I’ve had an eating disorder my entire life. Or at the very least… I’ve had disordered eating my entire life. From the day my mother put me on a diet at four weeks of age.
I’ve been actively seeking eating disorder recovery for over five years now. It’s very hard to pinpoint the day when I started to try and get better – I never chose to get worse – but a ballpark figure of seeking help is five years.
I’ve been recovering for six months now. Just over. And I guess the difference between actively seeking recovery and actually recovering is the associated behaviours. It may seem blindingly obvious, but changing eating disorder behaviours is really fucking hard. It’s taken me years of psychological therapies to put into practice the very things that made perfect, logical sense the entire time. But here I am – consistently putting stuff into practice for six months now. More if you count my time in the clinic where I was forced to be healthy.
SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM THEN?
The problem is weight gain. And it’s a very fine line to tread. The greatest fear for most eating disorder patients is gaining weight – and for many of us it becomes inevitable once we start recovering.
Actively trying to lose weight is the antithesis of eating disorder recovery. You cannot recover from disordered eating behaviours while trying to lose weight. You just cannot. It is impossible. So doing the “right” thing means letting go of weight-loss strategies – even the healthy ones. No intermittent fasting or low carb or avoiding all chocolate or converting to veganism. These things may be fine and dandy for mainstream dieters (or not fine and dandy – it’s not for me to judge), but for those of us with eating disorders, it’s a recipe for disaster.
THERE IS NO HEALTHY DIET IN RECOVERY
For me, this has meant weight gain. For a lot of people this means weight gain. As a woman in a western country, weight gain is really hard to take. We are a thin obsessed society and despite the best efforts of the body positivity movement, living in a larger body is difficult. But at the moment, my choices are to live in a larger body or to stay in eating disorder land. There is no in-between. Weight gain is quite often a natural consequence after years of binging, purging and restricting. The poor old body doesn’t know if it’s Arthur or Martha and it certainly can’t rely on a consistent source of nutrients – so it clings to those that it gets.
And the mental angst of denying desirable foods takes a long time to heal. Giving “permission” to eat is counter-intuitive for someone with an eating disorder. We never give ourselves permission to eat. This is why there is a strong emphasis on the fact that food is simply food – not good or bad. Not to be avoided. Just eat food. Whatever you feel like.
AND SO I’VE EATEN WHATEVER I FELT LIKE
Now I’ve gained weight and I need to be okay with that. I’ve bought new clothes so I’m not squishing my larger body into smaller body outfits – because that just makes me feel worse. A new frock in a new size makes me feel a million dollars.
BUT WHAT IF I WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT?
I’m currently trying to find the happy medium between accepting myself as is, right now, while still hoping for weight loss. And this has messed with my head. I know how to lose weight. We all know how. But changing that mindset is heading back down the rabbit hole and I don’t like being a rabbit.
I have been arbitrarily trying to find new ways of eating that will balance eating disorder recovery and weight loss. But I know these two things cannot coexist. It is particularly difficult over Christmas because overeating is such a common occurrence for all of us. I have eaten too much in the past week – although I have not eaten nearly as much as in past years. And I certainly haven’t compensated for my food intake by restricting, purging or trying to “walk off” the calories – which is an utterly pointless exercise.
As the dust settles from the explosion of Christmas overconsumption, I find myself needing reminders of how far I have come. Eating more food than normal has pressed my binging buttons and a little wants to become a lot. Then the thoughts of compensatory behaviours start flooding in and resisting the urge is not pleasant. I am finding I am not at peace with my body and my relationship with food, and this is something for me to work on.
When I started writing this post I was going to cleverly explain how I can combine weight loss with healthy eating while avoiding recovery relapse. But as I unpack my thoughts, I realise that’s impossible.
I AM WHAT I AM
Whether I’m living in a smaller body or a larger body is irrelevant. The only person who really judges it is me. Anyone else who judges my body is not worthy of my attention.
Eating disorder recovery requires constant reaffirmation of the reason behind recovery. I do not ever want to return to the mental anguish I was in. And if that means buying an entire new wardrobe of comfortable pants, then so be it.
If settling into new behaviours becomes normal and comfortable and my body eventually slims down naturally, then so be it. If it doesn’t, well that’s going to be okay. It takes a lot of psychological therapy and hard work to get comfortable with the skin I’m in, but I’ve been doing the work for five years now. I won’t play the weight game any more.
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