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[–] shigeo [S] 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

:( it really never goes away?

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[–] Carsandsarcasm 0 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago 

Not in my experience. I still get that reaction to lose weight as a solution to any bad feelings, I still have that sensitivity to feeling full or bloated, I still see thinspo and want to go down that rabbit hole, and I still have a harsh definition of what is too fat. It really is a lot easier, though, and I want to make that clear. It's not that overpowering compulsion anymore, it's more like an echo from past, ingrained habits. You can live with it without much trouble, but I don't think anyone really loses that voice completely.

You can look at this positively, however, for two reasons. Firstly, what it means is you shouldn't hold yourself to a standard that says you should act and feel like you never had it. The bar for recovery can actually be a lot lower. You only need to get to the point where it isn't controlling your life and that is a lot easier than attempting to remove every thought like it never happened. AN is a habit as much as anything. You can break habits, but the thing about habits is they are ... well habits like muscle memory and you don't lose it totally. I'm not suffering anymore, I do have some hangovers from it, but I am healthy and I live a healthy lifestyle. You don't need to be perfectly healthy, just not actively killing yourself.

Secondly, and this was what really helped me keep the motivation to recover: you don't have to get fat. You can maintain a healthy BMI that is still on the low end, you don't have to have a goal that says you eat three meals a day, you are allowed to still avoid various foods, and you are even allowed to fast. All of these behaviours can be healthy and they let you hold onto that need for thinness as a sort of compromise. I know it doesn't sound right and it's a bit like cheating, I just see it as being realistic. I will want to be very thin forever, so instead of forcing myself to maintain a BMI of 24 that will torture me and constantly drive me to relapse so I can pretend I am proving I can do it, I maintain a BMI closer to 20 which is very much still in the healthy range and also lets me be thin, just not crazy thin. Getting through recovery involved a lot of meal skipping when I knew that forcing something down would do more harm than good. It's incremental, it's doing what you can when you can, and it's getting there slowly and imperfectly. This attitude of force-feeding yourself to gain 30lb and then instantly maintaining 3 meals and snacks is black and white, extreme thinking. You can't be expected to stop your entire life and change everything immediately because you will relapse 100%. It's ironic because so much of AN is perfectionist thinking and then you are held to a perfect standard of recovery as if that's realistic. The fundamental idea you are trying to break is that you don't have to be perfect. It's okay to just be okay.

It took me 3 or 4 years to get there. PM me if you want to talk.

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[–] intermittentfeasting 0 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago 

Thank you for writing this, cars.

@bisonbiff, I hope you don't mind me tagging you but I thought it might be something that would be relevant.

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[–] shigeo [S] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

I actually tend to view others in a way that's different to me, other people are happy at a bmi of 22-23 and I'm super happy for them and they look pretty good to me, but like I then see myself and I see thinspo and think "I need a bmi of at least 17 to even look acceptable" I want to keep my good habits from this disorder and I hope I will..as awful as that is to say I do wish I didn't see food as a set of numbers anymore. I hope to never be fat, never again at least...I don't even know if I ever was fat? I don't know what I look like, I haven't for a long time. Eventually I hope to recover, but I can't get out of this hole, I can't even get to the first step. Seeing fats claim to have anorexia, or atypical anorexia (which is what I have because my BMI is at ...? 20-21? ish I don't know haven't weighed myself out of pure fear) makes me never want to recover. I'll PM you if I ever need it thank you so much for writing this for me, this helps so much.