What Comes Next: Life After an Eating Disorder
When I was battling anorexia on a regular basis, I remember constantly asking myself when I would finally recover. When I could stop worrying about the numbers, whether on nutrition labels or the scale. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be capable of letting go of something I had become so attached to. But the fact was that I’d managed to live the first 14 years of my life without being concerned about the numbers, and it was my mind that was refusing to give in to recovery – to let me truly let go of everything that anorexia had so desperately tried to latch onto.
I’ve now been in recovery for four years and haven’t weighed myself or fixated on calories for the past three. Although I occasionally feel the urge to check the nutrition label on certain foods or weigh myself after a large meal, I constantly remind myself that those are simply intrusive thoughts – remnants of my past trying to regain a false sense of control.
Harmful habits are difficult to break, and the new healthy habits we develop to counteract those harmful ones are even harder to maintain. The same often applies to eating disorder habits, rituals, or thoughts. Even people who have been in recovery for years may occasionally experience urges or temptations to slip into disordered habits that they worked hard to break. This is part of the reason why relapses among individuals with eating disorders are fairly common.
Many people who recover from an eating disorder are obliged to continue living in the environment that fueled the development of their disordered thoughts and behaviors in the first place. As a result, they may continuously fall victim to countless triggers around them. Friends who previously engaged in weight loss regimes and diets likely still do. Family members who have historically made insensitive remarks about your weight or body won’t magically keep their mouths shut now. The idealized and unrealistic images the media projects to its audience don’t disappear. Knowing this, it is crucial to learn how to ignore these persisting triggers.
I think that the best way to limit the influence of these triggers is to constantly remind yourself of why you chose recovery in the first place – what drove you to block out everything that was telling you to hold on to your eating disorder and recover anyway. Simultaneously, it is helpful to reflect on what you have gained in recovery, recognizing the positive aspects of life that would not have been possible when restrained by a life-threatening illness.
When eating disorder thoughts occupy our brain, we have less space in our minds for things that truly matter, such as our family, friends, school, work, and other activities and meaningful interests.
In reality, I believe that it is near impossible to consider yourself 100% recovered because there will always be triggers that may affect how you perceive yourself and challenge your ability to ignore old disordered thoughts. Life is not always easy, and sometimes small mishaps or deterrents that have nothing to do with our weight, bodies, or eating habits may cause us to fall back into what once made us comfortable. Engaging in eating disorder behaviors may temporarily give us the illusion of control, but we need to remember that we can never be in control of an eating disorder.
As I write this, I’m sitting on the living room couch with my friends. We’re sharing a bowl of popcorn as a cartoon movie plays in the background. At this moment, I’m not worried about how much I ate for dinner. I don’t feel guilty for enjoying popcorn with friends or taking some time out of my day to relax. I’m not worried about how my body looks now or what it will look like tomorrow morning. I am thinking about my hockey game tomorrow evening — the sport I love and was able to continue once I was in strong recovery. I am thinking about how my friends and I will go out for dinner after the game and then head to the library to study for the MCAT. Recovery has allowed me to pursue a career in medicine so that I can help others recover from illness — whether it be mental or physical — and I’m so grateful for where I am today. I now know that even though it may be difficult at times, I will always choose recovery. While everyone’s recovery journey is different, I hope that mine motivates you to continue with your own.
