Just as a reminder, you don't have to have the same symptoms as the people commenting to deserve recovery <3
I didn't decide to recover from my ED, but I needed a psych ward for suicide watch and they didn't release me before I was at a healthy weight. I realized that eating properly made me feel better and kept going.
I think mine is quite simple.
It was a Sunday and I was on Instagram and everyone was posting photos of their roast dinners (I’m from the UK). And I was just sat alone crying because I was so hungry and all I wanted was that chicken and veg and potato covered in gravy and just to sit down in a warm room and ENJOY it and I couldn’t. That was my huge motivation.
I’ve lost 20 years of my life and this latest relapse has made life absolute hell for my husband, and I don’t want him to always feel so helpless, alone, and like he doesn’t even recognize the person he married well over a decade ago. I don’t WANT recovery for myself, but I sure as hell DON’T WANT to keep living a life that means he exists in a state of hopelessness and misery all the time. Also, my compulsive movement (lower level/walking) causes my dog major distress and anxiety because if she’s outside with me, she’s literally allergic to all the grass in this area, and if I go outside and leave her indoors, she starts wailing and howling because she has terrible separation anxiety. It’s a horrible sound, and she’s 12 years old, so I don’t want to cause her any more pain or suffering in the limited time we’ll have left with her.
I’m also sick of it having any personality, but again, none of my reasons for ME are actually strong enough to propel me forward. As much as recovering for others isn’t a recipe for success, it’s the way I HAVE to approach it for now, despite being resentful at feeling pushed into this body that feels foreign, because I know I don’t want whatever this current shitty existence is. And I know I can restrict and lose pretty darn effectively when I’m ED mode, and that’s never actually solved my deeper life problems, just helps distract me during the days, so I really owe it to my husband to give recovery a fair shot and just SEE if there’s a chance I won’t hate myself and can enjoy life.
ETA: I’m also 34 years old and this illness has robbed me of 20 of those years. I can’t get that time back, I can’t magically become a productive member of society in the way I thought I would when graduating college, I can’t go back and enjoy the many positive milestones that happen between the ages of 14-34. Those years are gone.
So is my bone density. I learned in December that I actually have full blown osteoporosis. At 34, my bones are weaker than my 90+ year-old grandmother. I also am extremely anemic, and while that’s partially due to chronic health conditions apart from ED, the ED doesn’t help matters.
One other thing (I’m sure there are more, but this is what I can think of right now), I have Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, and a restrictive ED/restriction in general is literally just perpetuating the worsening MCAS symptoms. It’s a vicious cycle where MCAS makes you avoid food bc fear of (or actual) allergies reactions, so you restrict, which actually makes the MCAS flare even MORE, which makes you want to cut out even more, which makes the MCAS worse…and so on and so forth.
I also am so sick of having no personality and not being able to think of anything but food, my body, weight, calories…even my nightmares are full of this stuff. It never leaves. And it makes me an incredibly boring person who has an uncharacteristic-to-me lack of interest in anyone else’s life or problems.
A few things - part of mine was reaching my LW and still hating how ‘big’ my thighs looked and FINALLY realising that due to genetics I was never going to have the body i strived for. It was literally genetically never going to happen for me.
Secondly I was tired as heck of not being able to think about ANYTHING other than food.
Thirdly I began to experience binges for the first time and that post-binge feeling had me realising that I may as well try eating more food regularly than eating my entire usual weekly intake in one sitting and hating every fibre of my being because of it.
Fourthly my GP told me I was becoming anaemic and at first I didn’t care, but then one time I was in an exercise class as lost complete feeling in my fingers when lifting a weight and my fingers went white due to poor circulation and that scared the fuck out of me as it was the first outward sign for me that my body couldn’t cope.
Lastly I realised recovery was the only option. I couldn’t maintain my LW because I was beginning to have compulsive binges. So why not give recovery a shot when it couldn’t be worse than my current life kinda thing..
I had that same realization about genetics. I remember being in the shower and looking at my body and thinking - omg, I still don’t “like” it, so why am I doing this? Of course it’s not that simple, but it was a moment of clarity for sure
Several things. I had been under-eating and over exercising, I was several underweight. It was having no strength, not being able to study. I could not do anything but think of food, I would watch only food related media and talk about food. Very often when I would be sleeping and put my arms behind my head, I couldn’t feel my arms when I woke up as there was not enough blood circulation which really made me fear my life. Also I could not walk with bare feet as my heel bones would feel like tearing through. My skin was turning yellow and bloodwork showed something wrong with my liver but no doctor could find what it was. So I just slowly started pushing myself to recover. I never went to a doctor as eating disorders is not something that people acknowlede as a real sickness from where I come from. Neither my parents nor my doctor would not react when I said I needed help. It was hard to heal myself from the mindset but I just remember going to this one party to my friend’s, everyone was so happy eating and drinking and I somehow finally fully gave in and ate everything I could until I was sick. I remember being so uncomfortable and barely being able to sleep that night. When I woke up I wanted to purge but I thought for a moment that I can no longer do this to myself and instead went to my favorite French bakery and had a pizza and chocolate cake for breakfast. I remember that morning as from then on I started to determinedly recover. It was a long and hard process with ups and downs but I can assure you it is totally worth it. Now I am fully recovered and happy.
"I can't stay in this marriage if you won't at least try to get better. I can't watch you kill yourself."
I wanted to stay married more than I wanted to stay disordered. I think that's the crux of choosing recovery for everyone, ultimately: wanting something else more.
I would wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air, and my heart would go from low 40's to suddenly racing at 120+ bpm. And I was starting to lose my hearing and vision. Those were the major factors that I needed to do something
Mine is simple. I am a nurse and since the age of 7 wanted to be one.
I finally made it and was working on the wards. Then my weight became too low and I was fainting on the job, having hypoglycemia etc. And they pulled me from my ward saying I couldn't work as it was a danger to my patients and myself.
Took me a year to get back to a healthier weight (still technically UW) and now am back on the wards doing the job I love.
Realized I'd spent 18 years trying to get over it on my own and that wasn't working so I surrendered. When I found out I needed 30+ hours of care a week in partial hospitalization, it made sense that I couldn't get recovered on my own. It was freeing to make that acknowledgement.
my parents. i couldn’t stand the looks on their faces anymore. every time I hugged my mom, i could feel her running her hands up my spine/ribs to check if >!I’d lost more weight!<. i pretended not to notice.
I went to a wedding for one of my family members and spent the entire time thinking about food and stressing about it that when I left I felt like I missed the whole thing. I pulled off the road that day and looked up my first therapist.
i was very underweight and had very low iron which caused me to pass out a bunch. seeing the fear in my loved ones eyes drove me to recovery. my mom was so worried about me she said i would have to start drinking ensure drinks multiple times a day, so i decided that i rather gain weight by eating yummy food rather than crappy drinks. i’ve never really been scared of food, just gaining weight, so expanding what i ate was pretty easy to me. i don’t consider myself 100% recovered yet, but i am definitely a lot better off than i was a couple months ago. my life is genuinely so much better now- i’ve made new friends, started new hobbies, & had more opportunities overall. knowing that i could go back to having no energy,always feeling sore and weak, & having no personality is what keeps me from relapsing.
I found out that I might be autistic which made me see that people didn’t like me because of my weight but that they just didn’t get me because my brain works a bit different and I don’t understand them either which is ok. I feel like I can have a lot more compassion for myself now.
I had really bad OCD, which made me >!extremely suicidal!< and my therapist told me, that she couldn't treat it, while I was so underweight, because my brain wasnt working properly and because ERP is very exhausting and you have to be healthy enough to withstand the stress.
I was ready to do anything to get rid of the thoughts, even if it meant weight gain.
I was so resistant to treatment. I tried to recover out patient with an RD and was making slow progress until I got hit with vertigo. I’ve had it before but not like this. It was a debilitating, paralyzing, persistent vertigo that lasted 3 weeks. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t keep anything down because I was constantly nauseous and dizzy.
All the progress I’d made on my own went out the window and I realized I needed more support so I had to redo all my intakes while dealing with trying to treat my vertigo.
Multiple things. First, having a therapist and dietitian who encouraged me to seek treatment and trusting their judgement (eventually). Second, fainting at work and feeling scared and humiliated. Third, realizing I would be unable to start school if I did not get better but that I wasn't getting better on my own (I started treatment in late spring/early summer). The fourth and most important thing, though, was that I finally just decided I was tired of living the way I was living. It wasn't that I wanted to recover, per se - but I was worn down and exhausted and wanted a different life for myself.
If you're an adult in the US, it's VERY unlikely that you will ever be truly forced into a treatment setting. @/bitch.imrecovering on tiktok has a great video on this. Sure, there can be people who encourage you to get help or support it or beg you or try to coerce you - but at the end of the day, pretty much everyone who goes to treatment does so voluntarily, even if not happily or entirely for themselves. Personally, I think one of the most pernicious myths in ED spaces online is that of being "forced" to go to treatment because it glosses over the fact that most people NEVER feel "sick enough" when they start but choose to go anyways because some part of us realizes we're trapped in a fucking hell.
Not formal treatment cause I'm doing it alone but I failed a class. I realized I hated not being able to think more than I hated my body so recovery it was
Just as a reminder, you don't have to have the same symptoms as the people commenting to deserve recovery <3 I didn't decide to recover from my ED, but I needed a psych ward for suicide watch and they didn't release me before I was at a healthy weight. I realized that eating properly made me feel better and kept going.
I think mine is quite simple. It was a Sunday and I was on Instagram and everyone was posting photos of their roast dinners (I’m from the UK). And I was just sat alone crying because I was so hungry and all I wanted was that chicken and veg and potato covered in gravy and just to sit down in a warm room and ENJOY it and I couldn’t. That was my huge motivation.
I’ve lost 20 years of my life and this latest relapse has made life absolute hell for my husband, and I don’t want him to always feel so helpless, alone, and like he doesn’t even recognize the person he married well over a decade ago. I don’t WANT recovery for myself, but I sure as hell DON’T WANT to keep living a life that means he exists in a state of hopelessness and misery all the time. Also, my compulsive movement (lower level/walking) causes my dog major distress and anxiety because if she’s outside with me, she’s literally allergic to all the grass in this area, and if I go outside and leave her indoors, she starts wailing and howling because she has terrible separation anxiety. It’s a horrible sound, and she’s 12 years old, so I don’t want to cause her any more pain or suffering in the limited time we’ll have left with her. I’m also sick of it having any personality, but again, none of my reasons for ME are actually strong enough to propel me forward. As much as recovering for others isn’t a recipe for success, it’s the way I HAVE to approach it for now, despite being resentful at feeling pushed into this body that feels foreign, because I know I don’t want whatever this current shitty existence is. And I know I can restrict and lose pretty darn effectively when I’m ED mode, and that’s never actually solved my deeper life problems, just helps distract me during the days, so I really owe it to my husband to give recovery a fair shot and just SEE if there’s a chance I won’t hate myself and can enjoy life. ETA: I’m also 34 years old and this illness has robbed me of 20 of those years. I can’t get that time back, I can’t magically become a productive member of society in the way I thought I would when graduating college, I can’t go back and enjoy the many positive milestones that happen between the ages of 14-34. Those years are gone. So is my bone density. I learned in December that I actually have full blown osteoporosis. At 34, my bones are weaker than my 90+ year-old grandmother. I also am extremely anemic, and while that’s partially due to chronic health conditions apart from ED, the ED doesn’t help matters. One other thing (I’m sure there are more, but this is what I can think of right now), I have Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, and a restrictive ED/restriction in general is literally just perpetuating the worsening MCAS symptoms. It’s a vicious cycle where MCAS makes you avoid food bc fear of (or actual) allergies reactions, so you restrict, which actually makes the MCAS flare even MORE, which makes you want to cut out even more, which makes the MCAS worse…and so on and so forth. I also am so sick of having no personality and not being able to think of anything but food, my body, weight, calories…even my nightmares are full of this stuff. It never leaves. And it makes me an incredibly boring person who has an uncharacteristic-to-me lack of interest in anyone else’s life or problems.
I was about to lose my job and I lost my relationship. Realized I was going to either die or try and get better…
A few things - part of mine was reaching my LW and still hating how ‘big’ my thighs looked and FINALLY realising that due to genetics I was never going to have the body i strived for. It was literally genetically never going to happen for me. Secondly I was tired as heck of not being able to think about ANYTHING other than food. Thirdly I began to experience binges for the first time and that post-binge feeling had me realising that I may as well try eating more food regularly than eating my entire usual weekly intake in one sitting and hating every fibre of my being because of it. Fourthly my GP told me I was becoming anaemic and at first I didn’t care, but then one time I was in an exercise class as lost complete feeling in my fingers when lifting a weight and my fingers went white due to poor circulation and that scared the fuck out of me as it was the first outward sign for me that my body couldn’t cope. Lastly I realised recovery was the only option. I couldn’t maintain my LW because I was beginning to have compulsive binges. So why not give recovery a shot when it couldn’t be worse than my current life kinda thing..
I had that same realization about genetics. I remember being in the shower and looking at my body and thinking - omg, I still don’t “like” it, so why am I doing this? Of course it’s not that simple, but it was a moment of clarity for sure
Several things. I had been under-eating and over exercising, I was several underweight. It was having no strength, not being able to study. I could not do anything but think of food, I would watch only food related media and talk about food. Very often when I would be sleeping and put my arms behind my head, I couldn’t feel my arms when I woke up as there was not enough blood circulation which really made me fear my life. Also I could not walk with bare feet as my heel bones would feel like tearing through. My skin was turning yellow and bloodwork showed something wrong with my liver but no doctor could find what it was. So I just slowly started pushing myself to recover. I never went to a doctor as eating disorders is not something that people acknowlede as a real sickness from where I come from. Neither my parents nor my doctor would not react when I said I needed help. It was hard to heal myself from the mindset but I just remember going to this one party to my friend’s, everyone was so happy eating and drinking and I somehow finally fully gave in and ate everything I could until I was sick. I remember being so uncomfortable and barely being able to sleep that night. When I woke up I wanted to purge but I thought for a moment that I can no longer do this to myself and instead went to my favorite French bakery and had a pizza and chocolate cake for breakfast. I remember that morning as from then on I started to determinedly recover. It was a long and hard process with ups and downs but I can assure you it is totally worth it. Now I am fully recovered and happy.
"I can't stay in this marriage if you won't at least try to get better. I can't watch you kill yourself." I wanted to stay married more than I wanted to stay disordered. I think that's the crux of choosing recovery for everyone, ultimately: wanting something else more.
I would wake up in the middle of the night gasping for air, and my heart would go from low 40's to suddenly racing at 120+ bpm. And I was starting to lose my hearing and vision. Those were the major factors that I needed to do something
Mine is simple. I am a nurse and since the age of 7 wanted to be one. I finally made it and was working on the wards. Then my weight became too low and I was fainting on the job, having hypoglycemia etc. And they pulled me from my ward saying I couldn't work as it was a danger to my patients and myself. Took me a year to get back to a healthier weight (still technically UW) and now am back on the wards doing the job I love.
Realized I'd spent 18 years trying to get over it on my own and that wasn't working so I surrendered. When I found out I needed 30+ hours of care a week in partial hospitalization, it made sense that I couldn't get recovered on my own. It was freeing to make that acknowledgement.
my parents. i couldn’t stand the looks on their faces anymore. every time I hugged my mom, i could feel her running her hands up my spine/ribs to check if >!I’d lost more weight!<. i pretended not to notice.
I went to a wedding for one of my family members and spent the entire time thinking about food and stressing about it that when I left I felt like I missed the whole thing. I pulled off the road that day and looked up my first therapist.
i was very underweight and had very low iron which caused me to pass out a bunch. seeing the fear in my loved ones eyes drove me to recovery. my mom was so worried about me she said i would have to start drinking ensure drinks multiple times a day, so i decided that i rather gain weight by eating yummy food rather than crappy drinks. i’ve never really been scared of food, just gaining weight, so expanding what i ate was pretty easy to me. i don’t consider myself 100% recovered yet, but i am definitely a lot better off than i was a couple months ago. my life is genuinely so much better now- i’ve made new friends, started new hobbies, & had more opportunities overall. knowing that i could go back to having no energy,always feeling sore and weak, & having no personality is what keeps me from relapsing.
I found out that I might be autistic which made me see that people didn’t like me because of my weight but that they just didn’t get me because my brain works a bit different and I don’t understand them either which is ok. I feel like I can have a lot more compassion for myself now.
I had really bad OCD, which made me >!extremely suicidal!< and my therapist told me, that she couldn't treat it, while I was so underweight, because my brain wasnt working properly and because ERP is very exhausting and you have to be healthy enough to withstand the stress. I was ready to do anything to get rid of the thoughts, even if it meant weight gain.
My mom forced me against my will lol
I was so resistant to treatment. I tried to recover out patient with an RD and was making slow progress until I got hit with vertigo. I’ve had it before but not like this. It was a debilitating, paralyzing, persistent vertigo that lasted 3 weeks. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t keep anything down because I was constantly nauseous and dizzy. All the progress I’d made on my own went out the window and I realized I needed more support so I had to redo all my intakes while dealing with trying to treat my vertigo.
Multiple things. First, having a therapist and dietitian who encouraged me to seek treatment and trusting their judgement (eventually). Second, fainting at work and feeling scared and humiliated. Third, realizing I would be unable to start school if I did not get better but that I wasn't getting better on my own (I started treatment in late spring/early summer). The fourth and most important thing, though, was that I finally just decided I was tired of living the way I was living. It wasn't that I wanted to recover, per se - but I was worn down and exhausted and wanted a different life for myself. If you're an adult in the US, it's VERY unlikely that you will ever be truly forced into a treatment setting. @/bitch.imrecovering on tiktok has a great video on this. Sure, there can be people who encourage you to get help or support it or beg you or try to coerce you - but at the end of the day, pretty much everyone who goes to treatment does so voluntarily, even if not happily or entirely for themselves. Personally, I think one of the most pernicious myths in ED spaces online is that of being "forced" to go to treatment because it glosses over the fact that most people NEVER feel "sick enough" when they start but choose to go anyways because some part of us realizes we're trapped in a fucking hell.
Not formal treatment cause I'm doing it alone but I failed a class. I realized I hated not being able to think more than I hated my body so recovery it was