Having a boyfriend has really helped me in the final stages of my recovery

While this may not be the case for everyone,  my boyfriend has helped me enormously to overcome the last few stages of recovery. I think that this has been the case for me because he is such a wonderful person who I have developed a very special bond with so quickly. While it has helped me a lot, it is very important to note that having a boyfriend is not necessarily always a positive thing in recovery. This depends not only on what stage of recovery you are at but also the type of person your boyfriend is.

Although I was already weight restored when I met my boyfriend,  my mental state has continued to improve in leaps and bounds. When we began going out for dinner all the time, drinking alcohol  and enjoying food together, I really was still scared of all of those things. But just being with such a wonderful person really did help me to get through all of those things and eventually enjoy them with no fear at all. Now I have completely overcome the fears of eating extra food on some occasions and also eating out and consuming liquid calories. In fact, I now enjoy doing all of these things!

The fact that my weight has remained constant since I have started going out and eating more sometimes, has really proven to me that its perfectly fine to eat more sometimes and that doing this won't hurt me. No matter how many times I read or was told this was the case, I never truly believed it. Nathan has helped me to really start living and in the process has helped prove to me that eating extra doesnt necessarily lead to weight gain and is not a bad thing. It has also shown me that missing meals sometimes wont hurt me either. I know now that our bodies are not calorie counting machines and our energy requirements are not an exact science.

Having someone who loves and accepts me completely for who I really am really has helped me to accept myself too. I really do think that my low self esteem and poor confidence is what caused my eating disorder in the first place and it was also preventing me from making a full  recovery. For a long time I knew that learning to accept myself was an essential part of my recovery and I was right, because it is only through learning to respect and appreciate myself for who I truly am have I been able to overcome the final few stages of recovery.

Occasionaly, I still have moments when I wish to be thinner or am not completely satisfied with how I look but I think that this is all just a normal part of being a girl and I never act on these thoughts. The main reason being that I know my boyfriend likes me just the way I am and there is therefore no reason to change. Also, I know that if I got sick again I would hurt my boyfriend and possibly lose him, which are two things I couldn't bare to do. So not only has my boyfriend helped me to make recovery progress, but it has also stopped me from slipping backwards in my recovery too.

Recovery makes you stronger

This is so true! After overcoming all of the obstacles of recovery, I know that I am much stronger then I have ever been before....

An amazing weekend

As you would have most likely realised from this post title, this weekend has been another amazing one for me! After not seeing my boyfriend for 10 days, I was so excited to see him on Friday night. As usual we went to the local pub for tea and drinks. I had my usual chicken caesar salad which is my all time favourite food. It is so good to be able to eat foods like caeser salad which contains many different foods that wouod have once really frightened me withno guilt at all. Even though it contains things like cheese, full fat dressing, bacon, croutons and chicken, I still always completethe entire thing and enjoyevery single bite of themassive portion!

I saw this on facebook last night and laughed so hard 😂

On Saturday we just enjoyed spending time together. Except when I got up and walked Tess by myself as Nathan is always too lazy to go with me. We watched some of the cricket which was being played in Swansea and visited my dad and sister. We went for lunch at the bakery and then back to the pub again for tea. This time I had spaghetti bolognaise with a side of vegetables which was tasty too! My brother and also lots of the local youth were at the pub so we had a really great night and didnt leave until midnight. Many games of 8 ball were played and many beers were also drunk!

When Nathan, my cousin Siarne and I got back to my place at about a quarter to 1 we stayed up a little later snacking on chocolate and chips and having many laughs before going to bed. We didnt get out of bed until 9:30 or so and after an hour or two of watching telly and alsotaking Tess for a walk, it was lunch time.  After lunch Nathan and I went and picked up my little sister and cousin and took them up the cranbrook river swimming. The water hole was really full after our recentfloods so the girls had a great time swimming.

Please remember that it is possible to like your body at a healthy weight. Although I am no longer super skinny, I do accept my body the way it is and have no desire to be thinner then I currently am.

The only bad part of the weekend was when Nathan had to leave so that he could start the 3 hour trip back to where he lives. I miss him so much during the week when we are a part but I know the next five days will fly by and I will be with him again before I know it! This weekend I am going up to Launceston to meet him so that we can go to festivale, whichnis a food and wine festival. It will also be valentines day and since this is my first valentines day with a boyfriend, I cant wait!

Keep working on loving your body, it is possible and it feels great!

Updated 101 in 1001

Over the last few months I have been truly living my life and have managed to tick of quite a few more of my 101 goals in 1001 days goals that I wrote last year. I am proud of myself for all of the accomplishments I have made and am going to make a conscious effort to complete some more of these goals in the near future.

1. Travel outside the country for the first time
2. Make a full recovery from anorexia
3. Meet Anna, a girl I started talking to through my blog who also lives in Tasmania
4. Do a fun run for a charity
5. Eat pannacotta
6. Make some new friends
7. Find myself a boyfriend
8. Reach 100 000 page views on my blog
9. Publish 1000  blog posts
10. Help someone  make a full recover from anorexia
11. Stop counting calories all together
12. Learn how to listen to my body and eat intuitively
13. Reach my bodies natural set point weight
14. Eat food from 5 different fast food Places
15. Go to the Taylor Swift concert in Melbourne with My dad and Amy
17. Drive in the city of Hobart
18. Learn to love my body the way it is supposed to naturally be
19. Raise money/awareness for eating disorders
20. Explore some more of Tasmania
21. Go on a week long camping trip
22. Eat a chicken Parmiagana meal at a pub
23. Fully complete a crossword without usng the internet to cheat
24. Develop a good relationship with my mum
25. Try to find way to show Dad and Amy how much they mean to me
26. Get a horse
28. Help my mum to get better
29. To get my hair back to being naturally curly, like it was before I got sick
30. Read 10 books
31. Get healthy and clear skin
32. Eat a delicious dessert at a restaurant without feeling guilty or anxious
33. Go to a gold class cinema
34. Go surfing
35. Sleep under the stars
36. Sleep in until after 12
37. Paint Tess's dog kennel pink
38. Climb a mountain
39. Have a ski lesson in the snow
40. Get contact lenses
41. Meet a famous person
42. Overcome my anxiety so that I do not need to take anxiety medication
43. Try Ben and Jerrys icecream
44. Eat a krispy Kreme donut
45. Find a brand new hobby
46. Eat a big slice of my nans home made christmas pudding
47. Feel comfortable in a bikini
48. Go snorkeling on a reef
49. Eat popcorn at the movies
50. Make a snowman
51. Do a huge jigsaw and frame it for my wall
52. Cook and eat every recipe that I wrote down in my 'favourite recipes' book
53. Spend some more time on our farm with my dad
54. Keep improving my blog, as I learn more and more about effective blogging
55. Send a parcel of Australian goodies to a reader in another country
56. Get more involved in my local community
57. Buy some presents and place them under the giving tree this christmas
58. Always be there for Amy throughout her teenage years for support
59. Develop a closer relationship with my brothers
60. Make more of an effort to visit the nan who I do not see very often
61. Watch 5 north Melbourne football games live with my dad
62. To actually go swimming when I take my sister to the beach/river in summer
63. Eat a cooked breakfast in a cafe
64. Eat real pizza from a Pizza restaurant
65. To comfortably have drinks with calories in them, just because I am thirsty
66. To make a christmas Gingerbread house
67. To stay out with friends so late that we watch the sun rise
68. Get fit
69. compete my traineeship at the bank (but keep working there)
70. Take Amy on a special weekend away
71. Grow my own Strawberries
72. Make homemade jam
73. Not weigh myself for 2 months
74. Go ice skating
75. Eat only unprocessed foods for 1 week straight
76. See fireworks on New Years
77. Do the mud run
78. Become an organ donor
79. Go for 1 week without watching tv
80. Stop picking at imperfections on my skin so that I stop scarring
81. Watch the news everynight for two weeks
82. To not feel any guilt, after being unable to exercise all day
83. To be able to accept a compliment from another person
84. Try every type of magnum icecream available
85. Eat two courses at a resaurant without feeling anxious
86. To eat less tinned/ packaged foods and to start making them myself from scratch
87. See dolphins/whales in the wild
88. Find a brand new form of exercise that I enjoy
89. Spend less time inside and more time outside (especially in summer)
90. Make it through a whole summer without getting sunburnt
91. See something that makes me believe in magic
92. Run 10 kilometers along a beach
93. Make 10 new friends in one day
94. Get a tattoo that symbolises my recovery
95. Eat pancakes with icecream for breakfast
96. Eat icecream from the tub with a good friend
97. Laugh so hard that I cry (I did this all the time once, but I havent for a long time)
98. Maintain my weight/not lose weight for 1 year
99. Do a colour run
100. Donate blood

101. To be proud of what I manage to achieve and who I am 

Please keep fighting, I promise it will be worth it one day

An overdue update

For so long I kept telling myself that I had to keep fighting my anorexia if I ever wanted to be happy and healthy. I hoped with all my heart that one day all the pain and hard work would pay off but I didnt really know for sure that it actually would be. I can now say, completely honestly and whole heartedly that recovery definetely is worth it!

At this time, for the first time in as long as I can remember, my life is simply amazing. Every day I wake up and cant help but think about just how lucky I am to be where I now am. I have the most amazing boyfriend I could have ever dreamt of having. Not only does he make me feel special and loved every single day, but he is also helping me to respect and appreciate myself, for who I truly am.

I know that if I had not recovered from my eating disorder, I never would have found Nathan and been able to make our relationship work. Although Nathan would be the most wonderful thing that has come out of my recovery, there are many other things that are great about being recovered too.

This year was the best christmas I have had for a very long time and I know that this was only the case because I have recovered. I didnt spend the day worrying about what I could or couldnt eat. I just enjoyed myself and made the most of spending time with my boyfriend and with my family. And I enjoyed eating yummy christmas foods too. For the first time in years I ate as much chocolate, ham, pavlova and sweets as I wanted and my anxiety was basically non existent.

Dont get me wrong. Occasionally I still get an old anorexic like thought or concern about my weight or something I have eaten. However I suppose the difference now is that I am strong enough and healthy enough to ignore these thoughts and to continie to truly love my life. I know I now have way too much to lose by moving back to where I used to be. Simply nothing good can come out of me listening to anorexic thoughts  however I know that  so much good can come out of me ignoring them.

I am sorry it has been so long since I last posted. I have been meaning to post for a while now, to let you all know that I am happy and healthy but life has just been so busy and it really has been hard to find the time. I hope that you too are continuing to gight on your recovery journeys and i promise you all that no matter how hard it may seem at times, it really is worth it!

My boyfriend and I at the Christmas parade

Amys primary school graduation dinner

Still love walking with Tess

I like this photo as I just look so happy 

I finally feel comfortable with my body

My cruise was a blast