Letter to Younger Self/ Person. (The Costs of Conforming to Societies’ “Ideal Body”)

Dear…

I’m so sorry you’re struggling with body image right now.

Sometimes being human & having a body can suck.

And, I really wanted to tell you a few things I wish I knew when I first struggled with body image.

1. It’s okay. There’s nothing you need to do/ or can do to “fix” your body. Your body is NOT the problem.

a) it’s how you are made to feel about your body that is the problem.

b) No matter what you do to “fix” or change your body you won’t feel better because your body is not the issue.

i) Think of a day where you had the best day at school perhaps. You probably felt really good in yourself that day & if you looked in the mirror that day you would have “liked what you saw”.

ii) Now, think of a really bad day. Maybe you fell out with your friends. Looking in that same mirror, you didn’t feel so good. NOTHING, in your body changed between the two reflections. But how YOU FELT ABOUT YOURSELF was different. That’s basically body image. It has nothing to do with your body. & so my darling changing your body is never the answer.

AND what’s more it comes at so, so many costs. Costs my darling, I wish more than anything to spare you from.

Here are some of the costs associated with trying to look like the “associated ideal appearance”

1. It’s an illusion. The biggest lie you have even been sold.

a) Even if it is possible to reach, it NEVER lasts because of nature. We age, we get sick, we go through changes in lifecycles (puberty, pregnancy, menopause so many more). Bodies are supposed to change, age & not stay the same.

BUT,

i) even if it is possible, getting there can be a dangerous pursuit.

ii) it can lead you down a path of yo-yo dieting, disordered eating at best & at worst my path a miserable life of an eating disorder. Or dangerous disfiguring surgeries.

iii) Your body image gets worse and worse because there’s “more” to “fix”, “more” to conform to, it’s never enough. Your relationship with yourself, your body and food gets completely fractured.

The psychological costs are astronomical.

– Once you start you might feel good. (I’m not going to deny this) but that doesn’t last long, because here’s the thing, if you change something about your body & it’s not where your body is meant to be naturally, it WILL fight like hell to get to where it wants to be. Where it feels safe, where it can do all the amazing things that make you special. Your body doesn’t care about the fake “ideal”, it cares about you.

BUT, hard truth, when your body goes back to its own happy sweet spot you will NOT feel happy. You will feel like something is wrong, like a failure & then you’ll want to “fix” it again & so it goes on and on. You never really feel happy with your body. But you see, if you’re following you don’t need to fix anything. Your body is and will never be the problem.

What makes you special and the reason we love you, has NOTHING/ zilch/ nudda not one iota to do with the body you live in. Your earth suit. We love you for all the things that make you, you.

Another cost, specifically of dieting; food is something that if diets didn’t exist- then it’s fun, it’s away to socialize, share memories with friends and family or fuel your body to allow it to do all the amazing things you do!

a) But diets introduce morality to food. There’s NO morality, food just is. It cannot be “bad” or “good”. But, dieting corrupts your brain & teaches you to believe foods can be “bad” or need to be “earned” or avoided. NOT TRUE. ALL FOOD IS EQUAL. ALL FOOD HAS VALUE.

i) Dieting confuses your brain. It makes something that is simple become harder than quantum physics, introduces maths when there’s NO need.

ii) the more you diet, if you “trip up” you feel you failed & few bad about yourself. You can’t win. It all results in you feeling worse about yourself. When you zone out.. none of these things are to be fixed or in our control to begin with. But they all lead you to feel crappy.

Trying to “achieve” the “ideal” appearance:

Takes you away from what really matters, it draws your attention away from things you actually care about. It’s makes your life smaller.

It isolates you and that can make you lonely.

It makes you boring. (Participating in, talking about diets, plastic surgery, etc is really boring)

It makes you less “you”, less authentic.

It takes you away from your true values.

It also robs you of the opportunity to really get to know yourself and discover all the wonderful possibilities life has to offer.

And while you think you need to shrink yourself to fit in, the opposite is true. You have the right to take up space, unapologetically. To be bold, to create your own path in life, and to enjoy the freedom that comes with it.

The more you try to “fix” the more you fixate on the “problem”. The problem that’s not even there. But it magnifies and you see it get bigger. This makes you feel more negative about yourself. You obsess over it and this only makes you feel worse.

This striving for the ideal- lends itself to you beginning to compare yourself to others.

A) You have NO idea what anyone else around you, on Instagram, TikTok, tv, at school is doing to “achieve” this “ideal”. They might be very unhappy, living with dangerous ED’s, disabilities you don’t know about, you don’t know. But when you compare yourself to them you feel “bad” not “good enough” because you don’t look like that.

Again zone out.

i) Most pictures you see on TV, instagram or ticktock aren’t real. They’re made up/ curated. If you saw the person in “normal” day to day no make up/ filters etc they wouldn’t likely look like that all the time.

ii) let’s come back to the “ideal” according to who. Every single person on this planet is different which is really cool if you think about it. What you like in someone/ or are attracted to might be very different to the “ideal” and that is very cool. You can be who you want, like who you want.

Now, this is not specific to you, but important to EVERYONE. Conforming to ideals makes it hard for everyone to have and exist in a body.

Because,

It perpetuates the narrative that -ANYONE- outside of this “ideal” is a “problem” & needs to be fixed. This in turn fuels:

-Racism

– Ableism

– Fatphobia

– Homophobia

-Transphobia

** we don’t want to continue this! ***

You see, NO one needs “fixing” to be good enough.

When you think of your favourite person,

What’s the first thing you think of? What is it about them you like?

I bet it has nothing to do with how they look.

Now, I bet if the same person told you they “hated” their body/ how they looked,

You would remind them of how much you love them and all the reasons why.

You my darling, are perfect as you are. You are loved for who you are and always will be. And deserve to take up space in the world, to be seen and heard.

A little quote..

Someone I love wrote this on a card. And it really resonated. Acts of kindness and encouragement can mean the world when you are struggling.

I wanted to share these words of encouragement because they are so powerful.

Your recovery must come first so that everything you love doesn’t come last. Be willing to be a beginner every single morning.

Smoke ‘N’ Mirrors

I’ve never written a post whilst “in the thick of it” before. But one of my values is authenticity. We often forget our struggles when we come out the other side and often some of the biggest lessons are lost if not shared when we are truly at our most vulnerable. I’m out of alignment and stuck. That’s basically an eating disorder summed up.

The last few months have been hard. I let small ED things creep back in and before I knew I was back under anorexia’s grip. I didn’t think they were a big deal. Individually they probably weren’t but if like me, you have a history of an eating disorder, we have to be vigilant of these things because one slip can become a landslide before we even realise. It’s a lot easier to deal with when it’s small and early. My aim of this is to reach someone, perhaps you’ve noticed a couple of things slipping, shut this down before it becomes an uphill battle.

The best way I can truly describe being amidst a relapse of an eating disorder is “Smoke and Mirrors”. I could kind of see it happening, but the smoke just kept coming.

The eating disorder serves as an obscurer. It’s made it near impossible for me to accept/ see I am in a relapse, I have a problem, I need help or that I’m not making my eating disorder up. It confuses my brain on a daily basis. It will have me believe I’m fine when everything and everyone I care about tells me the contrary.

All of this is the smoke that has kept me in the grips of anorexia, it’s made me hard to “reach”. How do you solve a problem when someone doesn’t believe there’s one to be solved? It’s taking me time to figure this out. It can’t be unless I decided to trust the people telling me I’m on fire. Some days I believe it, other days I can’t see past the smoke.

This is the main reason for wanting to share this, because I forget this feeling when I get back on track and yet it’s a feeling I can guarantee anyone who’s lived an eating disorder has or will feel at some point. When this started a few months back, I didn’t talk about how things were slipping, instead I isolated and went to anorexia’s open arms. Anorexia and eating disorders thrive on this secrecy, isolation and vulnerability.

Talking might have pulled me out of this faster and so I urge you, if you can feel things slipping, don’t wait for it to get worse before you ask for help. “It’s no big deal” may well be a big deal. It gets harder to ask for help the longer you wait and the eating disorder will do anything to trick you into believing you have this “shit in control”.

It’s a scary and lonely place to sit in. When your brain doesn’t allow you to see through the smoke. Everyone around you might be trying to pour water over the fire, but you struggle to even feel the burn. Occasionally the smoke clears for a moment and you might get glimpses of the situation and it’s suffocating. Realistically it comes back to putting one foot in front of the other to pull yourself back out. Because I only I can pull myself out, just like only YOU can pull yourself out. BUT*** We don’t have to do it alone. Which is something I’m yet again grappling with.

My goals are to go back to basics.

What does that mean?

– Attempting acceptance and when it’s not there trying, to trust my support team because I sure can’t trust my brain right now. If people are telling you they are worried, try to listen to them even if the eating disorder doesn’t believe it. It may never believe it, but one thing I do know is, I can trust people that care about me.

– Try and be honest. There’s no point saying you ‘want’ to recover when you don’t, but that doesn’t mean we can’t commit to recovering or at least trying. It’s a very strange concept to explain to someone who has never lived an eating disorder, why on earth wouldn’t someone want to recover from something that was harming them. For me the work here is coming from “unpacking what my beliefs around what the eating disorder does for me“ It’s hard for me to say I want to recover when in the short term recovery makes me feel shit but I know that long term it’s short term pain for freedom.

Again being honest about what’s realistic for you to challenge now. Only you can really know this. Recovery is meant to feel hard. But I know if I over commit and I can’t meet that goal it only fuels the critical voice of anorexia. Everyone’s recovery is different. Your goals will be not be the same as the next person. Whilst we are at it, releasing comparison full stop.

– Going back to basics. Trying to re-establish the healthy routines.

– Trying to re-establish things like regular eating.

– Using tools that I have learned in treatment or that have helped me in the past- such as dialoguing (as much as I dislike this exercise) because I know it helps to bring my healthy self to the foreground. Dialoguing is something I have let slip, yet it’s a tool that has always helped me see my eating disorder thoughts and healthy self more clearly and allowed me to reinforce that healthy side of me in moments of difficulty. (For anyone who is unaware; dialoguing is an exercise where you write out eating disordered thoughts and counter them with your healthy self (non disordered brain) to try and separate yourself from your disordered thoughts and strengthen your healthy self, you should always end on a healthy self point)

– Connecting not isolating or withdrawing. For me this looks like: keeping appointments with my team, talking to friends and family and even writing this blog because it’s connecting with my authenticity. This is something that I’m finding hard right now because the eating disorder wants me to be quiet an secretive. I’m also having a tough time saying eating disorder or anorexia and so I’m being deliberate in using it. Calling it what it is. Connecting with reality, truth and people. All the things the eating disorder tries to stop me from doing.

So where am I going with this…

Am I motivated to recover at every waking minute at the moment HELL no, But I am COMMITTED to keep trying every day. You don’t have to want to recover. But first step is to meet yourself where you are and work with that.

Eating disorders will distort and hide the truth of your suffering from you. Making it hard to accept or see your reality.

But no matter where you find yourself, even in times of relapse it’s important to remind yourself you’re never starting at square one, even if you feel like you’re starting again. You’re starting with more knowledge and resilience than you did at the beginning. Recovery is not linear. It’s ok to not be ok.

https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/recovery/self-help-tools-skills-tips

Three Years in Eating Disorder Recovery

Sat in the car with Ben driving me to my first ED therapy session was the scariest day of my life, but it was also the beginning of my life. Sounds dramatic, well it was.

I sobbed the entire way, I yelled at him when we got stuck in traffic and the prospect of missing this appointment. The extreme reaction came from utter terror that if I missed this appointment I might never be able to re-find the courage that was leading me there and fear of starting the hardest battle of my life.

I had been to therapy before, when I was 7 and struggling with OCD and again a couple of times as an adult but I’d never talked about the eating disorder.

I remember the room and the welcoming demeanour of my then therapist who went about my intake assessment, I recall the paper questionnaire she had me fill, (EDE-Q) exploring my relationship with food body and mood. Distinctly I remember the battle in my head about how honest to be.

The room was cold and it was pitch black outside and I’d rushed from work, because I didn’t feel I could attend this appointment in work hours. At the end of the session I remember telling the therapist “please don’t label me”

She replied with a sentence that changed my life. “You have anorexia, restrictive type”

I felt a rush of complex feelings, Shame, disgust, denial and most prominent RELIEF. Relief I might not have to do this anymore.

Relief that now it was out in the open I couldn’t completely deny it anymore. Although at that very moment in time there was no part of me that felt “ready to give this part of me up” I also knew I couldn’t keep it up either.

The weigh in, which would become a regular feature of our sessions following, made the ED scream. I wanted to leave and not return for my second session but the present but quiet healthy voice would make me show up.

And three years on, that quiet healthy voice is now the predominant voice and I’m grateful to her.

I went back 3 weeks later and started CBT-E. It was the toughest and still remains the hardest thing I’ve ever done, hands down. I affirm it saved my life, in every sense. But 3 years on from that first meeting I wanted to share some hard truths.

1. Recovery isn’t a quick process. When I wrote a blog last “year- two years in recovery”, a large part of me hoped and thought by now I’d be saying I was fully recovered. In some ways this black and white all or nothing thinking kept me stuck. It was putting an unnecessary pressure on myself. There’s not magic crossing line.

2. You don’t always have to want to recover in order to do it. I mean when I reflect on that first appointment I certainly didn’t, but I started it anyway. There are days now, where the constant of my eating disorder feels like an easier option than recovering. But when it comes down to it, I hated my life with an ED far more than in recovery. Recovery will also not be forever, whereas an ED would be or a race for death. I don’t want to die and so even on the days where the ED comes knocking it no longer has as much power.

3. My definition/expectations of recovery have changed with time. Like I said, I no longer have a self determined end date for recovery. Instead it’s a commitment I make to myself over and over, with the hope and expectation that one day I will confidently exclaim I am free.

4. Slips, lapses happen. I’d be completely disingenuous if I pretended recovery has been linear. I’ve probably had more slips in the last 12 months than the 12 months prior to that, but each slip/ lapse has given me much needed information and education. I’ve gotten to learn so much about myself and it’s been generally easier to pull myself out of each one. It’s shown me areas of recovery that require my attention and focus to move forward and prevent the same slips later.

5. Self compassion. As a typical ‘all or nothing’ thinker and perfectionist tendencies it’s been one of my biggest challenges to learn to be self forgiving, to show myself kindness and compassion particularly in moments of struggle. But eating disorders feed on this inability to be kind to ourselves and practicing these have been by far one of the most powerful tools I’ve found in my recovery. This includes learning to talk back to the negative critic with kinder & gentler affirmations. Often, accepting what the eating disorder tells me and countering those thoughts with a healthy alternative. This continues to be something I work on. My journal is full of dialogues between my healthy self and the eating disorder voice and I gain insights to recurring themes or things that are keeping me stuck.

6. There are many beautiful things in recovery. My husband recently sent me a text “do you know what I really love? That the real Nikki is almost fully back, despite the shit that goes on in your head, the goofy girl that’s always been there is coming back more and more”

I screen shot that text and in moments where the ED is screaming at me, I read it and use it to motivate me to make the right decision. Finding something that can help motivate you in tough moments can really help, whether it’s a post card or somewhere you want to visit, an affirmation or a text from a relative can often empower you to fight back.

Now here’s where I highlight once more, I don’t always like recovery but if I want to stay that “goofball” my husband, family and friends love, I have to fight that voice, sometimes many times in a day. And this lends me on to another recovery tid bit.

Connection. Connecting with others in recovery, connecting with those that have trodden the path before you and connecting to your why’s is like an eating disorder recovery essential survival kit.

Connecting with people who ‘get it’ has helped me more than I can express in a simple blog. But if it’s something you’ve been reluctant or afraid to do, please consider it. Talking to people who ‘get it’ often without having to say what “it” is, really helps in several fronts; feeling seen, not alone or crazy. Not to mention the unwritten support and etiquette that most people in recovery show each other (I.e automatically knowing what Info is harmful, like numbers etc) without having to ask someone not to share things likes diets etc that is normalised outside of the ED recovery community. This can also lead to a level of accountability the “wanting to set an good example or help others” can inadvertently push you forward.

7. Connecting to my why. If I was to share what my why was three years ago, it would be very different today. The only thing I knew then was I couldn’t live that way any longer. Now, my why remains dynamic but is also much broader. I’m no longer a one dimensional figure where my life revolves around food and exercise.

What has recovery taught you?

That’s it my reflections on the last three years in recovery, who knows what I’ll find in the next 12 months, but I know one thing I’m letting go of the pressure of setting myself a recovery deadline and I’m just going with it.

Navigating Work and Recovering From an Eating Disorder.

Might work be an area that requires your attention in ED recovery?

If I was to ask you what one of your most challenging situations in recovery has been, I expect a lot of you will answer, navigating recovery and work.

What is it about work that makes it difficult to remain in recovery or on course with your goals?

Taking time off from our jobs/ school or college may not be possible for everyone in ED recovery. It wasn’t for me personally. There are times, where I know not being at work would have been really beneficial to recovery. Taking time out is beyond the scope of this blog and very individual.

I want to share some reflections regarding the relationship my work has had in my own eating disorder with the hope this may help you.

Considering many of us spend more than half our adult lives at work, it may be we need to put extra “work” in to maintaining our health in our place of work. Finding a way that means the two are not in conflict is vital. Both living with an eating disorder and recovering can be very stressful, managing this with the stressors of work can compound this further. It’s exhausting.

Ideally a person who is in the early phases of recovery wouldn’t be worrying about their career when the main goal at this time is to stay alive, yet because of a plethora of reasons, such as financial worries, stigma, access to care this is the reality for many. Many jobs lack the flexibility that is so needed to make progress in recovery.

Recently, I moved city and role in a new hospital.

Before we moved I told myself , “this was going to be an amazing fresh start in terms of recovery”. Before I go any further, I still have this view but I’ve had to shift my expectations and time line.

I came here with the mindset; people here don’t know my past which means I can start a complete fresh, ‘I will eat with people, eat all the foods I’ve not been able to in previous jobs and I will break away from the ED disorder identity’.

** To be clear, I ’m not ashamed of my background or struggles and if asked I will elaborate, however I want to recover, and not being tied to this ED persona is important to me.

My goal is to not be seen as the person who is ‘weird’ around food, or left out of social engagements that involve eating. I’ve missed out on this for years and my goal is to heal this relationship. Making connection with others, is recovery to me. To get to that, this for me means taking smaller steps.

Okay, so fast forward 6 weeks into my new job. I’ve felt completely perplexed by why my intentions hadn’t come into full fruition.

Let’s break this down, why might be harder than anticipated?

1. Firstly, let’s bin the notion you can ‘out run’ an eating disorder. I believed for years I could move and leave my ED behind. Time after time I proved this wasn’t a thing. I moved half way across the globe and my eating disorder followed. And so, let me save you the wasted time: YOU CANNOT OUT RUN AN EATING DISORDER.

2. People spend a lot of time at work. Sometimes people are afraid to share their struggles for fears of; discrimination, stigma or bullying. I was and to a certain extent still am.

3. Work can be a trigger for many. I’m not for a second saying certain occupations cause an eating disorder, however I strongly believe in those of us with the vulnerability to developing an ED, certain jobs may perpetuate them. Having this knowledge may be an asset in preventing and helping people to recover, for both employees and your employer. For instance certain occupations attract particular personality traits. Working in fitness, fashion, catering may draw specific trait’s. Working in the food industry may both be motivated by an ED or exacerbate. Certain careers like professional sports, fashion, entertainment and healthcare reportedly have higher incidences of people with eating disorders. Doctors’s may be at risk through; perfectionism, hard working, people pleasers and combine that with a culture where it’s praised if people forgo breaks, being vulnerable and speaking out against struggle is seen as a weakness. The stress of looking after others, exams, career progression, missing social events, It’s a perfect storm for those of us with the ED vulnerability.

4. Neural pathways take time to develop and naturally take time to deconstruct and rebuild new pathways. If your ED mindset and behaviours are entangled with your job, then it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to get why it takes time to resolve. (Though it’s taken me until now to realise this for myself).

5. Culture and societal pressures, “diet culture, weight loss, fad diets” are almost seen as a way of workplace bonding. People can fear being ostracised by speaking against this or simply excluded if they try to protect themselves from these otherwise seemingly innocuous conversations.

6. In the same theme as above fearing social engagements that involve eating with others can feel like it’s thwarting making connection’s and perpetuate this spiral.

7. Work place canteens may serve as a barrier to some people, the lack of options coupled with social anxieties may add a layer of stress.

8. Time pressure, work related stress may exacerbate eating disorder thoughts and behaviours especially when eating disorders have been the maladaptive coping strategies for stress.

9. Work may reinforce self esteem issues. If a person’s eating disorder is entwined with poor self esteem, a person who feels negatively about themselves at work or has poor confidence it’s unsurprising this may manifest in their eating disorder’s.

10. Imposter syndrome may be both perpetuated by an eating disorder and in some ways recovery. This is a big one for me, as I battle the eating disorder it can cause a imbalance of energy. I become anxious my focus on recovery is thwarting my career progression. I feel added stress and pressure, which can become a trigger in itself. However if I am not focusing on recovery, my work performance slips at the cost of my obsession with food and numbers. My anxiety can make me worry about losing out on promotions or career progression. Yet despite having to expend this energy, it will never impact upon my work in the same detriment that living with an eating disorder can. Being patient and kind to yourself here, I feel is the key. Forgiving for what is.

Now we can see some of the ways our eating disorder might be entwined in our work schedule, we have given ourselves insight and a place to focus our recovery goals.

I personally feel like identifying this, is a milestone in my own recovery, but I also feel frustrated by the fact it’s something I have to consciously focus on. It’s another hurdle when so much I want to be able to say; I’m free. Free to focus on anything but recovery from anorexia. However, I also fully embrace this is part of my healing journey.

Though I don’t claim to have this figured out, these are some of the tools I’m using to help me navigate this part of my recovery:

1. Make realistic goals. I am very much a black and white, or all or nothing thinker. Recognising my thought processes around recovering in the workplace has served as a catalyst to make changes. It’s not a failure if you can’t challenge everything all at once.

2. Be honest with yourself and importantly your support team. Make use of help anywhere you can get it.

3. Set yourself goals and debrief if they need tweaking. For example my initial goals were to eat with people every day when I started here. When that wasn’t working I needed to go back to basics and work out what was serving as the barrier. If eating with others is something that causes you a lot of anxiety, perhaps starting with smaller challenges first and building up to this might be a good one. I’ve been working on challenges like; making eating regularly non negotiable, practising eating different foods and buying the occasional meal or snack from the canteen. Something I have never been able to do until now. As I’ve become more comfortable in doing this I’ve then aimed to eat with others on occasion. I might not be in a place to buy foods and eat with others everyday yet, but that’s okay! I’ve often brought my lunch in and then gone and sat with my new peers outside or in the canteen. My point here is, you don’t have to achieve everything at once, take a step back from striving for perfect. Perfection is an illusion. Start with what feels achievable right now. I was focusing on the end goal rather than where I am right now.

4. Perhaps find a colleague you feel comfortable with, someone you can eat with (they don’t have to know about your eating disorder). I used to eat with a colleague in my old job, because she had a “fuck it mentality’ around food she was a great role model ( and she didn’t know how much she was helping me)

5. If it’s an option, sharing your struggles with a co-worker or employer. This is very personal and not for all. However having people around who know about your ED may allow other ways you can be supported: making time for breaks or allowing you to attend appointments etc.

6. Boundaries, boundaries and boundaries. Whatever boundaries you need to protect your recovery, whether it’s removing yourself from triggering comments, or carving specific times in your day that align with recovery. Boundaries are like a recovery superpower.

How can you, as someone without an eating disorder help a co-worker?

It’s highly likely you work with someone struggling with their relationship with food and body. You may never know someone is struggling ( kind of the nature of an eating disorder).

But you can be a real ally in someone’s recovery by:

1. Being mindful of how you talk about food and bodies around others. Don’t be that person who encourages the cheap diet talk. Keep the diet talk out.

2. Don’t comment on others eating habits, an innocent comment such as “ I wish I could eat that, or is that all you’re having or you’re going to eat all that” might just be the comment that serves as a barrier to a person eating.

3. If someone turns down an invitation to join you in social eating, don’t stop inviting them on other occasions. When someone feels excluded or isn’t given the opportunity to participate it may perpetuate the cycle that they cannot join in or they have to keep isolated. Eating disorders are extremely isolating.

4. Be kind. Don’t judge someone.

5. If you think someone you work with may be suffering from an eating disorder, share your concern with them in a non judgemental manner ( this may depend on your relationship). They may not open up to you, but you may have given them encouragement to talk to someone they’re comfortable with. It’s not your responsibility to make someone recover ( no one can do that) and so often a person won’t need advice but a supportive ear.

6. Educate yourself about eating disorders, some of the most harmful comments come from ignorance rather than a place of malice.

7. Be a role model, show people it’s ok to show vulnerability, to talk. You’re vulnerability may be the gift a person needs to feel safe.

8. If you are an employer, you can make your workplace a safer, more inclusive environment. Providing mental health training, awareness to make the workplace inclusive and reject stigma surrounding mental health.

I expect if asked, a lot of you would join me in saying one of the biggest threats to you recovery is work. Right?

With that, it makes sense a lot of our recovery energy needs to be focused on creating balance where the two are not in conflict. Perhaps talking with your support team can help you create a more symbiotic relationship.

What else would help you at work?

Lived Experience..in ED Recovery.

Lived experience is one of the most valuable assets to recovery.

You can read about eating disorders in as many text books as you like and on some level you will understand them. Cognitively you may get it, but unless you’ve walked in the path it’s difficult to “really get it”

When you have lived that experience, You get it on a whole other level. People in recovery “get it’ on a level that reaches them to their core.

This makes people with lived experience such important allies in a person’s recovery journey and can be crucial alongside treatment.

I will never be able to express the gratitude I feel for my therapist, I know she saved my life, literally. Therapy was huge in my starting recovery and breaking free from the ED. But the most transformative part in my own recovery has been through connecting with those who have lived it.

At all stages of my recovery lived experience has been influential and important in my own growth.

Reading blogs, listening to podcasts/vlogs and following pro-recovery accounts on social media has really assisted me in the process.

There’s a deep level of trust that develops, knowing that others who have fully recovered, or are in a strong place in recovery helps us to feel connected, validated and most importantly gives us HOPE.

I reflect on the times I listened to people like Jessica Flint, Tabitha Farrar, Mia Findley and Millie Thomas sharing their stories, their wisdom and experience and aspiring to reach many of the milestones in recovery. Believing through sheer faith in their stories that recovery IS POSSIBLE for everyone. Even in some of my darkest moments in the throes of the ED or difficult moments in recovery, trusting what those who have lived and come through the other side has felt comforting and at most motivating.

Connecting with others in recovery seemed terrifying to me when I first started. If I had have been offered group therapy or any form of treatment that meant connecting to others, I would have ran a mile. In fact, I did. I was so ashamed of my eating disorder and terrified my “sordid secret” would become common knowledge. But through listening to others, joining platforms or groups a lot of this shame began to disappear, because there was nothing in this community that was judged, hadn’t been felt, said or done before. I started to see I was NOT ALONE, that there were millions of us who have experienced eating disorders.

A common theme I began to understand was the level of shame we all suffered. The more I read stories, listened and talked the more the shame began to dissipate.

Things I felt I could never share with another living person, suddenly felt like no big deal in the recovery community. The nuances that we believe are so shameful and not to be brought out into the light of day, are everyday struggles we share and is part of non-judgemental wonderful conversations. They say shame is fuelled by secrecy, I believe this is so true.

Following other’s journeys enabled me to find my own voice. I refuse to be ashamed of something that has made me who I am and helping me to connect with my true self.

I used to say I wanted to recover to the person I was before the eating disorder. I no longer wish this, because recovery has made me someone else, someone bigger than I was ( pun intended), but the level of growth that comes from choosing to recover & surviving an eating disorder is such that I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’m becoming more connected with myself with every recovery orientated decision and becoming aligned with who I want to be. I’m grateful to those who were brave enough to share their experiences, that motivated my own recovery and helped me keep faith.

People recovering from eating disorders have to do this in a world that still challenges many of the beliefs we have to unlearn and to be able to recover in this society is so hard. For some this society can be incredibly cruel and the more people who share their struggle, experience the better this will be one day, especially for those who cannot find their voice. Lived experience is becoming a much bigger part of recovery, with the ever increasing resources available, recovery coaches becoming mainstream and peer mentorships, this can only be a good thing alongside traditional recovery. These people have experienced the struggles, the up’s downs and navigated their way out and are so valuable in helping others do the same, with compassion and sensitivity that is as authentic as it can get.

I’ll share some resources that have been so imperative to my own recovery below.

https://www.recoverywarriors.com/ From blogs, to podcasts and online community platforms such as the “Courage Club” this has been huge in my recovery. Jessica Flint is fully recovered from her eating disorder and has now founded a recovery community that has reached thousands of people in recovery. This has introduced me to some of the most incredible people I’ve ever met.
https://www.instagram.com/lindseyhallwrites/?hl=en Lindsey Hall has herself recovered from anorexia and she shares incredible insights
https://tabithafarrar.com/ Tabitha is a recovery coach, who has fully recovered from her eating disorder. She’s very direct in what she believes recovery is, but she has shared some amazing blogs, podcasts and now mostly posts video content on youtube. I followed her avidly when I first started recovery. She posts about things from “extreme hunger, weight gain, and neural rewiring”
https://www.instagram.com/millietnz/?hl=en & https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/end-eating-disorders/id1534539219 End Eating disorder recovery Podcast.
https://www.beyondbodycoach.com/ Mia Findley- is an Australia based recovery coach, who has fully recovered. She posts videos and podcasts with her experiences.
http://maintenancephase.com/ This is a great podcast that promotes HAES, diversity and is anti-diet
https://www.instagram.com/drheatherirobundamd/?hl=en

Recovering from an Eating Disorder doesn’t Automatically Guarantee Life Will be Perfect..

But when life is challenging , you won’t have an eating disorder to contend with as well.

Rather naively, I think many of us hold this notion of “if I could just fix my ED, my life will be perfect”. So let me get in there early and save you the “aha” in months/years to come, set your expectations now, be realistic .

This is something I have come to realise throughout my recovery. The many times I’ve contemplated what recovery means, how I define it, what life will look like beyond my ED.

As I’ve gotten further into recovery and shifting away from my eating disorder, it’s become increasingly apparent that recovering from an eating disorder does not mean life will ultimately be all rainbows and flowers once the ED is conquered. No. That’s just not possible. But, life’s so much better, just putting this out there early.

But, the big thing here, the “aha” moment for me, was recognizing recovering from an eating disorder means we have tools to help us when life throws us a curve ball and returning to the eating disorder does NOT have to be an option.

Additionally when something in life happens out of our control, not having to contend with an eating disorder simultaneously, means we are better equipped to handle the stress.

An eating disorder is a big problem, not a solution. It may feel like it gives you control and comfort around times of difficulty but I promise you, that is the mask of the ED. It is definitely an added problem that you do not need.

Recovery will not mean that when you have a stressful time in your life, a loss or lots of change you won’t experience human reactions such as anxiety, low mood or whatever else we all feel according to life events. Recovery doesn’t make you some kind of super hero that doesn’t feel or get rocked by anything- but it does mean you don’t resort to dangerous/ maladaptive coping mechanisms that you have relied upon until this point. Learning to feel has been a skill I’ve developed in recovery and how to respond to these feelings.

It would be unrealistic to believe you will never have a day of insecurities, or god forbid a bad body image day. Because even people who have never experienced an eating disorder experience these human emotions. But if you’re recovered you won’t obsess over them, you will be able to deal with them and it won’t “ruin your day your week or even your year”! Yes I did just do that.

Recovery is a beautiful thing and it means something different to everyone. The recovery process is not the same for any of us, but I do believe it is important to consider your expectations of what it will mean for your life.

Personally, it has led me to an understanding that beyond ED Recovery work, in order to remain in recovery, l will need to put work into ongoing stress management, imposter syndrome and work anxiety. For me they are interlinked.

It is highly likely this will mean continuing with therapy of some kind to help me work with these issues, because I want to protect my health legacy.

One thing I know, life stressors are not something that are going away because it’s part of life, everyone has problems. BUT don’t let having an ED be one of them or believe that once you have recovered you will be a unicorn and NEVER have another issue.

Identifying Core Values, in Eating Disorder Recovery

Finding life/ meaning beyond an eating disorder

Recovery involves a great deal of self exploration and a deep development of self -awareness, a level that most people will not their entire lives. This is something to be grateful for.

When I first started treatment for anorexia, I remember my therapist drawing out two pie charts. She asked me to fill in the blank circles with what was important to me in life and as a person. Her point was to show me how warped our thinking becomes when we are living with an eating disorder.

My pie at the time is a world apart from the one I would draw today.

The original pie was occupied by over valued pre-occupations with food, fear of weight gain and then tiny snippets of other aspects such as family, friends, career, “hobbies’ (at the time it was labelled as hobbies rather than individual interests because I didn’t have many besides controlling my food and shape) now this would include things like, creativity, art, writing, yoga, running, being outdoors, travelling, my veggie patch, puzzles, learning and discovery. My point being it’s a lot bigger and I have reconnected with individual interests and no longer struggle to think of what my “hobbies” actually are. Recovery involves increasing self awareness and discovery.

I wrote a blog on “you are not your eating disorder” some months back. Whilst I still believe this to be true, it is somewhat simplified because much of our identity is unveiled to us as we move through recovery.

When I was first asked, “what are your values?’, by my therapist I had the default answers, but they weren’t the core. I’d long lost touch with what they were. I suppose I identified as my eating disorder.

I had my values I would spurt as if off of a script because I felt they were what they “should be” I had my values that came from my eating disorder, but truthfully at the time I had no clue what my “true” values were.

Personally discovering and reconnecting with “my” virtues and traits has been instrumental in my recovery. There’s a sparcity in research pertaining to the use of connecting with values and eating disorder recovery but I believe for many of us it could be the missing link.

We know that eating disorders can be ego-syntonic ( we believe our actions, beliefs to be appropriate and congruent with our central personality, in contrast to ego-dystonic). Meaning many of us “value our eating disorder, see nothing wrong with it” and it helps to explain the resistance to give it up. This is where the whole rhetoric “you are not your eating disorder comes in, but to begin with we often view this as synchronous with our identity. Through the self exploration we bring the ego-syntonic values into question, essentially resulting in dissonance between the contradicting values.

I’ll use my own example, when I used to turn to restriction, I’d escape the negative emotion I was trying to avoid and feel a sense of mastery of control, in the early days anyway. All of these appeared congruent with my core values; self control, self discipline, hard working, dedicated. But the more I explored what my true values were, I could see there was an incongruence. It was bringing these values to the surface that helped me move past the ambivalence I felt towards recovery.

Some of my own values and how honing them helped motivate me in recovery..

1. Honesty and integrity. I don’t think I need to expand, I became extremely deceitful in order to protect my eating disorder. I could see that lying was causing a great power struggle. Giving myself permission to become my authentic self, learning to communicate with myself and support helped me to align with these values and realise living with anorexia was not living as my authentic self

2. Compassion, forgiveness, courage, perseverance, curiosity are some of my core values. Part of my self healing work has been to learn to set boundaries, to have an “off” switch, developing the compassion towards myself that I show others and practicing self forgiveness.

3. Solitude is important to me, I can be at home in my own company. I try and nurture this by following my morning routine where I get up slightly earlier and have 30 minutes to myself. I often use this time to journal and check-in. Expanding on this further I’m someone who needs routine to keep grounded

4. Connection is important to me, although I need time on my own, I thrive on connecting with others. My family, friends, other people in this community. This was incongruent to how I was behaving with my anorexia, I become isolated, withdrawn. I believed my behaviours were helping me connect, enabling me to control anxiety around social events for instance. However, what actually happened is I avoided the social events, I pushed people away. Highlighting the conflict of the ED value and my own.

Some food for thought…perhaps journal prompts

If you’re in a place where you are still trying to figure out your values, something I found helpful to start with, was thinking of people I admire. What is it about them that I admired?

What are some of your character traits? How do they help you or hinder you?

What are some things you believe in?

Identifying our core values helps us make decisions about the future, they shape our relationships are central to who we are. They help us to understand that when we are acting out of alignment to our core values it brings about distress and often maladaptive behaviours. This is why I truly believe connecting with our core values assists us with developing coping skills for situations and finding inner peace.

“Weigh days” in ED recovery

Your worth can never be defined by a number

Weigh day in recovery This used to instil dread and fear into me and so I want discuss this further as I’m willing to bet it’s a common experience in recovery.

I’ve already talked about my tenuous relationship with the scales. However in early recovery when we are “ nutritionally rehabilitating” the scales can be important in therapy. Weight restoration can be an integral part of ones recovery.

I was doing my usual re-reading old journal entries and so many were about “weigh days”.

For me, I used to experience extreme anxiety leading up to weigh day and then days following.

Why is “weigh day”so traumatic for someone in recovery?

People with eating disorders tend to obsess over numbers, whether it’s calories, clothes sizes, or the frigging number on the scale. The numbers torment us. We live by them, we fear them. Therefore on the days I had managed to gain weight my eating disorder voice would throw a full on wobbly, if I’d lost it would throw a full on wobbly. You cannot appease an eating disorder.

For my family the “weigh days” were important to them, they were afraid it was one of the only ways the could tell if I was “doing ok” or slipping because of the secretive nature of ED. This reinforced the anxiety as-well, the concern of feeling like a failure or the threat of more focus being placed on me. But, I had lied before, many times and so I respected the validation they needed whilst I rebuilt trust.

The “target weight” issue

I personally don’t feel that “target weights” are helpful to most of us with EDs. I completely get why health professionals use them, but I personally feel that they have the potential to perpetuate trepidation and internal judgements that exceeding that target weight is to be feared or avoided.

Realistically most of us go way over. We go over because we need to, it’s called overshoot and it’s natural. It’s your bodies way of protecting you in case another famine arises. It’s why when people continually diet end up heavier because their bodies no longer trust them. However eventually when you let go of the diet BS, your body figures it’s shit out. But try rationalizing that with someone fighting an ED voice and going against an entire society who shares the ideology weight gain is a negative.

I believe holding on to my target weight kept me stuck, every time I got close to I’d bail on my recovery efforts, if I surpassed this arbitrary number I slipped. Until I let go of weighing and ate unrestricted. For some I imagine having a rough idea of a target may help them but for many like myself it can be a sticking point.

I know that, eating disorders love to hold on to numbers, to manipulate our thoughts and behaviors. Mine convinced me I needed to know my weight in early recovery to “monitor progress to “check”. Let’s cut through the crap, my eating disorder wanted to know the number as a “form of control” to ensure I wasn’t “gaining too much, too fast” it colluded with the numbers and therefore my behavior. This was continual until I was willing to accept my motives to know the number was not healthy.

Additionally certain values held specific connotations to previous relapses, or behaviors. For example the “target weight” hurdle was a huge trigger. I found it almost impossible to reach or pass when I knew the value because my eating disorder voice would get so much louder.

Recovery is hard enough, why make it harder for yourself by observing the scales? If you follow the recovery process, eating enough, not engaging in behaviors your body will recover and reach its natural weight without your eating disorder trying to complicate/ control things along the way.

For a while, I couldn’t know my weight, or (when agreed with my therapist) we reduced the weigh days.

There are pros and cons to this. Weight provides teams with anthropological information about recovery.

Regardless of whether it’s vital you are weighed you do not need to know your weight, you have the right when you attend a medical appointment to be blind weighed.

Fast forward to now, I’ve been in recovery for a while, there are days where I feel a draw to the scales. I know it’s never about the scale and I return to my recovery tool box to find what I need. I do not weigh myself. If I have to be weighed I would like to think it would cause little more than an internal stir.

If I have the situation where I have to be weighed:

I will likely follow my own healthy voice’s advice and ask for the number not to be made known to myself. Because, weight has no value to who we are. We do not need to know. It’s not worth giving the unhealthy part of my brain ammunition.

Fat bias

When I started this blog, I had simple objectives. First of all I wanted to share my lived experience of recovering from anorexia nervosa. Blogs were a really instrumental source in my own recovery. Secondly I wanted to debunk myths and stigma attached to eating disorders, especially from a perspective of someone working within the healthcare profession. However as time has gone on, I still have these intentions, but I also wish to be a voice in the health at every size movement. It has become increasingly apparent how much fat bias exists within healthcare. Now I am more aware of it than ever, I do not intend to be quiet about weight stigma.

People are being harmed every day by weight stigma. The issue here is, weight stigma is not widely recognised yet. How can something change when it’s not recognised as a problem? We keep talking about it.

We aren’t even taking steps to reduce it within healthcare, because we don’t know it exists, even amongst ourselves.

Just yesterday a fellow doctor posted a question on social media asking for weight loss advice for her and her partner. The doctor went on to describe all the various diets both she and her partner had tried over the years. Further more she described her thin privilege but then “menopause occurred and I gained an unacceptable amount of weight”. Most of the responses to the post disappointingly were encouraging various other diets, only one of my colleagues responded encouraging her to explore HAES, discouraging dieting.

If those of us working within healthcare have such implicit biases, how can we expect to provide non discriminatory care to “fat patients”? I do not use the term obese as obese implies pathology, it’s a medical label for “fat” and fat is not a disorder or pathological problem in isolation. It’s a deep seated belief that has infected our entire society that fat is directly related to health. Though correlations can be present in certain conditions, it is not causation and not the sole indication of health. I repeat, correlation does not equate to causation.

I would be very hesitant to receive eating disorder treatment from a provider who was not health at every size aligned. I believe biases here potentially harm our recovery, comments such as, “we won’t let you get fat in recovery” this to me should be a red flag. You might get fat, if you are supposed to, if your body needs to and so harmful statements like this perpetuates the fear of weight gain and does not address the core beliefs that need to be rewired.

We need to be shifting the rhetoric of weight = health. If we move away from this paradigm healthcare becomes a lot more accessible and non discriminatory.

Why does it matter?

One of the fundamental lessons from medical school is to provide holistic care, individualised to every patient. Doing no harm to our patients. Yet, we try to treat every “fat person” like they are one person. There is a lack of individualised care. We are not providing holistic care when we have a “one size fits all approach” as long as that size fits within a certain range on the BMI chart. This in itself causes harm and is not practicing the fundamental principle “do no harm”. Patients do not receive the appropriate treatments to many conditions because of weight stigma, whether it is surgical procedures, access to eating disorder treatment it’s all discrimination.

What can we do?

Educate ourselves, join HAES organizations, learn & listen. If this is the first time you have even heard the concept of health at every size, or weight stigma I encourage you to check out some of the links below.

Leave weight out of the picture, not every patient needs to be weighed every visit, consider if it’s necessary. Ask if the patient wants to know the number before you do it, some people prefer or need this to be blind.

Address your own implicit anti fat bias.

Learn about the negative consequences of dieting.

Everyone has the right to weight inclusive care. I just want to say now, these are my own views and opinions. I’m a doctor sick and tired of hearing weight loss is the answer. I have had to work on my own biases in eating disorder recovery. I am fully aware many will not agree with my opinions, colleagues, peers and friends included and this is intended as a conversation starter.

Resources:

“Recovery Burnout”

Maintaining momentum in recovery is exhausting.

Some days feel like you are cruising along. But I want to talk about the days where you feel exhausted by recovery itself, when motivation wavers.

I feel it’s important because without acknowledging, this “burnout” has the potential to hinder one’s recovery, through frustration, boredom or just sheer mental fatigue.

Burnout has been defined as a state of complete mental and physical exhaustion resulting from prolonged stress, where a person’s ability to meet demands is impaired. Often, through feeling overwhelmed and/or emotionally drained. Not surprising the pandemic has resulted in high levels of this and likely far more to come.

This definition is also applicable to recovery don’t you think?

When I was all consumed by my eating disorder, if I’m honest, I found every day exhausting. Living by the constraints of so many rules and behaviours made every waking minute punishing , not to mention the insomnia. Oh my god the insomnia that results from a starving brain, it’s like a waking nightmare, you’re haunted by the food “you won’t allow yourself” and all the while your brain is trying to scream at you to eat. Your brain wants you to live and in doing so constantly reminds you about food, 24/7 it doesn’t sleep and so you don’t sleep.

Life with an ED was sapping, but I didn’t appreciate this at the time, partly because I was permanently living in a high state of stress all the damn time, my body didn’t allow me to feel it. It’s the fight or flight mode, the product of an overactive sympathetic nervous system. But I was tired.

When you enter recovery your body has the chance to pause and take a breath when you finally stop. It begins to heal. Healing hurts, when you injure yourself, it’s the inflammation and body’s response to healing that’s sore.

I’m not going to sugar coat it, this moment of stopping, everything might hurt. All the injuries, the pain your body has concealed from you, just so you can “keep going” hits all at once. It’s a wall like I have never faced before and barely have words for. This fatigue and pain gets better as you feed yourself, rest & heal.

Early recovery is exhausting. There’s so much healing and adjusting to do, but the anticipation of better days ahead kind of pushes you through. You and most people around you expect tiredness in the early days, it makes sense from what your body has been through.

It’s what I’m going to discuss next that I think has been a difficult concept for me to grasp or allow myself not to become overwhelmed by.

Recovery is boring. Really fucking boring at times. Realising you will likely need to deal with recovery each day to varying degrees. Recovery still has to fit in your world. It has to so that you don’t fall into a pithole.

For example as we get further along in recovery, so many things change, mostly positive let me just get that out there now.

However…as your world starts to get bigger and your eating disorder brain is taking up far less of your mental space, you start to see who you are and what life without your ED can be. You start to have goals and dreams that are “normal” people dreams, not unrealistic eating disorder standards. You don’t want your ED to even factor in, but for a while to protect your future it has to.

You know in order to realise these aspirations you still have to have recovery goals, because how can we dream of a life without an ED if we don’t put the work in to recover?

It’s more like an irritation on these days where you are mostly free, without the constant barrage of intrusive thoughts, you have room to deal with life, “normal” thoughts & goals. Here, I try to reframe my thoughts to be grateful for these days because the alternative of not being bored, sucked.

There are days like today, when I have lots of things I am focussing on, career progress, my job in hand, family, where we will be living in a few months etc that it irks me that I have to spend any extra energy thinking about recovery. Today this meant a bit of extra attention to meal structure because I’ve lost my appetite. I can’t afford to fall into that trap and I have to focus on fueling myself properly on top of the other things. Frustrating as it is, that recovery still has to fit into that world and those future plans, it’s helpful to reframe this thought process, I am happy to inhabit a big world that my recovery has made possible.

Other times where I think recovery can become arduous is when we ruminate on the past. I often experience regret for lost time to my eating disorder. I no longer feel ashamed about it for the most part, but I do feel sad. I find this regret prevents the resentment to recovery orientated thinking/ behaviours when I’m feeling “over it” because I don’t want it to be my future as well.

This can be emotionally draining. I think it’s important to return to your self care toolkit on these days. I think becoming tired of dealing with recovery is real but I would choose to be here, rather than be a slave to it any-day. Recognising how you feel and that you can’t make massive progress EVERYDAY is ok, Burnout is ok. Be kind to yourself. Acknowledge that this is a good sign.

If you’re feeling the recovery burnout I hear you. One day you won’t have to use as much energy to protect your health legacy. So be grateful for the boredom and keep going

Journaling #1 ED recovery

Journaling can be a game changer in eating disorder recovery. It has been for me.

Your journal can become one of your most powerful allies, it can become a well honed tool from your ever growing recovery toolkit. It’s versatile and you can scribble anything you like anywhere. There’s no right or wrong way to journalling. Journals can be sculpted to wherever you are at in your recovery. Journals can be used for outpouring your thoughts or completing specific activities.

If you’ve not tried the whole journaling shizzle out yet, I highly recommend you give it a go.

Why?

Journalling gives us a safe space to churn our thoughts on to the page in all their ugliness or beauty depending how you view it. Thoughts you wouldn’t otherwise exorcise.

The journal itself can be used as a recovery tool, through various journalling exercises and practices you can solidify some of the groundwork from therapy sessions etc.

Sometimes the journal can be as simple as your listening ear when your struggling with an urge. Often the time it takes to write out the thoughts and feelings around a behaviour or an urge is long enough for the urge to pass and you’ve got written evidence of what led to the feeling or thought to help you next time it occurs. Win. Win.

We often take progress we’ve made for granted, but re-reading journals can really help you see each tiny step you’ve made even when you feel like you’re stationary.

I’ve never been a “big sharer” of my thoughts or feelings (until I was well into recovery and now I write a very un-private blog with all my craziness laid bear). However journalling helped me to share some of my most shameful thoughts, fears and emotions without judgement. Part of the eating disorder problem is the inability to share, or express difficult emotions or the feeling that what we have to say is wrong etc. It’s this rhetoric that keeps us locked in. Journalling releases a lot of this and makes it easier to begin to talk outside of the pages.

Keeping a journal can help us to identify recurring themes, thought patterns, processes especially those that occur around our eating disorder “self”.

Although my eating disorder is not your eating disorder we all share some common thoughts patterns that make us similar, which is why I write this blog in the first place. If it resonates with one person I’m glad I write. I find reading about what has helped others in recovery not only inspires and motivates me it actually strengthens my recovery. I remember reading about journalling on NEDA and completing some journal prompts from the “8 Keys To Recovering from eating disorder recovery workbork” and they really helped get me started in journalling in early recovery. Now journalling is part of my daily routine. Mostly in the form of gratitude practice, but I will elaborate on gratitude later.

Once I have written the thoughts out on to page, it becomes so much easier to see them for what they are; THOUGHTS. Just because we have a thought does not make it true.

For example, an old entry of mine in June 2019:

I couldn’t make a single decision about what to eat for dinner, I stood in the kitchen for ages agonising over whether to add oil to the pan, all I could hear was how fat I’m becoming and how unhappy I will be
I reminded myself restricting has never resulted in happiness, I was not able to add the damn oil tonight, but I know I am capable of making hard choices and I will find the courage to do it”

After writing thoughts like this out on paper over and over, I began to believe my healthy voice again. Restriction doesn’t make me happy, neither does endlessly pursuing “skinny” They are just thoughts and my truth is I can be happy living an unrestricted life at any size.

My next post I’ll share some journal prompts that have helped me.

But for now, perhaps try and think about if you were to go to bed and wake up recovered ( I know I wish right?!) what would that look like, what are some of the things you would do and feel as someone without an eating disorder? How would your life be different?

Can you scribble somethings you have learned this week? What is helping you, what’s holding you back. What have you discovered about yourself?

Recovery isn’t about never making mistakes

Setbacks will happen, because life happens.

Whether you are just starting recovery or have been on the the path for some time setbacks are inevitable.

It’s okay. It doesn’t mean you can’t recover, I absolutely believe recovery is possible.

But not preparing for setbacks is setting yourself up to fall. After all perfectionism is part of the issue right?!

I am happy that I will one day consider “succeeding at anorexia” as my biggest failure. A setback or relapse does not mean you have failed at recovery.

Setbacks teach you things and pave the way for what might be ahead. They prepare you for a fulfilled life without your eating disorder.

I’m hoping my latest setback will help you.

I’m not ashamed I momentarily took my foot off the recovery pedal. It happened, I’m back in control and wiser for it.

Why did it happen?

Well if you’ve read any of my previous posts you will know I am a firm believer that eating disorders have a strong neurobiological component fueled by energy deficit. Energy deficit being the match to the flame if you like. The physical and psychological symptoms that follow being the fire that is contributed by everything else such as environment, stress etc. The important thing is the match in the genetically vulnerable.

I have just finished a set of night shifts. Night shifts to the average person without a history of an eating disorder can reap havoc on health, both physically and mentally. They disrupt your natural circadian rhythms, they can be socially isolating and routine can become difficult.

I’ve worked shifts for years. I know it’s a time where previously I have allowed my eating disorder to thrive. Therefore, armed with this knowledge I planned to avoid falling into the trap of my eating disorder.

Knowing I cannot allow myself to slip into energy deficit I made preparations to attempt to combat this. I ate more before work and before I slept, I planned out snacks to take with me.

But life happened. I missed some breaks and a few snacks. I was lacking sleep and so my appetite was lacking, I hadn’t made self care and routine a priority.

I didn’t think much of it in the craziness of the shifts, but when I found myself unable to eat 3 meals a day when I came off my shifts I knew I had slipped.

I haven’t had “fear foods” for sometime.

I haven’t thought about engaging in disordered behaviors such as concealing what I was/ or wasn’t eating, for months.

I haven’t listened to the voice tearing me to shreds in the mirror for the longest time ever.

But suddenly it was all there I was right back in it. I found myself wanting to control my intake, to compensate for every “ unhealthy” choice I was making. I recognised a familiar welcome feeling of emptiness that in truth I had actually forgotten. The emptiness euphoria made me contemplate giving up on recovery. After all if I’ve fallen so easily after so long, what’s the point in continuing? The intense draw to the scales returned, I had to fight to not give in to the temptation. I know that no number on that scale would have had any importance, but to my eating disorder it would have been used as firewood.

I danced with the temptation of a full blown relapse. However, I reminded myself it was all lies. If I didn’t put this match out I’d be amidst a wild fire that only wants to destroy.

I needed help. I needed support. I’m not ashamed of that.

My eating disorder tried to make me carry the weight of shame. But that’s another reason I knew I needed to put the match out.

I enlisted support from my support network. I chose to let them in. For the few days following, making decisions around eating felt like an impossible task. The thoughts were so loud. I have now reinforced routine, I challenged the “fear foods” that re-emerged and I prioritised taking care of myself by resting, talking and eating. Instead of pulling myself apart and focusing on “failure” I’ve chosen to treat myself with compassion.

I feel back on track. Ive bounced back. With more knowledge and information for my next set of nights- I need to prepare further. I will carry more snacks on my person. I will increase my intake. Self care, such as yoga, journalling and talking each day will be a priority and not an after thought.

My tool kit is more substantial.

Recognising a slip is vital to enable you to seek help and the support you need.

Recognising it early can help you get out quickly.

It’s obvious to me these slips came from:

⁃ Skipping meals (no matter how innocent)

⁃ Eating in isolation.

⁃ Blasè attitude “no big deal”

These are known triggers for me. Knowing your triggers can help you prevent and identify potential setbacks/ relapses.

Preventing setbacks is not always possible.

But planning what to do in the event is key.

Make your relapse prevention plan. Update it with each learning experience.

Seek help.

Most of all- choose to get back on track. Choose to put the match out, don’t start the fire. A moment of struggle doesn’t mean failure. Be kind to yourself and keep going

Check these out:

Relapse prevention plan mirror-mirror: https://mirror-mirror.org/recovery/607-2

Relapse prevention/ recovery maintenance sheets from cci: https://www.cci.health.wa.gov.au/-/media/CCI/Consumer-Modules/Overcoming-Disordered-Eating—Part-B/Overcoming-disordered-eating—09—Relapse-Prevention.pdf

Two years in recovery..WAKE UP CALL

TW and this may be difficult to read.

Yesterday a memory came up on my Facebook feed.

A trip we made to Sri Lanka in March 2019. My final wake up call before seeking help for my eating disorder.

It was not the wonderful experience that it should have been, or our pictures from our travels captured. They say “a picture paints a thousand words’, but most of what you see is what my eating disorder did for years, fake an exterior. It was this trip that I for the first time in 15+years, began to see how much of an issue my eating disorder really was.

For years my eating disorder had concealed the negative impact it was having on me.

My eating disorder was slowly killing me. If you are starving, you’re slowly dying. My friend if you need this sobering reminder, people die from eating disorders. We forget this when we are dancing with the devil. Or perhaps, we no longer care, when it’s painful to sit, or our body is covered in fine hair because we can no longer keep ourselves warm. We ignore message after message from our bodies until, if we are lucky we WAKE the FUCK up. It’s not just us that our eating disorders impact upon. Truthfully when engaging in behaviours and driven by the numbers, I didn’t worry about the effect each action could have on my partner, parents, brother, friends. But our actions do matter, If I had have continued I would have likely ended up as a stark statistic. Remember, YOU matter, your life matters and you affect many people’s lives. Please wake up.

That trip I felt completely lost and trapped in my relentless behaviours that had been by my side for years. I had no idea how I was ever going to step outside of the grips my eating disorder held on me. But I knew something needed to change or I would slowly but surely die.

What made me wake-up?

I realised I wasn’t living. If I wasn’t living, what was I? It became so obvious to me on this trip because Sri Lanka is full of beauty, but I felt nothing but cold.

I was done with the comments from peers and concerned looks. I hated it.

I was done with feeling nothing but bone cold, ALL OF THE TIME. Even in 30 degrees heat. I wanted to see past the brain fog and constant chatter.

I didn’t want to live like that anymore. I couldn’t live like it anymore.

This was not the first time I had had a moment of clarity, a few years prior I knew things were far from in control, but I didn’t seek help. I thought I could fix myself by eating a little more. Things got better for a time, but without support things soon descended back to the familiar chaos and calm of my eating disorder.

But this trip was different. Something needed to alter. I had reached “rock bottom” and I had to crawl out.

I wanted to be present, to share the experience but my eating disorder bled into everything. It was all encompassing. I was afraid for the first time. I was scared this was either going to be my life, or it would take my life.

It was the first time I realised how much stronger the eating disorder voice had become and how buried I was. I feared I had lost myself forever, I couldn’t recall when I was last in the driver’s seat of my thoughts. This was a sobering moment, at the same time I felt powerless to do anything about it.

These moments of clarity would pass again, and my eating disorder would begin to fool me once more that I was in fact fine, convinced me I wasn’t “sick enough” or that I even had an issue. However my healthy thoughts, were desperate to be heard and me listen. And so, it was this trip, I shared with my partner some of my story, although by this time it was hardly a secret.

Even though this trip was incredibly painful, I remain grateful for it, because it was like a wake up call and it kickstarted my true recovery process. Seeing pictures of the trip makes me sad for memories and experiences my eating disorder stole from me but I’m so thankful to be where I am now. Writing this.

If you’re in this dark place, THERE is always hope, It is never too late to seek help. And, you don’t have to go at it alone. You don’t have to have answers. Choosing to reach out of help is the biggest step, the rest will follow if you trust in the process and take that massive leap of faith.

There are stages we go through prior to starting recovery and then during recovery itself. I think we flip flop between them whilst we go to war with the two voices in our head. But we can all win, it is possible.

To me the stages look something like this:

◦ The “I’m fine. I’m just super healthy. I’m totally in control” stage.

◦ “Something’s not quite right with what I’m doing, but it’s ok right? I know I can stop if I want to. But I don’t want to” stage.

◦ The “Shit, I can’t stop. Well better just keep going. It will pass. It’s not that big a deal?” Stage

◦ The, “Ok, I think this is probably a problem. Not sure I want to do anything about it. But not sure how long I can keep going on like this” stage

◦ “Ok, I’m so done with this, I can’t keep living this way. But I don’t feel I have any control. I’m not sure I can stop” stage. This is the point I got to when I sought recovery. It’s one of the scariest decisions I’ve ever made.

◦ “Let’s try this recovery malarkey out. What do I have to lose? But I’m so scared of the thought of change”. Stage

◦ The, “Oh my god, this is way too hard. I’m never going to recover. Why even bother trying” stage. I think it’s common here, we often resort to old behaviours intermittently whilst making small changes in recovery. But the small changes matter and count.

◦ Then something clicks/ it’s like a switch. Recovery becomes easier. It’s still bloody hard but it’s less of a monster than the one that’s been dictating your life. This stage, you start to question your eating disorder thoughts, your own thoughts start to become clearer and in the foreground more frequently.

◦ It doesn’t take much for your ED to lure you back, a slip or relapse happens. But you learn from them and each slip you get wiser. Recovery gets stronger, you get stronger.

◦ Now you really want this, recovery feels achievable . You begin to see who you really are, what your life can be without this hitchhiker. You remain vigilant and know how recovery can look and you make it your mission to not go back. You’ve got this. Your actions and thoughts are all protective of your recovery, you have worked harder than anyone will ever know to be here.

Recovery is always possible, no matter how deeply trapped, lost or afraid you feel. Wake up, and rejoin the world, you deserve a full life and the world deserves to have you in it.

Check out the links below for seeking support/ starting the conversation:

Vacationing with an Eating Disorder..

Vacationing then vs Now

We have just returned from a few days holiday, which I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do for numerous reasons, 1. We live in a place we can travel at present and secondly my eating disorder was not allowed to dictate my behaviour for the first time in many years.

Why are holiday’s so hard for people with an eating disorder? Often in the midst of an eating disorder we use behaviours to cope with uncertainty, change or triggering situations. Firstly, you are away from home, your regular environment. This can be full of uncertainty and planning can go out of the window. Tonnes of food challenges can arise. Challenges you may not have foreseen, such as not being able to follow a regular schedule, a meal plan. Eating out and experiencing new dishes. All of these things can be extremely triggering. It’s hard to imagine if you’ve never experienced an eating disorder.

Here’s how a holiday for me used to look like:

Weeks leading up to vacation:

Enormous anxiety and dread. Escalation in behaviours in response to increased thoughts and fears regarding the uncertainty of said trip. I would buy into the “ prepare for the summer body diet culture crap” and it would set my eating disorder into a frenzy.

Then the event would arrive, no matter how much “ event restriction/ compensation” I had undertaken I would still feel ridiculously out of control and fearful that my constant was about to change. I would not be able to predict every meal and therefore calculate my intake. Holidays can be inactivity. This used to terrify me, how was I going to hide my “craziness’, fit in my ridiculous workouts in new territory? All the while Hitchhiker ‘HH’ would be telling me I was disgusting. How can anyone be present and relax on holiday when this is going on?

Changing experience of holidays’ with time and at various points in recovery;

Once I commenced recovery the anxiety around the trips shifted to a different kind of anxiety. When you start recovery, especially early on, you need to eat very regularly. Holidays can make important established routines very tricky to follow. I would worry if I would be able to eat the food available. Eating in front of people can be immensely anxiety provoking and largely, trips involve eating out. It’s a point where you are challenging ‘fear’ foods and there’s all kinds of food challenges that can happen on trips which for the person experiencing an eating disorder is overwhelming.

Some restaurants very unhelpfully have nutritional values on their menus which can be a minefield for those of us trying to recover from an eating disorder. Trying to do the “ right thing for recovery” when in an already stressful situation and then presented with your demons on a plate, in every sense is really freaking hard. I used to use one hand to block out the numbers. Or ask someone I trusted to look at the menu, find something I’d like and pick until I could deal with this. Until I got to this point, my eating disorder was too strong and it would not allow me to choose what ‘I desired’. This adds to the stress, feeds the eating disorder and makes the time really challenging. It gets better, I promise.

You can’t switch your calculator of a brain off overnight. It takes time and practice and many situations and repeated actions until your brain doesn’t equate the numbers with relevance. But it can be helpful to go to places you don’t know the nutritional value, because your well trained brain sometimes doesn’t switch off for familiar items. Now I can go to a restaurant with the nutritional values and choose what I desire without coercion. It irritates me that the diet industry even seeps into the catering industry and influences our choices. (I spent ages in recovery with a black marker pen scrubbing out nutritional values on boxes etc) Now I don’t automatically read or know the content of EVERYTHING. IT is possible to train your brain to stop paying attention with effort. Black marker pens are brilliant for this.

ALSO, FOR THOSE WHO NEED TO HEAR THIS, I’M GOING TO SAY THIS ONCE: CALORIES IN DOES NOT EQUAL CALORIES OUT. OUR BODIES ARE WAY MORE INTELLIGENT THAN THE PEOPLE WHO CAME UP WITH THIS LIE.

What my life would look like after I returned from a holiday:

A completely false sense of guilt for the “loss of control”. I say false because, I was not in control on any of the trips. I had abided by my eating disorder rules and stipulations. I might have eaten something slightly outside of ‘HH” rule book and paid an enormous price of guilt, shame and most importantly regret for all the things ‘HH’ made me miss out on because I listened.

I would return from holiday, unhappy, compensate for my warped view of the trip and over value I placed on it and nothing would change because an eating disorder is a constant event planning, life of restriction.

A Vacation now:

Leading up to the holiday, the old neural pathways are fragile and the ‘HH’ thoughts do get louder. The thoughts around compensating return. But the big difference now, I know these thoughts are lies. The do not lead to me feeling happier, more confident on my holiday, more relaxed and present. No the complete opposite. Therefore, I have to be vigilant I have to make an effort to do the opposite.

Vacations are a trigger. Knowing triggers, helps you plan and prevent slips or relapses or in the event of either recover from them quicker.

My husband and I talked about the trip prior. He knows my triggers pretty well now.

For me, this meant, making sure we always have ample snacks around incase we get caught somewhere ( we spent 6 hours driving and quite remotely at times).

We knew some of the foods would be challenging- so I set myself some food challenges. Like eating spontaneously on the road, eating foods that are deemed as “unhealthy”. When realistically no food is unhealthy it’s all fuel.

It was going to be the first time on a beach in my togs since I weight restored. This was a huge one. Putting on swimwear for the first time, since weight restoring is a whole new chapter in recovery. I’ve gotten used to wearing larger clothes to my previous weight restored body. That was a challenge in itself. But putting on swim wear is next level discomfort and vulnerability. Society tells us, to go to the beach we need to be “bikini/ beach/summer body ready”. Just putting it out there now, “bikini/summer body’s” do not exist. It’s a societal fat phobic term, the body you inhabit in, is beach ready whenever. If it can get you to the beach, it’s ready!

Learning to adapt. This has been a massive one for me. Whether it’s adjusting to body image, which is something that naturally creeps in on vacation. Being surrounded by different body sizes, it is important to feel as comfortable in your skin as you can. Wearing clothes that make you feel comfortable helps. My body is very different now in recovery, feeling confident and comfortable is hard. It is possible my friend, you shift your focus to the activities you are participating in, rather than the body you are in. I am grateful to this body because it’s this body that allows me to enjoy rather than fixate and agonise. No matter what body you are in in the midst of an eating disorder you won’t be happy.

But for the body image stuff: I tried to think about it this way..

Why is it, the least interesting thing about someone, their appearance is what we judge them on so heavily?

Personally, I think I have nice eyes, but that is one of the least interesting things about me.

There is nothing interesting about your, shape, weight or appearance. I don’t care how much you weigh or size jeans you wear.

This has helped me this week when I found my thoughts drifting to judging my recovering body. Instead I know I was mean on a paddle board, I am funny and a kind person, that’s way more interesting than worrying about the other crap.

I’m at a place in my recovery where I can eat out, and this can be regularly. I found this really difficult previously. Even so, my old thoughts were there on occasion but each meal I challenged them and moved on. That doesn’t mean I found the holiday as easy as someone who has never experienced an eating disorder. I still had to choose recovery at least 3-6 times a day and not let those decisions impact upon my plans or activity. But I did not engage in the ‘HH’ thoughts.

The holiday was more free and flexible. I felt present. I wasn’t bone cold in 25 degree heat. I wasn’t calculating. Goofy yes, calculating no.

This level of flexibility and freedom is something that has come with persistence and time.

Holiday’s are a time for rest and recuperation from the craziness of our day t day lives, for people with eating disorders they can instil extreme anxiety which diminishes any prospect of relaxation and enjoyment. But there are ways of managing them. As outlined above I think some of this will depend on the stage one recovery to the extent of planning and support required around them. But they should not be as stressful, so I hope if you are someone with or supporting someone with an ED, you can find someways of reducing the anxiety.

Things that I have found to be helpful when planning trips:

1. Talking with your treatment team before (and after)

2. Planning for potential triggers

3. Identifying potential triggers and a plan in the event of trigger-what’s in your toolkit

4. Planning food challenges for the stage of recovery, with appropriate support.

5. If following a meal plan, how the trip might be helpful or detrimental and planning around this

6. Wearing clothes that make you feel good.

7. Making sure you always have appropriate fuel available

8. Do you need to know where you are eating? (again I think very individual) I did at some stages.

9. What activities will you be participating in

10. Who are you going to be travelling with, are you supported/ triggered by them.

All of these are or have been part of my own trigger prevention and plan. This is growing/ changing as I encounter potential triggers or progress through recovery. You might have some similarities but you WILL have your own.

Quash stigma not fat: ED recovery blog

#Eating disorder recovery SAFEPLACE

#recovery lessons

Letter to Younger Self/ Person. (The Costs of Conforming to Societies’ “Ideal Body”)

A little quote..

Smoke ‘N’ Mirrors

Three Years in Eating Disorder Recovery

Navigating Work and Recovering From an Eating Disorder.

Lived Experience..in ED Recovery.

Recovering from an Eating Disorder doesn’t Automatically Guarantee Life Will be Perfect..

Identifying Core Values, in Eating Disorder Recovery

“Weigh days” in ED recovery

Fat bias

“Recovery Burnout”

Journaling #1 ED recovery

Recovery isn’t about never making mistakes

Two years in recovery..WAKE UP CALL

Vacationing with an Eating Disorder..

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