Some straight talk for the Goddesses following who are battling an ED and still trying to find a way out – This one’s for you so listen up:
You say you want to get better. You say you want to ‘recover’. You say you want to find a way to eat normally. Ok. I hear you.
Now answer me this question: “What would you rather be? A lower weight with your ED, or a heavier weight and healthy?”
You will know instinctively your immediate answer to that question.
If it’s the first one like it was for me for many years, then you don’t *really* want what you think you want. You just want to get to your “goal weight” and stay at your “goal weight” and find the perfect diet that keeps you at that magical weight. If you’re completely honest you don’t REALLY care much about your health. You care more about those numbers. I know because I used to be you, and pretended to myself I wanted to get better for years, all the while trying to control my weight with bulimia.
If you answered the question with “I’d rather be heavier and healthier” – congrats. Your recovery has already begun in your mind. For me as soon as I made this decision, the game changed. Yes – I had to come to terms with the fact that ending my ED would make me gain weight. I had to realise that MY LIFE was waiting for me, and the more I remained obsessed with numbers and pounds and macros, the more I was MISSING OUT on LIFE. I realised I was massively UNDERVALUING my human potential for what I was here to do!
Ladies – you were not put on God’s Green Earth to spend your days obsessing over numbers and trying to control what you see on a scale.
You are THE ENTIRE FREAKING UNIVERSE expressing itself as a human for a short amount of time! ? Yes – making a decision to end your disordered eating patterns WILL result in you gaining some weight. But let me tell you what I know FOR SURE – Being healthy and happy is worth it one hundred times over. Of course I gained some lbs when I stopped purging and started focusing on having healthy insides, not empty insides.
You know what else I gained?
My entire freaking life back. ??
Mel XO
This post really resonates with me, I am in those final stages of fighting an ED whereby I am trying to gain my life back and eat intuitively. And for so long I have thought about the goal weight I’m going to hit and done the absolute minimum I think I can get away with to get there, sticking to “safe” or “low fat” foods which actually offer little nourishment rather than focusing on filling my body with the nutrients it needs and not spending my whole life trying to fit into a certain calorie count, or eat clean, or eat low fat or low GI or whatever crap is forced in your face by advertisements. I have printed off this post and laminated it! It now stays on my kitchen work top and reminds me every day how important my body is and how it deserves nourishing, feeding and loving!