This article was posted anonymously. A young woman in her 20’s shares her story about the progress she is having after figuring out she has an eating disorder…
School for me wasn’t easy. I had a hard time making friends, especially in high school. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after I graduated high school. But I managed to pick a degree and a college and hoped for the best. Well during my second semester I decided to drop out. The degree I picked wasn’t for me and once again had a difficult time making friends. I was completely lost with what I wanted to do with my life. In a sense I lost control, but I soon found something I could control. What I ate. I felt I was gaining weight and it was going right to my stomach. In the beginning I just paid more attention to what I was eating and ate a little less. Months went by and my restrictions were getting worse. I gave myself rules and I had to follow every single one. Got an app to track how my calories I was eating every day. My mind was constantly thinking about food. What I should eat later? How many calories is in that? How many calories have I had so far? And on and on and on. As time went on I gave myself more rules to follow and less calories to eat in a day. I had moments where I would be worried that I was getting an eating disorder but I felt I wasn’t that bad. After about 6 months of this my health was showing physical signs that I was malnourished. But I kept brushing it off that it was something else. No one didn’t know what was going on with me. One day it hit me, that maybe I really do have a problem. I knew it was a problem when the thought of just eating more food brought me to tears. I had to tell someone. My best friend was the first person I told. After telling her more about my problems she knew it was serious and I had to tell my parents. The next day I got the courage to tell my mom. It was the hardest thing to do but it was the best thing I ever did.
My parents now knew what was going on with me, they were so proud that I admitted that I needed help. The next step was my mom talked to a counselor and got an appointment for me. Talking to the counselor made me realize why I developed this eating disorder and that I needed to start eating more for my health. My counselor wanted me to go to this clinic so I can get more help but I didn’t have the money. I stopped seeing the counselor because she believed I needed to get better by myself. Weeks went by and I was still struggling to eat more, I was still counting calories. Until one day it hit me that I wasn’t going to get better by counting calories using an app. I had to face my fear and delete the app. Once that app was gone it seemed like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders. Don’t get me wrong it was really scary eating foods without counting. But that small action was a huge step in my recovery. There still was that part in my brain where I still knew how many calories were in different food items. But I’m not that great at math to add all those numbers in my head.
Another thing I struggle with is talking to family and friends about my feelings. So instead of keeping all those thoughts in my head I started to keep a journal. . I do try to talk to my parents about what’s going on but it can get difficult. It’s a way to get my thoughts out and also gives me a chance to document my journey to recovery. Plus if I did something that day that was a victory I would make sure to write that down. So over time the victories start to add up. I also have a separate journal where I can draw, it’s another way to get my feelings out. It really helps out when I am feeling very anxious, either from eating a fear food to an event coming up, as a way to distract from those thoughts.
Now over time when I started to restrict, I gave myself rules. There were different foods or whatever that I wouldn’t allow myself to eat. But since I was in recovery I had to face those fears. I started small and just worked myself up. At first it was really difficult because I dealt with a lot of guilt after. But I just had to tell myself that my body deserved it. Believe me it’s easier said than done, most days I felt I was too much. There were even days where I used the calculator on my phone to count up my calories and got scared of how high the number was. In reality I probably was still not eating enough.
After restricting myself for months on end my metabolism probably got screwed up. Therefore I wanted to try to do this new plan for eating. People have told me to try it before but it always scared me. I had to face my fears and try the 6 meals a day plan. Which is basically just eating 6 small meals a day. I often would think im eating too much and I’m not eating enough, but at the end of the day my body needed it. However, eating 6 times a day gave me a chance to try new snack foods. Obviously that was really hard for me at first since I had to ignore the labels telling me how many calories they were. And not just new food but food items that I told myself I shouldn’t eat. I do admit that I will sometimes want to restrict but instead I would eat a fear food. A part of recovery is having a good relationship with food once again, which means enjoying everything I ate.
During my time of restricting I really had no idea what my weight was at. I only have a guess of what it was when I first started but I could be way off. This is only because we don’t have a scale in our house, otherwise, trust me I would know. It was only when I went to the doctors several times when my health was going down I knew how much I weighed. Those numbers I was seeing was lower than I thought, but it did show me I was losing weight. Fast forward to when we decided a scale in the house could help show me how I’m getting better. The number was way lower than what I thought I would be in the beginning of my recovery. Once I saw the number I knew I had to get back to a healthy weight.
I first heard about intuitive eating watching a YouTuber that really inspired me to get better. Intuitive eating is basically learning to listen to your body. Eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full. This is really hard to be able to trust my body after restricting. And even in recovery I wanted to eat at certain times, even if I was hungry before the time to eat, I would wait. There are times when I find out that I gained a lot in a week and I just have to tell myself that it’s ok. I am getting better at this but it’s a struggle. This YouTuber even inspired me to exercise, not to lose weight, but to gain muscle. I only do it a couple times a week and if I don’t feel like it, I won’t lift weights. I am learning to find that balance of life.
Over time I was able to make these huge steps in recovery by myself and was able to see my counselor again. I didn’t have to but talking to her will help me progress even more plus tell me what the next step is. Since I have been seeing her I have been able to do things that used to scare me. For instance I found myself able to walk around the grocery store by myself. I volunteer at a library, even though I had problems at first I tried again and succeed. Recently, I applied to volunteer at a hospital. I need to learn to be able to socialize and one day I will be able to get a full time job.
