part 1 of this story was written in November 2016. It describes how my eating disorder began, and the beginnings of the thoughts I had when I “officially” started recovery in November 2016. I say officially, as this is when I had help from an eating disorder specialist. I had made attempts to fix this on my own many times over the years prior to this.
Whilst the story below provides a great snapshot into the mindset of someone desperate to escape binge eating and bulimia, and the unfortunate and misguided quest for slimness and improved self worth that took me there, it says little of life since then. Life since “recovery”.
To me recovery is a bit like happiness. It’s a journey not a destination. You’re never at that destination of “happy”, just as you’re not ever at the destination of “recovered” (I know some people say they fully are recovered which is fabulous and I’m not saying this isn’t true for them, or in fact possible for anyone, including myself). For me so far recovery has been an ongoing journey. I’ll be honest I hated reading statements like that before. I thought what’s the point if you’re not even ever fully recovered? But the point is – you get to actually live your life. The more recovered you feel, the more of your life you get to live.
Some things helped me to make leaps in progress faster than any others had in the past (unintentionally seem to have made a 12 step list). These were:
1. I examined how dieting had ever served me, and eventually agreed not to diet anymore. I accepted that you cannot recover from an eating disorder and diet. I began to eat 3 meals a day and 2 snacks, eating every 2-4 hours. This helped me to feel less intense binge urges, and generally be less obsessed by food.
2. I learnt that it wasn’t my fault. A chart I was given early on in recovery, similar to the below, was a huge help to me in understanding binge urges and how the starve and vomit cycle made them impossible to fight. I finally accepted that I wasn’t a bad person. I wasn’t weak.
3. I checked in with someone with my food diary each week for 6 months, and then monthly for 6 more after that. In my case this was a psychologist at the eating disorder service.
4. I realised how much of my self worth I had attached to my weight and shape, and how little it really mattered in relation to my value to the world.
5. I broke down the rules I had about food and over time tried new things and tried making no foods off limit.
6. I reignited what I knew and described in my last post when I commented on the hypocrisy of people praising weight loss yet telling an anorexic they mustn’t get carried away. I got angry about all of this again. I informed myself about diet culture.
I read “The Beauty Myth” by Naomi Wolf again. I knew that dieting and this sad pursuit to change myself did nothing positive for my life. I used this anger to fuel my desire to never diet again, and to use my brain for more useful things.
7. When I binged I tried hard to use mindfulness techniques as well as other self care activities to try and stop the compensatory behaviours.
8. I tried hard to return to regular eating after a binge. I examined the fear I felt from doing this and tried to accept that binges cause weight gain, and skipping meal causes binges, so skipping meals wouldn’t help take back any weight gain anyway it would just make things worse.
9. I examined why gaining weight would even be so bad. In the end as my binges decreased I lost a little weight, but it wasn’t the number on the scales that was important, it was how I felt and how I looked more alive.
10. I began to have a lot more brain space for other things.
11. I got more open about my struggles. I got closer to those around me.
12. I began to treat my body as a tool. I looked into body acceptance, and from there moved towards loving my body. Not every day and not all the time, but it was hard to finish the London Marathon and not be thankful to my little legs for getting me through a challenge that was nothing to do with appearance.
2 years after ending the eating disorder specialist appointments I opened my @bulimiafree, my Instagram account, having been inspired by a podcast I listened to between Sofie Hagen and Megan Crabbie (@bodiposipanda on Instagram).
6 months since I did that, and I’m still learning. I’m living and loving my life more than I ever did. I go out for meals, I don’t think about food and calories all the time, I’m loved and love. I have the best connections with people around me. I progressed and shon at work in a way I never did before, and have a new job where I might just do the same or more.
But the eating disorder hasn’t fully gone away. I can’t honestly say to anyone it’s all the past and I’m fully recovered. I find lots of things trigger the binge urges. But I learn more and more what they are. I still carry some guilt, shame and secrecy around eating, which in itself can fuel binges. If I’m honest, I still am afraid of the idea of gaining weight. But I don’t feel these thoughts consume me in the way that they previously did.
As life has its ups and downs, so has my recovery. When things are bad, I try to have this awareness that it has been and will be better. That all is not lost. The colourful squares of my Instagram page remind me of this. I tell myself to scroll through, to look at my honest thoughts detailed in pretty fonts and captions, documenting my successes as well as my struggles.
The one thing that I haven’t mentioned that was fundamental to my progress is self belief. If you want to recover, please try to find that glimmer of hope. The voice inside that knows you deserve to live a more full life, & that knows you’re worth more than what your eating disorder has reduced you to thinking you are. You are not your eating disorder. It’s just something you’ve had to deal with.
Feed your self belief a teeny little bit each day. Read content that enhances your self esteem. Document the recovery wins you achieve, they are amazing and if anyone knows how hard they are, it’s you.
Having a poor body image from a young age contributed to my eating disorders. Not in the stereotypical stare in the mirror “I must be skinny way” often depicted, but in the deep seated beliefs I formed which told me “this body you have will not give you a happy life as it is”. Growing up I never imagined the body I had could get me a partner, a job, or friends. I felt that it wasn’t good enough, but that if I changed it, I’d feel better, become less shy, more bubbly, & all of the other parts of life would become available to me. I would have given all my money to someone who could change my body. I would have & did take dangerous pills to quell my appetite. I would have slept through months of my life & lost them forever if it meant I could have woken up having not eaten in this time, and therefore shrunk myself.
Laila Bloggs 