Gaining weight is essential

When I was underweight, people often said that it was impossible to get better mentally until I firstly got better physically. To be perfectly honest, I was quite reluctant to believe this as I could not see how weighing more would help with what was going on in my head. I didn't understand how gaining weight would magically make my anorexic thoughts go away but that really is what seems to have happened.

Since becoming weight restored I now fully believe this theory that the key to recovery is to eat and gain weight. To me, it seems as though the anorexic part of your brain is most powerful when the rest of the brain is malnourished and weak. And it is not until the rest of your brain gets stronger and repairs whilst you are becoming weight restored that your thoughts get better and healthier.

I know it feels impossible to recover and that you cant ever imagine a time when your anorexic thoughts wont be as strong and loud but I am begging you to trust me and take this chance. Gaining weight IS necessary in order to recover from anorexia. I know that this is probably the last thing you want to hear right now but sadly, you will not recover otherwise.

I waited around for years in the hope that my anorexia would go away and that my thoughts would get healthier but they never did. Even once I started eating a 'normal' amount, my anorexic thoughts and behaviours didn't get better at all as I was still at a very low weight. It was only once I started eating recovery amounts of food and started gaining weight that I have been able to start getting my life back and moving foward from my eating disorder.

While I may not be fully recovered, I would consider myself to be 80% recovered and I can still feel myself getting better everyday. Without gaining the weight I have, I know that I would still be exactly where I was a year ago, extremely anorexic and extremely unhappy. I know the prospect of gaining weight seems far to painful when your mind is still so unhealthy however you need to remember that as you gain weight, your mind gets better which allows you to accept the weight gain a little more easily.

I found the following article which explains why gaining weight is such an essential part of the recovery process at this website;

'So why the heck do people seem so impervious to the message that without weight restoration you get nothing?  And I do mean nothing: no physical recovery AND no psychological recovery.  Remember: psychological recovery is about the brain.  The brain is an organ of the body; like all other organs it needs fuel to replace broken or used-up cells, and for functioning cells to communicate with each other.  Starvation is as bad for children and for any other living thing.  This takes no great leap of intellect:  you can’t become psychologically normal in a state of malnutrition. You don’t (or shouldn't) need access to all “latest science” to know this.'

Challenging negative thoughts

Whether you suffer from an eating disorder, anxiety, depression, poor self esteem or all of the above, chances are it is the result of you having irrational negative thougts. In order to overcome these types of illnesses, we need to start challenging these negative thoughts in order for us to change them to more positive ones. I found the following tips from this website very helpful.

Whenever you become aware you’re feeling depressed, angry, anxious or upset, use this as your signal to stop and reflect on your thoughts. Use your feelings as your cue to reflect on your thinking.

A good way to test the accuracy of your thoughts might be to ask yourself some challenging question. These questions will help you to check out your self-talk to see whether your current view is reasonable.

Challenging questions

There are four main types of challenging questions to ask yourself:

1. Reality testing

What is my evidence for and against my thinking?
Am I jumping to negative conclusions?
How can I find out if my thoughts are actually true?

2. Look for alternative explanations

Are there any other ways that I could look at this situation?
What else could this mean?
If I were being positive, how would I perceive this situation?

3. Putting it in perspective

What is the best thing that could happen?
Is there anything good about this situation?
Will this matter in five years’ time?

4. Using goal-directed thinking

Is this way of thinking helping me to achieve my goals?
What can I do that will help me solve the problem?
Is there something I can learn from this situation, to help me do it better next time?

Recognising that your current way of thinking might be self-defeating (i.e. it doesn't make you feel good or help you to get what you want) can sometimes motivate you to look at things from a different perspective.

Changing the way you think about things may not be easy at first, but with time and practice, you will get better. Try it out - it's worth the effort. Let us know how you go.

Mixed feelings about weight gain

I got up this morning and weighed myself to find that I have once again gained weight this week, but that I am starting to gain weight at a slightly slower rate. Since I have already gained so much weight, I am quite happy to let the rate at which I gain weight slow down for a little while however I will definetely increase my intake again if my weight gain stops before I reach a healthier weight.

I honestly dont really know how my weight gain makes me feel. Sometimes I feel both happy and disapointed all at the same time when I see I have gained weight. Similarily, sometimes I feel as though gaining weight is getting easier, the closer to becoming weight restored I get and other times I feel as though it is getting much harder.

Reasons I feel happy about gaining weight

Every time I see that I have gained weight, the real me is happy as Iknow that this means that I am getting closer to being weight restored and making a full recovery. Seeing that I have gained weight tells me that I have been successful in fighting my anorexia over that week and it is always a relief, knowiing that I do not have to increase my calorie intake any further. 

Reasons I feel upset about gaining weight

When I step on the scales and see that I have gained weight, the anorexic part of me gets really unhappy and angry. Even the rational part of me gets upset as I know that any weight gain will act as fuel to the fire of my anorexia. Suddenly my anorexia has something to punish me for and I know tha tmy anorexia will use my weight gain to make me feel awful and guilty, whatever chance it gets.   

  

Why it feels like gaining weight is getting harder

Obviously the closer I get to becoming weight restored, the more often I see differences in my body which can make me feel self conscoius and anxious. After being far to thin for so long, I have gotten so used to seeing myself tiny. So the closer I get to a healthy weight, the harder it is to continue gaining weight as I feel as though I have already gained enough (even though I know that deep down this is not the case).

Why it feels like gaining weight is getting easier

Like many things in recovery, the more you do something (like gain weight), the easier it seems. While the thought of gaining weight was more scary to me once than dying was, now I am much more comfortable about gaining weight and feel as though Ican deal with it quite well. The more progress I make in my recovery and the more weight I gain, the healthier my mind gets. As my mind gets healthier, my anorexic thought are no where near as overpowering and I can therfore cope better when my anorexia is angered by any weight gain I have had.

I think that one of the things that makes recovery so confusing is that there are literally two voices in our heads. There is a rational voice (or real voice) and there is our anorexic voice. What makes it even more confusing is the fact that we cant always determine which thoughts belong to us and which ones belong to our anorexia. Even though my anorexia still gets very angry sometimes and makes me feel guilt and anxius, I know that it is no where near as strong as it was when I was at my sickest and this has only come through fighting my anorexic thoughts, no matter how painful it proved to be.

I remember writing something in my diary when I was in hospital that went something like this;

"It is so hard not to listen to something that is promising to make you beautiful, skinny and happy, especially when you feel so ugly, fat and disgusting."

No matter what my anorexia tries to tell me, I always try and focus as much of my attention as possible on what the real me is thinking. I know how hard it is to ignore your anorexic thoughts, when you are really sick as they can be incredibely convincing but you must try your hardest not to listen to them.  If your anorexia is incredibely strong and you think that all of your thoughts are anorexic ones, perhaps you should stop listening to any of your thoughts at all for a while and just leave your recovery decisions in the hands of somebody else.

So if you are feeling confused about your thoughts, try not to worry about this as it is to be expected. You will most likely continue to have mixed feeling about everything until you make a full recovery and get rid of your anorexic thoughts once and for all.

Waking early

As I started to get tired last night, I started to get more anxious about what I had eaten for my tea. In the end I decided the best thing I could do was go to bed and try and get some sleep, which luckily I was able to do. I woke up very early this morning feeling extremely hungry. I put on Greys Anatomy and waited for a while, hoping that the feeling would pass but when It still hadnt by 3:40 am, I decided to have some of my breakfast. I had a bowl of Caramel oats, with a sliced banana on top but still wasnt completely satisfied.

It was not until I had my toast at 5:00am that my stomach seemed happy. I had cashew butter spread on my toast however the cashew butter was rock hard and unspreadable because my kitchen was so cold. So I had to cook my toast and put a big lump of cashew butter on each slice of toast, that I then had to heat in the microwave in order to make the cashew butter spreadable. The reason I dont like having breakfast too early is because it seems too muck up all of my other meals for the day, as I always start to get hungry approximately 2.5/3 hours after my last meal.

Since waking up I no longer feel anxious about my Tea last night. Instead I am happy that I was brave enough to take the opportunity to face my fears and fight my anorexic thoughts. Yes I felt anxious afterwoods but I still didnt let this effect my actions which is all that you need to do in order to successfully fight your anorexia.

I am feeling quite positive at this stage but am not expecting to have an excellent day as I will be tired and my anorexic thoughts always seem so much stronger and harder to fight when I am tired. I dont know why this is the case but other people who suffer from anorexia that I have spoken to have found the exact same thing applies to them. I think the reason I find it harder is because when I am tired I lose the ability to think clearly and rationally.


I dont have many plans for my day off today so atleast I can have a nap if I get really tired due to the lack of sleep I had last night. I will vacuum my house as well since I am busy all weekend and wont get a chance to do it then. I also plan to make some more puddings of some description. Last time I made lemon but it was so delicious I am tempted to make it again.

I hope that everyone has had or is having a wonderful day today. :) To all of those fighting their illnesses, make sure you keep fighting and remember that recovery is possible, you just need to believe in yourself. <3

Unhealthy thoughts

I would like to say that I am almost fully recovered and that my anorexia still doesn't affect my life but this would be a very big lie. While I have made progress since I was at my absolute worst, I still have a very long way to go. I still get anorexic thoughts all the time but luckily I can fight most of them. Some unhealthy thoughts that I had yesterday were about something as silly as throat lozenges.

I am getting a head cold at the moment so had an extremely sore throat. In the past I have never had throat lozenges as I didn't know how many calories they contain. Yesterday morning I found myself debating whether or not I should have some or not. I considered having some but eating a little less for one of my snacks and then I thought about how ridiculous I was being. I had an extremely sore throat and was frightened to have some lozenges as I thought it would increase my Intake for the day. While I have been able to get my daily calorie intake quite high, I still do worry about going over my calorie goal each day. I know it shouldn't matter to me as I am trying to gain weight and you can't really eat to much in recovery bit this is something I don't feel ready to overcome just yet.

Don't worry, I can see how pathetic worrying about throat lozenges is but I can't control these anorexic thoughts. Since they are out of my control, I know better than to get angry at myself or feel disappointed in myself for having these  thoughts. what I can control however is the way I react to these thoughts. When I got these ridiculous thoughts about the throat lozenges, I was able to go against them. I made sure that for the rest of the day that each time my throat was sore, I had a lozenger and consequently by the end of the day it didn't bother me to have the lozenges at all.

This shows that the only way to stop having unhealthy thoughts is to go completely against them. I believe if I continue to do this I will eventually be free of these thoughts all together. Every time I am walking my dog and my anorexia tells me I should go around an extra block, I intentionally take the shortest route home possible. Every time my anorexia tells me I am being lazy and need to get outside and be active, I make myself lay on the couch for an extra hour and watch another episode of my favourite series.

I know that I can't try and change all of my anorexic behaviors and fight all of my unhealthy thoughts at once. By slowly eliminating these behaviors and thoughts however, I am making progress and getting closer and closer to recovering each day. If you continue to listen to your anorexic thoughts, I promise you they will never go away. It may take years but your anorexic voice will eventually get sick of being ignored and disappear, but only if you fight It.