I think most of us are ED recovery patients....
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jyska
Posts: 728 Member
Ok, so I know that I personally have never been a typical anorexic, but over time I have discovered there are so many forms of eating disorders out there. I now personally believe that those of us who are having the worst trouble wrapping our minds around the concepts of Eating More and are seeing the slowest, most difficult progress are really ED recovery patients. (personal belief...not scientific fact and I know some on here are not as far gone as some of us...you caught on to the truth in time!) I have come to terms with the fact that I have dealt with an ED now for over 20 years. Mine was a simple result of my personality - I am goal oriented, very determined and willing to do anything to lose weight and keep it off. 20 years later I find myself netting 1000 cals/day or less (often actually in the negative!) Although I do not look anorexic because of my binges up to 1000 cals/day on some days made me gain weight (hah...a binge...what a joke) I was pretty darn close to being one.
I came across this blog this morning and discovered that many of the recovery symptoms are just like what we experience in this group. Feel free to read it yourself....it may give you a little encouragement that its all gonna turn out ok in the end.
I tend to soak up others stories like a sponge so that I can get past the freak outs and keep the patience so everything I read that helps with that is like gold to me. :flowerforyou:
Here's the link: http://www.burpandslurp.com/2011/04/15/weekend-ed-series-fear-about-weight-gain-in-recovery/
Here's the story:
There are several things that nobody warned me about eating disorders and recovery. It’s about weight.
Of course, weight is always a prominent issue in eating disorders and recovery. Your weight fluctuates, dips, or increases according to what kind of disordered eating practices you engaged in, and the result of recovery is a restoration to a healthy weight. You gain, or you lose, and then you lose or you gain. Simple, right?
Nope. Weight is so much more complex and metaphorical than numbers. I don’t even need to tell you that. I’m sure most of us have struggled mentally or physically (or both) with weight before. Whether we think we weigh too much or too little, the number of the scale affects our emotions and psyche. But the distinction between a disordered mind and a healthy mind shows through our consequent actions. Some people shrug it off and blame it on the kids. Others take note to eat a little different, move a little more.
And then there are those whose mood crashes down drastically. Fear and anxiety swoop in. These are the people who start cutting back on all carbs and fats, adding a couple hours more on the elliptical machine, feeling the need to recount and recount calories, and then back out of all social plans so she or he can avoid temptations. They will not rest (literally) until they reach their weight goal, and even when they finally do, they still feel the need to continue on their restrictive, obsessive lifestyle because that constant feelings of fear and anxieties just never goes away.
An eating disorder is all about fear and anxiety. It’s a continuous cycle of fear leading to panicked, irrational behaviors, followed by a false sense of thrill when they succeed, quickly drowned out by a flood of fresh fear that was never resolved in healthy ways. Thus they continue on with their self-destructive ways, just to taste that deluded, short-lived thrill of “success” and “accomplishment” and “purpose” in their lives once more.
That’s what recovery is all about. Recovery is about learning to deal with those irrational, pervading fears, those negative feelings directed at self. For me, among many other things,that involved weight gain. Lots and lots of weight. About 50 lbs, to be exact.
Now tell me. How many people in this world would be happy to gain 50 lbs? No one. Unless you are a seriously emaciated war refugee. But ah ha, I wasn’t a war refugee. I always had plenty to eat. I just refused to eat them, because I was that terrified of weight gain.
This is why so many eating disorder individuals, especially Anorexics, dilly dally on recovery. This is why they pick at certain foods, feel the urge to exercise, refuse to eat at restaurants. It really boils down to weight. Yes, they can give you some elaborate, intelligent-sounding explanation on why they avoid certain foods, but that’s—pardon my French—bull ****. It’s all about the weight.
The complicated thing was that as much as I feared weight, I also very much envied those with normal-sized bodies. I envied what they could do, I admired how they would eat. But I still could not shake off that pervasive fear that was programmed into my mindset: the fear of weight gain.
It was a question my exasperated parents asked me often: “You obviously want to gain weight. So why are you still so afraid?”
I don’t have a definite answer. But what I knew was that as I struggled to deal with the additional poundage that piled on day after day, the fear just never went away. Instead, fresh fears about the unknown (or in my mind, “the impending doom”) arose. What if the weight gain never stopped? What if all the weight was fat and no muscle? What if all the weight piled into my tummy?
And then I became obsessed with “pretty” weight gain. I wanted weight on my cheeks, my butt, my chest, a little on my arms, a little on my thighs, a little around my ribs. But I wanted to keep my concave belly. And I didn’t want too much weight on my thighs and upper arms. In other words, I still wanted to look like freaking Barbie.
But that’s not what happens in recovery. I don’t mean to scare anyone in recovery right now. But weight gain in recovery is not pretty (but don’t worry, it’s only temporary).
Unfortunately, no one warned me about the…un-pretty effects of weight gain in recovery. Here’s what usually happens:
3,500 calories does NOT equal a pound in the early stages of recovery.At least, not according to my calculations. Depending on what stage you are in, the first stage of pounds just piles on really fast.
Edema sets in. That’s when some parts of your body (ankles for me) swells up like a sausage. When you poke at the flesh, you make indents, like clay. Yeah, muy attractive.
Bloating and gas. Seriously, stay away from us. We unleash stink bombs as lethal as the guerilla force.
Night sweats. For a month or so, I woke up every morning in clothes and sheets drenched in sweat. You could squeeze sweat out of the sheets. But just as quickly, I would cool down rapidly and start shivering again.
Disproportionate gain. You know your “problem spots”? Some people gain weight easily in the stomach, others thighs and hips. That’s where the weight might settle first. For me, it was the stomach. And it doesn’t matter WHAT you eat. You can eat 40 lbs of spinach vs. 5 Big Macs, you will still see disproportionate weight gain.
So all of these things happened to me. And it was super hard for me to handle all this new changes to my body, because I really did not know what was happening.
Here’s the deal though:
After the first initial pounds and consistent eating, your metabolism speeds up again (re: night sweats) and soon it gets harder and harder to gain weight.
Edema goes away when again, you consistently eat enough balanced meals.
Ditto with bloating and gas. Weight gain means stronger stomach, stronger stomach means better digestion.
Night sweats are a temporary thing. It only lasted about a month for me. And it’s actually a really good sign that your body is kicking back into cycle.
Now. The last part. The disproportionate gain. That was the hardest part for me, and it became what led to my downfall.
While a lot of my other symptoms went away after a while and weren’t too alarming to me (just my parents), the disproportionate weight gain slipped up last and stayed the longest. It freaked me out, because one of the several reasons I started dieting was my dissatisfaction with the baby pooch that all teenager girls have. I never thought I was fat, but I always thought I needed to flatten my stomach a bit.
Thus all throughout my spiral down into anorexia, I was the most obsessed with my belly. Whenever I felt fat, it was directed at my belly. Whenever I looked into the mirror, my eyes would check out my belly first to make sure it maintained its flatness.
So to see and feel the concrete weight pile on my stomach, while my arms and legs still looked too skinny, freaked me out. It was my worst nightmare coming true. I was going to look like a skeleton with a blown-out stomach forever.
At the time, I still had about 10 lbs to gain. But I couldn’t handle that anymore. How can I gain 10 freaking more pounds, when I already have a ****ing pot belly?!
Every time I looked in the mirror, I wanted to scream. Sometimes I would cry and wail, unable to control the burst of negative, bitter emotions. I scratched and clawed into my flesh in frustration and anxiety and panic and rage. I still have the marks.
I shared my freak-outs to my parents a few times, but they didn’t know how to calm my fears. Instead they lectured me and told me I wasn’t eating right (this was during my raw food/ low-carb kick). Their answer was in short, for me to “eat more rice.”
That just provoked me even more, because I didn’t trust them anymore. After all, they were the ones who told me repeatedly that I will not gain weight unevenly. I felt like they were liars who just wanted me to be fat.
What I didn’t know though, was that it is NORMAL to have disproportionate weight gain. Most recoverers gain unevenly, but after months of consistent adequate eating and slowly gaining back to a healthy weight, the “excess” weight redistributes evenly throughout the body.
But I didn’t know that. Thus I couldn’t fathom eating any more “disgusting carbs” as they wanted me to, because I was sure they would just go straight to my belly again. In fact, I couldn’t imagine eating anything anymore. I got even more stringent with my diets and my raw food/health food craze.That, and a couple things more that happened afterward, tugged me back into a horrible relapse.
I wonder, if it would have made any difference if I knew about the symptoms of recovery weight gain. In all honesty, I don’t think it would have made much of a difference. The second time I found myself going through recovery again, I was more knowledgeable about these facts, and yet I was still dilly dallying in weight gain.
You see, the fear of weight gain is incredibly strong. And my joke attempt at recovery never allowed myself to challenge that fear. It just blindly stuffed it down, until at the tiniest waver, all the oppressed fear and anxieties leapt out, as powerful as ever.
I came across this blog this morning and discovered that many of the recovery symptoms are just like what we experience in this group. Feel free to read it yourself....it may give you a little encouragement that its all gonna turn out ok in the end.
I tend to soak up others stories like a sponge so that I can get past the freak outs and keep the patience so everything I read that helps with that is like gold to me. :flowerforyou:Here's the link: http://www.burpandslurp.com/2011/04/15/weekend-ed-series-fear-about-weight-gain-in-recovery/
Here's the story:
There are several things that nobody warned me about eating disorders and recovery. It’s about weight.
Of course, weight is always a prominent issue in eating disorders and recovery. Your weight fluctuates, dips, or increases according to what kind of disordered eating practices you engaged in, and the result of recovery is a restoration to a healthy weight. You gain, or you lose, and then you lose or you gain. Simple, right?
Nope. Weight is so much more complex and metaphorical than numbers. I don’t even need to tell you that. I’m sure most of us have struggled mentally or physically (or both) with weight before. Whether we think we weigh too much or too little, the number of the scale affects our emotions and psyche. But the distinction between a disordered mind and a healthy mind shows through our consequent actions. Some people shrug it off and blame it on the kids. Others take note to eat a little different, move a little more.
And then there are those whose mood crashes down drastically. Fear and anxiety swoop in. These are the people who start cutting back on all carbs and fats, adding a couple hours more on the elliptical machine, feeling the need to recount and recount calories, and then back out of all social plans so she or he can avoid temptations. They will not rest (literally) until they reach their weight goal, and even when they finally do, they still feel the need to continue on their restrictive, obsessive lifestyle because that constant feelings of fear and anxieties just never goes away.
An eating disorder is all about fear and anxiety. It’s a continuous cycle of fear leading to panicked, irrational behaviors, followed by a false sense of thrill when they succeed, quickly drowned out by a flood of fresh fear that was never resolved in healthy ways. Thus they continue on with their self-destructive ways, just to taste that deluded, short-lived thrill of “success” and “accomplishment” and “purpose” in their lives once more.
That’s what recovery is all about. Recovery is about learning to deal with those irrational, pervading fears, those negative feelings directed at self. For me, among many other things,that involved weight gain. Lots and lots of weight. About 50 lbs, to be exact.
Now tell me. How many people in this world would be happy to gain 50 lbs? No one. Unless you are a seriously emaciated war refugee. But ah ha, I wasn’t a war refugee. I always had plenty to eat. I just refused to eat them, because I was that terrified of weight gain.
This is why so many eating disorder individuals, especially Anorexics, dilly dally on recovery. This is why they pick at certain foods, feel the urge to exercise, refuse to eat at restaurants. It really boils down to weight. Yes, they can give you some elaborate, intelligent-sounding explanation on why they avoid certain foods, but that’s—pardon my French—bull ****. It’s all about the weight.
The complicated thing was that as much as I feared weight, I also very much envied those with normal-sized bodies. I envied what they could do, I admired how they would eat. But I still could not shake off that pervasive fear that was programmed into my mindset: the fear of weight gain.
It was a question my exasperated parents asked me often: “You obviously want to gain weight. So why are you still so afraid?”
I don’t have a definite answer. But what I knew was that as I struggled to deal with the additional poundage that piled on day after day, the fear just never went away. Instead, fresh fears about the unknown (or in my mind, “the impending doom”) arose. What if the weight gain never stopped? What if all the weight was fat and no muscle? What if all the weight piled into my tummy?
And then I became obsessed with “pretty” weight gain. I wanted weight on my cheeks, my butt, my chest, a little on my arms, a little on my thighs, a little around my ribs. But I wanted to keep my concave belly. And I didn’t want too much weight on my thighs and upper arms. In other words, I still wanted to look like freaking Barbie.
But that’s not what happens in recovery. I don’t mean to scare anyone in recovery right now. But weight gain in recovery is not pretty (but don’t worry, it’s only temporary).
Unfortunately, no one warned me about the…un-pretty effects of weight gain in recovery. Here’s what usually happens:
3,500 calories does NOT equal a pound in the early stages of recovery.At least, not according to my calculations. Depending on what stage you are in, the first stage of pounds just piles on really fast.
Edema sets in. That’s when some parts of your body (ankles for me) swells up like a sausage. When you poke at the flesh, you make indents, like clay. Yeah, muy attractive.
Bloating and gas. Seriously, stay away from us. We unleash stink bombs as lethal as the guerilla force.
Night sweats. For a month or so, I woke up every morning in clothes and sheets drenched in sweat. You could squeeze sweat out of the sheets. But just as quickly, I would cool down rapidly and start shivering again.
Disproportionate gain. You know your “problem spots”? Some people gain weight easily in the stomach, others thighs and hips. That’s where the weight might settle first. For me, it was the stomach. And it doesn’t matter WHAT you eat. You can eat 40 lbs of spinach vs. 5 Big Macs, you will still see disproportionate weight gain.
So all of these things happened to me. And it was super hard for me to handle all this new changes to my body, because I really did not know what was happening.
Here’s the deal though:
After the first initial pounds and consistent eating, your metabolism speeds up again (re: night sweats) and soon it gets harder and harder to gain weight.
Edema goes away when again, you consistently eat enough balanced meals.
Ditto with bloating and gas. Weight gain means stronger stomach, stronger stomach means better digestion.
Night sweats are a temporary thing. It only lasted about a month for me. And it’s actually a really good sign that your body is kicking back into cycle.
Now. The last part. The disproportionate gain. That was the hardest part for me, and it became what led to my downfall.
While a lot of my other symptoms went away after a while and weren’t too alarming to me (just my parents), the disproportionate weight gain slipped up last and stayed the longest. It freaked me out, because one of the several reasons I started dieting was my dissatisfaction with the baby pooch that all teenager girls have. I never thought I was fat, but I always thought I needed to flatten my stomach a bit.
Thus all throughout my spiral down into anorexia, I was the most obsessed with my belly. Whenever I felt fat, it was directed at my belly. Whenever I looked into the mirror, my eyes would check out my belly first to make sure it maintained its flatness.
So to see and feel the concrete weight pile on my stomach, while my arms and legs still looked too skinny, freaked me out. It was my worst nightmare coming true. I was going to look like a skeleton with a blown-out stomach forever.
At the time, I still had about 10 lbs to gain. But I couldn’t handle that anymore. How can I gain 10 freaking more pounds, when I already have a ****ing pot belly?!
Every time I looked in the mirror, I wanted to scream. Sometimes I would cry and wail, unable to control the burst of negative, bitter emotions. I scratched and clawed into my flesh in frustration and anxiety and panic and rage. I still have the marks.
I shared my freak-outs to my parents a few times, but they didn’t know how to calm my fears. Instead they lectured me and told me I wasn’t eating right (this was during my raw food/ low-carb kick). Their answer was in short, for me to “eat more rice.”
That just provoked me even more, because I didn’t trust them anymore. After all, they were the ones who told me repeatedly that I will not gain weight unevenly. I felt like they were liars who just wanted me to be fat.
What I didn’t know though, was that it is NORMAL to have disproportionate weight gain. Most recoverers gain unevenly, but after months of consistent adequate eating and slowly gaining back to a healthy weight, the “excess” weight redistributes evenly throughout the body.
But I didn’t know that. Thus I couldn’t fathom eating any more “disgusting carbs” as they wanted me to, because I was sure they would just go straight to my belly again. In fact, I couldn’t imagine eating anything anymore. I got even more stringent with my diets and my raw food/health food craze.That, and a couple things more that happened afterward, tugged me back into a horrible relapse.
I wonder, if it would have made any difference if I knew about the symptoms of recovery weight gain. In all honesty, I don’t think it would have made much of a difference. The second time I found myself going through recovery again, I was more knowledgeable about these facts, and yet I was still dilly dallying in weight gain.
You see, the fear of weight gain is incredibly strong. And my joke attempt at recovery never allowed myself to challenge that fear. It just blindly stuffed it down, until at the tiniest waver, all the oppressed fear and anxieties leapt out, as powerful as ever.
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Replies
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I agree. Have thought this so many times of myself. I can binge alot more than 1000 cals at a time though. I believe thats what's causing my gain this month actually, not so much the EM2WL. I have been 2nd guessing, etc...and saying "why bother with all this" and then cookies, ice cream, here I come. I had finally started liked what i saw in the mirror then when I joined this group of course I started the gain but then got so depressed even though I knew it was going to happen and then now I'm up 10+ and so many inches (not because of this group but because of my binging). I have to pray about it everyday and every craving to just get passed all this each day. The last 2 days have been "better:" BUT yes 20 years here as well. About 16 years ago I was at my worst. I see pictures of myself graduating college and I look awful. Pale and awful. I remember what I was doing. I would work out for an hour then think oh I should go ride my bike for another hour all along ONLY EATING VEGETABLES. NOT kidding. So by nighttime (I was an evening drive up teller) I would binge on their donuts they left in the breakroom. It was horrible. I gained like crazy. I was at my best 7-8 years ago and so wish I could go back to that time (before pregnant w/ 3rd child) because I was at peace with myself. BECAUSE I was at peace with myself I was at my lowest weight (besides high school 100) 109!!!. I didnt stress, I only did a little bit pilates, ate what I wanted (had blizzrds for lunch because I could) and only when I was hungry. Didnt mean to but my body just let me know when I needed to eat and I never deprived myself. I pray everyday I can get back to that mentality. So many ups and downs in this life. It is way too short.0
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Just read the whole story and made me tear up. It is so the story of my life. Thankyou for posting.0
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it's mentally fatiguing battling through our fears of 'THE GAIN". No wonder some fall back into old habits...it's easier, it rewarded in the past, it's applauded and encouraged. Eating More to lose weight is just down-right against the grain and that makes us weary.
Eating at a VLCD for years may not be considered an ED by society, but I firmly believe that for those who have managed to do it for more than a few months it actually is. It becomes completely entrenched into who you are, what you do, and how you live. And of course, it seems to follow the pattern that the longer you've been doing it, the worse the disorder and the longer/harder the recovery; the more mental trauma experienced and similar the symptoms are to the blog.
Keep your chin up and put as much determination and effort into making this your new lifestyle, bringing order out of disorder, as you did into your former habits. I'm right there with you, and I refuse to lose this battle.0 -
Thank you for posting... it is very moving. I could see myself in the story as well.
It is amazing how society not only doesn't recognize this (low calorie count) as an eating disorder, but it is encouraged. I've heard many people get recommended to eat at such a small amount. The dancers in my university are being driven towards the more commonly recognized anorexia or bulimia because the nutritionist suggest they eat at the bare minimum. They say that it isn't a disorder because they are still "eating" and not "purging". But it is a push in the right direction.
Sad really...0 -
Oh wow. Thankyou so much for posting. I literally could have written that, right down to the belly obsession.0
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Thank you so much for sharing your story-very moving0
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Thanks for sharing! So cool that so many are finding health and healing through this group.0
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Thank you so much for sharing your story-very moving
I do want to clarify that the blog is NOT my story...it's someone elses. I do not have anorexia- I just ate VERY little 3/4 of the last 20 years and exercised a lot but because I still had some days where my cals were a little higher I never turned into a skeleton...I instead gained weight and couldn't get it back off because my body hung on to it for all it's worth in the lean times and piled it on whenever I did eat a little more.
I was only referencing it to show how similar the symptoms are for those learning to eat more after a VLCD (many of us actually overweight) as they are for an anorexic who is recovering.
It's all about the fear, the anxiety of weight gain whether you need to lose OR gain weight. That's where the equation comes in...and that's why I feel so strongly that just because we may not be anorexic, eating at a VLCD for years is in my mind just as much an ED as those with bulemia, anorexia, or any other type of ED that's out there. The recovery symptoms are similar.0
