the Tang Kuei Plus is a wonderful relaxant which helps me to destress and also sleep.

Finally I also use products from the sports range. The f1 sports nutritional mix can be used to make shakes prior to exercise instead of the regular f1, which substitutes a couple of ingredients with others that better prepare your body for exercise and activity. CR7 drive is a delicious tangy guava powder that I add to water for better performance and endurance whilst working out and rebuild strength is another chocolate favoured shake mix which I have after I have a strength training class as it helps my muscles to recover and repair.

I have found my recovery has come so far since I started these products and after abusing my body for so many years, it feels so good to know that I am now providing my body with all the nutrition and energy it needs to function optimally! I have so much energy now and am so thankful that I am now able to experience dynamic health, every single day!

A little motivation to start the weekend

Incredible motivation

If you are looking for some motivation, I highly reccommend Les Brown. He is incredible and has helped me a lot in my own personal development. :) here are a few of his quotes but there are lots of videos on YouTube  as well.

Just do it

What everyone suffering from an eating disorder needs to realise is that you will never be completely ready to recover and if you wait around for that day to come, then sadly you will most likely never recover. Its awful, but very true. No matter when you choose to get better, its going to be just as painful so I believe you might as well try and recover sooner rather than later, so that you dont waste anymore of you life unwell then you need to.

You may waste 6 months, 6 years or 6 decades of your life in that awful 'existing but not living' anorexic state we all know far too well. Personally, I spent about 2 and a half years there, before I realised I was going to do what ever it would take to make myself well again, no matter how painful it would be. Now, I wish I had started my true recovery sooner so that I didnt waste those years of my life, miserable like I did. I told myself at the time that I was trying to get better but now I can see that I wasnt really. I did want to get better but I wasnt actively fighting for me recovery like I needed to do.

I promise, being recovered is so worth every bit of pain that you go through during recovery and if I had to do it all over again to ensure I would end up as happy as I currently am, then I would without a doubt! No matter how hard things get whilst you are fighting your eating disorder, just keep reminding yourself of what you are fighting for and remember that although it may not feel like it, fighting tour anorexia cant actually kill you, only listening to your anorexia can do that.

To The Person With An Eating Disorder Who Feels Like Giving Up On Recovery

I thought this article was great as it spoke of all the reasons why you should not give up on making a full recovery from your eating disorder. I hope you find it just as motivating as I did, and that like me it inspres you to continue fighting for full recovery. 

You deserve a full life

Jennifer Rollin, MSW, LGSW 

Psychotherapist, Self-Compassion Enthusiast, Body-Image Activist

Maybe you just relapsed and the thought of starting over in the recovery process feels painful. Or perhaps you had changes in your weight, which is causing you to want to “throw in the towel.” 

It is so normal to be in a place where you feel caught between wanting to maintain your eating disorder and a desire to continue to seek recovery. Ambivalence and denial of the severity of the illness are common aspects of having an eating disorder. 

You likely have used eating disorder behaviors in an attempt to “feel better.” Behaviors like binging, purging, and/or restricting, may temporarily cause you to “feel better” and calmer. However, in the long run they only bury your underlying issues and cause you to feel even worse.

Your eating disorder may help you to feel “in control,” or “special,” however these are false illusions. The reality is, the deeper that you are into your eating disorder, the less “in control” you actually are. Rather, the eating disorder begins to completely consume your life and often becomes your primary relationship.

An eating disorder hijacks your true sense of self and identity and replaces it with an illness.

Some may argue that their eating disorder is the only thing that makes them “special” and are afraid to give up that identity. The truth is that the deeper one is in their eating disorder, the more one becomes a carbon copy of everyone else who is struggling with an eating disorder. An eating disorder hijacks your true sense of self and identity and replaces it with an illness. I guarantee that there are other traits or qualities about yourself that make you special and unique, which the eating disorder is currently masking.

If you are struggling with wanting to give up on recovery, I would urge you to recall what caused you to seek recovery in the first place. Living with an eating disorder is like having an abusive partner. Often your life becomes completely taken over by 24/7 thoughts about food, your body, and exercise. Many will find that they become increasingly isolated, depressed, and that their relationships suffer.

When you look back on your life at age 80, do you think that you will be fondly reminiscing about the amount of time you spent counting calories, avoiding social events, running obsessively on the treadmill, or hiding empty cartons of food in shame? Living trapped in an eating disorder is ultimately not a fulfilling life.

So what does recovery feel like? Just as no two people’s experiences of an eating disorder are the same, recovery may look different for everyone. However, ultimately recovery is when food and your body take a more normal place in your life. Recovery is when you can explore new passions (outside of food/exercise/your body) and build strong relationships with people who matter. Recovery is being able to explore the world and travel, savoring the food and taking in the culture of a new place.

Recovery is truly living again. You deserve a full life, one that you cannot have if you are still trapped in your eating disorder.

Recovery is laughing and losing track of time with friends and family because you are having such a great time. Recovery is also feeling sad or angry sometimes and dealing with disappointment and heartbreak. Recovery is feeling all of your feelings both pleasant and unpleasant. Recovery is truly living again. You deserve a full life, one that you cannot have if you are still trapped in your eating disorder.

It’s important to note that recovery is not a linear process. No matter where you are in your journey, it’s important to practice being kind to yourself. You are doing the best you can given the coping skills that you have, and you can also work to change and improve. It’s normal to have setbacks and to make mistakes, but what matters is that you learn from them and continue to work towards recovery.

I’d also recommend making a list of what your life could look like five years from now if you choose recovery and five years from now if you are still trapped in your eating disorder. If you are not working with a treatment team, it is also important that you identify specialists in your area that can help you. No one should go through the recovery process alone.

You didn’t choose to have an eating disorder, but you can make the choice to continue on the path towards recovery. No matter what lies your eating disorder may be telling you, your life is worth so much more than obsessing about food and your body. Imagine all of the amazing things you could accomplish if you devoted this time and energy to something positive. It may take some time, but I believe you will find a fulfilling and passion-driven life, one where you can finally say, “I am recovered.”

Marya Hornbacher, an author who recovered from an eating disorder, says,

I don’t remember when I stopped counting, or when I stopped caring what size my pants were, or when I started ordering what I wanted to eat and not what seemed ‘safe,’ or when I started just eating when I got hungry, instead of questioning it, obsessing about it, dithering and freaking out, as I’d done for nearly my whole life. I don’t remember exactly when recovery took hold, and went from being something I both fought and wanted, to being simply a way of life. A way of life that is, let me tell you, infinitely more peaceful, infinitely happier, and infinitely more free than life with an eating disorder. And I wouldn’t give up this life of freedom for the world.

Jennifer Rollin, MSW, LGSW is a mental health therapist, intuitive eating counselor, and blogger on The Huffington Post and Psychology Today. She is a junior board member for The National Eating Disorder Association. She specializes in treating adolescents, survivors of trauma, and individuals with eating disorders and mood disorders. “Like” Jennifer on Facebook at Jennifer Rollin, MSW, LGSW. Or check out her website atwww.jenniferrollin.com

______________

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorders Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.