Have you experienced this during recovery?

Edsaysimfat

Not trying to trigger!

I am struggling HARDCORE with this whole recovery thing. I want to lose weight again, but in a healthy way. Feeling really alone, and all the down-talk to myself is taking a tole on my overall smidgen of confidence.

This is my blog
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/Edsaysimfat

It explains how I am feeling.



Support? Thoughts? Advice?

lithezebra

I didn't have exactly the same experience during recovery, but your writing about how you feel is so vivid that I feel like I have an idea of what it might be like. Part of recovery involves eating, and if you've been underweight, that is going to mean regaining to a healthy weight. I have had a hard time learning not to see myself as fat, or just large. When I'm stressed or unhappy I take it out on my body by the way that I see myself. When I'm happy, I like the way I look. You could consider going back on antidepressants. I've tried going off them, and realized that I do better when I'm on them.

Please keep singing. You deserve to control your own destiny.

AIZondy

I was EDNOS (restrictive, not enough to be officially underweight when I started therapy), and I experienced a few of the same things during my recovery.

I've only recently started wearing similar clothes to the ones I wore during my ED, because they were too triggering for me. Those tight shirts, whenever I put them on I started looking at myself and thinking 'oh god, look at all the weight you've gained. You're so fat. People's eyes should be spared from seeing that'... so I didn't put them on. I got new clothes that flattered my new body more, and started to think about how I looked with an ED as 'how I looked when I wasn't eating healthy-- better not look like that again'. So my advice would be to accept that you're going to be a different size-- buy new jeans and take pride if you can't fit into the old ones! (My newest love are dresses and skirts when the voice in my head tells me I'm fat. I wasn't into them when I had an ED so now I look at myself and I'm like 'wow! you look great in that!' and refuse to listen to anything else. I look pretty!) The style right now seems to be all about loose tops and stuff, so think of yourself as being on a mission to become more stylish

I do have a question about your weight loss goal though... on your blog you said you've gained 30 pounds since beginning your recovery, and I see on your profile your goal is to lose about 30 pounds... I know for me that the weight I achieved was only attainable through insufficient eating, so I wonder if maybe your goal should be somewhere in the middle of those... as lithezebra said, you regain to a healthy weight as part of recovery. From the pictures on your profile, you don't look fat at all to me, so I'd make sure that you really are losing weight for your health.

I can really only share my own experiences. The thought that keeps me eating my daily calorie goals on this website is the thought of my last relapse (at the beginning of this diet I had another short relapse :P) and how afterwards I could no longer lift my foil for a long period of time for fencing. I'm not very strong (muscularly) so the muscle loss of not eating for a few days was enough to make it hard to do something I love. And the thought of that keeps me eating.

My greatest, most cliche piece of advice would be LOVE YOURSELF!!!!!! Try to think of everything you love about your body. For me, my hips and butt make me look great in dresses and skirts. My tummy, well, it makes them not look crazy in comparison to the rest of me. I need my arms strong to fence and my legs strong to propel me forward in a lunge. And more than anything else, I need my smile to be happy so people want to be around me, so I try not to bash my body so I can be happy. Right now I'm trying to lose some pounds so I don't get overweight (I'm on the borderline right now) but I think I'm beautiful regardless.

And you, from what I can see on your photos, have a really cute smile. Not to mention you have that hair that looks great in curls, straight, or however you style it (I can pull off straight, but curls don't look good on me). Your eyes are really pretty. And none of those are affected by any sort of weight loss or gain. You're beautiful.

(As I said, I can only give what has helped me, so if any of this is triggering or doesn't seem to be working... don't listen to me! This is the first of any advice post I've ever written 0.0 )

Keep being healthy and loving yourself! You're a wonderful, strong person, and if you've shoved your ED to the other side of the room before, you can do it again!

Kissifusita

I totally understand and feel in the same boat!! Let me tell you my story and if you want we can encourage each other to healthily achieve our goals and be there for each other!!

I am hoping to find more friends here so we can understand, support and encourage each other!!


So here is my story:

I started with ED's at 13 but was diagnosed at 16 with ENOS then I started really restricting foods and calories and was diagnosed with anorexia at 18. Had a strong episode was hospitalized at 20, started to binge and purge but got tired of it and went back to restricting. Hospitalized again at 23, 25, and tried recovering but hated it :-P. Then I sort of got ahold of it without letting me eat me completely but still struggled a lot so at 28started a water fast that lasted a month and again was hospitalized. Then I started practicing an incredible Buddhist philosophy which really changed the way I saw things and kept healthy for 4 years meditating and happy. Then my dog died on November 16 and I have stopped practicing Buddhism and I again find myself in this stupid maze !!! I am 33 now and thought I would be over it by now but as a psychiatrist once told me : Anorexics are like AA's you never recover completely and it is always latent.
I am fat now so I really hope to loose my bodacity and get in shape !! I am even thinking of a liposuction since my mom wants it too and we wanted to do it together. I just hope she doesn't notice I am back on restricting.
My friend did noticed and gets on my case sometimes but I don't care I am just not well right now!! I will handle it though.

themo90

I've experienced it a couple of times and there are different stages of recovering. First it's the purely physical part - gaining a little weight, eating regularly, starting up your digestive system again... and the sad story is that's the "easy" part. It's hard as hell and I really thought I was going to die every day and every spoonfull I had to eat. Then it got easier. I started not to struggle so much. I could go back to school. Enjoy my friends. Enjoy food sometimes, as long as I didn't eat "too much". I thought I was doing great.

Then came the psychological part. I started gaining weight and thought I looked like a cow. When I first got treatment my weight was 43kg (roughly 86 pounds) and 175 cm (don't know what that's in feet), and my "ideal healthy weight" is 65 kg (130 pounds). My doctor said he wanted me to gain weigh so that i weighed 60kg (120 pounds), I could agree with 50, 55 at the most (100,110). And while I was recovering, I kept moving closer to thoose digits.

When I hit 50 I hit rock bottom again. After months of not visiting the hospital I had to go back a few times every week. I felt worse then ever before. Then it got better. And then I hit 55, and another rock bottom. And it got better - for maybe 2 or 3 years. I felt great. Finnished college. Got engaged. Moved in together - and started to gain weight. Suddenly I had boobs (before I was flat like a flap jack/european pancake). And suddenly the scale said 65kg. Again, the voices started to come and I had to fight that battle all over again.

But it get's a little, little, little easier every time I have to do it - and slowly I've started to accept that I'm an Eating Anorectic. It's just like alcoholism - you never get "out" of the illness, you just get "eating" and it's a hard truth. Perhaps all this made you feel sad - but I promise you IT DOES GET BETTER if you keep figthing. And try your very best to enjoy food and limit your workout - what you feel is "fat" is probably thinner than normal. It will be hard. After 13 years of figthing I still don't see my body as others do - but you learn to love yourself anyway, and you learn to tell thoose voices that they can shut the **** up because God loves you so much that he wants a little more of you to love!

Good luck, keep figthing and know that we're there for you! And I'm really looking forward to hear you on the radio here in Sweden sometime in the future