WHAT DOES RECOVERY EVEN MEAN?
As I’ve made abundantly clear since the inception of this little blog, I’ve had an eating disorder (ED) my entire five+ decades. From the age of three weeks, I was put on a diet and not much improved from there. I did, in fact, write a whole book about it if you’d like the nitty-gritty details. But what I didn’t include in the book, because I wasn’t a hundred per cent there at the time, was the nitty-gritty of recovery.
I’ve had strong recovery for four years
I never consider myself fully “recovered”. With such a long history, there’s always the chance of relapse. But I’m in recovery and despite ebbs and flows, I’ve had four strong years. But what does that even mean? Or look like?
When someone’s recovering from drugs or alcohol, recovery is more obvious – you just stop doing the thing. If you’re not taking drugs or drinking alcohol you’re in recovery. And while addictive patterns can transfer to other behaviours, which can make the recovery waters look a little muddy, for the most part an alcoholic will count the days, months and years of recovery from the day they last had a drink.
This isn’t possible in eating disorder recovery
Unlike substance abuse, we have to keep taking the very substance that caused the problem in the first place. Depending on which of the nine different eating disorders is the primary issue, we may have to eat more or less food, more or less frequently, or different food altogether. But as food is an essential survival tool, at the end of the day, we have to eat.
I danced with the three most common eating disorders – bulimia on and off from the age of about 22, binge eating disorder my entire life, and a few short periods of anorexia during parts of my fifties.
My recovery journey began in earnest in 2015
Up until then I had no idea what I was doing and really no real motivation to make change. I wanted to change my body, but not my psychology or behaviours.
While my particular struggle with ED has been very much based on weight and appearance, that isn’t always the case. People struggle for a lot of reasons and sometimes that reason has nothing to do with weight. It might be fear of food, addiction to food, a sense of wanting to gain control in a life that feels out of control, or generational trauma. Eating disorders are extremely complex and have the highest mortality rate of all mental health conditions. But for me personally, the struggle was always weight and appearance.
It took a complete shattering for me to reach the recovery road
In 2015 my mental health breakdown began. That’s a long and complicated story, but rest assured the eating disorder is closely tied to everything that happened. There was a lot of mental health stuff to untangle. Eating disorders have strong comorbidities with depression, anxiety and even self-harm. Each aspect of my failing mental health needed to be addressed. In 2016, I had my first psychiatric inpatient stay. I was instructed that if I didn’t start eating, I’d be sent against my will to the public hospital and put into a strict eating regime. So I succumbed and started eating again. Reluctantly.
In 2018, I voluntarily sent myself for a six-week stay at an ED-specific psychiatric ward. It was very difficult but I learned a lot. Primarily, the necessity to eat six times a day and to never compensate for eating behaviours. No matter what slip-ups I may or may not have, the next meal was still mandatory. No making up for anything by restricting, purging, exercising or anything else. What’s done is done and recovery stays in place regardless. I was told never to go hungry. Which was the direct opposite of how I treated my body – trying to see how long I could force myself to go without food. Hours? Days? Weeks? Somehow, the longer I could go without, the more successful I felt.
But every period of restriction is followed by a binge
History showed that to me clearly. So I walked out of the programme in 2018 determined to eat every three hours – a regimented eating plan. Because if there’s one thing I know for sure, an eating-disordered person cannot be trusted with hunger signals. After screwing with our bodies for so long, in the initial stages of recovery we need external reminders for how to eat. I had to trust the professionals who’d spent years studying and working with eating disorders and knew what was required. So I did – for a period of time I ate six meals a day and felt better for it.
I had recovery at this point, but it wasn’t strong and it wasn’t consistent. I would waiver, relapse and then get back on the wagon. Acceptance of my body was also still a struggle.
In 2020, for reasons unrelated to ED, I broke through all my rock bottoms and found a hellish low I didn’t even know existed. I overdosed. I was diagnosed with Bipolar II Disorder. And I was once again in a psychiatric institution. This time for nine weeks. But the first five weeks were to stabilise my mental health and sleep, while the last four weeks were a Binge Eating Disorder programme.
And that’s where my recovery began in earnest
In all honesty, I didn’t learn a lot of new things in the programme, but it reinforced everything I’d learned over the past five years. In combination with my new mood-stabilising medications and treatment for chronic insomnia, I began recovery. When I walked out of that hospital in May 2020 I felt like I was on the recovery road. Which looked like:
- Eating something every three hours
- Never, ever compensating for what/where/when/how/why I’ve eaten
- Eliminating body checking behaviours
- Learning acceptance of the body I was standing in
- Accepting bodies ebb and flow over the years and that’s no reflection on who I am as a person
- The concepts of intuitive eating, gentle nutrition and joyful movement
- Confronting fear foods
- Learning to ride emotional waves
- Awareness of hunger and fullness signals when they started to return
- Finding value in myself outside of appearance
- Accepting that recovery is possible – even when you’re 54 years old
- Avoiding numbers – weights on scales, sizes on dresses, calories on packaging
My journey since May 2020 hasn’t been flawless
But I still consider myself to have strong recovery. Perfection is a standard that’s been thrown in my face most of my life and something I learned in recovery is that an impossible standard isn’t what we’re aiming for here. It isn’t about whether I’ve made a mistake, it’s about how I respond to that mistake. So these days I wobble, but I never spiral.
Occasionally I get the urge to stand on the scales. This isn’t ideal, as regardless of the number, behaviours can be triggered. But every now and then curiosity gets the better of me and I find a set and stand on them (I don’t own any scales of justice myself). Usually the number is just a curiosity and doesn’t impact how I behave. But occasionally I see a number that triggers an old response and I have a few days of wobbly behaviour. But it isn’t long until my tried and tested recovery boots go back on.
Not that long ago I was feeling sad and ended up skipping breakfast and lunch before my head kicked into gear and said don’t be ridiculous, and I ate dinner. These kinds of episodes wax and wane throughout my years. I don’t flawlessly eat every three hours without exception.
But always I pull my recovery boots on quickly
I think this is why I consider myself to have strong recovery. It’s not because I never make a mistake. The two little angels who rest on my shoulders often argue but always eventually agree that recovery comes first. I haven’t had a full relapse since before my 2020 hospital admission.
Currently, I’m absolutely consumed with grief. It sits heavily in my belly day and night. For the first three weeks, I was physically ill and quite simply couldn’t eat. Despite forcing food in as much as I could, I lost a lot of weight very quickly. For the first time in my life, I was afraid. I didn’t want rapid weight loss. I felt no sense of joy or accomplishment at having loose pants. Since the shock subsided, my appetite has returned, and due to the restriction of those few weeks, I’m more hungry than normal. I follow the principles of intuitive eating, listening to the hunger cues my body has relearned. So right now, I’m eating more than normal. I’m confident everything will even out in time – both my weight and my hunger.
For me recovery looks like accepting my body as it is right now
Following hunger cues, moving regularly but not obsessively and certainly not for weight loss, forgiving the wobbles before they turn into relapses, sitting with emotions and sometimes eating emotionally because that’s a human experience. And acceptance is not the same as loving my body. I simply have to acknowledge this is the body I have for today and not doing something stupid in an attempt to make a rapid change.
Accepting my body has been the hardest part of my journey but even before I lost weight I had come to find a radical acceptance of where I was at. I would choose a larger size body over an eating disorder every single day of the week. I know that without a shred of doubt. But I also made the decision to have weight loss surgery to be able to climb mountains more easily. Which I can now do. I chose surgery over a return to an eating disorder. But I also chose surgery over being in a larger body. A decision not everyone would make and one I thought long and hard about. The primary motivation couldn’t be related to appearance. And it wasn’t.
Recovery looks remarkably like my gastric bypass journey
Which is a controversial thing to say. But because of the bypass I eat very small amounts of food a lot more frequently – long gone are the days where I’d aim for three meals with nothing in between. And skipping meals where I could. Now I eat every 2-3 hours. Or any time I’m hungry.
I also have the strongest hunger signals I’ve ever had in my life – I get hungry, I eat, I get full, I stop. And a few hours later I do the same thing. I am conscious about nutrition but not obsessed with it. My diet has a wide variety of foods for both nutrition and enjoyment purposes. I try and prioritise protein because I don’t want to lose muscle mass, but if there’s one sure thing I learned in recovery it’s that no food is off limits. If I feel like cake, eat cake. Once my psychology became accustomed to the sense that cake was okay, I didn’t crave it anymore. I don’t really have fear foods anymore.
These days I eat for the same reasons non-eating-disordered folk eat – hunger, nutrition, pleasure, socialising and occasionally emotional soothing. Although for the most part I try to work my way through emotions by simply feeling them and writing them out. But it’s a common thing to feel like a chocolate bar after a very hard day. And it’s not the end of the world. So sometimes I do that too.
I have more food freedom now than I’ve had my entire life
My head is cleared of obsessive thoughts. I don’t map out what, when, where, how, why I’m going to eat all day long. I can walk past food and not even notice it. Or spy something delicious and eat it just because it’s pleasurable. And I don’t have to eat the whole lot.
Recovery is not a linear progression. And it’s not a destination. It’s a way of responding to food and body. It’s forgiveness for the imperfections and a willingness to say, that was a shitty way to respond to that situation. Let’s do better at dinner time. And then do better. It’s a constantly evolving way of living. And it’s one of the most freeing things I’ve ever experienced. Not flawless, because I’m not a robot. I can’t control my thoughts but I can direct them. And I can choose my actions and reactions. Even if the most recent reaction was not perfect. For me, recovery includes wobbles, but not spirals. And for me, that is enough. I feel strong and well.
