Inspirational comments from people in recovery.

I'm now 9 months in, and the unthinkable has happened. I no longer care what my weight is. It is the weight my body needs to be healthy and give me an awesome life. That's all I need to know.

Your ED played an important role in helping you feel safe, and for that you can lovingly and respectfully tell it thank you and good bye, and the edema is body language for sit down, eat more, let me rest, let me sleep, help me cry, help me feel, feed me, feed me, feed me.

We are so afraid to gain weight because what are we going to say to those who notice? It is so embarrassing. What excuse shall we make? No! That is so twisted! We don't have to come up with an excuse for the weight gain because there is nothing wrong with it. We should say the opposite: I was ill before. That is it. We got it all wrong because we are sick in our minds. No reasonable person supports starvation.

Every time you are unsure if you should allow yourself to eat or rest say: All food I crave is good for me now. I need this. If I crave amounts bigger than normal it is because I have not given it enough in the past. I can eat what ever and how much I want any time. I want to serve my body and it doesn't have to "deserve" food or rest by doing exercise to get what it needs. 

"I looked at my life, and I realized through obsessing over my body I was selecting the easy path. I was choosing to focus on externality, and ignoring the larger picture. I was choosing the ego path," she wrote. "Because the fact is, life is way too short to be focused on the exterior. Time spent worrying about your size is time wasted. There are far bigger fish to fry in the world than your thigh size. There are so many better uses for your brain."

When you look in the mirror just look for the positive because you are loveable just the way you are. We look at ourselves with a critical eye when we fear others look at us that way, but if someone close to us do that it is their attitude that is wrong, not our imperfections.

Me as 14: An inspiration

Can you remember how you felt before you started restricting? A time you felt good in your body, felt strong? Before someone made you feel small? Remember how you treated your body then and had regular meals? Try to get inspired by that and take back that self image. You need support to overcome the feeling of being small, to overcome the trauma. Talk about it, cry and so on. I have been destructive for so many years myself because some men have treated me badly. They scared me and then I used the fear to restrict. They are the ones who should suffer, not us. I am done treating myself badly. Just because they did doesn't mean I deserve it and should continue doing it. No, we should find love so we can cry, heal and be good to ourselves again.

I think if we shift our focus from how the body appears to how the body feels when it is no longer starved + how more happy and calm we feel when no longer starving it will be easier to accept the weight gain in recovery. And to focus on wanting to heal our body, nourish it with food, instead of associate food with weight gain.

I remember when i was 14 I knew I was bigger than I wished to be, but I focused on the positive I could find with my body and was happy. I thought as long as guys find me attractive i am fine. An older guy expressed that he wasn't happy I wasn't thinner. I was surprised and laughed because I had seen a woman leaving his flat once looking very thin. I thought to myself she had a completely different body type than I had and I didn't even want to look so frail. I thought he was childish complaining I didn't look like her. So I didn't get offended or hurt at all. This was before I experienced several sexual traumas that made me insecure.

I have thought back on my past, again. This time not just one event, but my whole life. Looked at what happened and what I felt and did after each trauma. Finally I got the whole picture and snapped out of my fear-filled atmosphere.