Can you not stop weighing yourself?

I stopped because it is pointless to follow the water fluctuations and what comes in and out of the intestines, you know? I no longer have a desire to lose weight if it happens because of restriction because muscles always comes with fat loss when it happens like that and I view that as unhealthy and therefor undesirable. Restriction also reduce the metabolism I want to be high. I see no point in restriction anymore. It can not last and will show me in a manipulated version only. So if I am loved then the question will always be: Will I be loved if I was natural?

I thought not eating enough and be thin was going to prevent me from harm and rejection, but that is magic thinking. Thin people are not spared by pigs, assholes and selfish people. Thin people also lose control, mess up and get rejected. Thin people can also be met with contempt and judgement. To restrict is like holding a straw as a weapon and a skeleton for comfort. It is asking others to take care of something you are suppose to do yourself, but just never learned how to in a good way. What needs to be done is to learn that instead of looking like a beggar of maternal love, because no one will ever take responsibility for your well being like you can. You must find love the way you need it so you get support for the love you have in yourself.

Is it impossible to recover for certain people?

I think everyone can recover from an ED if they get the right tools to do so and the right support. Recovery can be likened with finding the keys to a lot of doors and all those doors reveals a part of the recovery landscape. The more doors I open the more of the healthy landscape I see. When the landscape is bigger than my ED world I move into the new one and just now and then I peep into a door to the old world, but then I am reminded of the fear based life on the other side and quickly go back.

So one actively look for the right keys. It can be topics about how to set boundaries, how to express emotions, how to find the right kind of love, how to tolerate all kinds of bodies, how to detach from thoughts, how to change mindsets, how to love, how to challenge fears, how to trust the body, how to eat healthy, how to not care about what others opinion is, how companies creates and benefits from peoples insecurities. The list is long.

For me it helped to watch a lot of recovery youtube videos, but most importantly my own questions to myself so I could understand why I did what I did, how it benefitted me, which of my unhealthy opinions were taught and not really mine, what my true opinions really were. Again the list is long.

First thing I did was to make a meal plan - that neither scared me too much to refuse to eat it nor was so meager I would be too hungry - and follow that. That gave room to think about all these questions instead of food/body/exercise/number/how to endure all the time.

Years in quasi recovery

I lived several years eating 1500 calories. Every day I ate the same foods to keep the calories in check and performed the same amount of activity. My days looked the same just to make sure I did not gain. It worked to maintain my weight, to be an anorexic person who don't end up dead, but I don't recommend it. I recommend to work on why you fear weight gain and replace the fear with love so you get a life, not just a quasi life.

I found out that my need for structure had to do with my fear of losing control of my emotions. I had strong emotions after a lot of trauma and abuse. I wanted to be "put together" within the structure I had made for myself. To be put together also means to be always tense. By living within this structure of a meal and activity plan I was not challenged, so no emotional outbursts would happen. I can get very mad in a second. I really hate it because I want to be a person who have control so I don't get hurt. I feared that I would suddenly faint on the bus not knowing what people would do to my body. I can also cry a lot. God wanted to challenge me on my fear of losing control in public so he made me lose control of my emotions even within the structure. He made me cry uncontrollably sometimes among strangers. Cry hard! Huge waves of emotions just came over me I could not stop.

I also experienced getting what later was called hysterical once I bled and the bleeding would not stop. Also something I feared I would be called. What I found was when I lost control I felt another type of control. I was detached from my emotional self and just witnessed it, untouchable. Thing is I did not trust peoples kindness. I was afraid they would bully, abuse or hurt me in some way if I was vulnerable, but God showed me otherwise. People showed respect when I cried. They just looked at me with kind caring eyes and when I was perceived as hysterical I thought the woman who disliked me or the situation was coldhearted. What she thought of me did not matter. Only what I knew was true mattered.

So ask yourself why you need the structure and challenge yourself so you can come to see that what you fear has nothing to do with your body and what happened to you had nothing to do with it either.

My ED is my mum un-personified

Mum taught me one should not eat until satisfied,  one should go to bed hungry, wait as long as possible before one eats, looks is utterly important, one must suffer to be pretty, manipulating the body in brutal ways is ok. She said I had to quit classical ballet (the core of my life) because she could no longer afford it as she needed to do plastic surgery. She bought me nice clothes when I was starved and skinny. When I had a normal weight she complained about how much I ate and how expensive the food was.  She could not help me look after my son when he was small because she had to wash her hair. Yes, it took the whole day and evening.

When I realised mum was my ED voice it was easier to recover because I never thought her opinions were wise or her values good. I got an ED to be seen behind my surface, but the strategy failed because she was too shallow to be able to, and my dad was too.

He was too scared to look within or go deeper than the surface so the anger he hid from his violent mother came out uncontrollably when his kids disturbed him. Mum divorced him when she caught him hurting the smallest one. He decided to no longer be our dad then and left the country. I was 10 by then. Mum hated him for leaving her kids and took the anger out on me who loved him dearly.

She was sexually abused as a kid and felt dirty and contempt. She thought she was disgusting so she never hugged me as a kid, even though she was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. 

To change our appearance to prevent others from feeling disgust is easier than to clean the dirt inside. The ED focus is a cover to hide how bad we feel about ourselves, but if we heal our wounds; recover from our ED; discover who we truly are and help others do the same we become selfless and develop divine qualities which makes us free finally from the burden of a body and the focus on appearance. We no longer need to be understood because we understand ourselves, nor do we need to be seen behind the surface because we see it for ourselves, that we are pure love and there is nothing to hide. 

It is only when we cover up and hide our essence we see imperfections. The critical eye is the eye I was seen with by my mum. The critical eye is the one focusing on the surface and as through a magnifying glass see the small imperfections as huge and disgusting. It is the same as the evil eye. It is disgusting what only look with disgust. I inherited it from her. By making sure I saw the flaws before she/ my world did I hoped I could prevent criticism, but it made me critical with everything and everyone else as well. It made me evil, intolerant. I had to stop looking for flaws and I understood criticism is nothing to fear because those who criticise looks are only focusing on the negative, the surface and are disgusted by themselves. It is distorted and sick. 

"But how will I accept that the ED even happened" you ask.

By getting over the fear of weight gain and in the process of recovering we find out who we are. To recover from an ED is your journey to get to know yourself. While you were just full of fear and acted accordingly you were a product of your environment. By recovery you free yourself from the collective and become a unique strong individual. By recovery you can also help the collective to improve just like you do, step by step, by sharing what you have understood. The ED was a trap like any other (addiction or mental disorders) everyone else also falls into before they climb up to the light.

I gave up the fight.

It is a relief to let go, but to let go of fighting is not a defeat. It is to realise I don't have to fight to get what I need. I already have it inside of me. All along I wanted to draw other peoples attention to behind the surface, but to manipulate the surface never did that. It is not a defeat to give up doing it when one no longer need those others to be able to focus there oneself. To give up the fight is to stop the war against the needs of the body and me and choose acceptance of those needs. To stop the fight is to cooperate with the body. The body was never the enemy. The unaccepting view was. It is to choose love and health instead of fear and destructive behaviour that ruins health. It is to accept all kinds of bodies and flaws, it is to focus on the positive aspects of bodies and everything else. It is to stop trying to change an already brilliant creation. We have experienced it can not be changed long term anyway. It will always try to bounce back to fit its design.I wanted to be seen behind the surface because I value what is there and want to explore it. When I find other people and ways to do so and finds ways to deal with those who only focus on the surface of things, who are negative, critical and judgemental I found space to let go of trying to avoid comments from those who focus on the surface of things by manipulating my body. Those who are negative and critical will see negative aspects even in the most beautiful creation anyway. They can not be pleased. It will take a life time trying to and one is bound to fail.

We must take responsibility for our own recovery and well being. We must provide love for ourselves. Stop hoping to get it from someone who does not have it. We need to be loved to love. And then we can love those who can not love so they learn how to. My journey began when I prayed to God and discovered that for me to be able to connect I had to roll over the big stone in my heart. God is ready to heal when ever we are ready for it. I was desperately fighting to get love. I can love now. I can love my body, myself and those who "should have" loved me when I was small and needy. Turns out they don't even take themselves seriously. They don't even love themselves. They don't even have any insight in themselves. I gave up fighting because I have "won" what I was fighting for, but from the source of it, not blocked channels for it. Everyone can receive the potion they are receptive for from God. No need to fight because there is no competition or conditions. Just be like an open minded trusting kid.

I am almost there now. I am almost fully recovered.

I am not authentic when I act according to my ED voice and because having an ED means I act out of fear and that is really nothing to write home to heaven about. I have finally managed to break the spell and understood all the reasons why I have had an ED and what has kept me having one. My ED voice is a congIomerate of strong impressions I have got from people that has hurt and "made me" fearful. To avoid more bad experiences from such (selfish, shallow) people I have followed a set of rules. But neither those rules or anything else can hinder people to be assholes and as long as I fear these people I become like them. Focusing on appearance even though I hated that they did it! I choose health over appearance and love over fear now and I am out of the ED grip. Instead of ignoring or fear hunger when I feel hunger I think the body needs food and eat. Instead of getting stressed because I have no energy to be active I rest and remind myself I will get energy to be active later. I make sure to eat enough in the evening so the body has fuel to repair/heal during the night which is the time most of the healing is done. I don't fear that I will gain weight because it only happens if the body really needs to.

I am at a normal BMI now, but it is ok. I was thinking: Who am I to think I can change what God created? Do I think God did a bad job? Do I really think I can make it better? It will just force itself back to what it genetically is designed for anyway. What a stupid occupation trying to change an already good design just because my stupid parents and a lot of others in our society has a distorted, disrespectful and vain view on the body. Just because they are obsessed with appearance and can not see beyond it doesn't mean I should be like them. My mum is 86 years old now and told me yesterday she weighed only 38 kg. I have pushed her to eat more, but she always says that if she eats more it will get on her tummy. She is the eating disorder voice in my head with all the stupid rules. So no, I am getting free from the destructive rules and ideas she fed me. I will be supportive to every body, every mind, every heart. If someone stops liking me because I am at a normal weight it is probably just my mum and dad. I could not deal with that rejection earlier because I was in need of love they never gave me, but now I have found love from within and from others and find they need me more than I need them, because I have the love they never had for themselves.