My New “Healthier” Body

Someone asked me the other day how I adapted to a new and healthier body. On one hand they, like most of us in recovery, know that the changes in their body signify a better life. They also, on the other hand, like most of us in recovery, struggle greatly with the emotional discomfort, or outright physical pain, we feel in our new changing bodies. This took me years to deal with and I am still not completely there yet. I do not love my body. I am getting there. It is a process, a long, long, long, shitty, process, and even though I have made it to acceptance and appreciation of my body, I can’t tell you how to adapt to your new body. All I can offer is how I muddled through adapting to mine.

The first thing that happens in recovery is, no surprise here, weight gain. It sucks. You are never ready for it, but it comes quicker than you anticipate. Also, we are so fixated on weight and body shape that we notice the slightest changes, because, after all, our body growing bigger means we are not migrating to the best of our ability, and that could mean our extinction. So the first thing I had to get used to was that first bit of weight gain. Someone else without an eating disorder may not even know their weight had gone up some, but I knew when I first gained, and I am sure you knew when you first gained too. I know there are a lot of people out there touting all-in as the recovery quick fix, but that was not for me and the few times I did try all-in I ended back up in a restrict cycle. So as long as I did not move backwards toward anorexia I let my body take the lead. After I gained a few pounds, yes, I freaked out, of course. I froze. I did not want to proceed. But this time I allowed myself to stop adding to my meals and snacks and just maintained. But for me, that was the secret. I maintained. I did not run back to restriction and get rid of the few pounds. I kept reminding myself it was only a few pounds, surely just a few pounds was safe. What would I tell a friend if they gained a few pounds? Would I even notice? Probably not. I gave myself permission to not gain any more yet. I could just maintain right where I was. I could rest and be proud of the few pounds I stole back from anorexia. And then something funny happened. I started feeling ok and safe with those few pounds on. After a few weeks I just felt like me again, I had rode the wave of anxiety and panic and came down the other side. It wasn’t a fun ride, but it was doable. In eating disorder recovery we are not shooting for fun, or love, even like, we are looking for doable. Can we do it and move forward…..that is all we need….doable.

After I came down the wave and was feeling ok in my body I added some more food and gained again. As soon as I started to feel really bad about my self and felt myself wanting to run back to restriction I stopped. I just maintained. Did it feel good? No, it felt like shit. I felt gross and horrible and no clothes fit. Eventually though, I would make a trip to Good Will, size up, and get used to my new body. Did I ever look at myself and love what I saw? Nope. My feelings would cycle through being disgusted and barely able to look at myself while riding the wave of panic upwards, to feeling mildly accepting of my body and OK about it as the wave went down the other side. Moving from disgust to accepting was no easy task, always painful. This is how I gained the weight, pound by pound, stopping when I felt panic, moving forward when I felt safe. I wanted to recover, we all want to recover, but our panic gets absolutely unmanageable and stops us. We have to figure out what works to manage the panic and fear so that we can keep moving, keep gaining, keep accepting our bodies.

I had a therapist tell me years ago to hide all of my mirrors, and I did just that, but it never helped. When I was near a mirror outside my home, or reflective surface for that matter, I would be drawn to it, I couldn’t help myself, and I would look at my body to see if I were ‘still thin enough’, if anything had changed, or if I was in a decently suitable body to be seen by the world. Not using my mirrors at home just made things worse because I was avoiding the thing I was afraid of….myself. When I would happen to look in a mirror somewhere my brain would immediately chime in, ‘you are fat’, look at your arms, look at those rolls on your belly, you must have gained so much,’ and on and on it would go. I had to come up with a way to combat those thoughts, but they were so immediate, so unconscious. So one day I uncovered all my mirrors. The first thing I did was make a rule about the mirrors, anorexia loves rules, I obviously loved following rules, so I made a rule. When I looked in a mirror, every negative thought that my brain threw out at me, I pledged I would make a non-negative statement back. I could not start with positive statements, I couldn’t even think of any positive statements pertaining to my body, so I started with non-negative, or neutral, ones. For example if I walked into the bathroom, saw myself, and my brain said, ‘look at your fat arms, you should not eat lunch, and your stomach is huge today’, I would force myself to stop and respond. Just stopping and catching my brain saying those negative statements was huge because for so many years those negative eating disorder thoughts were just, I thought, part of me and my truth. After stopping myself I would have to counter both thoughts. “There is a possibility that my arm size does not matter to others. My arm size doesn’t matter to my family, my arms cook us dinner or hug my kids. My stomach being bigger means my kids are less afraid for my health.”

In the beginning I wrote a bunch of non-negative thoughts on post-its and stuck them to my mirrors. Here are some examples; being bigger makes my family feel safe. I do not want to scare my family. My legs carry my body and work hard every day. I want my kids to remember me as a fun mom that can eat a cookie. This tummy means I can share food with my kids. This fat roll means I shared coffee with my daughter. This butt makes my husband less afraid of me dying. There is a possibility that my world will not end if I am bigger.

Many of my reasons and non-negatives have to do with my family. I tried to take the focus off of the size of my body and put it onto what was really important…my relationships. Anorexia is selfish, it doesn’t think of others, it didn’t think of my husband or my kids who were living in fear that their mother could die and be gone forever. I needed a constant reminder of why I was gaining and why this new body that was morphing out of me was so worth the almost unbearable emotional pain that comes with it. We all have non-negatives and they are a great place to start when you can’t find any positives….and lets be real….if we had a bunch of positives we wouldn’t be in this place to begin with.

So, for each bit of weight gained it was like a cycle for me. Gain some weight, panic, freeze and maintain, get used to this new body, size up if needed, talk back to the negative voices in the mirror with my own non-negatives. Then, when I felt safe in my body and size I would increase my food (which would actually happen quite naturally as I got more comfortable at each weight I would naturally want to add a bit of food here and there also), panic, freeze and maintain, and go through the cycle again. This cycle was hard enough as it was but still there were a few more things that definitely got in the way here and there, that being bloat and digestive pain.

The pain and discomfort of recovery is so real and so uncomfortable it can send you right back to anorexia! At least it did for me on more than one occasion. There was the sharp pain of gas that would stop me in it’s tracks. I lived with hot water bottles on my belly. When this would happen my kids loved to remind me that they liked my painful gas of recovery better than the smelly gas of anorexia. Anorexia is known for the worst smelly vegetable gas on earth….my kids can attest to that. There were times in recovery when I thought I would end up in the ER due to stomach pain, curled in the fetal position. Use this pain as inspiration to keep eating. If you stop eating you will have to endure this all again when you eat again. I would remind myself of this all the time….how many times do you want to go through this shit….make this the last time!

There was also the bloating that stayed with me for over a year and a half straight….going from deflated in the morning to stiff and sometimes outright unbearable throughout the day. I think one of the reasons the bloat stayed so long for me was because I had such a hard time eating through it. It is so hard to eat when you are hugely bloated from the meal before, so I would skip some meals, therefore my body never settled, and the bloat would return. Also it is just terribly hard for someone with an active eating disorder to see ourselves in such a bloated state, yet like an evil bit of karma, most of us have to endure loads of bloat before we straighten out our systems. Our bodies aren’t used to processing so much food and in recovery, especially at first, it feels like loads of food. After realizing I had to embrace the bloat and eat through it to get rid of it all I could do was try to have a sense of humor. I used my non-negatives and lots of humor. I would walk around with my shirt up….exposing my belly and all it’s bloated fullness. I would laugh at it as much in horror as anything else, but then I would remind myself that my family is so much more comforted by this bloated belly than they ever were by my concave one. And then always bringing it back to priorities….my family or anorexia….I choose family. I choose bloated belly over concave. I choose life with the ones I love over death with anorexia. And make no mistake, that is the choice we are making.

So really, for me, there was no waking up one day to body love. There was just long days with choice after choice after choice. I could choose restriction but instead I choose to have food memories with my family. I could choose a concave belly but instead I choose a belly that puts my children’s fears to rest. I could choose a selfish life with anorexia and her behaviors but instead I choose my family and a life that gives them a mother and a wife that is present for them and has the space for their needs too. What will you choose?