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.

Out of the storm of thoughts

When I feel bad because I think I have been wronged by someone I usually get a lot of thoughts. After a while I see they are useless and the judgmental ones too; Shallow. To get out of the endless stream of thoughts I detach myself by asking myself: What do I need? I only need to understand why I feel bad and how I can feel good again. I need to know what I need and how to get it. That is what I should use my brain to figure out instead of listening to a storm of defensive thoughts that leads nowhere.

Worthlessness

Now and then I hear people say if you don't work you don't deserve to eat - and when I ask if they really mean it they say: Yes, it says so in the bible. I think this quote is ingrained in a lot of people and it causes many disabled people to feel bad for not contributing to society. 

I have always had a feeling of worthlessness. To reduce myself and not eat enough made me feel less guilty. In recovery when I ate what I needed without working the guilt was huge. I was convinced I had to work to deserve to feel worthy and that God was behind this feeling! I cried a lot. I got an idea for a way to work so I could feel better about myself. After a month I was surprised the feeling of worthlessness  was gone even though I had not worked yet. 

Now I understand that I just needed to deal with my feeling of worthlessness instead of always trying to reduce it by eating less. Feel it for real. I no longer believe we have to work or act a certain way to feel worthy. We just need to believe we are appreciated. If we feel loved just because of who we are we no longer think we have to act or look a certain way. I think we are here to learn to love. Love unconditionally. Not to work, not to please others, but to love. 

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.

Holy anorexia

If I say I have been fighting against and tried to ignore my body because I don't want it to matter as much as many people think it does and I want to be seen behind the body, do anyone recognize themselves? It backfired though; To try to ignore and fight my physical body just made me more aware of it. I have been sick of my parents who can not see longer than the material aspects of things. Who never cared about me, just bodies and other things. Anorexia is like a hunger strike against the massive focus on bodies instead of souls, not sure how to live, survive in such a world so being half a ghost is preferable. Looking forward to a heavenly world where one does not have to eat, does not have to feel pain, will not be seen as a body, but where every thought and feeling is exposed like an open book. Transparency finally!

Holy anorexia is to have too high expectations. Expectations that can not be lived out at earth, just in heaven. I wanted to be selfless, serve others day and night on no food, no drink, no rest. I beat myself up all the time for not being able to fulfill those expectations. Angry that my body hindered me. Needed something all the time. Distracting me. It is hard to accept that we need to spend so much time on taking care of a physical body, a garment and tool for communication at earth only. A body well nourished is also distractingly sexual. Sexuality is also such a huge and difficult topic when one is a perfectionist who also doesn't want to let God down. 

I feel very alone with these thoughts as if I am the only one who has them. I looked up to saints who only ate communion bread. When I recently checked if they were anorexic I found that they were. Of course they were. They were not so holy the physical laws no longer applied to them as I thought. I thought I could be like them and become so holy the physical laws no longer ruled over me. They died of starvation. What a wake up call that was for me to read. Lower your expectations! God wants us to be realistic and spiritual. Spiritual, not only alone, but in the horrible world where people lie, murder and steal too. A difficult task indeed. To see the good only. To believe in the good in people no matter what they express so the good can come out. Be good to attract the good in them. 

So much easier to hunger strike against what I don't like than to be what I would like to see in the world myself. Try to focus! There is so many distractions as there is people in this world. Find your path.  God will guide you. What questions is important for you to find the answer to? What experiences is most important for you to experience? 

The body is more trustworthy than calorie calculators

Earlier I saw food as calories and calories as potensial fat. I didn't think about why the body was hungry. I never saw food from the perspective of the body. 

There is one thing left I have to give up to be fully recovered from anorexia and that is to stop calculating my calorie intake. I asked God for help to get over the fear of accidently eating too much and gain unnecessary fat. It took some days before I received the epiphany where I saw it all from the perspective of the body and understood that I can trust the body. 

The body is constantly doing a lot of work. For this it needs energy and nutrients. When it knows the fuel is running low it will send images of the food it needs for its tasks to the mind in time for the owner of the body to make the meal or go and get the food. I used to ignore these images because I was not yet physically hungry, but not long after I would be hungry so if I had started making the food right after I received the image I would not have to cook while hungry later. These mental images is what is called mental hunger. Someone who is never fueling the body enough will have these images a lot.

The body will give signals for the owner of the body when it wants it to eat food and when it register that it has got enough for the time being a signal of satiety can be felt. The body will not ask for more than it needs. It will not ask for extra fat so it can store it at your stomach area unless it is needed for protection and hormon production. It asks for food so it has energy and nutrients to work with.

Because the body knows exactly what and how much it needs the signals can be trusted. The only thing we should make sure of is to give it a variety of food and drink options. If the only food it knows about is pizza it can not send an image of anything else than pizza to the mind. If the only liquid you give it is pepsi max, it will send an image of pepsi max to the mind every time it is thirsty. This is also why good habits is important. If you normally drink water when your are thirsty you will think of water when you are thirsty. 

My advice to people who do not have an eating disorder or who have recovered physically from an eating disorder or at least have honored the body's cravings for sugar and fat as long as that was needed is to give the body a variety of whole foods so it gets as many nutrients (vitamins and minerals) as possible and as many options to choose from as possible so it can send an image of a food that will fit its needs the best each time. Then the body will work optimally and there is no reason for it to store more fat than necessary.