Day 2: What have you done to help yourself with your eating disorder?

Something I have realised throughout my battle with anorexia is that recovery will not happen unless you actively make it happen. I spent years sitting around hoping that I would one day wake up free of my anorexia but it obviously doesnt happen like that. In order to recover you need to make changes and see them through no matter how painful they may be. Here is a list of 5 changes I have made since starting to recover. These changes would seem very easy to normal people but for me they were incredibly hard.

1. I have stopped weighing everything I eat
For me this was a huge change that I thought I would never be able to overcome. My anorexia hated me not weighing my food because it meant that I couldnt be sure exactely how many calories I was eatimg. I would weigh absolutely everything including things like muesli bars, slices of bread, icecream bars, spreads like peanut butter or jam, fruit and vegetables, biscuits, slices of ham and cereal. I even weighed out amounts of things like stevia sweetner that had practically no calories in them anyway. I would not trust the weights written on packets of food portions either so would re -weigh everything once I had unpacked it and then calculated the exact amount of calories based upon its true weight.

While there are a few foods I still weigh like rice and pasta, I can honestly say that I no longer feel the need to weigh most of the food I eat. I still do keep a basic track of how many calories I eat to make sure I am eating enough, but I no longer feel as though I need to know the exact weight and calories contained in what I am eating. This change didnt happen over night and it is something I have had to work really hard at but I am so glad I did because I feel as though a huge weight had be taken off my shoulders.

2. I Started my recovery blog
I have allready talked about how starting a blog has helped me in my recovery and you can read it here.

3. I have increased my calorie intake, ALOT
At the moment I am eating so much more
then I ever have before. Increasing my intake is not just something I have done once to help myself to recover, but something I have done many times. Every time I weigh myself and see I have not gained enough weight I increase my intake no matter how many reasons my anorexia comes up with of why I shouldnt increase. Over the last few years I have increased my calories from starvation amounts however I still refused to eat even a 'normal' amount and wondered why I couldn't gain weight. Now I eat a lot more than the average person, something I never would have dreamed of doing before. I have not only managed to increase my intake to the recommended minimum recovery intake of 2500, I have exceeded this amount by quite a lot and I feel great for it.

4. I started taking medication for my anxiety
Ever since being diagnosed with anorexia, my gp has tried really hard to get me to agree to taking medication for my anxiety. She told me that my underlying anxiety was making trying to recover too difficult as making changes caused me unbarable anxiety. And when I say unbearable, I mean it. I never did anything that I knew I was not 'allowed' to do as how I felt for going against my anorexia was so awful. When I was at my sickest if someone had told me I had to either risk my life and jump off a bridge or eat a block of chocolate, I definetely would have jumped off the bridge. Dont get the wrong idea, I have never been suicidal or suffered from clinical depression but not listening to my anorexic thoughts was a scarier thing for me then dying.

So eventually I started taking some medication for my anxiety and it was around that time (about a month before starting my blog) that I started to want recovery more. The reason I started taking my medication was actually because I was starting a new job and I knew that I needed to be more confident and stop doubting myself to do well. I reccommend trying medications like these for anyone trying to recover. While I still do feel anxious, now I feel as though my anxiety is much more barable. It even surprises me how strong I can now be when I stand up to my anorexia and I know that my medication is partly responsible for this. There is nothing wrong with getting help when you need it and this does not make you weak in any way. Does it make a cancer patient weak for having chemotherapy treatment if that is what they require for them to survive? Of course it doesn't. I dont care if I have to be on this medication for the rest of my life if It allows me to stay happy and healthy.

5. I stopped giving in to my anorexia
While I still hear my anorexic thoughts loud and clear, I dont let myself listen to them anymore. As I continue to fight my thoughts, I can feel my anorexia getting weaker and the real me getting stronger. Every day my anorexic thoughts get a little bit quieter and easier to ignore and therefore everyday I am getting closer to recovery. While it feels impossible at first, know that it does get easier but only if you stop listening. If you continue to give into your anorexia, you are only feeding it and making it stronger.

My biggest obsession

For the last few years, my life has has revolved around various obsessive behaviours and compulsions, but the worst of these for me has been calorie counting. When I say I counted calories, I mean I took it to a whole knew extreme. Every piece of food I placed in my mouth had to be weighed so I could calculate the exact number of calories it contained and if the exact number of calories of a food couldnt be calculated, I would refuse to eat it. I would not be satisfied with just reading the nutritional values on packets of food either as I didn't trust them and knew that most portions were actually bigger than stated on the packaging. I also couldn't eat a food like sultanan bran (breakfast cereal) as I would be too anxious about the composition of ingredients that ended up in each serve. For example if the ingredients stated that the cereal was supposed to be 10% sultanas and 90% Bran flakes, I would be worried that there was actually 15% sultanas and only 85% Bran flakes which would slightly alter the calorie content. I obviously don't refuse to eat foods like these anymore and can now see how silly I was being but at the time it absalutely terrified me.

Every food you can think of I would weigh. Even once I stopped starving myself and eating considerable amounts of food I still continued to obsessively count calories. For example to make breakfast I would weigh two slices of bread and then toast them before weighing out the correct portion of spread. To make cereal I would weigh out the cereal, milk, yoghurt, fruit or anything else I may have been putting on top of it. Every piece of fruit and every serving of vegetables needed to be weighed and I would weigh any snacks like muesli bars, biscuits, icecream bars and chocolate. If i ever weighed out a portion prior to a meal time I would always re-weigh it just before eating it in case I had made a mistake and I would still feel anxiety while eating it as I would be paranoid I had missread the scale somehow. At one point I was not only obsessed with ensuring I had the perfect amount of calories each day but also that my macro balance was what I considered to be perfect too. Each day I made myself eat 35g of fat, 310g of carbohydrates and 70g of protein. It was actually very time consuming to plan my following days food as I would have to search for a foods that would fit into my macronutrient and calorie goal. For example if I found that I needed to add more fat and protein to my day, I would have fewer vegetables for tea and add an egg instead. Or if my Carb intake was too low, I would have jam in my sandwhich instead of Peanut Butter at lunch. As you can see I never actually got to eat what I felt like and this was an extremely unhealthy way to be. Luckily I have improved enormously since then.

Now I am much less worried about exact calorie counts. While I still keep a basic count of calories to ensure I am eating enough, the weighing of most foods has stopped. For example, I don't weigh each piece of fruit or each slice of bread I eat anymore and I do not weigh snacks like chocolate bars or muffins to make sure I know the exact number of calories they contain. I dont weigh butter or spreads like I used too and feel as though I can use generous amounts of spreads without feeling anxious. I dont weigh the belgium or ham that I put in my sandwhiches anymore and it doesn't really worry me anymore not knowing exactely how many calories I eat each day. As long as I know I am eating enough to allow my body to recover I am happy. I always refused to eat anything that I had not prepared myself as I couldn't be sure of how many calories were in it but now I have the freedom of going out for tea with my family to restaurants and eating food prepared by others. While doing this still makes me a little anxious, I don't feel as though the anxiety is anything I cant overcome.

I am going to be honest and admit to you all that there are still a few foods I weigh and this is because I feel anxious while serving them up and think I would eat too little if I didn't weigh them out.  For example, when I make pasta salad, I weigh the amount of dry pasta I add and I do the same with rice in rice dishes I make. Hopefully one day I wont feel the need to do this at all but I honestly think that if I didn't do this I would end up eating far fewer calories as my anxiety would get the better of me and I would add too little of something. For example if I am putting grated cheese on a pizza I weigh the cheese as otherwise I would feel anxious about the amount I was putting on and not put on enough. I also weigh icecream as I am serving it up for dessert as by weighing it, the anxiety disappears and I am free to dish myself up a more generous and adequate portion that meets my calories needs. As I said I hope that one day in the not so distant future I no longer feel as though I need to weigh any of the food I eat but for now, especially while I am trying so hard to gain weight, I think that it is necessary. What are other peoples views on this? Do you think that what I am doing is wrong or can you understand where I am coming from? What experiences have you all had with weighing food and counting calories?

my late supper tonight (I have had a yoghurt as well since tea)