Accepting weight gain in recovery

I think that one of the most difficult and triggering things about recovery from anorexia can be seeing your weight increase, both on the scale and as your body gets bigger too. I guess the reson it is so hard is that anorexics practically dedicate their lives to preventing weight gain and just because they make a committment to recovery, does not mean this fear or pattern of thinking that is so deeply instilled in them instantly goes away.

There is no way of avoiding it, the fact of the matter is if you want to make a full recovery from anorexia, you will need to get to a healthy weight. Telling yourself anything different will mean you are only setting yourself up for failure and more pain in the future. Your body and mind simply wont work properly whilst you are underweight and you will therefore never be able to get rid of your anorexic thoughts all together or make a full physical recovery either.

Whilst I was gaining weight, I remember feeling a mixture of emotions everytime I stood on the scale. If I had failed to gain any weight, the part of me that wanted to recover woukd be dissapointed but at the same time, the anorexic part of me would be overjoyed. Getting these types of anorexic thoughts at stsges throughout your recovery are completely normal and nothing you should be ashaimed of. Alk that matters is that you do not change your behaviors based on these thoughts. Accept that they are there but chose to ignore them.

Similarily, everytime I stepped on the scale and saw that I had gained weight the part of me that was dedicated to recovery was glad but the anorexic part of me was furious. I believe thst in order to stay on track in recovery as you experience weight gain, is that you need to want recovery, more than anything else in the world. Before I began my 'true' recovery, I reached a point whereby I was completely fed up and miserable with my anorexic life. I started wanting a recovered life, more than anything wlse in the world. It was only then that I was able to find the strength I needed to fight my anorexia and make actual recovery progress.

An important thing lto remember is that as you continue gaining weight, it does get easier. So dont think that the anxiety and pain you experience the first time you realise you have gained weight will persist through your entire weight restoration phase of recovery. I think a big part of the reason that it gets easier is because as your weight increases, your brain chemistry normalises too. This means that your thinking becomes more rational and some of your biggest fears like gaining will therefore lose some of their significsnce. 

I am a huge believer that the only way to overcome a fear is to face it, so by gaining weight and doing the exact thing you fear, it will slowly become less scary. No matter how hard it may seem you just need to remind yourself of how much you want recovery and the fact that you will not recover if you dont gain weight. The reason I was able to push through the fear and anxiety if weight gain is that I wanted recovery so badly, more than anything else in the world. 

My top 5 recovery tips

An important thing to remember about recovery is that it really is different for everyone. What works really well for some people in recovery, doesn't work at all for others and there is no right or wrong way to recover.

Despite this, I thought it may be helpful if I share the 5 main things I did in my recovery, which allowed ME to recover.

You may or may not find these things helpful yourself but if you havent already tried these things, maybe you should give them a go. I hope they help you as much as they helped me! 

1. Follow a Meal Plan

I simply couldnt have recovered without a meal plan. In my opinion you cant just eat intuitively in recovery and if you try, chances are your anorexia will make many of your food choices for you. A meal plan is an easy way to keep track of the energy your putting into your body and can therefore be incredibely helpful to help you to restore your weight. 

While it wasnt always easy, I followed my meal plan perfectly all the time. I found this very helpful as it meant that my anorexia wouldnt even try and convince me to eat any less (no matter how anxious the food made me). It was almost like my anorexia knew I had no choice but to follow my meal plan and so it stopped even trying to tempt me not to do so. 

Whilst designing my meal plan, I considered how mang calories I needed and therefore chose various foods that would allow me to reach my 'calorie goals' for each day. It is importang to note that following meal plans doesn't necessarily mean eating the same things everyday. My meal plans always had a lot of variety and I would change what I ate from day to day while making sure I was eating the right amount of calories. 

2. Restrict exercise

Even though you may really enjoy exercise and want to be fit, exercising while you are in recovery may not be the best thing for your health. Not only does it make gaining weight even more difficult, but your ED may just use it as an opportunity to compensate for any extra amounts of food you are eating.  

Cutting out exercise was incredibely difficult for me whilst I was trying to restore my weight but I can see now that it was the best thing for me to do. Not only did it enable me to gain weight more quickly but it also helped me to learn to control my anorexic thoughts in relation to exercise. 

Just remember that you wont need to restrict your exercise forever and doing so will most likely speed up your recovery for you. So by cutting out exercise, you will most likely be able to exercise again sooner, once you are recovered!

3. Monitor your weight

Some people dont like to see what they weigh and I can completely relate to that. I believe in order to recover however you really do need to keep track of your weight somehow. This may involve a blind weigh in or weighing yourself, whichever you are more comfortable with. 

From memory, I weighed myself 2-3 times a week so that I could make sure I was gaining the weight I needed to. I found this incredibely helpful as it stopped my mind from playing tricks on me. For example it stopped me worrying that I had gained enormous amounts of weight when I hadnt at all. 

Also, without weighing myself I would not have known when I needed to increase my intake. Whenever my weight stayed the same for a few consecutive weigh ins, I knew straight away that I needed to add something else to my meal plan. This ensured that I kept gaining the weight I needed to.

4. Talk to others in recovery

It doesnt matter if you are suffering or recovering from an eating disorder, either way it is can be  an incredibely lonely experience. I found that no matter how much the people in my life tried to understand what I was going through, they simply couldn't. 

I highly reccommend you reach out and talk to other people who are going through the same thing as you. Talking to other people who I could relate to and who understood what I was going through was extremely helpful and comforting for me. I felt as though I could tell these other sufferers things I wouldnt have told anyone else, which meant I could get things off my chest without the fear of being judged.

While it wasnt the case for me, some people may find that talking to other anorexics can trigger their eating disorder. If this is the case for you, then I definetely DONT reccommen talking to other sufferers. In this case I would suggest talking to a professional or someone else who you trust, so that you can get everything you need to off of your chest.

5. Believe you can do it
If you dont believe in your self, your anorexic voice will over power your own thoughts and you will give into your anorexias demands. I honestly think that in order to recover, you need to believe you can do it and you also need to believe it is possible.

For example when you feel overwhelmed about eating a certain food and your anorexia is trying its hardest to convince you not to eat it, if you dont believe in your self chances are you will give into your anorexias demands. But if you believe you are strong enough you will see that you can do it and therefore you will be able to eat the food that is scaring you so much.

Recovery isnt something that happens overnight, it is something that requires you to fight incredibely hard for a very long time. If you dont believe in yourself, I dont think you will be able to fight your anorexic thoughts whenever they may arise. So please, try your best to believe in yourself. Everyone is capable of recovering, no matter how sick you are. You may feel like its impossible but its not. I promise you can do it!

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?

Focusing less on my weight

I have decided that since weighing my self courses me more anxiety then anything else, I am going to set myself the challenge of not weighing myself for 1 month. I will see how I feel after the month and if I want to, I may continue this challenge even longer. The thing is, I really dont need to know my exact weight to know whether I am healthy or not and I feel ass though seeing my weight go up only makes me feel terrible, whether I can a tully see any difference in myself or my body or not.

Afetrall, why does the number on the scale mater so much anway or even my bmi? I felt as though weighing myself really was necesssary while I was stlll underweight as I needed to make sure I was making enough progress with my weight gain and my mind also was not healthy enough so that I could trust what I saw i the mirror. For example my anorexia would distort my reflection and make me believe l looked much bigger when in fact I had not gined any weight at all.

Now however I trust myself enough to keep a check on my weight by looking at my body and seeing how my clothes fit me. I dont need aa scale to tell me an exact number to know that I am healthy. I believe that this will also let me allow my weight to settle at my natural set point weight if I am yet to reach it as I wont feel anywhere near as anxious about gaining a little extra weight, If I am not weighing myself and therefore have no evidence it is happening.

If anyoe would like to join me on this month without the scale please feel free to do it. Even if you are weighed by a doctor or specilist regularly, you can still participate as you just need to ask if you can do a blind weigh in.

Weigh in wednesday and ANGI update

I have been a bit nervous leading up to today as it was my first weigh in since last Wednesday when I significantly increased my calorie intake. I have been nervous about weighing in today for a couple of reasons. Firstly, while I am determined to recover and want it more than anything else, I am still struggling with the idea  of gaining weight sometimes. Well I suppose it is my anorexia that is uncomfortable about it and I have been worried that I had gained a lot of weight and that I would freak out when I saw it. As silly as it sounds, I have also felt worried because I was scared I may have maintained my weight and not gained anything at all. If this was the case I truly would feel as though I had let myself as well as the people who read my blog down. So I have had really mixed feelings over the last week. Part of me wanted to gain weight as I know that it is essential for my recovery and the anorexic part of me didn't want me to gain weight.

I held my breath this morning as I stepped on the scales and was really happy when I saw that I had...... GAINED HALF A KILO. Not only was I over the moon that I had gained weight, I was also excited because for the first time in as long as I can remember, I was actually happy about gaining weight. This goes to show just how much my mind set really has changed in the past little while. I know that as my weight increases more and more, gaining weight will become much more difficult for me to deal with but all I can do is take each day as it comes. 

Since seeing I had gained weight this morning, I expected my anorexic thoughts to be really strong throughout the day and I expected to feel as though I should compensate in some way by restricting or exercising but I can honestly say that this has not been the case at all. I think that the healthy rational part of me was just so thrilled that I had gained weight and that I haven't let anybody down that not even my anorexia could make me feel bad about myself. This was one achievement that I was not going to let my anorexia stop me from feeling happy about. I honestly think that all the extra food I am eating is what is making the non-anorexic part of me so strong. While I haven't always believed it in the past, I really do think it is true what they say, that food is medicine for someone suffering from anorexia. Since I have gained half a kilo this week, I am not increasing my calories this week but if I find that my weight does not continue to increase at a similar rate over the next week, I will have to increase my intake again next wednesday.

I went to my GP today and got blood drawn for the ANGI study I am particpiating in. ANGI stands for Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative and is a study that I am really glad to be a part of. For anyone who hasn't heard of ANGI, you can read an earlier post I wrote about it here. You may even find that the country you live in is taking part in this study too and you may be able to participate as well if you have Anorexia. As I said in the last post I wrote about it, I am really passionate about the relationship between genetics and Anorexia as various family members of mine have suffered from it. While most studies that have been done in the past have investigated how environemntal factors influence wether or not someone develops anorexia, I honestly do believe that there are genetic factors that play a role in the development of the disease in individuals. Out of curiosity, do any of the people out there reading this with anorexia have loved ones that have also suffered from the same illness?

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? 

Waking up feeling positive and motivated

I have woken up this morning still feeling really confident about the changes I have decided to make which is excellent! I know that I will find it most challenging to stick to these changes once I start seeing a difference in my body and start gaining significant amounts of weight but I am determined to do it. I really do want to be strong and healthy and I know I will eventually be able to feel comfortable in my new body. I have decided that to avoid any unnecessary anxiety I am going to stop weighing myself most days and start weighing myself once weekly instead. I have decided that since I made my big change yesterday, Wednesday will be my new weigh in day. To be honest I would rather not weigh myself at all but this is the only way I can be sure I am gaining the required weight. I would be happy with gaining between half 0.5kg and 1kg per week but will try not to freak out if I happen to gain more then this initially. I know that my metabolism will adjust and the weight gain will eventually even out.

I really do feel as though My blogging has helped me so much in my recovery. Writing my own blog has given me a chance to express what I have had to bottle up inside for so many years and in a way it is helping me to let go of my anorexia. Reading other peoples blogs has also helped me enormously. I feel as though this little support network I am a part of is so amazing and I really appreaciate the fact that I always have someone willing and able to offer fantastic advice when I need it most.

Specifically, I want to thank bloggers like Izzy from http://www.lifewithoutanorexia.com and Olivia from http://freeofaneatingdisorder.blogspot.com.au as you have been my true inspiration for recovering. I haven't always been convinced that it was possible to fully recover from an eating disorder but thanks to you, I know that it is possible. You have given me hope and shown me what life can be like without anorexia or once you are free from your eating disorder. I also want to thank Emmy from http://ganache-elf.blogspot.com.au and Ange from http://nutellarella.blogspot.com.au. You guys are so brave and strong and give me the extra motivation I need to make progress and move forward in my recovery. You make me feel so much stronger as I no longer feel as though I am fighting anorexia alone. I know that I have you gorgeous girls beside me for understanding, encouragement and support.

I am looking forward to my day shopping with my mum today and I am going to make sure I buy myself something really nice as I really am proud of myself for all of the progress I have been able to make in the last few weeks. I would like to buy a nice outfit as I have hadly any nice items of clothing and would also love to pick out a new television series (do you have an suggestions?).


While recovering, don't forget to recognise when you have made progress and reward yourself.  Not only do you deserve it, but this will help you to start appreciating yourself and respecting yourself for who you are, which really is essential in order for you to recover from your eating disorder.

My weekly weigh in

It is exactly one week since I weighed myself and increased my calorie intake so I knew that I had to weigh myself again this morning to see if I had gained weight. I was feeling really hopeful as I have been reaching my new calorie goal everyday and have not been compensating in anyway.  I stepped on the scales and was very dissappointed to see I weighed exactely the same as I did one week ago. Firstly, I felt bad about myself, like I had let myself down. After thinking about it for a while I realised that I wasn't really being fair to myself.

The truth is, although I didn't gain weight this week, I still made progress in my recovery. I still managed to reach my new calorie goal every single day. I probably ate more calories in the past week than I have in any other week of my life and this is something I should be proud of. Sure, it would have been better if I had gained weight but atleast now I know that my body needs even more food to continue repairing. I am not going to let this dissapointment get me down, I am just going to keep fighting which is all I can do. I am quite used to eating big portions and I can currently eat all of my meals without feeling too full or uncomfortable afterwards. While it is nice to be able to eat all of my meals comfortably, I know that recovery wasn't ever supposed to be easy and if eating even bigger portions and making myself feel a little uncomfortable is what I need to do to gain the required weight, then that is what I will do.  

I know that I eat a lot of fruit throughout the day and while I enjoy it and fruit is really good for you, I am planning on substituting one of my serves of fruit with a higher calorie option. Usually for Morning Tea I have some fruit as well as some type of cake (muffin, lamington or slice). From now on I plan to to still have the cake but instead of having fruit with it I will have an Up and Go meal replacemet drink. I love fruit and enjoy eating lots of it each day but considering I generally have it as a part of my breakfast, lunch, afternoon Tea and dessert as well, I shouldn't miss it too much. I think 4 serves of fruit a day, is still plenty ;).

While it is good to eat fear foods in recovery and they can help you to gain weight, I also like to eat healthy foods with them. That is why I have generally always had a sweeter more 'unhealthy' option like cake or a chocolate bar along side a piece of fruit. It was my way of eating a large number of calories while still eating a relatively balanced diet. This is why I also eat lots of vegetables and lots of dairy products which are rich in calcium. I think It is important that I give my body all of the vitamins and minerals that it needs so that it can be repaired, as well as just lots of energy in the form of calories. 

I don't feel really extremely scared about once again increasing my calorie intake and I think that it is because after being underweight for so long, I am finally ready to recover. I know that it's not going to be easy and once I start getting closer to my goal weight I will feel more and more uncomfortable with my body but I am determined not to give up. I deserve to be free of Anorexia and enjoy my life. Up until now, I haven't felt as though I was strong enough to recover but now I do. Blogging has really helped me to find the extra strength inside of me that I needed to really kick anorexias arse, and that is exactely what I plan to do!