Happy Monday everyone! Today is December 7th, which means yesterday was December 6th – a very important day for me. Yesterday was my third-year anniversary of eating disorder recovery! I have previously written about my 7-year struggle with anorexia, though I didn’t reflect much on the journey itself – mostly just present-day challenges. For the past 3 years I’ve taken this day to check-in with myself and do some deep thinking on how I’ve progressed, as well as thoughts I have about the future. Luckily, I have this super cool blog where I can share these thoughts. As such, if you happen to be interested in the journey of a recovering anorexic who is a proto-engineer in the mining industry, then hoooo boy, this blog post is for you! Otherwise, this is for me.
What does “recovery” from anorexia mean? If you’ve never suffered from it, this may seem like an easy question to answer. Most people may say that someone who’s recovered from anorexia doesn’t choose to starve themselves anymore. The problem with this answer is that there were many times where I didn’t choose to starve myself – I just “delayed” a meal, or I “forgot” to eat. “Oh, I didn’t choose to skip lunch and breakfast, I didn’t plan on eating them in first place because I slept in today”. This answer also implies that recovery from anorexia is successful with only the physical act of eating. In order to fully recover from anorexia in a sustainable fashion it is necessary to tend to the mental aspect of it too, because that’s ultimately what caused the starving in the first place. Recovery is difficult to define. While I may eat more regularly than I used to, I still battle the same thoughts that fueled my anorexia in the first place. Am I recovered? Or am I just better at handling it? Truth is – I don’t think I’ll ever be recovered. You may think that’s grim, I suppose. However, I don’t see it that way – accepting this was a big part of getting better at recovery. A recent article I read on this topic summarized the disorder quite succinctly: “The only successful anorexic is a dead one”. For me, being successful during recovery means consistently choosing to fail at being anorexic which requires a tremendous amount of energy, planning, and mental fortitude. Not being okay with failing anorexia is what drives anorexia, while being okay with failing anorexia is recovery.
That being said, let’s talk about my recovery. This year has looked a lot different than the two before it – and not just because of the pandemic. If I were to breakdown each year into a Hollywood blockbuster film, it would go like this:
- Recovery Year 1 – Mission Impossible: Damage Control
- Recovery Year 2 – A New Hope of Rebuilding in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
- Recovery Year 3 – Return of the Queen (Extended-Cut Goal Setting Edition)
Year 1 film synopsis: “With the help of friends, family, and medical professionals, a struggling university student embarks on the seemingly impossible mission of anorexia recovery. To the outside world, the mission appears simple and is ultimately non-negotiable: stop unhealthy eating behaviours. The mission tasks are straightforward and doable – but at what mental cost?”
In hindsight, year 1 could have been handled a lot better. I was so focused on quickly resolving the issue by just eating consistently and as such, I had very little regard for the mental trauma that could incur. I didn’t feel like I had enough energy to dissect & resolve the underlying mental issues that caused the eating disorder in the first place (ie. undermining my self-worth, needing an outlet to feel “in control”, poor coping strategies, etc.) my approach was to just force myself to eat. I wasn’t overly concerned about the quality of food I ate either, I just wanted to ensure I was eating 3 meals a day (healthy or not). Of course, I gained back all the weight I lost and more – this was devastating, but ultimately wasn’t a huge issue like I made it out to be at the time. Overall, it was a tough year but at least I stayed firm with my boundaries and didn’t resort to starving myself very often.
Year 2 film synopsis: “After a trying attempt at overcoming unhealthy eating behaviours, our young university student was successful in her short-term mission – but the battle is far from over. In order to ensure the sustainability of a healthy lifestyle, our protagonist must set out to develop mutually beneficial routines and contingencies to subdue the underlying mental afflictions that have been reaping havoc in the galaxy”
Year 2 went significantly better than year 1 – I had begun to understand that I couldn’t just force the issue and pretend that I wasn’t anorexic anymore. In the short-term, forcing myself to eat like a “normal person” was something I was able to do. However, I don’t think that strategy would have been successful for much longer. So, just like everything else I do – I needed a routine to adhere to, and I also needed to develop contingencies for when I didn’t follow the routine. I needed to learn that I was guaranteed to fail from time to time – and I wanted to be prepared for when I did. No more “forcing” myself to eat, and no more last-minute decisions. I developed a routine that was “mutually beneficial” to both someone who was anorexic and someone who was trying to recover from anorexia. Every day I ate the same things, every week I bought the same things – I always knew what to expect and for the most part, I was okay with the plan. On bad days where I decided I didn’t want to grocery shop or eat the food I had planned to eat – I ate soup instead. That’s one of the things I learned about myself during this time: I will always be willing to eat soup.
Year 3 film synopsis: “Back and better than ever: our young university student has proven that her routines and contingencies are effective in managing her long-time nemesis. With the dawn of a new era and impending graduation, she is ready to take things to the next level – self improvement. While embarking on this task, she must toe the paper-thin line between previous bad habits and doing things the proper way. Will she succeed?”
This year has been quite revolutionary in terms of self-care and acceptance – but it was also a lot of work (mentally and physically). Though I was proud of myself for the improvements I had made after year 2, I knew that in order to keep improving I had to tackle my biggest issue: confidence. Unfortunately, I still find a lot of my self-worth in my weight which is not something I’ve learned how to overcome quite yet. This is a huge problem – especially for someone with a history like mine. Nevertheless, I knew at the beginning of year 3 that I wanted to lose weight but this time I had to go about it the proper way.
The risk of this endeavor resides in the methodology of losing weight the “proper way”. I chose to count calories, I chose to exercise often, and I chose to impose strict eating rules. These are pretty common things to do for anybody trying to lose weight in a healthy way, but all of these things were also tools I used with anorexia – but with anorexia, I just took it to an unhealthy extreme. It was difficult to navigate these things over the past year, but I believe that the mental rehabilitation I had done the year before allowed me to stay on track and not let things get out of hand. I now do these things for the sake of self-love – whereas the 6 years before this, I would have done these things because I hated myself. The biggest achievement of this year is that I started making choices for the sake of loving myself. I love myself, so I will run today because it’s healthy. I love myself, so I will have an ice cream sandwich after supper because it makes me happy. I love myself, so I’m going to save these chips for another day when I am more mentally prepared to handle them. These thoughts are a lot different than ones such as: I hate myself, so I will run today because I deserve to be punished. I hate myself, which is why I just ate that ice cream sandwich. I hate myself, so I will not eat these chips right now – and if I ever do eat them, I will have failed. The “hate” mindset is like a positive-feedback loop – you are imposing cruel expectations for yourself and they only get more extreme. It’s not an easy thing to get out of, and for me it required years of external help. I’m still not completely immune from it and I don’t know if I ever will be.
Over the past year or so I’ve lost about 65 pounds mostly by the “proper way”, which is something I never thought I’d be able to do. A neat side-effect of this is that I’m also starting to decouple my weight from my self-worth – but I still think I need to do a lot more mental work on that. I’ve also maintained my routines and contingencies, and I’m a lot more okay with failing. I’ve begun to think of anorexia as something to be “managed” rather than something to “overcome”, because I don’t think I’ll ever be what I would consider as “fully recovered”. I’ve learned to feel less burdened by it – it is what it is. I will never be perfect when it comes to eating or food, and perhaps it may bring me a little more stress than the average person – but I can certainly handle that and plan for it. It’s all a balancing act!
For year 4, I suppose I have a few goals. I’d like to work on being more intuitive about eating (ie. less reliance on routine), which is something I’ve done a tiny bit over the past year. In order for me to move into this realm of “intuitiveness” I’d need to learn how to be less hard on myself for breaking routine, and also ensure that I sustain healthy behaviour when straying from the routine. I’d also like to run a 5k. Finally, I’d like to work on my aforementioned association with weight & self-worth. I’m excited to try these things! Furthermore, I am confident that if I fail at these things then I will be okay – I have already built myself reliable foundations to fall back on (routines & contingencies).
There’s a lot more I would like to say on this topic, and a lot of things I still haven’t been able to figure out. Though, I think this will suffice for now. I have come a long way, I’m quite proud of myself, and all I can hope is that I keep it up for however long is required of me. Thank you for making it this far – at the very least, I hope this post has given some insight on what the past few years of my life have been like. Writing about it seems to be a positive outlet for me. I hope everyone who struggles with any facet of life finds their positive outlet, too.
(December 7th, 2020)
astronomine 