I wish I could tell my past self that in a few months I’d be eating “junk” food at sleepovers with friends, eating lunch every day at school, feeling no food guilt, and my outfits wouldn’t revolve around the shape of my body anymore. At my lowest, I told myself that I would never restore my weight or heal my relationship to my body with food. I wish I could tell myself that I was fully capable of pulling myself out of that state and tell her how much I’m thriving now. My past self would be so proud of my current self.
There are days where I still struggle with my body image. Especially as a teenage girl, I take photos of myself almost every day that are stored on my phone forever. It can be hard to look at photos from last year and seeing the way that my body used to look. But, I also see how dead my eyes looked, how pale my face was, and how horrible my skin was. I romanticized how I looked back then- but in reality, I know that I now look healthier and prettier than I ever did when at my lowest weight.
My biggest support system through recovery was my childhood best friend and my journal. Although I had other systems such as my family, therapist, and doctors, these are the two things that motivated me the most to recover. I’m someone who’s never felt comfortable around adults. So naturally, I turned to someone my age and one of my passions, writing. Spending time with my childhood best friend was a breath of fresh air because I knew I could fully trust her without triggering her. Although she didn’t relate to my struggles, she was extremely understanding and played a major role in my journey to food freedom. I used journaling as an outlet to track my progress and document both my good and bad days. Looking back on these journals is extremely empowering and motivating to me. I couldn’t have done it without these two support systems.
One thing not spoken enough about anorexia is how it’s not only body-oriented. Personally, my eating disorder started as trying to change my body and eventually turned into a coping mechanism when my life felt out of control. I felt a sense of satisfaction when I was hungry and became addicted to the feeling. It eventually became much more than trying to lose weight. Anorexia is also not a weight disorder. There is no “look” to anorexia. You can struggle with eating and be at a healthy weight, overweight, or underweight. You can never not be “sick enough” to recover.
My favorite part of my life that I got back was my social life. Pre-recovery I missed out on so many opportunities that I was afraid of just because of my eating disorder. Now I can accept plans to go to restaurants, eat snacks with friends, go out every weekend, and have enough energy to make it through every day.
There is a wide range of signs that could be early indicators of anorexia. Some more obvious ones are limiting food intake, refusing to eat “unhealthy” foods, and/or rapid weight loss. But, there are many others that are very common: developing a random obsession for cooking/baking, always looking at yourself in the mirror/“body-checking”, eating the same foods over and over again, abrupt mood changes, always feeling cold/dizzy, etc.
When I feel a relapse may be coming, I have to remind myself of everything I’ve gained from recovery. I think about the memories and friends I’ve made, the new foods I’ve tried, and the confidence I’ve gained. I also think about how unhappy I was at my lowest point. I think about all of the health complications I experienced, people I worried, and how terrible I really looked and felt.
When talking about anorexia, it is very easy to trigger others who have struggled with disordered eating. One common mistake people make when in recovery is talking about specifics of their disorder. For example, how many calories they ate, how much weight they lost, or specific unhealthy tactics they used to lose weight. Because anorexia can be competitive, this usually causes people to compare their unhealthy eating habits as others which is extremely harmful to ones recovery. There is also an unspoken assumption that people with anorexia don’t struggle from other eating disorders, such as bulimia or binge eating disorder. I am particularly passionate about de-stigmatizing BED because it is often looked down upon in our society. When talking about anorexia, it is always important to keep in mind that anorexia often comes with purge and binge episodes as well and everybody’s experience with anorexia is different.
In recovery, some of the most triggering statements I received were about my weight gain. I often heard “you look so much healthier” which to me, felt like an indication that I had gained a noticeable amount of weight and looked worse than I did before. I believe that you should never comment on anybody’s body no matter the circumstance, especially if that person is actively in recovery. It always does more harm than good.