anorexia recovery

Have You Developed Binge Eating Disorder? (+Giveaway!)

“I’m in recovery and I’ve been eating a lot more than usual. I think I’m developing binge eating disorder. I feel like I’m losing control around food. HELP!”

I can empathize with this feeling, I felt this way at the beginning of recovery as well. During the beginning when the extreme hunger was at its peak I didn’t know how to process what I was doing. I was scared, and it was emotional, and I all but completely convinced myself that this was binge eating disorder.

When you are recovering from an eating disorder or restrictive eating or chronic dieting, your body needs to replenish the backlog of caloric deficit that you have built up over the years. Even if you have been in quasi recovery for a long time. Your body still has not had the chance to metabolically restore itself to its set point. You will continue to get these strong urges to eat large amounts of food until your body has had its chance to properly heal. Until you are energy balanced and your metabolism is back to functioning optimally your body will continuously call out for more food. This desire to eat (and eat and eat and eat) is perfectly natural when you are recovering from disordered or restrictive eating. Your body heals itself through calories and eating what seems like a lot or a “binge-able amount” isn’t actually a binge but a natural bodily response to starvation (and/or restriction).

Eating disorders gain their power from control and often in recovery the hardest part is feeling the loss of that control. It’s a scary and difficult time to navigate, but just because it FEELS like you are going off the rails by eating a ton doesn’t mean you are developing a new psychopathy. Binge eating disorder is a very serious mental health disorder with many other symptoms and aspects other than just “eating a lot” and “feeling out of control”. When you are a person who is recovering from restrictive eating in any way, anorexia, orthorexia, EDNOS, or are in quasi recovery, responding to the extreme hunger that your body feels in recovery is not the same thing as having binge eating disorder.

The thought process that the unrestricted eating in recovery is actually BED is unbelievably common. Most people have a certain picture of what their recovery will look like and when it goes off the rails and outside the lines of the plan the reactions can be extreme. Recovery is about letting go of structure, numbers, and plans around food and just letting your body have what it truly needs. This is scary, but it’s a sign you are on the right path. Learning to become comfortable with the discomfort is a huge and important step forward. Your body knows what it wants and needs, and you should honor that to get yourself better.

ALSO – I’m having a giveaway over on my Instagram. The company Levoit has agreed to send one of my followers their super dope yoga kit. I’m super duper thriled because I have been looking for a way to thank you all for getting me to 1,000 subscribers on my Youtube channel!! If you are interested in entering the giveaway all of the details are on my instagram. Giveaway ends on 5/2/18.

Minnie Maud Recovery

Minnie Maud is an eating disorder recovery method developed by Gwyneth Olwyn. It has since been rebranded as the Homeodynamic Recovery Method. The website with all of the pertinent information can be found here. What follows is my own analysis of the method and a brief overview of my successes with it.

MinnieMaud Guidelines are the guidelines for recovery from restrictive eating disorders such as anorexia, binging/purging, bulimia, orthorexia and any EDNOS involving food restriction that I followed in recovery. The “Minnie” refers to the Minnesota Starvation Experiment and the “Maud” refers to the anorexia family based treatment program, the Maudsley protocol.

The guideline’s food amounts are what energy-balanced, non-eating-disordered people normally eat to maintain their health and weight. Meaning your minimum intake guidelines are what you can expect to eat during AND after recovery. However, you can expect to eat far more than minimum intake during the energy-restoration part recovery. (AKA extreme hunger).

The way to successfully follow the MinnieMaud program is to:

Eat the minimum intake every single day. It is a minimum intake and you are both encouraged and expected to eat more. Never restrict food intake. Your minimum intake is between 2500-3500 depending on your age, height, and gender and can be found on her website.
No weighing yourself or measuring yourself. This is the easiest way to relapse, so just avoid it completely. While I was gaining weight, I covered mirrors, threw away my scales, and bought loose flowing dresses that would fit me even when I was bloated or heavier. All of these things were crucial to me being okay with the weight gain and getting through the hardest part.
No exercise. At all.

The MinnieMaud guidelines believe that restrictive eating disorders are neurobiological conditions. The condition can be either active or in remission, but it is never completely cured. Part of remission is addressing the anxiety and guilt you associate with food head on with a therapist to avoid repeating inappropriate response behaviors to eating such as over exercising or restricting food.

So, the three steps to recovery are:

Weight restoration – to your SET POINT.
Repairing and reversing physical and metabolic damage.
Developing new non-restrictive neural patterns in response to usual anxiety triggers.

These steps can all be achieved through following the program.

I discovered Minnie Maud over a year before I finally committed to it. The one predicament about this method is that you have to want recovery for yourself in order to successfully go through with it. When I found the program, it was still available on the original Youreatopia site. I haunted the site and forums for months as I unsuccessfully attempted to recover through quasi recovery. When I finally found a therapist who supported Minnie Maud and I committed at the beginning of 2015. My whole world began to change and by the end of that year I was finally in remission.

Clearly MinnieMaud worked for me. I still consider myself in remission to this day. After I started eating the minimums within a few weeks extreme hunger hit me and for the next month and a half to two months I was eating between 5000-10000 calories a day, sometimes more. It was like I had a hunger deep inside me that could never be satisfied. Then that eventually calmed down and I kept eating to the minimums. I love the concept of a minimum intake because it completely flipped the script from what I had been implementing for years. Instead of being afraid of going over a certain number, I now had absolutely no limit! It is a freeing feeling. I felt the healing relationship to food. I felt the physical transformation. I felt the eating disorder disappear into the furthest, darkest corner of my brain.

Left: Jan 2015, just deciding to do MM. Sad, thin, empty, confused, miserable. Right: Sep 2015, VERY happily enjoying my summer 9 months into MM and 4 dress sizes bigger. Happy, social, free.

If you are considering this method of recovery I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you are still not sold, do the research on it yourself. That’s what I did and it was more than enough to convince me. People can say what they want about Minnie Maud but they cannot argue with a success story like mine and the many others out there. The best way to fight food restriction is with food. Food is medicine, it keeps us alive, and none of us are born with issues about it. MinnieMaud finally allowed me to remember what it was like to have a normal relationship with food and my body, it taught me so much about being a kinder compassionate human both to myself and to others. It allowed me to find myself again after years of hiding being an eating disorder and for that I am eternally grateful.

Atypical Anorexia and Weight Stigmas

Atypical anorexia is a disorder classified by exhibiting all of the symptoms of anorexia without being underweight. Atypical anorexia falls under OSFED or other specified feeding or eating disorders, previously known as EDNOS (eating disorders not otherwise specified). When I was sick I did not want to seek treatment because my BMI wasn’t technically underweight and I thought my concerns wouldn’t be taken seriously. But a person can have an eating disorder regardless of their size, shape, or weight. Also BMI is Bullshit, but I didn’t know that then.

Due to the weight stigma surrounding anorexia a person may think, I am not sick enough to have an eating disorder, because they are a “normal” weight. This is a grave misunderstanding that can prevent those who are struggling from seeking out the appropriate help needed for recovery.

Please remember that weight is not an essential criteria for an eating disorder. We need to challenge the weight stigma surrounding deadly diseases so that more people feel okay speaking out about their struggles.

I fear this happens to countless people, specifically women who have disordered relationships to their bodies and food after being brainwashed by diet culture. You can be a normal weight and still be struggling with an eating disorder. There is no one type of way to look if you are sick. If you have found yourself struggling with irregular eating patterns or abnormal thoughts when it comes to your body and food, be sure to talk with someone you trust.

You are not alone, you are not being dramatic, you do not need to look a certain way to be suffering, and you can recover.

Why 3500 Calories?

Before I begin this article/website is where I learned it all.

I’ve had a few people reach out to me asking how to eat 3500 calories a day when the mere idea seems impossible. I’ve also been asked why is this number the minimum. These are questions I once remember having and are echoed a lot throughout this community since coming from a place of restriction can make this number seem overwhelming.

First, why 3500 calories? 3500 is the number laid out in MinnieMaud recovery guidelines (now referred to as the homeodynamic recovery method). The logic on that website is sound but let me break down my interpretation of it.

An average human being needs anywhere from 1700-2700 calories a day just to maintain their weight while living their normal every day life. This is affected by how much you move around all day like if you have kids (or cats) or walk around a lot for work or school. It’s also affected by your natural metabolism which is different for everyone. Like, my boyfriend could pound this many calories and literally have 0 fluctuation in his weight whereas other people (like me) aren’t so lucky. When weight restoring obviously you want to put on weight by eating above your maintenance number and 3500 is that magic number.

But Rachel, you say, I am weight restored to a healthy weight already! I did it on 1800 or 2200 or X number of calories, so obviously this minimum doesn’t apply to me, right? WRONG. Here is the thing… you only were able to gain weight on those numbers because you’re metabolism was so suppressed – and I’m speaking from experience here. A big part of the minimums is that it also aids in repairing the suppressed metabolisms that people who restrict give themselves.

It is very easy to get stuck in quasi recovery instead of eating enough because the natural inclination is to assume that if you are weight restored back to a normal weight then you are recovered and need to start restricting calories again to avoid getting huge. That’s an ED fueled thought process my friends. When you eat at least the minimums every day you won’t get stuck in the quasi-recovered state that usually leads to relapse and instead you will find your optimal weight set point.

When recovering there is a backlog of caloric deficit that needs to be replenished. This was studied in one of the most fascination studies of starvation of the human body, the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. The minimums were designed to help replenish the months (or years, or decades) of caloric deficit that has accumulated and reverse all of the negative physical effects like losing your period, feeling cold, hair falling out, compromised organs, etc, etc.

Once you hit your body’s optimal weight set point (not just “weight restored” according to the bullshit BMI) then the metabolism is normalized and that means that the extra energy you were taking in for weight gain and repair now goes to the usual day-to-day functions that were not happening at all from the moment you first restricted calories.

Now that we’re clear hopefully on WHY 3500 – let’s focus on HOW.

Three words: Calorie. Dense. Foods.

Try to incorporate avocadoes, cheese, ice cream, nut butters, coconut milk, dates, olive oil, nuts, dried fruit, pasta

Now I know that a lot of these foods might be “fear foods” for a lot of you – they certainly were for me. It may not easy to face these foods head on – but this is recovery and if not now, then when? Try one a day, see how it makes you feel. Focus on the positives and load on up. It’s easier if you just rip the bandaid and do it.

Here’s a few more tips:

Nuts, seeds, and dried fruit make a great addition to salads, rices dishes,pasta dishes, etc…

Add olive oil and butter to as many foods as possible. I.E.: rice, sandwiches, salads..

Increase portion sizes – Create larger meals of calorie dense foods like rice, mashed potatoes, and pasta.

Drinks are an easy way to intake calories. Drink juice, soy milk, smoothies, shakes, and other healthy high calorie beverages.

Example meal plan (with rough estimates):

B: oatmeal with milk, nut butter, dried fruit, banana, nuts = 730
S: avocado toast = 450
L: double layer sandwich with hummus, protein, oil soaked veggies, cheese = 670
S: mixed nuts and chips = 300-500
D: pasta, veggies, protein, tomato sauce, olive oil – 600-700
S: after dinner shake with bananas, soy milk, nut butter, sweetener – 450 chocolate – 100

3500+ BOOM

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

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.

Starting Over

Welcome, everyone, to the new Ladle by Ladle.

This blog originally began in the summer of 2014 as my way of sharing recipes (mostly baked goods) with friends, families, and whoever else stumbled upon them. Well, two years have gone by since then and a lot has changed.

When I started writing my recipes I was newly discovering what life could be like again if I recovered from my eating disorder. I ended up abandoning the blog after a few months for bigger recovery goals like drinking, socializing, getting take out, and trying to forget about how difficult it once was to put a cookie down my throat. As I slowly recovered over the following year my fascination with food plummeted, as it should have, and maintaining a blog like this wasn’t good for my fragile newly recovered psyche.

It has been about three and a half years since I became anorexic, two and a half years since I decided to try and recover, and one and half years since fully recovering. You can read about my slow decline into the grips of ED in more detail HERE in an article I wrote for Spoon U when I was in college.

When I was sick I was brought to the hospital for complications of being underweight several times, I went to therapy, I talked to family and friends, but absolutely nothing was helping me. I knew that something was wrong but I could not accept my responsibility to do anything about it. To me, the pain was worth the price of being thin. Until one day as I was in bed wrapped up under four blankets with the heat on staring at my dorm room wall wishing I could die instead of dealing with it all, I began to realize that I was not okay. I took a look at my life and saw what a shell of a human I had become. I had isolated myself from all of my friends. I had made my family and long distance boyfriend feel helpless as they could only watch my destruction from afar. I hadn’t had a single thought that wasn’t about food, calories, weight, or exercise in over a year. I looked at myself in the mirror and I only saw failure where others saw sickness. I put gum in my mouth from my third pack of the day and decided to look online for help.

On the internet I found my salvation. It started with discovering blogs of other girls who were recovering. It was shocking to read about people who felt the same way that I did. I read tumblr accounts of people who I felt understood me and the way I was seeing the world, my body, and food. I found blogs like youreatopia and thefuckitdiet. I was seeing girls who were able to challenge themselves to a piece of pizza or bowl of ice cream, feats that I didn’t think would be possible for myself. Discovering the possibility of recovery by seeing what it could look like was the first step in the longest and most difficult journey of my life.

I continued to use the power of the internet (coupled with external support) to conquer my illness and get myself into a full and robust remission from anorexia. The process was tough and challenging, and perhaps even more difficult than being sick was because I was fighting against the voice in my head instead of succumbing to it. However, I powered through and I am so grateful for the life I get to lead today because of it.

Now it is time to give back and so I’ve returned to Ladle by Ladle, given it a small makeover, and am going to make this my new recovery blog – from the perspective of someone who has recovered from restrictive eating and all that it entails. I am going to share my own tips and method of recovery from ED with the hopes of helping someone who is where I once was. Perhaps seeing the possibility of recovery and understanding what it takes to get there can be someone else’s first step on their life changing journey. So I’m here, and my advice and stories will be peppered with some outrageously in your face body confidence and also to keep true with the original intent of the blog… some delicious recipes!

*The advice I give is not professional medical advice, merely anecdotal evidence. Please do what is best for your own body and seek help from a medical professional for official guidelines to recovery.

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