jumpingjacktrash:

funereal-disease:

theunitofcaring:

My dietician says that the body image things are the last part of anorexia to go. You decide that you prefer to maintain a weight at which you can be healthy (and gosh, deciding that is complicated all by itself). Then you gain weight until your brain functions normally and you’re not fatigued all the time. Then in theory I am told you get back to having normal hunger signals and being able to mostly eat when you’re hungry and still get enough calories. And then maybe if you’re lucky some of the body image stuff fades.

 I really wish someone had told me that several years ago. Lots and lots of the generic advice for eating disorders gives the impression that, like, you have to combat your unhealthy body image that is presumably driving your eating disorder, that you have to become all right with maintaining a healthy weight, that you have to grapple with the things that made you want to be thin in the first place. 

As far as I can tell this doesn’t seem to be true. You have to eat a lot. You have to eat when you’re not hungry and don’t feel like it. You have to learn to manage nausea and manage stress and manage restaurants. You have to keep eating when you feel like you’ve been doing this eating thing for a while and it’s not at all rewarding and your weight is close enough can you call it a day. 

There is probably some value to be gained from figuring out why you want to be thin, and why you have the emotions you have around food, and what you actually want, and so on. But all the introspection in the world will actually just get you… a really clear mental picture of having an eating disorder.

The thing to do to get healthy is to consistently eat a lot of food. 

This is both better and worse than advertised. It is better because it means I don’t have to change my mind, suspect my own wants, interrogate my self image, rewrite my preferences, in order to recover. I thought I’d have to do that and I did not want to and I think I was very justified in not wanting to. It is worse because it means doing something which varies from ‘vaguely unpleasant’ to ‘awful and directly contrary to everything I want and everything my body is telling me’ six times a day (three meals, three snacks) with no breaks and no exceptions. 

But I am doing it. It has been harder than anticipated and I do take breaks and make exceptions (and I notice that this is negatively affecting me, and I plan ways to not do it again), it’s much more of a full-time job than I could possibly have guessed, but I am doing it. 

Sometimes it even feels like it’s getting easier.

“I don’t have to change my mind … in order to recover.”

This times a million. Construing my disorder as explicitly medical helped more with my recovery than calls to introspection ever did. I am not concerned with the emotional roots of bingeing and purging. I’m concerned with whether or not I’m chafing my throat and ruining my digestive system, and taking Vyvanse is what enables me to not do that. I have a life; I’m tired of spending energy ruminating on the noxious seed. I’m just happy I can keep it from growing.

this is important for a lot of reasons, and one of the reasons is that eating disorders are not always psychologically based.

i have disordered eating because of sensory processing disorder. i don’t experience hunger properly and never will. i will always have to eat when i don’t feel hungry, and stop eating when i still feel hungry, and eat things that don’t feel like food, at times that don’t feel like food times.

i’ve accepted i need assistance with this. i have a helper who comes in 5 mornings a week to make sure i eat breakfast, and while i can’t always eat the whole thing, i at least get enough that my meds don’t burn a hole in my stomach. she leaves me tidy little portioned-out snacks in the fridge. for the rest, i rely on my spouse and friends to keep me on track. but even with all this, there are times when i don’t eat, or barely eat, for days.

accepting that this isn’t a moral issue, and it’s not an issue of mental health, or willpower, it’s just one of those things that happens, has really helped me keep fighting for my health.