What I Wish I Knew About Recovery

Some important details I wish former me knew about recovery from an eating disorder

During my bulimia

Doing anything new and worthwhile also comes with making fair amount of mistakes. When I first entered recovery, I didn’t know what I was doing explicitly. I was just doing what felt right, whatever was going to help me achieve health after being encapsulated with an eating disorder. Looking back, I wish I had a mentor, someone to guide me when I was scared or slap me with the cold truth when I needed to uproot out of my own bullsh*t. This topic has been on a mind a lot lately and I want to share with people some essential tips that would’ve helped me along the path of my eating disorder recovery when I was a newbie.

1. If you developed an eating disorder that severely restricted your food intake and/or involved consuming large amounts of processed food, then your perception of reality is most likely warped. Studies have shown how a lack of proper nutrition negatively impacts mental cognition. Your mental cognition includes your capacity to pay attention, learn, memorize, and critically think. This means if you have a poor diet it can lead to distorted perceptions, awareness, attention, thoughts, memory etc. because your brain does not have the necessary nutrients to make connections and perform functions. Your brain does not have enough nutrients to operate at optimal levels. This is why a lot of people with restrictive eating disorders start loosing hair or their menstrual cycle. A poor diet also explains how many people with eating disorders develop body dysmorphia (due to distorted perceptions and volatile moods that influences one’s worldview). So don’t focus so much on your body image. Your perception is skewed. Just focus on eating a healthy diet. In due time you will begin to see reality for what it truly is. And this leads to my next point
2. You will experience a lot of hunger. When you are hungry, EAT. Eat until your full. Sometimes I would eat an extra meal on top of a full day of eating. It’s just what my body needed at the time. If you can, see a registered dietitian so you can receive professional nutritional advice. Learning what your body needs and what normal eating looks like will help you feel less anxious around meals. It is going to take some time before you feel safe around food again. I adopted a scheduled eating plan in the beginning and it helped.
3. Once you adopting a healthy diet, your brain will be set on fire. You will be feel mentally keener, and your brain will most likely move at a rapid fast pace. It might even feel like you can’t enjoy simple things in life because you’re finding problems, solutions, and logic in things. This is okay and normal. Take your newfound productivity and run with it. Work with it. You are literally seeing the world with new, fresh lenses.
4. You are still subject to the highs and lows of life. Just because you entered recovery or are recovered doesn’t mean that your struggles in life are over. More struggle is up ahead, and that’s O.K. You will be able to face them successfully. I foolishly thought the “hard” part of my life was over, that recovering from bulimia was going to be the hardest thing I would ever have to do in my life. Eating disorders are often developed as a coping mechanism in life, so dealing with the stresses and challenges of life without using your eating disorder will be a new skill you have to learn. Give yourself some time in recovery without making huge decisions or taking on extra difficulties,(moving out of state, changing careers, whatever that is new and would be hard for anyone) if you can help it. It’s OK to take your time getting adjusted to a life without an eating disorder because hard times will come and you don’t want to revert back to an eating disorder to calm your nerves.
5. Stop trying to lose weight. Seriously. Do not try to lose weight for aesthetic purposes. And DO NOT TRY INTERMITTENT FASTING (or any kind of fasting in that case). Health professionals advise against fasting if you have a history of an eating disorder. I personally went down this route and it was torturous, mentally and physically. I would like to try fasting for its purported benefits, but I have learned my lesson and I am not willing to take that risk again. Focus on being healthy. Learn about adopting a healthy lifestyle and your mind and body will follow. Plus, it’s going to take a fair amount of time before you brain accurately processes what your body truly looks like.
6. Don’t try to be perfect. Who are you trying to impress when trying to be perfect? We become better versions of ourselves when we make mistakes and learn from them. As long as you’re becoming a better version of yourself, you’re doing enough.
7. Analyze your intentions. If your intentions are based on image (which is your ego), insecurities (ego again), or fear, then the actions you take based on these intentions will most likely be unfulfilling. It can lead you to running from one extreme to another. I recently read Ashleigh Bowling’s orthorexia recovery story and she talks about how unhealthy behaviors in recovery kept her leading to extremes.
8. Be honest. If you’re not used to being honest with yourself and others, this is going to take practice. I remember hearing this from someone and it gave me such relief. I didn’t have to be perfect with my honesty. I just had to practice being honest to best of my ability and move from there. Early in recovery I didn’t trust myself with a lot of things. And I didn’t trust my capacity to be honest with myself when prior experience showed I often lied to myself.
9. It’s OK to let go and grow out of your ideas.There was a few times when I’d feel genuine change in my life or feel a sense of relief only to reject the progress or relief because it went against these core beliefs I had about myself. That or I would feel stupid at having had such a trivial idea bother me, so, to satisfy my ego, I would hold onto to useless feelings and ideas just so I would feel justified in my thinking. I didn’t want to be wrong, but in having such a large, fragile ego that couldn’t be wrong, I denied myself change. I was attached to my ideas, fears, image because I thought they were my identity but these concepts actually stunted my growth. We are meant to change as individuals. It’s OK to stand for certain ideals and morals, but it’s also vital that we change when we come into more understanding.
10. Learn to identify your ego and let it go, little by little. It’s essential to your growth and actualizing your potential.
11. Don’t bother yourself too much with what other people are doing. I started meditating and studying modern theories of spirituality and then abruptly stopped. I felt weird and out of place because I thought, “no one else I know is doing what I’m doing”. I really wish I had never stopped meditating because I reaped such great benefits from it. This idea of my image and what people might think of me and wanting to fit in is what stopped me from having more practice in and developing a meditation routine. But lesson is, it’s fine to do your own thing. Do it. You reap what you sow.
12. Meditate. You don’t have to be an expert in it. All you have to do is spend some quiet time with yourself. You can use this time to reflect on whatever is bothering you or a topic you’re having difficulty with. It’s proven to have great mental benefits. It also helps to rewire you brain in a healthy way.
13. Listen to that voice of reason in your head. You’ll know it when you hear it. And when you do, follow advice and get out of your own way.

This is a lot, and it’s probably impossible to apply into your life by just reading it once. If anything stands out to you just focus on that. Focus on what resonates with you and what you need. People don’t have the same experiences in recovery, and maybe all of this information will never be pertinent to you. If that’s the case, don’t make anything fit that doesn’t belong. It’s OK. Your recovery is your journey.