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Drinking Alcohol in Recovery

It’s popular wisdom in the eating disorder recovery community that drinking alcohol/doing drugs is bad – and there is a lot of evidence to back that statement up. There is a strong correlation between people with substance abuse issues and eating disorders. Alcohol, of course, is detrimental to your health whether you are recovering or not. People who need to re-feed can rely on alcohol for a bulk of their calories and not get the proper nutrition they need. Alcohol is just an unhealthy way to self medicate anxiety. Listen, I understand all of that.

Here’s my well thought out, scientifically backed up, and thoroughly researched counter argument though: I love vodka.

I am not here to tell you not to listen to your therapists and doctors. Every single person is different and what they need to help themselves is unique. However, drinking in recovery was absolutely essential for me and perhaps more than one of you can relate to my reasoning.

Before I was sick I drank… a lot. I was in college and in a sorority in New Orleans. It was hard to avoid, and frankly I didn’t want to avoid it. I loved going out to bars, knowing bartenders, trying new drinks, hanging out with my friends, etc. When I developed ED alcohol was one of the first things I cut out. Doing this may have seemed like a very healthy decision for myself, but looking at it from the lens of an eating disorder I think we can all understand how it really wasn’t. It was simply another excuse to restrict more calories. When I was in quasi-recovery I still refused to drink OR if I did drink I would make sure not to eat all day to compensate. That was the wrong way to approach alcohol. I was rarely drinking and I still did not enjoy it the way I used to.

When I finally committed to true recovery I began forgetting about the “empty calories” and returning to my pre-ED behavior towards drinking. Being able to have fun with my friends the way we used to was essential to me continuing to have the strength and will to re-feed. Returning to my old social life was a “Recovery Goal” of mine, and re-learning how to drink without care of calories was essential to achieving that goal.

Is this the right way to approach alcohol for every person in recovery? Certainly not. If you think that you have a real substance abuse problem than alcohol can hinder any potential progress you might make. If you drink alone often or view alcohol as a way to medicate anxiety instead of as a social lubricant

or way to connect with others than you are abusing the sauce and should not imbibe. If you are still counting calories and restrict your intake to allow you to drink alcohol than I can tell you from experience that is very wrong, dangerous, and ultimately not even fun – so just stop. However, if drinking is a part of your social life that you miss and you understand your body and your limits (and you’re of legal drinking age!) then I think that drinking during recovery is essential to reminding yourself who you can become once again.

Did you drink/are you drinking in recovery? Do you think you’re going about it the right way? Or do you avoid booze completely? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear other perspectives!

https://youtu.be/yYrGReO1x-M

Sweet Potato Thai Green Curry – Recipe Video

Today I’d like to share the first of what I hope are many recipes to come. I filmed this on Monday night after I came home from work. This is one of my many simple and quick dinners that I make after a long day. While I typically pre-make most of my meals, one or two nights out of the week I feel inspired to play around in the kitchen a bit.

One of the best parts of recovering from an eating disorder is the freedom that I have in the kitchen. When I was sick I would have had to weigh the sweet potato, and measure out exactly how much coconut milk, olive oil, and chickpeas I used. To be honest, I probably wouldn’t even cook with some of these ingredients because they are too calorically dense. After recovery, all of that fear is just a distant memory. Now I can experiment, estimate, make mistakes, and I know everything will be okay. This has allowed me to become a better amateur chef and a happier person.

I hope you enjoy this meal as much as I did! I think I actually preferred it heated up the next day. It is super filling, nutritious, and it is vegan! (I am not vegan – but this is!)

Bon Appetit!

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Recovering From a Binge

Binge eating, the uncontrollable impulse to eat mass quantities of food despite any feelings of hunger or fullness. Most people entrenched in diet culture can empathize with the terrible feeling that comes in the aftermath of a binge. Whether they are suffering from BED, bulimia, or are just experiencing the effects of fad/yo-yo dieting, a binge is one of the most common disordered relationships with food. Binge eating typically stems from an emotional attachment to food as a source of comfort followed shortly by feelings of guilt. Many people who have binge eating episodes engage in dangerous purging behaviors such as throwing up or laxative abuse to regain an “empty” feeling. These binge/purge cycles often seen in bulimic individuals are physically dangerous.

Personally, when recovering from anorexia I had several binge eating episodes. The only way I can describe my own experience is that it was like my brain turned off and all I could focus on was the food. I was in a blind effort to eat as much food as I could find and fit inside of me. After consuming thousands of calories in just 20 minutes I would then cry and feel terrible and guilty. While I was supposed to be eating a lot for my recovery, the binges were still not the normal relationship with food I actually needed.

Here is my quick guide for recovering immediately after a binge eating episode. This process is what eventually allowed me to begin overcoming binge eating:

Do not be hard on yourself about the binge – One of the worst parts of any binge is the abrupt feelings of overwhelming guilt that bubble up. These feelings are what lead to the continuation of dangerous behaviors such as purging. The purging then eventually leads to more binging and the cycle is continuously perpetuated. After you have a binge, recognize your feelings of shame or disappointment as temporary. Remind yourself that what happened has happened and the best thing you can do for yourself is be kind and forgive yourself for the binge. Regularly practicing this internal dialog will help stop binges from happening again. Remind yourself over and over again that you have worth, that this misstep does not define you, that you are going to be completely fine. They key is to identify and replace the feelings of guilt with feelings of forgiveness.
Distract yourself – After quickly having a loving reconciliation with yourself, quickly distract yourself before you can backtrack on the positive internal dialog. Put on a movie, go for a walk, paint your nails, take a shower, call a friend, do anything that takes your mind off of the binge that just happened. The more time you take to separate yourself from the episode, the better you will begin to feel. My go to way to distract myself was to brush my teeth and call a relative (almost always my dad) to catch up. If you decide to exercise to distract yourself remember to take it easy. Do not use exercise as a way to punish yourself. Keep it simple with a light walk or calming yoga.
Do not restrict your food – This might be the most important tip here. After your binge, when you have hopefully successfully identified and replaced the negative emotions, forgiven yourself, and then distracted yourself for a while to keep your mind off of it, CONTINUE TO EAT NORMALLY FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. You may be less hungry naturally, but if you binge mid day you still need to eat dinner and if you binge at midnight you still need breakfast! Restricting your intake to compensate for the binge will only put you back in a cycle where another binge becomes possible.

Binge eating is complicated, the reasons behind a binge are multifaceted and unique to everyone. Often therapy can help with BED, bulimia, or just mending a very bad relationship with food. However, there are a few things to remember to do to help yourself outside of seeking professional treatment. Binges can be physiological and/or emotional. The best ways to prevent them is by protecting yourself from both.

The first step is practicing consistent self care. Treating yourself with love and respect will nurture a positive connection between yourself and your body which is an important step in repairing a damaged relationship with food. Keeping a daily journal to write down feelings of gratitude and affirmations is a good first step. It can often feel silly and awkward at first but eventually you will begin to notice the permanent changes it brings to your overall mindset. While recovering, I wrote all over every mirror of my room positive quotes and self esteem boosting mottos. Make sure you look upon yourself with love, and treat yourself to nice things whether it’s manicures, bike rides, or long colorful bubble baths. Remind yourself that your body is merely a vessel for the beautiful soul underneath.

The next step is stop dieting. Stop restricting. Diets don’t work, they encourage an abundance/scarcity mentality which upsets your brain and your metabolism. Practice eating intuitively. There are many resources available that teach this way of thinking. The way I achieved it was by eating my minimum 3500 calories to gain weight, reset my metabolism, and shift my perspective on restriction. Eventually, when the mentality of restriction began fading away the urge to binge left too.

Binge eating is not a solitary experience, many people go through it every day. You are not alone. With a determination to make a change and by practicing self love and no restrictions, binge eating is something you can recover from.

Resources used:
https://www.recoverywarriors.com/ten-tips-recover-binge-emotional-eating/

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/eating-disorders/binge-eating-disorder/binge-eating-disorder-medref#1

https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/binge-eating-disorder

Unpacking Thin Privilege

I want to talk about the existence of thin privilege, the special rights and advantages that are made available specifically to thin people. To start, I do not speak for all heavy people. I am aware I am writing this from a position of privilege and I hope to not offend anyone.

o-BD4692003-facebook — via everdayfeminist.com

Let me start out by outlining my personal bias. Most of my life I have been average sized. I was never subjected to fat-shaming even at my heaviest because average is still considered to be “normal.” When I dropped from a size 10 to a size 2, however, I felt the world change around me. I had no idea the level of comfort and generosity that a thin person receives every day until I experienced it firsthand. Strangers were much nicer to me; Not just the creepy dudes at bars who wanted my number, even visitors to the university information desk where I worked were far less snarky to me. While my relationship with food was admittedly fucked up, when I was recovering and indulging in ice cream, pad thai, and whole pizzas I didn’t have any fear of other people commenting on my diet as if it were there place to police my personal choices. I could go to the boutique stores that only sold “one size fits all” and know that everything would fit me. I didn’t have to cherry pick my outfits for flattering cuts and angles or worry that nothing would fit me.

I’m outlining my experiences only to say that, until I lived as a thin person (and was ironically in the worst health of my life), I never fully understood the privilege because it is easy to miss and take for granted. Now that I’m back to average a lot of these perks have gone away, but I’m still lucky and privileged not to face most of the oppression that an overweight person does.

The reality is that we live in a thin-centric world and fatphobia is built into the foundation of our society. Airplanes, sports stadiums, roller coasters, subway cars and other public spaces were designed for thin people and often do not accommodate bigger bodies. Unless you are thin you are expected to pay more, be physically uncomfortable, or are flat out not welcome into these spaces.

Clothing stores do not always carry plus size clothing. A fat person has limited options that are more expensive and harder to find. They are told by society that only certain patterns and styles look okay on them which is only a way to minimize their identity. Often times plus size options are positioned in an entirely different section causing not-thin people to feel ostracized, or they don’t exist in stores at all.

There is less representation of heavy people in television and movies, and when they are present they are often portrayed as something broken to be fixed or in a negative way. Fat people are denied fertility treatments and lifesaving surgeries unless they promise to change themselves first because of a bias in the medical industry. Fat people are heckled with insults about how they are lazy, immoral, or unhealthy on a daily basis. There is an employment and promotion bias against overweight people. They exist in a world in which it has become a normal narrative to have conversations and campaigns about getting rid of people like them.

d9aedd886802d9cbb9f51ce72230e922 — Via everydayfeminist.com

Now, a lot of people justify all of this fatphobic bullshit by saying that fat people are unhealthy and shouldn’t have their bodies catered to or glorified. This argument is based solely in the fat=unhealthy argument, which has been proven to be untrue. Weight is an inaccurate measure of health despite what you may have been told by doctors (the same ones who are making this judgement based off the inaccurate BMI). There are actually many studies of overweight and obese people having a lower mortality rate and being better able to survive cardiac arrest. Despite what you may think, correlation is not causation – so while people who are overweight have cardiac issues and diabetes, their fat is not the direct cause of the illness, and thin people have these problems too. Thin people however, are not judged the same way. Being fat is not always unhealthy and without fully knowing a human being it is impossible to tell their specific conditions behind their weight. When people thought I was at my “fittest” I was literally dying, so I know these people aren’t really concerned about health – they are just fatphobic. It’s not anyone’s place to pass judgement on another person because of their appearance. What is more, you simply cannot judge someone’s health simply by looking at them – that is a gross misconception. However, because of that misconception blatant fatphobia continues to be rooted into the everyday workings of our life.

To be fat in this society is to be oppressed and that is exactly why thin privilege exists. Not to say that all thin people have amazing and easy lives, but thin people do have the social supremacy. To those of privilege who don’t like hearing about their privilege I am not trying to invalidate your struggles. Skinny-shaming is definitely a problem and something that happens regularly. It’s never okay for any woman to hear that their body isn’t good enough. If you read this blog about eating disorder recovery I hope it is clear that I am not invalidating the struggles of thin people at all. However, although a thin person might have negative body issues, they still get to enjoy the advantages that have been constructed into our civilization. Fat people have been disenfranchised by a world that seeks to minimize and villainize them.

So, thin privilege exists. Like with any privilege you may be blessed to live with take this knowledge and make sure that as you navigate life you view all people with the same amount of respect and empathy that you expect for yourself. This was one of the biggest lessons that shook me during recovery. Despite what culture may try and dictate, every person no matter their size, color, ability, or nationality deserves understanding. Check your privilege before making assumptions and be kind to one another

Orthorexia: The “Healthy Eating” Disorder

Let’s talk about orthorexia. Sometimes called the accidental eating disorder, orthorexia is ironically when a person becomes SO obsessed with a “healthy” diet and lifestyle that it actually becomes unhealthy. It is Human Makeover: Extreme Edition. It’s obsession under the guise of health. While someone who develops orthorexia might have started out with harmless intentions, they often end up in a very unhealthy place.

An orthorexic is often very concerned about the “purity” of their food. They are fixated by the oils used in restaurants and potential toxins in their food. They eat only a very small list of “acceptable” foods and are unable to eat food prepared by others. They will become completely fixated on the quality of food, how to eat it, and when to eat it. They will put themselves on strict eating regimens that most people could never stick to. They want to be better than others by proving their dietary superiority. If they have a slip up they will often self-punish with more exercise or less food. Ultimately their food choices are destructively restricted and their exercise routine becomes so aggressive that their health suffers.

Orthorexia is not technically an eating disorder according to the DSM-5, but let’s be clear folks, this IS an eating disorder. It was a phrase created by Dr. Steven Bratman in the late 90s. He had patients who were overly health obsessed to the point of being harmful to themselves. While it was not initially meant to be a diagnosis, over time he discovered that this term describes a very real eating disorder.

Of course there is a difference between orthorexia and a normal healthy lifestyle. The amount of stress and fixation that comes with orthorexia typifies the illness. A person leading a healthy life without obsession or fear is not sick in the same way an orthorexic is. While the line might be blurry orthorexics suffer from compulsive behaviors, preoccupations with optimal health, self-imposed anxiety, shame, and severe restrictions that escalate. Orthorexics might attempt cleanses or fasts in order to “detoxify” their bodies. While any disordered relationship with food is unhealthy, people can also suffer from nutritional deficits, self-inflicted social isolation, damaged relationships, and total loss of the ability to eat intuitively. The biggest problem of all is that orthorexia is tricky to recover from. We live in a society that idolizes healthy eating and thinness. In this environment an orthorexic may not realize that they have a problem and can stay disordered under the pretense of a healthy lifestyle.

So, if you think that any of this might apply to you… Start eating things that scare you, look at your attitude honestly, accept that you may not be the healthiest person in the world, and begin to re-learn how to love your body no matter what. Stop measuring your self-worth by your overly restrictive diet and exercise routine, and learn how to eat intuitively. Fill your body with joy and self-love and take a step back from unrealistic health goals that stop you from truly living a life worth living. A life full of strong and happy friendships and relationships, a life with junk food and salads, wine and smoothies, ice cream and vegetables, happiness and joy, and no self-hate. Orthorexia is an eating disorder to recover from – and recovery is worth it for you too.

Body Mass Index: The Meter of Lies

When suffering from an eating disorder numbers become a very integral part of life. Weight, calorie intake, calorie output, and every number on every nutrition label are constantly circling the brain like a 90s cartoon character trying to do math.

Of course, there is also BMI. BMI, short for Body Mass Index, is technically the measure of body fat using height and weight. It calculates whether an individual is underweight, “normal”, overweight, obese, etc. BMI is a widely used evaluation by doctors to assess a person’s health. It is also a malicious meter of lies. I was obsessed with my BMI while I was sick, before I realized that where I fell on the chart was not at all an accurate picture of my health or anyone else’s.

quetelet_adolphe — Pictured: actual evil wizard

First thing is first, the evil wizard who invented the BMI equation gave instructions to not use BMI the exact way we have been using it for decades. Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (ridiculous name) said himself that the formula should not be used to suggest an individual’s “fatness”. Instead the equation was meant to measure obesity throughout a population to help the government determine how to allocate resources. He’s still an evil wizard in my book though for bringing the BMI into the world in the first place.

BMI does NOT account for gender, age, waist size, bone density, or muscle mass. For instance, athletes and people with strong bones will often be classified as overweight or obese because bone and muscle are denser than fat. Some of the fittest and healthiest #bodygoals you can think of including many body building competitors are technically obese?!?! That alone should tell you how grossly inaccurate this whole concept is.

The very notion of BMI suggests there are defined groups of underweight, ideal, overweight and obese people and that these groups have borders that are separated simply by a decimal place. That is completely ridiculous. Let’s just call a spade a spade, BMI is bullshit.

Before I had an eating disorder a doctor looked me in the face and told me that I was overweight. I went home with this information and internalized it. At that time according to the BMI chart all I had to do was lose 2 pounds to be considered “normal”. 2 POUNDS! Perhaps, had I not been PMSing that day or had gone to the bathroom before my appointment the doctor would have never said that to me. But he did, and I heard it. I set my weight loss goal and got crackin’. Then, long story short I went too far and ended up with anorexia.

Here’s the thing about my eating disorder. For the majority of the time I was sick, I was never “technically” deemed underweight according to the BMI chart. An 18.5 or below is considered underweight and for the most part I hovered at 18.8. My ED begged me to eat less and less to stay below that arbitrary threshold. But while my hair was falling out, my bones were sticking out, my mental health was spiraling, and I was starving any doctor could have looked at me and told me that I was “ideal”! Let me tell you, I was not. Fortunately, now I don’t know my BMI and I honestly can’t even take the time to figure it out because I know that is a completely garbage number.

Let’s just all vow to never check our BMI again or let it dictate our behavior towards our bodies. If a doctor tries to give you any advice based on it slap them!*

*Do not physically assault medical professionals, the slap should be figurative.

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Metabolism and Set Point Theory

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor! This information is based on advice I received while recovering, studies I have independently researched, and anecdotal evidence from my own recovery.

When recovering from an eating disorder it is common to think that if you allow yourself to gain weight then it will never stop. You may continue to gain weight until you become morbidly obese! Well, my dear reader, if you have these thoughts I am here to prove them wrong. I’d like to introduce you to a little concept called set point theory.

Set point theory was originally developed in 1982 by Dr. William Bennet and Joel Gurin as a way of explaining why dieting is overall unsuccessful in sustaining long-term weight loss. They stated that every person has a pre-determined weight range at which their body runs optimally and will defend itself to stay at. The metabolism will speed up or slow down to keep you stable at your set point range. If you are at your body’s set point and begin to crash diet your body perceives this as starvation and will trigger feelings of hunger so it can remain at its ideal weight. The more you “starve” the body through crash diets or calorie restriction your body’s metabolism will continue to slow down making it harder and harder to shed the weight. Once you go below your body’s set point range, your metabolism restructures itself to conserve the calories it already has on board. This is why your core temperature drops and why many people with eating disorders are constantly cold. It is also why menstruation will eventually shut down in women’s bodies. The reproductive system stops working because the body knows it could not endure a pregnancy. This is also why people with eating disorders will binge or have strong urges to binge. The body is begging for more food to get it back to its set point range.

Now, while the metabolism will slow down when the body is below it’s set point range the opposite will occur once the body goes above it. Your metabolic rate will heighten to help fight against weight gain over the set point range. Your core body temperature will be warmer as your body attempts to burn off the unwanted calories. The only hold up here is that if you have kept your body in a sustained starvation mode for a very long period of time you will need to overfeed your body to return it to its stabilized condition. This was studied in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. When the subjects were told to re-feed many ate more daily calories than they had eaten before the experiment. Their eating patterns looked like binging but the over-feeding ended up being necessary to re-building their metabolism. Once their body was at the ideal weight the metabolism kicked in again to help normalize each person’s appetite and weight.

This phenomenon is exactly what I witnessed firsthand in my own recovery. According to the Minnie Maud guidelines (now called the Homeodynamic Recovery method) that I was following I re-fed myself by not limiting any calorie consumption and remaining as sedentary as possible. I avoided weighing myself completely. After several months of eating more than I ever could have imagined I had mended my metabolism and my weight gain tapered at my set point. I have determined that my body’s set point range is between 145-155 lbs. I can eat all day long and not move a muscle and my body will stay at 155 lbs. I know this because that is precisely what it has done for the past year and a half and also because that is the weight my body maintained happily before I was ever sick. If I chose to eat healthier foods and get off my butt every now and then I would possibly eventually drop down to 145 lbs but once I lost weight below that point my metabolism would slow down and send me the signals that it is not happy. I think of my metabolism as my internal furnace. All day it is burning – even when I am just sitting at my desk. I need to continue to fuel my furnace by eating regularly so that it continues to keep my body functioning properly.

So, to my dear reader who is afraid to recover because of the fear of infinite weight gain – I am here to show you that it will all be okay. You will not gain weight forever. Once you have re-fed your body will trust you once again and your metabolism will fight to keep you at a stable weight that works for you. Keeping in mind that everyone’s set point range is different and that is okay. Understanding the science behind what determines body weight helped me mentally accept the changes that recovery brought. Understanding that each and every one of us is beautiful no matter what, but that we are all the most beautiful at our happiest was a breakthrough I needed. The weight that anorexia wanted wasn’t the weight that my body wanted and my body keeps me alive so I bravely decided to honor it and make myself happy and you can too.

F*ck The Patriarchy

“I may not be happy but at least I’m thin”

Have you ever thought that? I have. I’ve even said it out loud multiple times, to my therapist, my ex-boyfriend, my dad, my journal, my friends. It seems so crazy now but I truly believed that my own sanity and mental health was worth sacrificing for a smaller waist. How are we driven to think like this? Well I know it is not our fault that we were pushed to this point.

So many people (myself included) have/had been conditioned by modern culture to believe in one ideal body type for women. It has been subconsciously taught to us females that we should have the rail thin bodies like the ones that walk down the runways, grace the covers of magazines, and sell sexualized womanhood on billboards and television ads. But why are all women overwhelmingly represented in fashion and media by just one type of figure? It doesn’t make much sense when you consider that the average American woman is a size 12/14 while the average model is a size 00/0. Nevertheless when beautiful pictures of celebrities and models are being glorified it easy to see how making yourself fit into the small box of “thin, white, super model” becomes the subconsciously ingrained creed. When women and girls are served up articles and television shows teaching them how to fix their appearance as if that is their most valuable asset, one can begin to see how such a toxic environment for subtle misogyny begins to form. So women of color hurt themselves trying to get lighter skin and a young girl starts to teach herself how to eat a little less every day until she takes up no space at all.

It really is all rooted in the patriarchy when it comes right down to it; The system of
society in which primarily men dictate the norms, create the ads, determine the “look”, and set up the environment that has killed young women all over the world. The representation of women in classic television, films, and advertisements is one that is produced by oppressive forces that seek to minimize the presence of strong females and typify the few women with leading roles as weak and unable to function without help from the male heroes. So when women are trained by the man-made culture they grow up in to only be valued based on the stereotypes forced upon our gender and the approval of our appearance by “society” AKA THE PATRIARCHY we start to understand a little more how the rate of eating disorders can be so incredibly sky high.

This all circles back to the young girl staring at herself in the mirror seeing only failure at her ability to achieve this ideal. Driven mad by starvation and deceived by the image she sees in front of her. Crying because she’s hungry and depressed and lonely and scared but goddammit at least she’s thin, right? WRONG. This is why the body positivity movement is so powerful, this is why women coming in to positions of influence is important. Women have dealt with a system that has worked against them for centuries but now we are in a place to fight back. I will proudly stand tall as another feminist killjoy in line to bring down the patriarchy if it means one less girl will see herself as lesser because she can’t live up to a false ideal.

Since recovering and having my eyes opened so widely to the lies, hypocrisy, and injustice of the world around me, the fire within me has been burning to try to DO something about it. If someone like me, who comes from a place of such immense privilege, can still be brought down we must realize that as women none of us are immune. It’s hard to pick one thing to be mad at these days, but for this issue I will try my best to be a role model and continue to share body positive, food positive, anti-shaming, and feminist stories, images, and posts to break down the cultural expectations of beauty and be on the forefront of the new wave of female representation.

The blame for what has happened cannot be placed with the individual who has fallen ill with an eating disorder. She did not create this air brushed diet culture we all live in, she was simply born into it. Now it’s all of our roles as women to help destroy it until it never hurts another innocent life again. What will you do?

How I Recovered

I want to start off by saying that I am not a dietician, psychologist, or doctor of any sort. If you are experiencing serious medical concerns, please go see a doctor as soon as possible and if you are having any abnormal, anxious, depressed, or suicidal thoughts or feel like you need a trained ear to help support you please seek counseling from a professional.

For me, recovery from my eating disorder took a long time and happened in several phases. Boiling the whole process down to a series of easy-to-follow steps just isn’t realistic because this disease is complicated and different for everyone who is affected by it. This is my recovery story and though it may not be exactly the “right” method, it is the one that set me free.

TRIGGER WARNING – There are descriptions of restrictive eating in here.

The day I googled “symptoms of anorexia” I felt my stomach sink as my eyes scanned the pages identifying with all the evidence I saw. After a lot of crying and googling for more answers, I was finally ready to accept that I might have a problem. However, I sat on that knowledge without doing anything about it for a long time. I told my boyfriend and my parents and they were supportive and not surprised but I didn’t really know where to go from there. I made an appointment with a therapist, I did some more online research, but mostly I just ignored the truth for as long as I could.

I saw therapists and went to doctors but the most impactful discovery for my recovery was online communities. It all started with my Tumblr recovery page. I discovered other girls who were recovering from anorexia and what that process looked like for them. I spent hours and hours reading posts from recovering girls and the articles they found interesting. The first step of course, was to increase my intake. It happened slowly over the course of a few months. I increased to 1200 a day then 1300 than 1500 and so on until I settled on 1700 a day for many months. I stopped all workouts that weren’t yoga. I made a list of all the food that scared me and I vowed to try and eat everything on the list at least once. I started photographing my meals and posting about my days on my tumblr. I was in this state, which I refer to as “quasi-recovery” for over a year. I went through several periods of relapse where I would return to my old ED behaviors before returning to quasi. I was still an unhealthy low weight, but I wasn’t losing anymore I was maintaining. At least I was eating I thought… sure, I was still cold all the time, afraid of certain foods, isolating myself, losing my hair, not menstruating, feeling depressed and suicidal, I sprained my ankle in my sleep because my bones were so weak, and sitting down still hurt because all my bones stuck out of my body… but for some reason I still felt like I was “recovered”. Just because I wasn’t eating only 500 calories a day and the fog in my head was dissipating I thought the battle was won. The problem was that numbers still ruled my life and I was not happy. I was not recovered.

The beginning of my salvation came upon the discovery of youreatopia.com and the Minnie Maud method of recovery. In summary, it is a system of recovering in which the person eats at least 3,000 calories (some cases it is 2,500, and some it is 3,500, but for me, it was 3,000) and stays as sedentary as possible. This is all in an effort to restore one’s metabolism, while simultaneously expanding from the mental restriction of anorexia. The 3,000 calories required is the minimum, however, if one’s hunger is not satisfied at 3,000, then they are encouraged to eat until satisfied. In fact, many people who recover this way experience what is called extreme hunger and can eat upwards of 10,000 calories a day. Minnie Maud is named after the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which is an fascinating study of starvation on the human body. I was spellbound by the study, and I encourage you to read through it too to discover the negative impact of calorie restriction. Minnie Maud is controversial because the woman behind it all doesn’t have any known credentials but many girls follow her advice with success regardless. I had known about Minnie Maud for months but never truly considered it as the right option for myself. In truth, it scared me. I think my eating disorder knew that doing this would work, so it constantly told me it was the wrong thing to do. I haunted the online forums but never truly committed. Then one day after almost 2 years of quasi-recovery, I just did it. I ate the minimums and didn’t move all day. It felt horrible, I hated myself, but also a little tiny part of me felt a little freer. I started following the guidelines every day.

The extreme hunger was very real. At the worst of it I was eating over 5,000 calories a day and I had the feeling of food being stuck in the back of my throat constantly. I worried incessantly that I was becoming a binge eater but I just kept going because I didn’t know what else to do and I wanted this to work. With the freedoms the minimums gave me I was finally able to eat foods I had avoided for years, pasta, cheese, ice cream, candy, avocados, bread, and so much more. I finally was able to stop counting calories like a maniac. One exciting day that I will never forget is the day that I was able to delete MyFitnessPal from my phone. The app had been controlling me like a mindless zombie for years and all of a sudden poof! I didn’t need it! I still had a lot of negative thoughts, the first few months on Minnie Maud were not all roses and sunshine. I had to cover all my mirrors and hide my scale. I was truly gaining weight for the first time in years and that made me more nervous than anything else. However, a big component of the Minnie Maud system is the theory of a “set point.” That you can keep eating the minimums for the rest of your life and eventually the weight gain will taper and each body will hover around the weight that is right for it. I was skeptical, but I had read success stories and knew girls who had recovered and I used the anecdotal evidence to keep myself going.

fearfood — Pictures from my tumblr of me challenging myself to “fear foods”

Two months in to Minnie Maud my ex-boyfriend of almost three years broke up with me. It was so devastating for me at the time. He had been there from the beginning and had always been supportive. The problem was he bore the brunt of most of the negative thoughts. I depended on him for emotional support and it just got to be too much for him (tangent: let’s not blame that breakup on me though, he was a cheating asshole who left me for someone else and couldn’t own up to it like a man.) I thought that it would be the worst thing for my recovery, but in truth after grieving for a month I started making more progress than I ever had before. I didn’t have him as an emotional crutch and I finally had to just depend on myself to push through. The bulk of my recovery happened in the five months after he left me. Mid way through that same year I looked at myself in the mirror and knew the battle was truly over. The last hump of recovery was the hardest. In my final month of recovery I was still counting calories and weighing myself. I was eating tons of food – to the point of stomach pain every day. My body and brain were begging me to eat. and eat. and eat. I was uncomfortable, but I didn’t stop. I never stopped. I felt large, and insecure, it was not easy. Then one day without me even noticing, it was easy. One day – I didn’t count my calories. I didn’t step on the scale. I didn’t think about food unless I was eating it. My body felt fantastic. I felt fantastic, and I knew I was healed. I don’t think about numbers, I don’t care about food, and every day I love my ever expanding beautiful soul.

In the end, I gained 40 pounds back. I experienced painful swelling, bloating, and stretch marks but I pushed forward anyway. I ended up at a weight that I could truly love myself at without hurting myself. The best part of recovery was feeling my personality return and grow into something more exciting than it had ever been before. I did stop gaining weight eventually despite not changing my eating habits. I was the same weight I had been before I became anorexic because set point is real. I haven’t obsessively counted calories in almost a year but I have to imagine I’m still eating near the minimums every day and my weight has stayed stable give or take a pound or two since the initial weight gain. I don’t usually weigh myself, I can just tell by my clothes. I felt truly recovered from the thoughts and the actions about 7 months into Minnie Maud. Today, I eat and eat and eat – not because I think I have to but because I live in an amazing city with delicious food. I eat because I work in an industry that feeds me decadent delicious free meals. I eat because it is an important way that I connect with the people I love. I eat because food is delicious. I eat because we need food to live. I eat because I remember what it’s like not to and I will never go back to that life again. I am recovered.

Letting Go Of A Thin Identity

Let’s talk about personal identity. Something that I noticed is that when the inches of your waist and number on the scale become the central components of your life, it is hard to stop from identifying solely through the frame of the disorder. You can find your identity being defined by traits that only surround your obsession with calories, weight loss, and trying to stay thin. I had a personality thrust upon me that my disorder created and I couldn’t escape her. I had become this quiet, introverted, thin, workout crazed, healthy eating “guru”. None of those were really representative of me, but they were who I had unwittingly become.

Have your dreams, hopes, fears, and attributes outside of the disorder been lost and forgotten? It can be all too easy to fool yourself into thinking that this new identity you’ve created is the “new you” and that you are no one else without it, but letting go of that falsehood is an important step out of the darkness.

When I was recovering I would refer to “sick Rachel” and “healthy Rachel” as if they were two different people completely. “Sick Rachel” was not the real me and in my heart I always knew it even though the voices in my mind tried to hide it from me. It took me a long time to rebuild myself back to “healthy Rachel”. As I recovered and my hair thickened up, my nails stopped breaking, my period came back, and my health returned to normal, my personality started slowly returning too. A lot of my pre-ED qualities came back (nerdy fantasy obsessions, inclination to party, social skills, a passion to work in TV, a more relaxed vibe, open heart, and positive outlook). However I also had new components to my personality that I was able to incorporate into myself. I had to re-learn what it meant to be Rachel all over again. I started realizing that “sick Rachel” was never me, it was who I became when I let the anorexia speak for me. During recovery I visualized “healthy Rachel” being locked in a dungeon in the deep recesses of my mind. All she needed to do was break free and defeat “sick Rachel” for my personality to be restored.

So, how do you separate yourself from a mental illness that distorts you view of reality? How does “healthy Rachel” vanquish “sick Rachel?” The first step is to stop moving and eat. Eat so much that it doesn’t seem right. Continue eating and living until one day you wake up and the fog in your brain has lifted and you start seeing yourself for more than your body. That’s when you’ll start being able to really piece yourself together once again.

Your own self is the ultimate reason to recover.

Your identity is such a tricky thing to pin down. What makes you, you? When recovering it is always helpful to write down a list of things you’re recovering for. I always put Myself at the top of the list. I wanted my life back, I wanted to be me again. If you have sacrificed any fragment of yourself to try and be thin over anything else then you have already wasted far too much of your own time. It’s time to let go of all that poisonous, culturally ingrained bullshit. It’s a new year and a perfect time to remember what a badass warrior princess you really are! Instead of worrying about a workout, go watch one of your favorite movies. Instead of counting the calories in a piece of bread, bake a 3 layer cake and cover it with glitter. Stop hiding behind an identity of thinness that a disorder has convinced you is who you are. Stop worrying, start eating, start living. It may not sound easy, and it isn’t, but boy it is worth it.

Stay tuned. In my next blog post I will be outlining the exact method I used to recover.

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