Eating Disorder recovery. (Part Three).

I tend to be guilty of being a bit long-winded in my posts, so this time I'll get down to the nitty-gritty of my eating disorder recovery. It was so long ago, and there's still probably a lot I've missed, but I'll give it my best shot anyway! If there's anything you want to ask that I've missed, just get in touch!

It's probably useful to have read parts 1 and 2 first which has more background info.

Questions that I'm asked about my own recovery.

1-What was different about this time, from the other times you had tried?

This time was different because I was fully committed to getting well. I was sick of the way things were and I wanted to live a normal life. I'd made that decision fully in my mind whereas before it had only been half-hearted and didn't really mean it. It was do or die this time. Quite literally. I knew if I carried on I would die. I was too young to die. There were things I wanted to do and see. My survival instinct kicked in.

Around this time I started a woodwork and upholstery training programme which was to last 2 years. In retrospect it was this that saved me. It gave me something to focus on rather than food and I got to interact with people in the real world who had a normal attitude to diet. 

It also gave me a routine - something that had been lacking in my life for years.

2-Was it really scary?

It was terrifying. I had been discharged from specialist ED services years before, so I was doing this completely on my own. I was starting my life over, with no idea of what to expect or where I was going.

I knew my journey was going to be a very difficult one, but I reasoned if I had the determination and willpower to get as sick as I did, then I could bloody well use those qualities to get better again.

3-Did you gain lots of weight?

This won't be the answer you're looking for, but initially I did. My metabolism was so mucked up and my thyroid under-active. It took about a year for my metabolism to get back to normal and after that the weight gain slowed down and actually stabilised for several years. The first three months were the worst but it did get better.

My weight gain was very rapid in the beginning and ironically I was told to cut down on what I was eating, as I was at risk of cardiac arrest because my heart hadn't got used to my heavier body yet. I had quite a laugh over that one!

4-How did you cope with the loss of your anorexic body?

I was devastated at the loss of the body I knew so well. It was something that had been my companion for the last 10 years and I knew I would never see it again. But I had reached the point that I couldn't carry on like this and this fuelled my determination to recover. I closed my eyes to what was happening to my body and I couldn't bear to look in the mirror for a long time. I shed many, many tears over it. It was a bereavement in a way. 

I know it sounds silly, but before I started eating again I said a proper goodbye to my body which in a way gave me a sense of closure and more prepared for the start of a new beginning.

A slight compensation was that as I went up dress sizes, I had to buy new clothes which is my all-time favourite activity! That part was fun. Plus, clothes fitted me much better as I put on weight. No more hunting for hours in the children's department!

5-I'm worried if I start eating I wont be able to stop. Did this happen with you?

Initially I went a bit crazy. Everything tasted very vivid - psychedelic almost! I'd deprived myself for so long and allowing myself the opportunity to try out all these foods I had never tasted was very exciting! My stomach had stretched due to the bulimia and my medication at the time made me very hungry, so it took a while to learn to adjust things. I'd not eaten properly in over a decade and had to relearn basic everyday things around eating.

My appetite did calm down after a few months once my body knew it was to continue getting food, but I was terrified that it would never stop. 

6-Did you crave things?

At the beginning I craved Mcdonalds chicken Mcnugget meals. It had to be a large meal with extra fries! For the first few months I had to go down there about 3 times a week, the cravings were so strong. I also had cravings for cheese, and I put grated cheese on top of every meal that I made for months! Oh, and also buttery microwave popcorn! It did eventually calm down!

7-Did you keep taking laxatives?

No. I was committed to getting better and that meant no half-measures. I think stopping the laxatives was one of the hardest things about my recovery. My laxative abuse wasn't that bad compared to some..once or twice a week at most..I stopped them cold turkey..not entirely as part of my recovery, but also because they made me feel like I was having a heart attack every time I took them..I'd be up all night, shaking, sweats, pains in my chest and a rapid heartbeat. They tasted so disgusting that I retched every time I took them. 

The down side of stopping the laxatives was that as I had been relying on them for years..my gut was unable to work properly..it took a month before I could "go" at all. It was uncomfortable and very painful but I persevered with it and things got better. My gut was very sluggish to begin with, but drinking a lot of fluids and eating fibre helped. It took well over 6 months before my gut functioned normally.

8-How did you manage to stop bingeing or resist temptation? 

To try to combat any slip-ups, I did not keep anything that might be a temptation in my flat. No biscuits, sweets, bread, crisps, jams..anything. Of course I had a few slip-ups where I thought individually wrapped biscuits might be the answer, but nope!.. If anyone gave me boxes of chocolates for Christmas or birthdays..I would give them away. I knew that I could never just have one chocolate...I had to have the whole lot and I'd be back to square one..so initially it was best to avoid them completely. I actually had to keep doing this for several years and eventually I just got in to the habit of it. 

Eating in the first place was the biggest help for stopping the binges. The majority of them were because I was starving. 

9-Did you get rid of your scales?

I tried a couple of times to ditch my scales, but could be seen retrieving them from the bin the next morning in panic. I needed to know what was happening with my weight. I only managed to part with them for the final time last year, and it was pretty liberating! It was nice to be finally free from them - the old shackles gone!

Since then I've moved in with my partner who has his own set of scales and I weigh myself maybe once a week or less.

10-Does it affect you if you see an anorexic in the street? Does it trigger you to relapse?

It doesn't affect me any more, but I used to get very upset if I saw an anorexic. I used to think wistfully "He/she's so lucky that they can be that way and I can't." I got very jealous, but it never triggered me in to going back to my old ways. I think the first two years of recovery were the most vulnerable in this respect. 

When I was ill, I used to buy lots of magazines with eating disorder articles (and hopefully pictures), but I stopped that too as it was very upsetting. I still have that folder of articles buried somewhere in the house. I don't know why I keep them..I never look at them..but I guess they are from an era in my life. A part of my history.. 

I never bothered with Pro Anorexic websites. 

11-Was it strange eating 3 meals a day? It seems so much!  

It took a long time to get used to eating normally. The concept of a meal time was completely alien to me. I had my meals at the same time every day..even if I wasn't hungry. Sometimes I really had to force through the fear, but as time went on it eventually became habit. 

I was stunned the first time it hit me a few years into recovery that I was in town, it was lunchtime and I'd gotten lunch and eaten it without a second thought. Progress!

12-What did you do if you really wanted a bar of chocolate but knew it would trigger off a binge?

If I ever did fancy a bag of crisps and chocolate, I went to the shop and bought a small bag of crisps and the smallest bar of chocolate and just stuck to that. There was no other temptation. If I "allowed" myself those treats, I didn't feel so guilty. It was very tempting to go back in to binge mode when I was buying these treats, but the control-freak side of me made sure I stuck to what I'd intended to buy. Five years on I still go by this. - Not because I'm worried I'll binge, but because it's just habit now.

13-How did you handle meals?

 After the initial euphoria wore off and the panic set in, I was very rigid about my meals. I cooked the same meals every night..ready meal sized so my tummy would shrink. I'd literally not cooked or eaten a proper meal for a decade, and had totally got out of the way of set meal times or amounts. I had to relearn everything. My stomach had over-stretched due to the bulimia. For the first few months after deciding to take the plunge I lived off ready meals which were roughly the same size as each other: I knew exactly what I was eating, and they allowed my stomach to shrink back to a normal size again. 

Later when I felt more confident in cooking for myself I would cook things, put them in ready meal-sized boxes, and have the same thing for dinner each night. I was eating, but I felt safe..I had cooked it, so I knew exactly what was in it.

I expanded my cooking repertoire later on, and slowly discovered the delights of eating out, though I got very self-conscious to begin with. Sometimes I took a book with me which distracted me. I shut my mind off completely to any thought of calorie counting and it all got easier and easier as time went on.
Shopping in supermarkets was excruciating to begin with. I felt very self-conscious that I shouldn't be there.
Again, perseverance and not paying attention to anyone else got me over that one.   

14-What are some of the things I can expect if I start eating again?

OK, this is the hard bit which will make you want to give up straight away, but bear with me on this one!  

Anorexics tend to have 'delayed gastric emptying' which is a way for your body to hang on to food. When I started eating again nothing moved for a long time. I became very constipated and my stomach stuck right out. 

It was very upsetting and sometimes I felt I looked pregnant. Don't let this put you off. Once you get past this, things ease very quickly and recovery seems more possible after this first scary stage.

Your digestive system will be very sluggish to begin with, but once it gets used to working again, it soon speeds up.

You can expect that you will gain weight quite quickly the first few months, but it DOES taper off - You will not end up huge!

You may have cravings for foods. These will also die down.

You will find you have more energy and as you put on weight, not as cold all the time. 

15-How long did it take for your periods to restart?

My periods restarted about 6 months after I had reached a normal weight for my height. I had found the loss of periods one of the few bonuses of anorexia but despite this, I still called up all my friends screeching down the phone to them that my periods had started again! It was a sign that my body, after years of abuse and neglect, was healing. 

16-Do you miss being bulimic and anorexic?

No. I don't miss it at all. Life is much easier without them. There are aspects that I do miss..there is less expectation placed on you when you are ill, and when I'm stressed about stuff I get nostalgic about a time when there wasn't so much pressure on me.

Sometimes I miss the ruthlessness and single-mindedness. It was the only time in my life where I have done something just for me with such focus and drive. Now it's difficult to focus on anything very much or for very long and I flit from thing to thing not knowing what my purpose is.

I miss the rebellion against the system and what was expected of me. In a weird way it was liberating to have had that rebellion, but in the long run, the only person I was hurting was me. Everybody else by that point had given up on me.

But I don't miss the misery, loneliness, self-disgust, having no money, despair, feeling cold and hungry all the time, the critical illness episodes and the things that an eating disorder forces you to do that make you despise yourself.

17-Did you have any relapses?

I've mentioned in a previous post that once I started eating normally again, my bulimia calmed down. A lot of my illness was habit, and I had to learn new ways of coping rather than reaching for the crisps and biscuits..

There were a few bulimic slip-ups from time to time but these gradually got less and less and now I no longer feel the need for a binge. 

I did have one anorexic relapse about 18 months in to my recovery. I wasn't hospitalised, but I was threatened with it. I guess I just wanted to see what would happen..but it was so awful to be back in that horrible place. It was quite a relief to get back to my recovery.

18-How did you keep going when things got tough?

When I felt my resolve weakening or I was just so shit scared, I remembered my friend who had passed away..and the reason I was doing this was for her.

I had to learn a whole new way of coping. Distraction. Once the starvation binges stopped, I noticed I still binged occasionally if I was bored, lonely, upset or angry. Emotional eating.

I increased my social life, started volunteering which gave me a purpose and something to do out-with my home. I did more exercise which combated any agitation and took my mind off the need for a binge. 

Nights were harder when everything had shut down for the day and loneliness kicked in, but when I started going out with my boyfriend we would hang out in the evenings which was another distraction.

Also.. a bad memory can be a good thing. I kept plodding away at my eating..and eventually it became habit. 

19-Do you eat many sweets?

Not really. Sugar is one of the things that can cause my depression to get out of hand, so no sweets for me! I also try to avoid fizzy drinks, but I do eat crisps sometimes (carbs freak!) but often I will make up my own popcorn and put salt, or a little bit of sugar or even chilli powder on it depending on what I fancy. 

20-How is your diet now?

If I got one positive thing from anorexia, it's being very aware of what I eat. I don't calorie count, but I am aware if things are processed or full of chemicals and sugar and I try to avoid them. I now have a wheat/gluten intolerance and I have to be careful. If I eat too many carbs, caffeine and sugar my mood really suffers and I get anxiety-ridden. It's a very fine line... 

People think it is a result of my past eating disorder that I eat healthily, but it's in fact to stave off depression and digestive troubles. Sometimes when I get PMS I have the odd craving for a can of fanta. I enjoy this occasional guilty pleasure but I know in a day or two I'm really going to pay the price with my crashing mood and lethargy.

21-Do you have any lasting effects from those years?

When you're in the midst of an eating disorder, you don't think about the future. The thought of recovery is impossible and you think you'll either be stuck with this forever, or it will end up claiming your life. You can't picture yourself after you are well. I never knew that I'd now be riddled with osteoporosis, extremely sensitive teeth, throat and gastric troubles, food intolerances, fatigue, a crappy immune (I catch everything going), low muscle mass and intolerance to the cold. I don't know yet if I'll have trouble conceiving if and when the time comes, but I still have a bit of time left before I have to worry about that. 

My initial weight gain was very rapid and I have a few stretch marks from this time. Many mothers my age have stretch marks so I don't feel too bad about them!

I'm very hypersensitive if anybody comments on my weight and I can end up attacking them verbally if I feel they are particularly rude. It bugs me that they feel they have the right to comment. It's none of their business. I lost a lot of weight during my Mirtazapine withdrawal and I got a lot of hassle from those who weren't aware of the withdrawal situation.

Nothing scares me more now than losing weight. I get paranoid that I am far too thin and that people will get the wrong idea. Each time I get a comment, it takes me back to those illness years and dredges it all up again. I'd now rather move on now thank you! 

Oops! I didn't realise how long this was going to be when I started it - sorry folks!

Kerry.

Anorexia.

It gets on my nerves when the glossy girlie magazines are often blamed as the cause of anorexia. It wasn't like that for me, and the anorexics that I have come in to contact with rarely mentioned the images in magazines as the cause of their illness. Instead the reasons ranged from trauma, neglect (emotional or physical), being afraid of sex or growing up, to have some control in a chaotic life, the many forms of abuse, lack of self-esteem, being in the shadow of a dominant sibling, a dominant mother, and many, many other reasons. Every anorexic is different, and the reason(s) that he or she became that way also differ.

A person suffering with anorexia is often seen as attention-seeking, fussy, stubborn, or the whole situation is a silly diet gone wrong, or a way to manipulate people, revenge, or the person is just being plain awkward and "for F*** sake, why can't you just EAT?"

This was something I heard frequently when I was ill. Unfortunately, not being able to eat is the tip of the iceberg. It's more complicated than just shovelling food into your mouth, chewing and then swallowing. How do you explain to someone (if they are even willing to listen), that being presented with a meal is like attempting to climb Mount Everest with a broken leg? Or that the innocent action of a friend inviting you out for coffee can evoke extreme terror and the probability of you saying "no" is about 99.99%? Or the only way you can go to sleep at night is with the knowledge that you haven't eaten today, that you've notched up 1000+ calories on your exercise bike, and as you slump in to bed exhausted you are so hungry that it's painful. But you feel safe. And clean. As you drift in to sleep, you dream about food. Every night. Huge banquets. You can taste it in your dream. It's wonderful. But then you wake up and realize that you will never be able to attend that banquet or eat that food for fear of the consequences-whatever they may be.

During your waking hours, you think about food constantly. You salivate and your tongue craves the feel of food on it. You gaze longingly into the windows of cake and chocolate shops, savouring every smell hoping it will satiate your desperate hunger. But it doesn't. You want to go in and buy the whole shop. But you can't. You mustn't. It would be weak. Your bathroom scales are your best friend and your worst enemy. They determine your mood for the day. You also develop an uneasy relationship with your toilet. The fear that any food has been ingested is so great that you will go to great lengths to get rid of it. Vomiting, laxatives, ipecac, enemas and colonic irrigation to name a few. After a while, the laxatives don't work any more. Your body has gotten used to them and you need more and more just for them to take effect. When they do, you are perched on the toilet for hours in the middle of the night with stomach contractions comparable with what I imagine childbirth to feel like. They also make you have cold sweats, palpitations and chest pains which make you think you are having a heart attack.

I was fairly uncommon in that my anorexia wasn't about my weight or body image. It was about what putting on weight represented. Growing up. Becoming a woman. Sex. A boyfriend. Motherhood. A job. And just being in a world that I felt too young for and which I hated. At my lowest weight of 69lbs and a BMI of 9, I could see how thin I was. I looked like a concentration camp victim. I looked disgusting. But I felt safe.

In hospital, being stuffed up with food, calorific nutrition drinks, drips and a nasogastric tube terrified me. It brought me closer to a life that I was frightened of and one that I didn't feel ready for.

I have photographs of myself from those days. I used to be proud of them-the achievement of getting that thin! But now when I look at them, I feel sick.

I didn't really know all my reasons for becoming ill until far on in my recovery process. I made a conscious decision to become anorexic. Initially it was to buy time until I worked out what the hell I was going to do with my life after the devastation of the breakdown. I'd devoted my life exclusively to music and that had gone. I was left with nothing. I needed something to focus on. Anorexia fitted the bill.

As a person, I am determined, goal orientated, a perfectionist, single-minded, stubborn and I like my own way. These qualities are fatal in an anorexic.

Looking back, I'm not surprised I ended up that way, and my reasons for becoming so were much more complicated than I'd originally thought.

I mentioned in a previous post that I'd wanted to be a nun for years. Now I can see that my motives for that were not fully religious, but an escape from the world, living in an ordered environment with somebody telling me what to do 24/7 for the rest of my life.

I'd felt a decade too young for my age. At university when my contemporaries were talking about jobs, in the back of my mind was a small voice telling me that I felt about 12 and too young for all of that. My childhood home-life was complicated; single parent, dominant younger sibling, and my own personality as a child, blah blah, which stunted my emotional development. I also believed I needed to punish myself for my failures. I felt I didn't deserve to live a normal life or to have love, so I deliberately destroyed the potential for both. There are other layers to the onion which I won't go in to, but it was definitely not a glossy magazine that gave me the idea to embrace an eating disorder!

It's hard to say if I regret those years. I do and I don't. I wasted a decade of my life which I can never get back. I am now left with osteoporosis, dodgy teeth, digestive troubles and food intolerances. I had no periods for 8 years and it's unknown whether I will have trouble conceiving when the time comes to have children.

Sometimes I feel very old for my 34 years.
Despite all this, I learned a lot. About me. About people. About life.

I feel a much richer person having come out the other end. I hit rock bottom and survived, and I found that life is not as scary as I once thought it was. Yes, I get anxious about all the crappy little things, but my attitudes towards the bigger picture have relaxed significantly. It irritates me when I see parents pushing their children to be something they clearly don't want to be which can cause emotional damage in the long run. As long as that child is healthy and happy, who cares if he wants to be a barista rather than a barrister?

I learned that life is precious and fragile and should never be taken for granted. I also learned that life can be very cruel.

I'll talk about my path to recovery in a later post, but I am extremely glad that I have no lasting food issues from those years. I put this down to my reasons for becoming anorexic in the first place-buying time and hiding from life rather than a distorted perception of my own body.

It's a sad fact that people have fewer expectations of you in the midst of anorexia, and now that I am recovered this is the thing I find hardest to deal with. I could never go back to that way of life, but sometimes when I'm having a crap day and stressed with the demands on me, I occasionally yearn for that simpler life where the only things I worried about were my weight and when my next binge would be. (I had bulimia alongside my anorexia, but I'll talk about that in time). Then I remember the fear that surrounded those years, how lonely it made me and how I nearly lost my life on several occasions. It makes me realize how lucky I am to be alive and how far I have come since I decided to face my fears and make the decision to recover.


Kerry.