Living with Recovery
While I consider myself to be recovered now, there are still things I struggle with, in regards to eating, exercise, and body image.
It's been seven years since I developed anorexia, and every year, the things I struggle with become easier as I keep working towards maintaining recovery.
Behaviors that I have overcome:
- I used to constantly do leg exercises in every single class, whenever I was doing homework, etc.
- I would do calf raises every time I was brushing my teeth or waiting in a line.
- Everyday I would I throw away the school lunch I packed for myself.
- I would do 500-2,000 jumping jacks every single day, on top of my 1-2 hours of running/pilates.
- I started using less toothpaste than I normally did because I worried about the calories in toothpaste.
- I would NEVER eat anything with trans fat, partially hydrogenated oils, or high fructose corn syrup.
- I used to skip out on hanging out with friends because I had to exercise, or because they were going somewhere that involved eating.
- I used to start to chew some food and then spit it out because I got too scared of consuming those calories.
- I didn’t eat dessert, added salt, added sugar, butter, condiments,etc. for months on end.
- I would exercise for weeks and weeks, every single day without ever taking a rest day.
- I would go to the bathroom while I was at school just to exercise a little bit.
- I used to go up stairs 2 or 3 at a time to burn extra calories.
- I would only drink ice cold water to hopefully burn extra calories.
- I would sleep in my exercise clothes so I could save time in the morning and exercise a little longer.
Behaviors I still struggle with, but have gotten easier:
- I still often check restaurant menus online to see if they have vegan options, but I no longer look at the nutritional information or the calories of different items!
- I still often plan my entire day around what time I’ll workout and what time I’ll eat my meals. While I’m much better nowadays at spontaneously deciding to work out or spontaneously deciding to skip a planned work out, I still frequently worry about eating too much before a planned work out, and then not being able to work out because I don’t have enough time, and then feeling fat because I missed a workout.
- I still remember random nutritional information, like there are 80 calories in 2/3 of a cup of blueberries and 3 grams of fat in two tofu sausages, but I don't let it influence my eating.
- If someone is eating less than me, I make myself feel better by thinking "They probably ate more earlier today, so it's okay that right now I'm eating more than them".
Behaviors I still actively deal with:
- Hearing non-eating-disordered people talk about different diets, exercise, cutting back carbs, etc. is much more triggering to me than hearing about specific eating disorder behaviors. It is very hard to avoid talk about food and exercise, and hearing about people cutting back on carbs can make me feel like I need to do that too.
- It’s very hard for me to eat before bed, even if I'm hungry, because I got so used to going to bed hungry that I feel fat and guilty if I'm full when I go to bed. I’m slowly getting better at this.
- I can’t sleep with my bare legs touching because it makes me feel fat; I have to either wear sweatpants or have a blanket between my legs.
- I still often will eat a cookie, or even a bite of a cookie, and think that I instantly gained weight or fat, even though I objectively know it doesn’t work that way.
- I am constantly thinking about how my body looks to others. Every single time I get dressed I think about whether or not I look fat, every single time I sit down, I cross my legs so my thighs look less fat, etc.
- I still attach most of my self worth to how my body looks. If I feel skinny, it doesn’t matter what else is going wrong in my life, I’ll feel good about myself. And if my life is going really well, but I feel fat, that’s all I focus on.