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.

Body language

Anorexia was my body language

saying I am fragile, handle me with care.

An illusion I felt protected by

as a good girl who had learned

to show the other cheek

and not how to protect myself.

If someone forced themselves on me

I'd freeze.

After many attempts to get some attention, be heard and seen, for years, I gave up. Emotionally starved for attention, utterly lonely, I used the symbolic language instead. I did not really think it would work, but I had tried everything else to get attention/love and I was desperate. No one says: Please love me or please give me attention. No, so symbolic language it is.

I got a tiny bit attention that way, though. Anger from my dad and many years later worry from my mum when I had become very thin. It did not help because they did not ask why or what they could do to help. They kept on living their life with blinders on.

I am not a child anymore. I just thought I would share in case someone can relate. My suggestion is: Do not think you are unworthy or flawed just because they don't give you attention. It is not you, it is them who are flawed. Find someone who have attention to give, heal your wounds with the love and care about yourself and others.

My restriction mindset

It started like this: I wanted to act like a grown up who had control over herself and ate what she found healthy instead of what ever she desired. At the time I was traumatized and did no longer want to have big boobs to attract men. I wanted to be taken seriously and not as a sex object. Now I like to have control over myself and make all aspects of my self better. I am not a carefree person. To restrict is very easy for me after a lot of practice. I just have a routine. I eat the same every day so no need to think about food unless I am gonna make it or buy it. I like to be thin so then I will make myself thin. The best method for me is to restrict with just 500 calories a day. That prevents binges and I will get to my goal weight even though it takes a long time. I also have the pleasure of knowing I get thinner every day. Earlier it was the fear of having fat on my body that drove me. I don't feel the fear that much anymore because I have restored my weight several times.

Now that I am in a serious relationship I understand that to fix how I look is so much easier to focus on than fixing how I act and communicate. I can be a lot nicer. When alone I am not confronted about what I need to change so I just change my appearance. In a relationship I must work on my negativity so I am not a depressed and risk that he leaves me, control my anger, not express my negativity in a way that can be perceived as an attack, not criticise, dare to show love, dare to ask for what I need, dare to be vulnerable and honest, change the words I use to express myself. I have to change into a loving person in other words.

Back on the old track

It is so hard to eat normally after the weight is restored and the hunger is normal again because that is when to restrict a little is super easy and it even feels natural because I am so used to it, I guess. And after the period of time when I have eaten more than normal to restore my weight I am tired of food, so restriction is hard to avoid! I guess the body will get back in harmony after a while: First super hungry, then tired of food and lastly a balanced hunger and appetite, but by the time I am in balance I am already stuck in my habit of restriction! I know I should probably eat 2000 calories a day, but I eat 1500 now. I understand that I don't like the feeling of being well nourished. I wish I did not have to eat. I still have digestive problems and have to use digestive enzymes to digest fructans in onion, wheat, banana, GOS in beans and lactose in milk. I have to follow a low fodmap diet strictly. I don't digest any of the fodmaps. My diet is therefor very limited and boring.

Edit 15.08.2024

Yes so I got down to the same weight I had before going all in.. I will do reverse dieting this time. I am already eating 1830 per day without gaining weight. I do it slowly, but steadily. I have tried several times before, but in the past I stopped every time I stepped on the scale and saw I had gained, even though I gain water weight every month no matter what I do. I just have a tiny doubt it is just water weight when i know I eat more so because I fear weight gain i go back to the intake i had right before I was adding more. Now I am not gonna freak out if I see I have gained because by adding food as slowly as I do it is impossible to gain fat. And I have experienced it sos many times now that what I feared was fat gain was indeed just water because I kept on losing weight. I am gonna write it on a note on the scale for myself so i don't change my mind yet again.

The problem with reverse dieting is one may likely experience a surge in appetite and hunger when eating more. So adding very slowly is key. First step is to increase food intake as long as i do not gain. When I see I have increased it so much I have gained (more than just the monthly water weight) I will decide then if I will take step 2 and keep on increasing. If I still feel hungry for a higher food intake ( can not imagine I will not) I will keep on adding to allow the most necessary weight gain so I get out of the underweight category. If I am still hungry for more after that I have to consider again what to do. If I am ok with a higher weight or not by then. I doubt that I will do step 3 this year, but I will some day. I know.

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.