How to Know You’re Fully Recovered From an Eating Disorder

Don’t get stuck in quasi-recovery like me.

Photo by Thomas Kilbride on Unsplash

There were countless times in my eating disorder recovery I didn’t know what was worse: living in the grips of my illness or exhausting so much time, energy, and money trying to overcome it.

After more than a year of outpatient treatment and months of abstinence from restricting, bingeing, and purging my food, I decided I was “healed enough” and stopped scheduling appointments with my therapist, dietitian, and MD.

The next two years looked a little something like this:

• Not weighing myself but obsessively mirror-checking to make sure my body wasn’t getting “out of control.”
• Not using a fitness tracking device but depending on exercise to compensate or to earn food and alcohol.
• Not tracking my calories in MyFitnessPal but tracking calories mentally.
• Not abstaining from any foods but often judged myself for what I ate.
• Not bingeing or purging regularly but bingeing and purging once every few months “because I earned it.”

The long and the short of it: I cut the recovery cord too soon and ended up working with an eating disorder recovery coach to help me with my unfinished…