Half recovered

Hi Izzy... maybe you could write a post about the hardest perod in recovery which is (in my opinion) the moment when you have better weight maybe not the goal BUT you still have the bad thoughts. .. i mean not everything that is normal is easy for you and you KNOW it... and here comes iriration which can cause the bad feelings... it looks like youre healthly hut yiu know there is a lot of things that are connected with anorexia. YoU want to fight it of course but it takes time. .. do you remember this moment in your recovery? How was it and how long? When have you started just feel free with eating and NO GUILT?


I know exactly what you are talking about. 
   I went through this stage during the end of 2011 to about the middle of 2012. I was half recovered... i hadn't fully gained my goal weight, and i blamed it on the fact that i have a very high metabolism... but the fact was, i was scared of letting go of my illness. I didnt want to reach my goal weight. I didnt want to weigh 58kg. I was still struggling with body image issues, so somedays i felt extremely fat and i was scared of how i would look if i weighed 3-4kg more which would bring me to my goal weight.
  I had begun school again and was only going to Mando once a week or once every 2 weeks to get weighed and taalk to my case manager. I had stopped following my meal plan because i wanted to eat according to my body... eat what i wanted, when i wanted. But i still couldnt trust my body... i was still scared of eating certain foods. I still felt depressed at times. 
  And at the beginning of 2012 i fell back into bad behaviours due to stress .... i began cutting back on food during the day and then binging during the evening/night and then purging. My anxiety came back stronger and so did my ED thoughts.
   
On the outside, my family, friends and case manager thought i was healthy... that it was only the weight left. Because i could go out and take a slice of cake, but i still felt guilty. I could eat bigger portions, but would compensate later.... 
  There was also the whole mental thing... the thoughts i had to deal with.

This period of half recovery lasted maybe 6 months..... after my starving/binging/purging circle at the start of 2012 (Feb/March) then i really began to focus more on recovering fully. To not just be half healthy... because you cant balance on that scale forever... eventually you will tip to one side... either fall back into your ED/develop another ED or you will have to recover completley, and let go completely of your ED and all your bad behaviours.

^^Took this picture (and made it) sometime start of 2012..

It was the start of summer 2012 that i was allowed a gym card, and it was then i began thinking more about what i was eating.. and i wanted to feed my body correctly. I knew i had to eat more because i was exercising more. I needed the energy, i wanted to take care of my body. Feel good physically and mentally.

  So i can say that exercise helped me recover fully. I made a goal that by the end of summer - when i started a new school, then i would have reached my goal weight and be declared healthy from anorexia.

   So i began eating more, drinking supplement drinks, doing some strength training (though not as serious as now... back then i mainly did cardio). Eating lots of chocolate, enjoying my summer, focusing on liking my body, feeling good while exercising, eating foods which i liked, baking, trying new recipes....

   and all of that combined helped me to gain weight and reach my goal weight & be declared healthy.

While i was gaining weight, i focused on liking and accepting my body... exercising and strengthing my body has really helped me to love my body. As its like my body reflects my mind... how strong i am mentally, my body is also strong. I hated being weak, so i like being strong.

   I also learnt more about nutrition, how food works, what it does in the body etc... which for me, helped me get a better understanding of food and taught me to not be scared of carbohydrates or healthy fats. To not restrict, because that isnt doing any good. And to know that everything is ok in moderation, because nothing is good in TOO large an amount.

^Me at the start of 2012... and at that time i still thought i was fat... Definitely not.

So from summer 2012 i just got healthier and healthier mentally, so by the time i got declared healthy i was feeling mentally healthy aswell.

^^ The day i was declared healthy!

   

I worked on getting rid of bad habits, ED habits.... which is important in recovery. Working on all fear foods. 

It takes time to recovery fully... there are different stages of recovery: http://living-with-anorexia.blogspot.se/2013/11/10-phases-of-recovery.html

   And they're all hard, but it gets easier.

So just keep going. Work on your fear foods. Do things which scare you... instead of just letting yourself be half recovered, instead... work on the things which keep you sick. Make yourself stonger, fight the anxiety and guilt...

  Otherwise you will just be stuck in that semi-healthiness...