“To recover from an eating disorder is to be thrown into the middle of the ocean without a life vest. You’ll struggle and sometimes you’ll get pulled under, but you will learn to swim.”
I once read this quote which very accurately describes recovery from an eating disorder. It’s a struggle. It’s a lifestyle in itself, a very destructive one. As you try to get well, instead of feeling strong, the mean voices in your head just get louder. The voices that tell you “you’re not good enough,” “no one will like you if you gain weight,” “you’ll be just like everyone else; even worse, because at least everyone else has their sh*t together,” “you will no longer be special if you gain weight,” etc., etc. Yeah, “special”. In my mind, my eating disorder makes me “special.”
I have been struggling with eating disorders (the whole array of them) since 2005, and even though I get better every once in a while, I have never fully recovered. It’s not as easy as I thought it would be. And I try. Boy, do I try! For those of you out there who think that beating an eating disorder is as easy as saying “just start eating more and don’t worry about it,” are f#*%ing crazy. I apologize for the foul language but I’m just trying to make a point. There is nothing ‘easy’ about eating disorders. Nothing. It’s a long way, straight down unfortunately. And the older you get, the more complicated dealing with it gets. The metabolism is not as fast anymore, your cravings get stronger after years of abusing your body, you learn ways to restrict and purge your body of food, and the guilt grows bigger than life. And just like that, slowly but surely things spiral out of control.
You lose your ability to feel satisfied. Your satisfaction comes from either restricting your calories to feel skinny (“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” anyone?) or from stuffing your face with enormous amounts of food. The infamous binge/restrict cycle. There is no such thing as eating in moderation. What is moderation? Is that thing even real?
The toughest part is even if in your mind you want to recover, you want to live that nice life where thinking about food does not occupy 90% of your daily activities, you cannot let go of the guilt. You cannot let go of the idea that thin does not equal pretty. You cannot accept the fact that so many people are going to be thinner than you after you gain the weight back. You will no longer win the game. You will now be a loser. The crazy thing is that I am ready to be recovered because I am tired of the constant mind-game; but as ready as I am, just thinking about letting myself eat anything I want and allowing myself to gain weight gives me panic attacks, quite literally. But that brings me right back to the beginning of the cycle described above; that is the exact fear that lies at the very base of the eating disorder.
With all that said, recovery is possible. Or that’s what they tell me. I have been going back and forth with this for months. I have tried every possible scenario: I’ve tried to find my passion to keep my mind off of food, but food would always end up taking priority over my passion; I’ve tried to let myself eat what I want, but the guilt would always push me back into restriction; I declared so many days as my ‘fresh start’, and it lasted for various periods of time until I would relapse all over again. See the pattern? Somehow, my mind always finds tricks to snap back into the illness. Somehow, it seems impossible to completely let go of the disease. It seems to be a permanent passenger in my life journey. But even after all that, I still believe that recovery is possible. It will become even more real when I finally stop comparing myself to the others and basing my self-worth on how thin I am compared to other people.
Over the past few days, probably even few months, I have been doing quite a lot of research on how to recover from an eating disorder. After all the research, I have a good idea of what it takes. You basically need to let your body loose (I mean it in a good way) – stop restricting, stop yo-yoing between recovery and relapse, eat calorie-dense foods, do not overcompensate (no purging, no skipping meals, no exercise), do not let yourself get too hungry, etc. (advice from http://followtheintuition.tumblr.com/). Seems simple enough, right? Wrong. The fear of letting yourself loose is exactly what underlies the principles of eating disorders. And the cycle does not end there. In addition to the emotional turmoil of having to accept yourself just the way you are, you have to deal with stomach issues (bloating, constipation), and the constant questioning of whether it’s even going to work. But after having seen a number of real-life examples (I am talking real real-life examples, not some polished Instagram stars), I am hopeful. I am ready to fight. I want the life fueled by guilt, dissatisfaction, and self-disappointment to be over. Even as I write this, my inner voice tells me otherwise. It wants me to go back to being in control, it tells me that I will never win in life if I lose that control over keeping myself thin, it tells me that people will see me differently if I gain weight. But here’s what I want to say to that voice (yes, I know I’m totally talking to myself): “I am tired of following your stupid rules. I am tired of suppressing my personality just because I am “not thin enough yet” to claim people’s attention. I am tired of suppressing my femininity and trying to make my body look like a teenager’s. I am tired of feeling that I am never good enough, no matter what I do and say and how I act. I am tired of being controlled by the food, and not being in control of the food. I WILL NOT PLAY THIS GAME ANYMORE.”
Honestly, if I want “staying thin” to be my biggest achievement in life, then it’s an issue in itself. I want to be proud not of having an eating disorder, but of having had it in the past and having beat it for good. I know it will take time, and I will have my sad moments, but I know I can do it. Slowly but surely I will beat my eating disorder’s a$$. I am sad, of course, because I am trying to let go of an important part of who I am (even though that part is self-destructive), but it is the right thing to do if I want to live a normal life. I am sad because I am trying to break all my principles by which I have lived for the past 11 years (yep, since 2005). I am sad because somewhere deep inside I don’t want to recover as this disease is my security blanket. But also deep inside, I know that this is the right thing to do. So I am sad but I hold my head up high.
Coffee Meets Glamour 