eating disorder

Work and School in Recovery

It’s no secret that once you finally feed yourself and let yourself rest in recovery, the exhaustion and extreme hunger can be overwhelming. The physical and mental symptoms are enough to keep you on the couch for weeks (and there’s nothing wrong with that if you have the ability to do so, in fact – that’s the best way to ride out recovery.) For most of us though, we realistically can’t just sit on a couch for weeks. We have school or work that we need to attend to keep our lives moving forward. So how can we do both?

Let’s start with school.

First you have to decide, is school right for me and my mental and physical health right now? Can I afford to take some time off to work on myself? Has being in school stopped me from fully recovering in the past? Is school triggering for me right now? It is not wrong or shameful to take the time to take care of yourself. This is your life and you know what you can handle and what is right for you.

Eating and resting in recovery is a full-time job. If you don’t feel as if you’ve been hit by freight train of exhaustion at the beginning, then chances are you’re not really in full recovery. This is why taking time off if you can is a valid choice. Besides, you may not be able to put forth as much effort into school if you’re more focused on recovery – so taking time away could be actually better for your academic career.

If you do want to remain in school while recovering, then you will want to develop a very detailed plan of what you will do this time that is different from how you might have tried to balance school and recovery in the past. For example, when I was in school I planned to go see an on campus mental health professional, be honest with my family and friends, and prioritize recovery. If school got in the way of full recovery I chose my health first. I lightened my coursework, cut out toxic friends, and spent my mental energy fighting for myself. I was sick with my ED for most of my time at school and only had one semester to go when I finally committed to full recovery. I was very close to graduating so I went part time that last semester to be able to accomplish what I needed to for myself and my education.

Having a plan is very important. Being convinced that THIS time you are ultra-committed, and you are really, really tired of your ED will get you only a few weeks into full recovery before the anxiety will start to mount and get the best of you if you don’t have support in place. Without a therapist or counselor to help teach you how to keep approaching and eating food even as the anxiety mounts, you are likely headed to a relapse. So make sure you think honestly about what is best for your life and how to move forward productively.

Okay now let’s talk about work.

Work is a little bit different than school because you are working to make money to support yourself, keep a roof over your head, provide food and necessities for you and your family. Since you can’t stop working, instead I have a few tips for how to handle recovery in the workplace.

Block out time in your work calendar for meals and snacks, treat these times like priority meetings that you must attend.
If you have a very physical job or one where you are on your feet all day, consider finding ways that you can be more sedentary. Is there a job you can go for that requires sitting at a desk? Can you work a register instead of walking around a store? Can you hostess instead of waiting tables? Try and find ways in your own workplace that give you more time to rest.

It might ultimately be necessary to find a different job if the one you are currently in is toxic, triggering, or not helping you achieve your personal health goals. This is something only you can be honest with yourself about and decide.

Check out my video on this topic here:

Vacation and Post-Vacation in Recovery

I just took a little 2-day trip to New Orleans for a friend’s birthday and while my brain and body slowly phase out of vacation mode and being drunk for 48 straight hours I thought it would be a great idea to write about how to handle vacations while in recovery from an eating disorder.

Vacation is of course meant to be a fun and relaxing or inspiring time spent away enjoying a new place with yourself or friends or family. However, I know that for people still struggling with their disorder or in recovery from it, vacation can be a lot more complicated than that.

When I was sick I would flat out opt out of fun trips just because of my food and exercise anxiety. When I was in quasi recovery I would go on trips but there would be days and weeks of research and stress beforehand. Each meal was a challenge, every day of rest was torture, and looking back I remember more mental stress than any enjoyment from those trips. After each trip there would be a few weeks of lowering my intake and upping my exercise to “make up” for some of my more indulgent meals. When I went into full recovery life became so much easier. Yes I was eating extreme amounts of food, gaining weight rapidly, and feeling constantly bloated and uncomfortable – but these temporary stresses and feelings allowed me to be able to eat whatever I wanted with no minimum or judgement. Therefor I was actually able to go places and have fun and focus on the trip itself because there was no need to overthink food or exercise.

So for those of you who are still working through some things, here are a few tips for you on vacation:

NO COMPARISON: You don’t want to ruin your trip by making comparisons that will only serve to make your eating disorder stronger. If you are feeling awkward, remember that people don’t really care what you are doing. They are more interested in what they are doing. We’re all narcissists and the only person who is judging you is yourself. So stop that.

Keep Your Food Expectations Realistic: The food is gonna be different than you’re used to. It’s gonna give you a “fear food” kind of reaction most likely. Most trips include eating out a lot and if you’re me, drinking a ton. Your eating won’t be perfect. It’s not supposed to be. There is literally no such thing as perfect eating anyway. Go into the trip knowing that you can’t control everything and be openminded.
Change Your Exercise Expectations: You shouldn’t be exercising anyway but if you’re going on a trip that involves a lot of walking (around museums or whatever) just realize that you are going to be a lot hungrier as a result of the extra calories you’ll naturally burn. Be ready for it and allow yourself to eat yummy delicious local food!

Okay… now let’s talk about getting home after vacation. Typically people with active EDs will feel strong urges to engage in compensatory behaviors. Compensatory behaviors are simply activities done in an attempt to make up for having been “indulgent”. They are an attempt to erase shame, anxiety, guilt or other “bad” feelings about the food eaten. This is of course very silly and unnecessary because there is nothing guilty or shameful about enjoying food and having fun. You do not need to reverse any “damage” because that’s not how your body works, It will regulate itself without you getting involved and f*cking sh*t up.

Some common behaviors are the misuse of laxatives, compulsive exercise, doing cleanses, fasting, or restricting calories for a period of time.

Here’s the thing – in ED recovery and then afterwards in life, you should begin to realize that your life is not a constant never ending game of calories in and out and that your body will be happiest when you’re just enjoying yourself. Going on vacation and perhaps overindulging is not “bad”, it is not shameful, it does not give you permission to starve yourself, hurt yourself, or be mean to yourself. It does you no good to make yourself feel bad about enjoying your life. By compensating after vacations you’re reinforcing the idea that your waistline is more important than your happiness. NO. Recovery means giving up that control, and loving yourself without judgement.

Listen, I just ate a ton greasy, yummy, fried and smothered southern food. I guzzled alcohol like a machine. I spent most of my trip sitting or lying down. Did I freak out the second I got home? Fuck no I went to Subway and got a bag of potato chips and a sub and put off packing in favor of binge watching Netflix in my bed. The next day life went on. I’m home. No weirdness, no guilt. Just great memories. As it should be.

Is Body Positivity Promoting Obesity?

A concern I hear from time to time is that by promoting a weight stabilizing, non judge mental, and body positive model of recovery I am encouraging unhealthy lifestyles and promoting obesity. Most of the time the criticism comes from people who know very little about body positivity and are still deep in their eating disorder or in diet culture denial. They just somehow ~*know~* there must be something wrong with people being happy, even if they’re fat…

“Promoting obesity” implies that the goal of recovery and body positivity is to actively encourage everyone in the world to get fatter. The thing is, that is not a message I’ve ever heard or said. There is no one body type being promoted as the only way to be happy, recovered, or confident. The idea is simply that however your body looks, you are good enough. You are worthy of respect, happiness, and love. You are allowed to exist contently in that body. You do not have to waste your life forcing yourself into a different size to be worthy, you already are when you are at whatever size allows you to be free from your eating disorder and mentally at peace. That’s it.

The real issue of the promoting obesity argument is of course about “health”. It’s about the culturally engrained assumption that fat equals unhealthy. There is so much wrong with that assumption. First of all, you truly cannot tell a person’s health from just looking at them. You just can’t. You are not their doctor. You do not know their life. It is unfair and incorrect to assume that just because someone doesn’t fit into a societally ideal body that means they are automatically sick. Also, thinking that shaming someone with very thinly veiled faux concern will have a positive effect on their health is ludicrous. Even if you could tell someone’s entire medical history from looking at them, how does dehumanizing, humiliating and shaming them help? Mental health is just as important as physical. Recovery and body positivity communities do not “promote obesity”, we stand at the frontlines of deconstructing the idea that not being thin automatically makes someone ill or bad. Instead let’s all focus on being more empathetic and kind human beings who accept that some of us are naturally large, some are naturally slim, and some are in the middle – but that the most important concern is that we are happy. Because guess what? Everyone no matter what their size, is worthy of respect.

Fat people are allowed to exist. We live in a society that promotes a certain body type as the key to beauty, happiness, respect and self love. Just because the media portrays that though, doesn’t make it true. The reality is there is no weight gain industry selling pills, lollipops, teas, apps, or surgeries to be fat. Instead thinness is promoted and sold to us by the diet industry as the only way to be worth something. I am trying along with the body positive movement to change that narrative. We are not “promoting obesity” we are promoting happiness. I’m promoting the radical idea that you have permission to love yourself at a bigger size if it means you can be mentally freed from the prison of your eating disorder or of diet culture.

If you like this make sure to check out my youtube channel, instagram, and twitter for more self love, eating disorder recovery, and body positive content!

If you are interested in joining my private facebook group with other badass recovering, anti-diet culture warriors check out my patreon here.

Chronic Dieting vs. Eating Disorders

A question I am asked somewhat regularly is: what is the difference between chronic dieting and having a full-blown eating disorder? Or more accurately, eating disordered vs disordered eating.

I consider dieting disordered eating because it often comes with disordered red flags: Feeling that your Self-worth is related to the size of your body, body dysmorphia, exercise addiction, obsessive calorie counting, anxiety around food or specific food groups, inflexible meal times, refusal to eat in restaurants or outside of one’s own home, food restriction, and feelings of guilt or failure. In my opinion, the only difference really between the disordered eating patterns of a chronic dieter and a person with a full-blown ED is the degree to which these abnormal behaviors are taken. But even if the severity is lower in chronic dieters, it is still a major problem. It is still disordered. More dangerously, a chronic dieter is at a very high risk for developing a full-blown eating disorder. They also can experience symptoms of metabolic damage like gaining weight on restricted calories, osteoporosis, insomnia, and feeling weak and tired.

So, in my opinion there is a very small difference between chronic dieting and eating disordered people. Both issues can and should be recovered from. They can both be physically recovered from by eating to repair the metabolism and find your body’s set point. Fortunately, chronic dieters often won’t have as deep of a mental connection to the control of food restriction. While they may be anxious or depressed, the difference between a chronic dieter and a person with an eating disorder is that their anxiety and depression won’t be as inextricably linked to their body issues and need to control food so physical and mental recovery should come much easier. Having dieted for years and years and having an eating disorder are different, but not by as much as you think. Whether you fit into one category or the other you deserve recovery.

It’s hard to unlearn dieting behaviors especially when they are constantly reinforced by society around us every day, but it is possible. Getting out and recovery for a chronic dieter involves eating without any judgement or restriction and allowing your body anything it calls out for. Sweets, processed foods, fried food, a lot of food, food at weird times – whatever it needs to repair the damage that’s been done to your metabolism. Just like in any recovery weight gain will happen, but eventually as you continue to eat freely your hunger cues will normalize again and you will feel a connection to your hunger and satiety (a connection that is completely lost during a diet.)

Eliminate all categories and judgments such as “good” and “bad” when it comes to food. Allow yourself to eat all foods with the awareness that food is meant to be a positive, nourishing experience. It’s a long process – but it is so wonderful to have freedom and love within yourself once you’ve escaped.

Being Bigger Than Your Boyfriend

Do you feel self-conscious about being with a partner that is smaller than you?

You’re not alone.

I think a lot of people feel this particular insecurity. One of the many many factors that went into me wanting to lose weight so long ago was feeling uncomfortable about weighing significantly more than my ex. That was very dumb because the weight loss and subsequent eating disorder put a way bigger strain on our relationship than my insecurity ever did.

There is this common heterosexual relationship myth that the female should be smaller than the male. But like, why? Seriously, why? I have always been attracted to people who are smaller than me in some way. I can’t help who I like. My mom is taller than my dad and they’ve been married for over 30 years.

Image may contain: 2 people — My mom and dad ~ 1984

The feeling that you need to be smaller than your partner is one of those things that’s been pounded into our head over and over from the media and our culture. It’s silly though because if we limited the people we were allowed to love by certain classifications like race, gender, or size than we would miss out on the opportunity to be with incredible people who may have the power to love, shape, and change us forever.

If you’re worried about what other people are thinking about the two of you than you’re not thinking about your relationship the right way. If you’re truly in love or on your way to being in love than who the fuck cares what others think? You only need to seek validation from yourself and your partner. But mostly yourself.

Maybe you’re in a relationship with someone smaller and you are feeling a little uncomfortable or self-conscious in front of them. I get that. I have been guilty of covering my stomach, avoiding being on top, and other stupid shit like that. What I came to realize eventually is that my partner is not blind or dumb. They know what I look like and they chose to be with me NOT in spite of but likely because of it. It’s not that you’re someone’s fetish – because you are so much more than that. Your body is unique and beautiful, and your partner chose to be with you because they love you and everything you got going on. If you feel self conscious in front of them then to me that feels like you don’t fully trust them yet. You know what might help with that? Talking to them about it.

If you think you’re too heavy or gaining too much weight and that you’re partner won’t love you because of it – listen to me, it’s all in your head. If your partner didn’t want to be with you they wouldn’t. We’re all human we have free will. Any insecurity you feel comes from within. Take time to work on your self esteem and body positivity and realize that your partner is LUCKY to be able to touch your soft skin and beautiful body.

*IF A PARTNER EVER MAKES YOU FEEL SELF CONSCIOUS IN A NEGATIVE WAY OR VERBALLY ABUSES YOU ABOUT YOUR WEIGHT, LOOKS, OR ANYTHING ELSE – GTFO GIRL. Life is too damn short for that bullshit and there are plenty of other people who aren’t asshats out there for you.

Gaining Weight on A Low Calorie Diet

So, you’ve been restricting calories to lose weight. For whatever reason, perhaps because you have an eating disorder, because you think you need to look a certain way to wear a bathing suit, or because the media and our culture have forced you to look upon yourself with distaste and wish for something better. You’ve googled what to do and low-calorie diets and meal plans come up immediately. “If energy in is less than energy out and the pounds will melt right off!” the articles say.

Maybe that was you 1 year ago, and you tried the diet, and it worked! But then you couldn’t maintain the restrictive lifestyle (because who could??) so the weight came back on. Then you tried again. and again. Now you’re restricting your calories under the façade of a “diet” just like you did before but this time you are noticing that you’re gaining weight!! Why the fuck is this happening??

angry look whos talking now GIF — your metabolism @you

Well let me tell you – honey, your metabolism is mad.

When you attempt to lose weight quickly with low calorie meal plans, sure you lose some fat, but you ALSO lose muscle. Your muscle mass is the most important factor that keeps your metabolic rate high.

Let’s say before you started dieting you were able to maintain your weight easily on 2700 calories a day. (These numbers are just examples). Then you go on your first low-calorie diet and lose 10 pounds quickly. While that rapid weight loss is initially encouraging it is not as fantastic as you may think. You see, those 10 pounds include muscle loss. So after a few weeks when life gets in the way and the diet is no longer sustainable, the weight comes back on AND your metabolic rate has dropped from 2700 to 2300 because of the muscle loss. With each new diet your metabolic rate decreases even more until your maintenance calories are lower than your diet calories – hence why you will eventually gain weight on low calorie diets.

Unfortunately, this is a common problem and one of the reasons why the diet industry is an evil multi-billion-dollar industry. You see when these low-calorie meal plans work initially, people then blame themselves when they aren’t able to sustain them. Then they continuously attempt to recreate the results of the first time but every time you force starvation onto your body through the guise of a “diet” you are furthering metabolic damage. This is also why when the weight comes back on eventually, you gain more than you started with. It’s not your fault, it’s the lies of diet culture that “innocently” suggest unsustainable and dangerous meal plans on people desperate for a quick fix.

So, you’re in a metabolically suppressed state commonly known as “starvation mode” – what do you do? Well the first step is obviously to STOP low calorie diets. When I was stuck in this situation the only thing that worked for me was to eat eat eat until my metabolism caught up with me. No, your metabolism is not “broken,” I promise you that is impossible. Yes, I gained he weight back to where I was before I ever attempted my first diet… but I’m so much happier loving myself in this body than I ever was torturing myself in my calorie restricted body.

“Beach” Bodies???

Bikini Body Season. What the f#@! does that mean? Typically, it refers to the months in late spring/early summer right before the weather is right for pool parties, beach days, and barbecues (aka reasons to put on a bikini). Since diet culture attempts to make women feel like they don’t deserve to wear a swimsuit unless they have thigh gaps and visible rib cages – women spend this “season” dieting and working out in order to look good in waterproof underwear.

I know you already KNOW that I am going to say this but – The ONLY thing you need to do to achieve a “bikini” body is to put a damn bikini on your body!!

If someone cares deeply about the way other women look in a bikini that says a lot more about the character of the person judging than it does about the person enjoying their time at the beach.

If you feel pressured in any way to achieve a certain type of body just because you may be in a bathing suit in the upcoming months remember that it is not worth stressing over because this “expectation” is simply a product of diet culture. And may I remind you, DIET CULTURE IS BULL SHIT.

Don’t sacrifice your mental health for your physical health. You are not an object. Though the media may have you believe that the only reason to wear a bikini is for others to scrutinize you.

The truth is the only reason to wear a bikini is:

Because you want to

Our bodies should be celebrated and not hated. Every flaw or mark that separates your body from an airbrushed super model is a reminder of your journey and uniqueness. You are beautiful, and “beach body season” is bullshit.

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.

The Minnesota Starvation Experiment

The Minnesota Starvation Experiment was a study done by Ancel Keys in the late 1940s to study the effects of famine on war torn countries in Europe post World War Two. Besides fulfilling its intended purpose – the study also ended up shedding the first light on how dieting and food restriction effects the human body.

Here is an overview of how the experiment worked:

The subjects were all men. First, they were studied under a 12-week control period in which they were fed a standard diet of 3200 calories. During this time their psychological and physiological states were measured in order to determine each subject’s baseline condition. At this phase each man was at their natural weight, which they all maintained on the control diet they were fed.

The next phase was the starvation period. For the following 24 weeks all of the men’s diets were cut by approximately half to 1570 calories per day. It was during this phase that the behavior of the subjects began to change drastically. They all began presenting symptoms that we commonly associate with chronic dieters or anorexia sufferers today. Some of the symptoms observed included:

A decrease in strength and energy
Apathy towards everything except for food
A sudden and intense interest in food displayed through reading cookbooks for fun and to stare at the pictures
They took advantage of being allowed to chew gum by chewing packs and packs of it per day, and they guzzled coffee and water to stave off feelings of hunger
They became irritable around meal times
Many men became depressed
They lost weight (obviously)
Their heart rates decreased
They felt dizzy
They felt lethargic
They were constantly cold
Almost all subjects experienced body dysmorphic disorder and were unable to recognize how much weight they had actually lost

The next phase of the experiment was the recovery period. The men were split into four subgroups and each group ate a different caloric intake to recover from the symptoms of starvation. The first group ate 1970 calories, the second 2370 calories, the third 2770 calories, and final the fourth ate 3170 calories. Even with the increase in calories all of the men were still left feeling hungry or starving. These increased intakes were not helping and specifically the men in the lowest group were not feeling better AT ALL. In light of this discovery Ancel Keys decided to add 800 calories to each groups intake. Eventually he observed that the only factor helping these men recover was providing them way more food than he initially thought would be necessary. He concluded that a person needs at least 4000 calories a day to recover and rebuild their strength.

After the recovery period was over the men were free to eat whatever they pleased, but Keys continued to observe a small handful of them. He observed that most subjects continued to eat thousands and thousands of calories a day (12,000+ in some cases) for many months. Many subjects reported to have an unending, insatiable, hunger months after the experiment ended. As the subjects allowed themselves to re-feed through eating to their extreme hunger, their metabolisms began to heal, their strength returned, and many of the symptoms of starvation began to vanish. Although to the layman it may appear that these men were massively “overeating” it became extremely evident that their bodies requires this seemingly inordinate amount of food to fully heal all of the damage.

On average the men regained their weight back to what it had been previously plus 10%. You may identify this as an overshoot. With unlimited food and unrestricted eating eventually their weight plateaued and about nine months later all of them were back to the weight they had been at the very beginning of the experiment. This is one of the first documented and analyzed cases of a body’s “set point.” Despite the original fear that all of this unrestrained eating would cause infinite and exponential weight gain, that proved to not be true. This experiment demonstrated that over eating and starvation induced hunger only presented as long as a body was below its set point.

And that was the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. It’s fascinating because just a cursory analysis of the study demonstrates how insanely harmful caloric restriction is on the human body. As you may note, all of the symptoms that the men experience in the starvation phase are eerily similar the symptoms felt by eating disorder sufferers and chronic dieters. Sadly, most people who struggle with a disordered relationship to food today are often eating even less than the subjects of this study were. A typical dietary recommendation for people seeking to lose weight is often a caloric total lower than the 1,580 calories the study subjects ate. It is important to recognize that these “dietary guidelines” are dangerously low, unsustainable, and unrealistic amounts that should not be practiced.

Furthermore if you are stuck trying to recover from yo-yo dieting, binging and purging, restrictive eating, or any other disordered relationship to food this study gives you an excellent blue print for how to recover. This was the science that I read when I decided to go all in on recovery using the Minnie Maud method. This science validates that method of recovery (and now so does my own lived experience with it).

Please feel free to watch my video below for a synopses of the information above along with an outline of my own experience and my results from using this method to recover from anorexia.

Relationships in Eating Disorders and Recovery

Happy Valentines Day to all of you! I hope you have a wonderful day celebrating all of the love in your life. Love between family, friends, pets, and romantic partners! Being in a romantic relationship while suffering or recovering from an eating disorder is not an easy task. Often it is difficult for a partner to handle the stresses of the disorder by watching their loved one hurt themselves emotionally or physically. I’ve been with people through every stage of my journey and here is what I’ve learned.

When I got sick I was dating my now ex-boyfriend. Our relationship was long distance and he was with me when I developed anorexia, suffered from it, and made my first few attempts at recovery. Overall, he handled it pretty well and was very supportive but over time the stress and seemingly unending pain started to wear him down and after dating for almost three years he left me. (Whatever, I’m too good for him so it’s cool). From that experience I learned the following tips:

It’s okay to tell your partner what is going on with you and keep them included, but don’t turn them into your personal therapist. Don’t put absolutely every burden you are dealing with onto them (remember a lot of these thoughts are not your own, but originate from the disorder). A person may love you but everyone has their limits and one person cannot be responsible for handling all of your problems.
Allow them to cope however they need to. Everyone handles stressful and difficult situations differently and there is nothing wrong with that.
Don’t blame them for trying to help. Even if the help is unwarranted or not actually helpful. If you feel your partner trying to help you, be an effective communicator about what would be the best way for them to do that.
Make sure your partner can handle the stress of loving someone with a mental disorder. Sometimes people just can’t, and you cannot put your entire reasons for happiness into your faith in another being. You need to be okay relying on yourself and paid professionals.

I have been with my current partner for a little over 2 years and we are as happy as can be. I’m writing this as I stare at the beautiful flowers he had sent to my office. I am lucky to be recovered and to rarely ever flirt with a relapse, but nonetheless I now have the tools to be able to handle our relationship in a more mature way.

Happy valentines day everybody! Hold your person close, they love you (even if your person is your mom or your cat).

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