My psychologist once told me the first part of recovery – (to restore to a healthy weight range) was the easy part of recovery. I thought she was taking the piss because it took so damn long to get to this ‘magical’ weight. It drained almost every cell in my body to push though, and here she was telling me it was the simple part…. What I thought was a load of BS was absolutely right.
There is a misconception that once people look ‘normal’ or have restored weight, they are recovered from their eating disorder.
If this was that case, my recovery would have finished over 12 months ago – yet here I, and so many others are still recovering. But what now?
After 4-5 long months of beginning therapy I eventually made ‘healthy’.
** Please note my use of quotation marks ‘healthy’. Healthy in-terms of BMI – which is bullshit anyway – everyone has a different set point range, different genetics and different everything basically – healthy for some does not mean healthy for others…. Let me just make that clear.
WEIGHT OVERSHOOT AND MENTAL SCRAPS
When I reached this weight I thought I wouldn’t really gain much more after this (even though I was still the lightest I had been since my teens), I didn’t really want to. I thought “Another 3 kg at MAX to give me a safety barrier, and then no more”..
There it is, the mental thoughts, the fear of gain and the fixation of the number I weigh – the eating disorder thoughts.
The reality of is this, yes I got myself to a healthy weight range, I began to play sport and exercise again. But I still had no period, I was still thinking constantly about food and had many food rules and fear foods.
Clearly, I needed to restore MORE weight and clearly I still had a poor relationship with food and my body that if I stopped recovering here – I would just go right back to where I was.
And once this started happening it never seemed to stop. It went far and above what weight the eating disorder wanted.
There is a phenomenon called weight overshoot, whereby people who have been in a state of famine and are now restoring and recovering put on ‘extra’ weight compared to our target weight, or pre-eating disorder weight, ie.we overshoot weight. It’s the body’s way of trying to store extra energy (in the form of body fat) incase we go through another famine again – clever really.
Fortunately and unfortunately this is something very common among restrictive eating disorders.
To put into perspective think about this; we have gone from having our pre-eating disorder clothes, to our ‘sick’ clothes, back to our pre-eating disorder clothes, possibly to a larger size of clothes again in a matter of a year or 2. Nobody likes the feeling of needing bigger clothes than they thought.
It’s so hard to watch our body grow more than we would have liked, and yet we still have some disordered thoughts and behaviours. It so hard to let these thoughts pass without acting upon them – especially now because our fear of weight gain is still so real. So please be mindful, if you notice someone might be going through this phase, its possibly one of the hardest, most irritating and emotional phases of recovery.
This is the long game of recovery. The restored weight will trigger obsessive body checking habits; pinching and feeling, looking into mirrors and reflections, being anal about photos and comparing to old photos, trying on old and new clothes obsessively this starts creeping in more and more as we notice ourselves growing and growing.
It triggers thoughts which made us diet in the first place. You restore weight, the eating disorder mind gets louder – so we restrict again, then we must restore weight again – it’s a vicious cycle.
Although there is nothing wrong with some general population wanting to lose some weight, there is NO WAY someone still recovering from an eating disorder should want to lose weight – simply because our mind still has disordered thoughts and impulses along with an unhealed relationship with food.
WHAT NOW?
Yes we may appear on the outside to be eating more variety, looking a lot healthier and managing our emotions with more poise.
However we still have food rules, fear foods, anxiety and now the extra body image concerns that have emerged from weight overshoot.
This point in time is where you have climbed a hill, but so much of the race is left to come.
From becoming at a more ‘healthy’ weight range, if I haven’t made it obvious by now, you can expect us to gain more weight.
However, the goal now of recovery is now to target deeper, more ingrained issues – fear foods, food rules, healing our relationship with exercise, body image concerns, addressing social anxiety and perfectionism.
For myself, this part of recovery has particularly focused re-establishing a healthy relationship with exercise. I have the tendencies to train and train, to overexercise and to become addicted – so this proves tough when I still NEED to be the fittest, strongest, fastest, whatever it may be. I am also addressing body image and learning to appreciate what I can now do and what I can now feel – I don’t feel I need to love myself, but more appreciate my body. The relationship with food is also still a working progress – I still get anxious (not as bad) when it comes to eating socially and unplanned snacks, I still have foods the eating disorder avoids and I still have the tendency to want to abide by rules that might be creeping in.
Although this phase can only be summarised as extremely stubborn, it has brought me the most rewarding and joyous moments of my life since being a whipper snapper. I’e been able to eat that snitty after netball with no anxiety or guilt, I have fueled my body for performance, I have allowed myself to move my body how it wants and feel good doing it.
If you’re supporting someone through this phase here’s some helpful tips:
- Go together to get new clothes – this is something that is really really hard, but reinforce COMFORT.
- Give us positive encouragement and acknowledge the work we are still doing “you’re doing so well”, “I am so proud of you”, “you are glowing”.
- Reinforce other aspects of our life that have been gained – ie how much happier we look, how much we are more ourselves.
- Understand anxiety and frustration around social and food setting are still extremely real.
And for those battling:
- Stop yourself whilst you’re body checking.
- You do not need to gaze in the mirror that often.
- Throw away old clothes or ‘sick’ photos that no longer serve you purpose.
- Are these impulsive trigger thoughts actually logical?
- You have restored weight, yes, but how much health have you also restored?
- Back playing a sport you love?
- Back feeling strong?
- Back enjoying meals with friends (even though it still stresses you out a little? It’s all worth it)
Carla xx