How to make the shift from controlling to honoring the needs of the body in recovery.

When your intention to eat is to give your body what it needs to be healthy, measuring food and body weight becomes irrelevant, as those were tools used to decide how much the body was allowed to get of food and rest instead of listening to it. To get well you can decide to kick out the ED-dictator and be a loving human being instead. You can start honoring the needs of your body instead. Then you will give the body what it needs of food, drink, rest, activity..and how it looks when you give it the best foods and the at least stress possible you will accept because when you love you don't look for flaws, but see the totality, the positive and beyond the physical. 

You don't have to study your body in the mirror, you don't have to body check because when it is taken care of by you it is perfectly fine. You don't have to find the flaws to get rid of them before someone see them and comment on them because if someone would look at you to find flaws and comment on them you are dealing with a very negative person and someone without self control. This person needs help. You don't have to have such people as friends. You can find people who are positive, supporting and loving. You don't have to defend yourself against negative, judgmental people. You can leave them to themselves like other positive people would. And if it is your parents who are like that loving them will change them. They will learn from you and take better care of themselves too and later also be able to love you back.

You have to be the one to start loving you. Someone who have no love can not love you even if they wanted to. 

Medication paradise

I had a weird experience today. I found my new medication Lamictal take away my stress the first day I used it, my constant little fear. Today on day 3 it has made me think differently about my body! My husband said I looked stronger today after I had been to the gym, but I said he probably just imagined it. I felt sad he thought I lifted heavier and heavier and that I had to tell him I can not, that I am not strong, I am not having enough fuel to replenish afterwards, I get too much pain and what not. Really unhappy because I could not train to get stronger as he thought. I asked myself later why I got sad because of that when I have always wanted to look skinny and not be muscular. Then I saw an image of myself as bigger, with more muscles and more fat and I loved that image of myself. I was like: What? How is that possible? That has never happened before! It must be the medication that makes me think differently as it removes my fear. Without the constant fear I no longer see the need to be skinny. It is so weird to be changed so radically and that rapidly! But it is also great. It means I can get much healthier. I can allow myself to increase my calories even when I start to gain weight from the number of calories I eat in the reverse diet that I do, because I will use that energy to get healthy and strong. I then asked myself: If I knew before taking the medication it would make me want to gain weight willingly, would I still take it? The answer was no, no way.! But now I am happy I am one step ahead. 

ED is just fear based! When the fear is gone the ED is out the window with it. Before this happened, at the gym, something happened that can be related to the change of mindset. I had to cry, which I normally do every day anyway. The difference this time was that an image of my mum looking malicious came up with it. It was like she came up through my throat and I had to feel her on the way out of me. By seeing and feeling this evil aspect of her I felt so much better afterwards. Was I relieved from the cause of my fear? She used to scorn me. Always hanging over my shoulder to look for something to criticise me for. It made me into a perfectionist, constantly stressed and afraid of criticism ever since. Seems like my ED is an evil spirit created from the traumatic impact my mum had on me. She became a part of me; Just like she harassed me in my childhood she harasses me in my adult life as a spirit within, making me just as unfree as when she hung over my shoulder. Well, that was up until now. She is out now and no longer have any power over me because the fear is gone.

After a day or two another cause of why I get stressed appeared. What I assume others expects from me. Now I will try to ask people directly if I worry they expect something I don't want to give them. The reason why it stresses me is that my mum used to criticise me and complain when I did not live up to all her unreasonable expectations. I also was in a relationship with a selfish guy who did not talk to me for a week or two if I did not do as he wanted me to, which happened a lot.

Then the third and last, it seems, reason came to my awareness. That I put the bar high for myself to always give correct information and be totally honest. Before I started the medication and lacked patience and detachment to my thoughts it was hard to prepare what to say properly. I also tried to say what I was to say as quick as possible because I  feared the attention span of the listener was very limited. Because I often didn't express myself as correct as I wanted to I was sometimes worried my message was misunderstood and had to correct myself afterwards. With Lamictal I am not so impatient, are calmer and are more detached to my thoughts so I can prepare better what to say so I fulfil my own expectations to be correct better,

Intuitive eating in eating disorder recovery

I understand it like it is about listening to both physical and mental hunger. In the beginning of recovery it is normal to eat more of the fear foods we have desired, but not allowed ourselves and you might fear that you will continue eating these foods forever, but you will eventually get used to them and desire vegetables and fruits again too. You can still use your knowledge about nutrition and. try to eat as varied as possible. You don't have to eat just chocolate for dinner, but have some after dinner instead. So if your mental hunger says chocolate it means you are hungry and want chocolate. Then you make sure you get food for the hunger and chocolate too. That is how I ate in my recovery and it worked perfectly. I felt I had full control even though I ate 3500 calories a day for several weeks.

Going all in is intuitive eating. You eat as much as you want and you allow yourself what you desire. We need the extra calories from our fear foods to be able to gain. When the weight is gained the desire for the fast food is low enough it is easy to eat less of it. It is normal to suddenly be less hungry, both mentally and physically, when the weight is restored, making it easy to eat normal healthy foods. If you have overshot your set point weight you will therefor naturally lose that overshoot weight because you eat less. Just let it come off by itself without pushing it by restriction. That last part is important so you don't end up where you were before the recovery attempt. In this phase it is important to focus on life and the mental aspects of the ED, not the body so much.

Back and forth in recovery

After a week or so in recovery you ask yourself: Is this really what I want to be doing? Because it is easy to go back to restriction after a week and lose the little weight you gained (mostly water), but if you decide to keep on doing it then you know you will gain a lot in a short period of time. I did change my mind once after a week or so all in, but it is just a matter of time before recovery has to happen so after some months I went all in again and didn't stop eating until my weight was recovered. Problem then was that I was not really ready for recovery because I lacked support to deal with underlying issues so as soon as my weight was restored I started to restrict again. Too nervous to live with a normal body with no support. ( I should have taken St johns wort to take the anxiety away). I started with reducing with just 200 calories thinking that's not even restriction, but then the snowball started rolling and not many months later I ate the same amount as before I went all in. Too impatient to wait for the overshoot to come off.

This time around I have got the support I need and have worked through where the hate and feeling of unworthiness comes from so I have no urge to go back to starvation mode. I was so hard on myself because of too high expectations. To talk when I felt disappointed about myself worked. I gave myself a break by the thought that even though I don't do a whole lot of good to people I really want to when I get the chance so I have no reason to beat myself up. It is not my fault that I can't do more. I also understand now that being good should happen naturally, not forced by a strict voice. I have had days with low mood and appetite a couple of times where I don't force myself to eat a certain amount of calories (even though that is what is recommended in recovery), but I have the support to feel good again after some days and then my appetite and hunger is strong again. I truly believe I will recover for good this time because I have sorted so much out and I have the best support ever.

Anorexia, a weed in the garden

If the weed could be pulled up from the ground it would have been a miracle and only possible to do from a being higher than ourselves. If God had pulled it out what would we be challenged with? It would have been something else. It is there so we can have a life challenge we can learn a lot from and conquer one day. What we can do is stop giving it sunshine (attention) and water (nourishment) so it will weaken until it dies by itself. To dare to do that we must first understand that it doesn't serve us. When we dare to stop listening to it we can give attention to another plant that is very small if the weed is strong. One day this plant is taking more space than the weed did. Perhaps the roots may always be there just like we can not eradicate our past traumas, but I think the roots can become weak and dry. I think my mum had common pokeweed in her garden and fed me poisonous berries. Even if the plant is in our garden we don't have to eat from it (believe in it).

I found a light under all the darkness I usually lived with that grew in intensity and size the more I contacted it. The voice of love has the truth which the fear does not. This light is much more powerful than the darkness, if we just ignite it to shine. I shone the light on the little devil (ED) that was gnawing in my stomach. It was interesting to see how small and nasty it was in this light, but it hated the exposure and jumped out. It was as small as the people who acts cruel to us are. All the cruelty and neglect I took personally I had to look at again and detach myself from. It was never about me. It was them. They just couldn't do better at the time.

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.

Replacing ED thoughts with healthy thoughts and how to deal with weight gain

From being ruled by fear that rejects to being ruled by love that has room to embrace everything:

Before I decided to recover I saw myself from the outside, as if I were standing 2 meters away. What I saw was a mentally weak woman driven by fear and I was thinking: That is not how I want to be! I want to be bold and conquer my fears! I also want to be fully authentic!

From emphasizing what society thinks to what you think:

We grew up in a society that emphasize how bodies look so even though we don't think peoples appearance matter much we still care about it because we were influenced by the opinions of others. We care about something because it is expected by others. Do you think body weight matters much? Do you value appearance much? Do you think it is ok to manipulate the body instead of respecting its needs? Do you think bodies should only look a certain way even though they naturally differ? Recognize the destructive thoughts when they come and look at them objectively. Ask yourself if the thought is based on fear or love and throw away the fear based ones.

Many fear that others will judge them if they gain weight. Remember that it is mostly people with eating disorders or narcissists that may be fat shaming. They may do that because they fear fat themselves. Most people have been misinformed about fat in food and fat on bodies and think it is something to fear for health reasons so they may show concerns if we gain a lot of weight and eat a lot of processed foods. We will be less vulnerable if we educate ourselves enough to be sure we are doing the right and healthy thing by eating a lot and a lot of unprocessed foods for a while. If we are educated we can educate all those who do not have the knowledge about eating disorder recovery. 

Apart from being educated and therefor confident we are doing the right thing, we should remember to not take things personally when people come with comments that shows they don't understand. Instead of being offended try to see things from their point of view and know you can not expect that they should know better. Both these things makes you less vulnerable. A third thing is to not care too much about other peoples opinion. If you have found your own. What others think doesn't matter much. It is only when we are uncertain we are open to other peoples view. If you are uncertain about something choose your source of information wisely.

Not lazy, but charging batteries.

There is nothing wrong with being lazy. If you have exercised without eating enough you need a lot of rest in recovery. In the beginning you will feel that need because the body will feel exhausted and need more sleep and rest. You don't have to do anything to earn your food. Babies don't do much, do they? They don't say to themselves: I am just going to drink from one breast this time because I have just been crying and sleeping the last hours. When I have been called lazy it is after saying no to do something for a person who doesn't want to do it himself.😅

From "unworthy" to unneurotic:

Many of us has said we don't deserve food, that we are unworthy. Would you say that to a child? If not is it fair to say that to yourself? When I think someone appreciates me I don't think I am unworthy. When we are sick we typically isolate ourselves. You will feel better if you socialize with people who likes your company and when you can behave a way you like.

To be neurotic is to be disappointed because you are not like your ideal. Trash the unrealistic ideals and focus on the qualities you do have and use them. Lower the bar and be humble.

From uncertainty to trust:

You don't have to calculate how many calories you eat to make sure that you eat enough or not too much. You want to calculate because you are afraid to eat too much, but in recovery what is enough is for the body to decide.

In recovery and in the future you should listen to your body and not your or other peoples head saying when to eat, how much to eat, when to rest, how much to sleep, when to sleep, how much activity you should have etc. The body knows what it needs so much more than anyone else does. And it will not gain more weight than it needs.  

There may be some uncertainties like how much weight you will gain, if you will overshoot or not and if so how much, how much food you will need at week "2, 7 and 10", if you will experience extreme hunger and how long it will last, when your period will come back, when your edema will go away. Things like that. So we must be patient, trust the body and see it happens when the body decides is the right time. In recovery we can relax. No more controlling and manipulating. The body is responsible to tell us what to give the body now. The only thing we need to do is give it what it wants.

From thinking only thin bodies are accepted and beautiful to see beauty in every living creature God made: 

I have started to follow plus size models and recovered people I think look amazing to rewire my brain to see that to have fat, even a lot of it, is beautiful. It helps me a lot actually. I have started to embrace the thought of being sexy. I hated that earlier. I liked being skinny and just cute, like a girl, not hot like a woman. Now I slowly try to get used to being sexy and to think that is ok. To see my body through the eyes of a man. He doesn't think: Oh she is fat. No, he will look at the boobs and the butt sticking out and just wants to sink into the soft body and explore every curve like a snake. Men look at the positive and the sexy. They don't care about cellulites and stretch marks. They love the soft bodies that we hate. We are to desire a mans body, not our own. I love a ripped body, but I don't need one. My boyfriend has it and he loves my body because it is soft. We must stop looking at bodies with a critical eye. Look for what is pretty only. Imperfections are everywhere and just makes us disappointed to focus on. We must stop looking for what could be fixed because in recovery we are not fixing anymore. We are accepting now and let the body fix. With fear gone we can love.

My boyfriend help me heal my body image when he gives me physical attentiona and makes love to me no matter how weird I feel about my "fatter body". I asked him the other day what he thinks about my body changing and he replied excited: You are just you. He sees me so often he doesn't see much change from each time while I am aware that I probably gain a kilo a week. It is easier to focus on the positive now that I have been in active recovery for 12 weeks. The positive in my appearance, personality, behaviour and qualities. Instead of focusing on what you lost, find what you gained instead. Examples: To go from anorexic to recovered is like going from being delicate to delicious, from cute to hot, from frail to fierce, from dishonest to honest, from stingy to generous, from miserable to happy, from mad to sane, from ghost-like to alive, from weak to strong, from self occupied to free, from fearful to loving.

The only way I managed to not fear foods was to overcome my fear of weight gain. Earlier I saw recovery as becoming chubby instead of seeing it as getting strength and health back. My fear of gaining weight was reduced when I saw a big and strong woman from the Masaai tribe in Kenya. I have feared not being taken seriously if I gain weight, but she was big and had a fierce attitude. I understood that weight doesn't matter. It is what you express through it that determined how people will perceive you and interact with you. It is possible to be elegant, cute, strong, intelligent, all the positive things no matter the weight of the body. But if you feel trapped in the body and hate it that's when you may experience all kinds of weird responses from people. People can smell insecurity and start criticizing, but people can also smell strength and respect you. For me who has authenticity as a goal should accept and have my natural body as well.

From looking for faults to looking for benefits:

It is easier to focus on the positive now that I have been in active recovery for 12 weeks. The positive in my appearance, personality, behaviour and qualities. Instead of focusing on what you lost, find what you gained instead. Examples: To go from anorexic to recovered is like going from being delicate to delicious😜, from cute to hot, from frail to fierce, from dishonest to honest, from stingy to generous, from miserable to happy, from mad to sane, from ghost-like to alive, from weak to strong, from self occupied to free, from fearful to loving.

Change your goals:

To be as thin as possible can no longer be a goal. If that is still a goal you will restrict at some degree and hope your recovery weight be as low as possible. You will probably end up restricting after you are weight restored if you have not already while weight was restored. You must get rid of all fear of bodyfat, weight gain and a bigger body. It is easy to say, I know, but it is possible to change this if you want to. I can tell you some ways that was helpful for me.

Before I even started to seriously think about recovering I had moved to Kenya where diet culture is non existent and most women are bigger than most women in Europe. Then I got a boyfriend who was brought up in this culture and was excited to support me if I chose to eat freely and gain weight. To conquer my fear of weigh gain I changed my mind about which bodies are beautiful by looking at plus size models. When I found plus size models hot and beautiful there were no longer any reason to fear eating and gaining weight. I started to find bigger bodies more interesting than the thin ones I had seen a million times already in magazines etc. I looked at bodies that looks similar like mine when it is at its set point weight and tried to look for the positive in it. I tried to remember how confident I once was in a bigger body before I started to restrict. Not right before, but before what triggered me to restrict food happened. I owned my body then. I knew it wasn't perfect, but I treasured the positive parts of it. I didn't focus on the negative. I didn't look at myself with a critical eye like I did during my eating disorder. To remember this as vividly as I could it helped me get back the same positive attitude towards my body. 

Shift focus: 

Even though my body looks weird now it is even weirder to criticize it since it is not my creation. If it was an illustration I had made it could be criticized and changed until near perfection, but it is not. And because it is not my creation it is not for me to force a change upon it. The body is given to me so I can use it for what I need to do in this world. It is not been given to me to be perfected. It is already working fine if I just take care of it. To take care of it and use it in a good way is my responsibility, not changing how it looks.

From taking things personally to be objective about what others say and do:

When we gain weight in recovery many of us are afraid of rejection and humiliation so we don't accept our weight gain and how we look. This is fucked up. I think we once (or more than once) felt that we were rejected or humiliated and therefor wanted to change to avoid it from happening again by changing our body. In recovery when we change the body back to how it looked when we felt rejected or humiliated the fear of this happening again comes back up. Now is the time to realize that it is not about the body. It was never about the body. It was about the other person. We should never have taken what the person/people said or did personally as rejection or humiliation. Try to understand the person who said or did the things you took personally so you can detach yourself from it and see that what the other person did is about that person and not you. If someone acted with lack of respect does not mean you did not deserve better. It means that person lacked respect in that moment for some other reason. Instead of changing your appearance, change what you will believe in. 

From trying to change our body to try changing our mind: 

We don't have to change to be accepted by others. If we do we do it based on fear. We have a drive to become better. A drive that is a loving force.  This natural drive has a love for divine qualities. The qualities that if we love them makes us attracted to heaven so that becomes our home. Someone with an eating disorder have many negative thoughts and beliefs. To get healthy we need to look at these thoughts and beliefs that makes us want to destruct our bodies objectively. When we focus on them we will see there is very little truth to them. Next step is to replace the thoughts with positive and truthful thoughts and beliefs. Another thing we can change is what we will focus on. We can stop focusing on things that will not help us to go in the direction we want to go and focus on what will support us. 

From masculine to feminine:

We live in a society dominated by masculine values like hard, strong and intellect. It is not healthy for women to be like men. Women has a softer body and softer voice. We function differently. Don't reshape yourself and your body based on the values in a patriarchal society. Be you. This society needs a balance between masculine and feminine. Be a part of the restoring of this balance. The world needs brave women who are themselves and contribute to the world with their uniqueness and feminine qualities. Even though a lot of people (mostly men) don't value or understand the importance of sensitivity, intuition, surrender, tenderness, empathy, humility, understanding, cooperativeness, kindness, devotedness, expressiveness, passiveness, vulnerability and so on doesn't mean they are not equally important as masculine qualities. Don't be embarrassed for being a woman. Be a natural one. Be authentic! See that a soft body is lovely. Let the men have the low bodyfat percentage. Let the men have the hard bodies. You don't have to be as active and strong as them. Don't be embarrassed for being vulnerable and emotional. Just be you. The world needs feminine qualities so don't suppress them.

If you have something you want to add, please feel free to comment.

Can one be free from anorexia?

I don't agree to those who say it is forever. For some it is, for other it is not. The sooner you get out of the anorexia behaviors and deal with emotions and stress in a more constructive way the better chance you have to be free from it forever. I have heard many say they are free from it and I do not think they are lying. If we find good supporting people and learn better ways to deal with stressors it is hope. If you understand why you started restricting and have found another, constructive way to deal with your problems and no longer try to manipulate your body, but take care of it and trust it I will say you are free from it.

It was a big surprise and a turning point for me to realize that the ED voice wanted to not make me slim, but dead. I understood it the day I was looking in the mirror to see if I could find some fat, thought I had found some, but saw that it was just a bone and I found myself angry at the bone for sticking out, taking up space! I was surprised about the reaction and thought about it and understood that I (or the ED voice ) wanted the body to vanish completely. Meaning I was suicidal without being fully aware! 

I was depressed and wanted to die, but didn't want to do it quickly. I tried to trick my body to survive on little, but in reality I was fooling myself because one day one will die from that behavior. I had thought my ED voice was on my team, helping me reach my goal to be skinny and free, but when I realized it wanted me dead I had to kick it to the curb and find my own voice. I had to dig deep through the darkness that filled me before I found some light. The more I contacted it and listened to it the more it expanded.

Look thoroughly at the thoughts that makes you engaged in the destructive behavior and pretend you hear someone else say this to themselves. What would you say to that person then? If there is something triggering the behavior see if there is something else you can do as a response to it or something else to do to prevent it to happen. Again objectively, because when we are caught up it is close to impossible to change how we see things. I found myself suddenly snapped out of the eating disorder mindset as if I had been spellbound earlier. It is the fear that traps us and an inner world based on fear is distorted. Anything/anyone who can help you to no longer fear a normal weight is helpful. 

Work directly on the fear issue. Dissolve it. The reason why people have an eating disorder for long is lack of the right support. We have to stop thinking the body and food is the enemy. Who taught you that the needs of your body isn't important to fulfill? 

Overcome the irrational fear

I don't want to come to heaven and have to say: Well, on earth my main goal was to be thin and stay thin because I was so traumatized. I just fiddled with what was right in front of me- my body, too overwhelmed to look up on what was going on around me.


I did wish to serve people, but this wish was at the base of my skull, overshadowed by the fear of gaining weight. Unfortunately, I can't say to do good to others was my main goal. I was more like a skinny bitch than a pleasant selfless servant of God because my happiness was just as starved as the rest of me.


I don't want to die and not yet have overcome an irrational fear (of having a normal body weight). I want to be reckoned among the strong- the survivors who got lost at sea, but held on to the helping hands until I could stand safe on my own two feet on land.

Comments from others in recovery

The triggering things most people are able to say is the hardest parts of recovery, I think. I hope I will be able to be understanding without getting upset in the future. It should be possible because it is easy to understand the shallow self centered comments and harder for others to understand us deeply because they don't have the experience to do so and without us educating them first we have no reason to expect them to either. For the worst cases of shallow and self centered it can take time and repetition, but I trust that if people are educated well enough they will eventually understand. So many people are shallow, we have to avoid being close to them and find the few people we can feel comfortable around. I just started to eat more and I expect several people will think: She has gained weight, she doesn't look as good anymore etc, but soon they will be used to seeing me like that and not think about it anymore. I have taken pride in how i look so it will be humiliating, but if I look at it objectively it really doesn't matter what I weigh and how i look. I don't want to have pride, but self respect and one doesn't get self respect based on looks. One have to focus on inner qualities. And that is what we want, we don't want to be like those who utter superficial opinions. So let them focus on looks while we focus on what really matters.

Can we chose to get well, chose to eat enough?

When we are narrowminded and destructive we don't feel we have a choice, because we feel trapped with no freedom to chose. Its when we want to get out of our prison we search outside and can find the freedom to chose. But first we have to understand we have put ourselves in a prison. When we deny we have a problem, we think we are more free than others because we are proud that we can chose not to eat, and we think others are like animals eating with no self control (no freedom).

I see anorexia as being possessed by a little devil that takes over our mind and body. We can chose to find the loving voice inside of us buried underneath all the blackness from the little anorexia devil we usually listen to and act according to. When I found the love I was surprised to see how much of me was the devil. We can choose love and freedom and refuse to listen to negative and destructive thoughts. When I started to look for the love inside it grew. The more I wanted to listen to that instead of the devil it took up more and more space and soon the devil disappeared because it did not like the light.

Its hard to chose to not be afraid. When we are afraid we get thoughts that are not worth listening to and we get so narrow minded it is hard to think outside the box. We can chose to look for people and an environment that can give us a sense of acceptance, freedom and love , though, so it is easier to let go of the negativity and take a chance on love.

Enough food = Happiness.

When we get enough food into our bodies it is so much easier to be happy. We don't need a reason to be happy. If we just stop looking for something about ourselves to criticise, but rather be happy about how things are instead, there is room for happiness to take place. I am gaining these days and I see I am getting fat on my stomach and hips, but my mood is great so i can actually find the fat making my body look charming. In my last recovery attempt I knew I would gain a lot and i did, but my fear of getting that big had nothing to do with reality. I did not get humiliated in public and no one said anything negative about my weight. I was still me, just in a bigger body. And a bigger size frightened me earlier. I was afraid of being more visible and possibly a target for attack, but I am stronger now and enough food makes me strong enough to deal with it. What will I be attacked for? What I say that can be offensive, right? I will use my self control to control what comes out of my mouth rather than the amount of food that comes in. If I can take responsibility for everything about me nothing will be perceived as an attack.

What you can expect in recovery from an eating disorder

People who recover from an eating disorder may soon go back to old habits unless they get knowledge about what to expect in the recovery process. Many are surprised that they get less energy instead of more when they eat more. They don't understand that the body wants to rest to be able to heal the damage the body hasn't been able to heal the time it did not get enough energy for the job. They don't even think damage has been done. In the beginning of the healing process many experience edema. Many freak out and think they rapidly gain fat, but that is not possible. Read about edema here:https://www.acute.org/blog/edema-eating-disorder-recovery-causes-prevention-and-treatment

Many also get surprised when they get extreme hunger and can eat ten thousand calories in a day, forgetting the body has been starved and need extra food. When this happens many are afraid they have just switched from anorexia to binge eating disorder and are not getting well at all, but this is a misunderstanding. A restrictive person do not become a binge eater. The extreme hunger will only last until the body has got the energy it needs to heal from starvation. Do not stop eating a lot just because you think you have reached a high enough weight. It is up to the body to decide when you have gained enough. After a period of extreme hunger the hunger will normalize and the weight gain will stop.

At this point it is important to continue eating enough food. Read the recommended amounts at the ED institute https://edinstitute.org/blog/2011/9/14/i-need-how-many-calories. Don't compare your own food intake with others, but eat when hungry till you are satisfied all day every day. Respect the bodys signals and eat. You need a lot of food. Do not trust a calculator online to tell you how many calories your body needs. The body will tell you that more precisely. 

Do not restrict even the slightest to lose weight or you may very soon go back to restricting more and more. No more restriction! No more starving! If you overshot your set point weight you will lose excess water and fat naturally if you continue eating enough and avoid purging and exercising. The body needs the food and weight gain to rebuild the muscle mass and heal the metabolism. You don't need to do strength training to rebuild the muscles, you need enough food and rest. The body gain water first, then fat, then muscle mass. So be patient.

To weigh yourself, track calories, look in the mirror and wear tight clothes can all make it harder to recover.

Cool recovery comments I have found online

I have a friend who is a dietician. In her facility, she has a device that determines your metabolic rate by analyzing your breath for 10 - 20 minutes. (You breath into a tube through your mouth with a clip on your nose.) I decided it might be interesting to do a "before and after," so I asked her if I could use the machine.
Anyway, I took a measurement the day before I started eating a minimum of 2700 calories a day. (I'm a 5'9 28-year-old female.) The result was that my resting metabolic rate was about 1350 calories, meaning that, with activities of daily living and no deliberate exercise, I would maintain my weight on about 1800 calories a day. This is obviously far less than the Minnie Maud recommendations.
But that's not the whole story. I retested myself today - I've been eating at least 2700 calories (usually more) a day for about a month. I knew there would be a difference - my body temperature has gone up three degrees and I soak my sheets with sweat at night - but I was shocked by how big it was. My resting metabolic rate was about 2100 calories, meaning that (again, with just normal daily activities), I have to eat about 2700 calories to maintain my weight.
Hmm...2700 calories. Does anyone recognize that number? Oh, right, it's EXACTLY the number that the Minnie Maud guidelines predicted. :-)

Malnutrition distorts body image and perception, I believe the Minnesota Starvation Experiment showed that ED thoughts are really to a large extent a product of starvation, rather than the cause. At the beginning i would only put myself down for eating 'naughty foods', but by the end i would be feeling extreme feelings of guilt and shame for eating something like a banana.

Genetics creates the blue print
Familial/childhood environment fashions the gun
(At some point) a chronic or acute stressor pulls the trigge.

My new mantra became "I release the need to be thin so that I can trust the process so that I can become Real".

Its ironic that, for me, the ED is both born from fear and dies at the hand of fear.

I do the body check thing too! Sitting, walking past mirrors, etc. Something that has kind of helped me--kind of because I'm still making a habit of it--is to pretend my body belongs to somebody else. Sounds weird, but it helps me to be more objective and less critical. If I catch myself staring at my stomach or thighs or whatever unflattering feature, I imagine myself doing the same thing to somebody else and realize what a rude thing it is I'm doing. Same with weighing and measuring; if some random person came up to me and started measuring me or weighing me for the sole purpose of tearing me apart in their mind I would be pissed, so why is it okay to do to myself?
It helps. Don't like to be rude!

Life after anorexia

What I enjoy most now that I have recovered is sex. It feels so much better. When I no longer starved my libido I was confronted with some immature behavior I had starved to keep still. I had to integrate it to make it less dominant/out of control, and now I feel there is nothing I am ashamed of and have to hide/starve. I also enjoy doing physical activities and have the energy to do it. As well as having a good mood and a lot of humor I had forgot I had. And creativity!!! I thought I would not find anything to fill my life with when i gave up anorexia. After half a year I started doing yoga, strength training, taking bahai-courses and take photos. The energy I got when i was better gave support to try out things I thought could be fun, so I did not have a good reason to worry about an empty life after anorexia, really.

Higher weight

It's can be easier to handle being at a higher weight the longer you have been in recovery because you feel better over all, your mood is so much better and you feel stronger. That is how it is for me at least. It is so nice to be able to make jokes and laugh hard again. It is strange to be spontanious again, but now I don't take myself that serious anymore, so I can live with the shame of saying stupid jokes sometimes. I think my energy has started to increase too now. I don't think so much that I am in recovery anymore. Instead I focus about getting stronger and enjoy life. Like, i eat because that is normal, not because I'm in recovery. The only reason why I could start restricting again would be my vanity, but I do not want to be a slave of vanity. Then I'm more proud of looking normal. Most people are at a BMI between 23-28 or something. Don't remember exactly. So it is not that we will look bigger than most. So, no worries. Those who make a lot of effort just to look a certain way is not someone I look up to anymore. I feel a bit ashamed I have been such a person all my life. I will focus on important things instead. Not appearance. I will eat and move because it is natural and enjoyable.

Panicking

I sendt this to the 180 degree diet:
Hi. I am a recovering anorexic who have eaten 4500 calories for 7 weeks now and have gained water and fat. I read that Matt says that you can't build muscles on low carb ( how low?) and suggest recovering anorexics to eat just 10% from fat and mostly carbs to gain muscles. I have eaten only 6 % from carbs = 63 grams these weeks a day. If I continue doing this will I gain fat only if I am just resting? My body craves fat mostly, and fruit (that I don't eat), not potatoes and stuff because it wants more body fat at the moment, so I wonder if I should wait with the diet switch till the body wants to gain muscles and maybe I don't crave fat so much anymore or start right away.

I have been on low carb while undereating for many years. I tried eating fruit after 3 years and got stomach pain so I didn't add it to my diet even though I wanted to be less strict. Now you will probably say: add carbs slowly (even though that leads to fat gain). I don't want extra fat, you know, but, I don't know. So I wonder should I continue low carb, go on the 10% fat diet Matt suggests or should I eat high fat diet with more carbs and deal with the extra fat? Most importantly: will I gain muscles on low carb when only resting like those on high carb does while in anorexia recovery? And will eating low carb high fat (372 grams = 77%) make me gain too much fat and too little muscles?

So you see where I am at. Reading Matt Stones writings has made me so confused because I trust the well informed guy. I have bought a lot of high carb foods so I can start tomorrow on the diet that I can eat as much carbs I want as long as I eat less than 10% from fat. This way I will only gain muscles. I tried to make a menu and it is very hard to reach enough calories with so little fat. So I'm worried I am ruining my recovery now. Oæææ! Confused, confused, confused.

I actually do know what I should do to not ruin my recovery and make everything perfect. That is to add carbs slowly and deal with the weight gain. It's a hard one. My fear is I will gain too much fat, but that is probably not what will happen. I will gain the fat I need quicker. I'm already uncomfortable with my gain. Recovery is so scary.

Matt Stones advice for anorexia recovery

Anorexia
When someone loses weight this is accompanied by a large rise in catecholamines – the adrenal hormones that break down both fat and muscle tissue to be used as fuel. Along with the rise in catecholamines comes a rise in neurotransmitters dopamine and beta-endorphin. These are energizing. Pain goes away. A state of subtle euphoria sets in, and we get a little “high” from it. We are talking about opiate substances here, and they are very addictive – as addictive if not more addictive than actual opiate drugs. Very low carbohydrate eating often has the same impact, and while an anorexic can self-medicate by keeping carbs low enough to trigger dopamine and beta endorphin release, it is counterproductive to recovery for reasons explained below.

When levels are naturally low, substances or activities that spike these neurotransmitters are particularly alluring. That’s because a person that naturally has low levels of these neurotransmitters correspondingly has a lot of receptor sites wide open to capture this small amount of dopamine and beta endorphin. Anything that causes a surge of these chemicals causes quite a thrill ride.
At the same time, spiking these neurotransmitters results in what is called “downregulation” in which some of those wide open receptor sites close down. This is precisely what makes anything that spikes feel good brain chemicals habit forming and addictive. With a low production of dopamine and lots of wide open receptor sites, life feels good, balanced, stable, and normal. But with a low dopamine production and closed receptor sites life feels slow, sluggish, depressing, painful, and so on – the opposite of a dopamine high.

Once dopamine has been spiked enough, and enough receptor sites shut down – even if dopamine production is still the exact same as it was to begin with, the person feels nothing but withdrawals and has the experience of insufficient dopamine, beta endorphin, or whatever. They need increasingly larger spikes of these neurotransmitters just to feel normal, much less good, just like any true long-term drug addict or alcoholic.

To recover, I believe that there is no way around achieving “upregulation” in which the receptor sites for beta endorphin and dopamine open back up again – allowing you to feel normal with your naturally low production of those neurotransmitters instead of experiencing too little and having an unquenchable thirst for anything and everything that spikes it.

1) Eating frequent, starch-based, whole food meals at above-maintenance calorie levels. The food should actually be somewhat bland, in whole food format, with some, but not too much added fat or protein (protein raises adrenal hormones and associated neurotransmitters, and really good food, especially sweets mixed with fat, triggers a big release of opiates that you are looking to avoid). A non-vegetarian macrobiotic-ish diet would actually be decent for recovery. This will also help in fixing reactive hypoglycemia, which I would guess nearly all anorexics suffer from to some degree (although it too will exacerbate hypoglycemic symptoms in the short-term).
2) Sleep a lot, including regular naps.
3) Perform various relaxation techniques, from gentle yoga and breathing exercises to meditation.
4) Avoid stress as much as possible.
5) Avoid strenuous exercise.
6) Avoid stimulants.
7) Avoid drugs – recreational and psychoactive.
8) Avoid sweets.
9) Avoid anything overly pleasurable. The more miserable you are, the faster you are upregulating.

Bulimia shares a similar pathology. Know how miserable you feel right before puking and how euphoric and instantly healed you feel immediately after vomiting? That’s some endorphins for you. Addictive as hell if you do it enough to start shutting down your receptor sites.

It can take a while after VLC to re-establish the kind of gut bacteria needed to properly digest carbohydrate foods without them running right through you. I experienced this recently when I ate almost nothing but fruit for a week. The beginning of the week I hardly left the bathroom, but by the end I was passing about half as much, and without hershey squirts. I think you'll experience some level of the same.

As for fat gain, some is to be expected, and some is desired in your case. That doesn't mean you are destined to become highly overweight as you rebuild. In fact, after an intial "detox" type of period, you may find that eating a starch-based diet with some resistance exercise will make you look more like a fitness model than a frumpy 20 something. This is yet another reason why I am increasingly favoring overfeeding with reduced fat intake, especially for those concerned about gaining fat, and those coming off of low-carb, who always seem so capable of gaining fat on a high-fat and high-carb diet.

I actually find the ratios mentioned here to be pretty solid…
http://veganmaster.blogspot.com/2008/08/mnp-100-muscle-and-34-selected.html
You can also see that protein requirements are not that high, just 10-15% of calories. Many starchy foods are 10% protein or higher, which means that animal protein intake does not need to be very high – just a few ounces per day. Corn tortillas are fine. Just note that they have only about 12 grams of carbs per tortilla, so the usual 2-3 tortillas is pretty scant. 8-10 tortillas per meal – now we're talkin.'

I remain "open" to fruit sugars, but I still can't see how they are preferable other than they tend to contain more vitamin C and potassium than most starchy foods. In terms of raising body temperature, there's no doubt that starches (and lactose) are superior because of their impact on leptin (raise leptin, increase leptin sensitivity) vs. fructose which does not.
Perhaps someone with severe adrenal problems might benefit from snacking on fruit throughout the day, but my gut instinct tells me that the blood sugar instability from fructose might do more harm than good to someone trying to recover.

Example:

When I was coming off Zero Carb a year ago, I used white rice as my starch of choice.
I adapted Matt's original HED to a low fat high starch diet. I used white rice as a transition carb because it is very easy to digest and assimilate.
I would consume 3-5 meals a day mainly rice with a little vegetable and lean animal protein.
Doing this allowed my to enhance my carb tolerance quickly with no rebound fat gain eating more calories than I was when zero/vlc.
After eating like this for a month or so, you can expand your carb choices and experiment with how different ones treat you.

Any type of overfeeding increases insulin levels. When comparing high-starch overfeeding vs. high-fat overfeeding however, high-fat overfeeding does not raise the metabolism as much, increases the rate of calories stored in fat tissue, and decreases the amount stored in muscle tissue.
ALL forms of overfeeding discussed lowered blood sugar in both lean and obese subjects. 
The trick is to get high insulin levels to store excess calories into muscle tissue but not fat cells. The higher the starch to fat ratio, the higher the ratio of muscle to fat gained during calorie surplus. 
Too many carbs in relation to protein and you have too much serotonin and you feel sluggish and unproductive. Too little carbs and you feel anxious, jittery, nervous, and quick to anger.http://180degreehealth.com/serotonin-and-the-carbohydrate-to-protein-ratio/

The fuck it "diet"

It's so funny and I love my body because of this. All I do is eat and sleep. I wake up hungry after five hours of sleep at night, get up by the thought of food, eat, sit up for a little while with my computer, get tired and go back to sleep. Then I wake up after an hour or two later, get up by the thought of food and eat, are up for a little while and go back to sleep. This goes on and on. I call it speed recovery.

I found an awesome blog I want you to pay attention to. It's called and are about the fuck it "diet". Heard of it? No? This is so bad ass cool. This can kick start your recovery if you haven't started the journey yet. Take a look and read: http://thefuckitdiet.com/ It's so motivating, inspirational and healty minded (natural). It encourage women to be bold, accepting and natural.

I like being bold. I thought I was when balancing on the edge of death. That wasn't bold, that was reckless. To be natural, strong, caring and genuin is bold in the culture I/we live in.

The people who eat what they want, the amount they need and have a natural body are the boldest. Not those who are scared of not pleasing others, restrict themselves in every way afraid of rejection, exrecise even though it doesn't make them happy and try to fool people with a perfect image (and showing parts of life only) even though everybody knows human beings will never be perfect.

I'm going to eliminate the negative thoughts by the method taught by the woman behind the fuck it "diet". Like if there is a thought that makes it hard to recovery, f.ex. " I'm not worthy" you say it so you can hear it in 30 seconds and feel what the statement does to you while tapping your heart chakra. I tried it with " I'm not so important" and it works. When I had said it about 30 seconds the words had no effect on me anymore. It was just empty words. I didn't believe them anymore. Other statements can be: "fat people are weak","there must be something wrong with me", noone can really love me", "I'm a pig" and so on. Say it with the words you'd use. Drink some water afterwards. She explains this method in her youtube video and in this book are a lot of suggestions too:https://gumroad.com/l/foodbeliefs#

Im curious about this book: https://gumroad.com/l/VKSW#


iF YOU HATE YOUR BODY, THE HATE HASN'T GOT THE RIGHT ADDRESS.

iF YOU ARE DISGUSTED BY YOUR BODY, IT'S NOT THE BODY THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH.

The calories the first part of this week

I have had a natural increase of calories this week, from an average of 1520 last week. I have eaten according to my hunger and appetite. I have been relaxed about it. I find it interesting that there is no point in increasing mecanically as I had planned. It can happen quicker as you can see. When this happens naturally it's all fine.
Monday: 1681
Tuesday:   1828
Wednesd:  1918
Thursday:  2063
I will give an update in a few days unless I am too ashamed of a huge number at the end of the week:) Perhaps I am heading towards EXTREME HUNGER!! I am scared, I must admit. I don't like the idea of eating 2500 or more calories a day. On the other hand it is better to gain weight on that amount than on 1600 like some others do, you know. I guess it's just the number that freaks me out. I hope my body can gain on 2600 max and in this way avoid extreme hunger. I want a little bit of control:( Please! Please! We will see what I will do when the time comes.

I'm sorry I can't give you any weight numbers along with this increase of calories. I do not want to torture myself with that. I know I will probably gain 30 kilos anyway, so, it doesn't really matter. I think I will gain 30 and afterwards lose 7 kilos and not be far from overweight according to BMI calculators. How can a body be called overweight when it is at it's set point weight and the healthiest it can be? Stupid calculator!

Today i have felt there is some healing going on in my legs and feet. That is a good sign.