How do you deal with gaining weight?- Anorexia Recovery

Hello :) 

Today I thought I'd write a post on one the most frequently asked question I get about my recovery from anorexia-"how do you deal with the weight gain in anorexia recovery?" 

Gaining weight has been hands down the hardest part of my anorexia recovery. At the start if my recovery I grew used to eating normally again within a few weeks, because I overcame this fear that if I eat food that I would immediately gain weight and be fat, but when I didn't I began to feel okay. 

However, obviously slowly overtime I did begin to put on weight, and when I saw this weight gained I completely freaked out and relapsed completely. 

When I gained weight my anorexia began screaming at me, calling me disgusting, fat, a failure,weak etc. and I believed it and gave in. 

But after a few months I got back into the recovery, because I learnt of ways to prepare myself and deal with the weight gain and the voice of anorexia. 

These ways aren't bulletproof, they won't magically make everything easier all the time. You need to accept that in order to healthy and love you have to out on weight, but they will hopefully make you strong and keep you motivated to stay in recovery: 

1)wear baggy clothes when you feel big or bloated- if you cover your body and can't see your shape you won't think about your changing body nor can you see it (out of sight, out of mind) 

2)on days when the anorexia is strong and you already have a negative view of yourself, avoid mirrors 

3)pick out 3 things about your body that you like everyday 

4)tell yourself that your body is becoming healthy. That your body needs to look this way to have children, to run, to travel, to go out, to live a fulfilling and amazing life

5)your body deserves this food

6)you aren't weak for eating. You're a zombie if you listen to the anorexia.

7)if you do not eat and gain weight to be healthy, you will die

8)your therapists aren't making you gain weight because they hate you and want you to be ugly. They are doing it to save your life and make you have a beautiful life, mind and body 

9)surround yourself with happy and positive people 

10)unfollow all thinspo accounts and pro-anorexia blogs

Recovering from anorexia will be one of the hardest things you'll do, but I swear to you it is so worth it in ways I can't even out into words for you. 

Please keep going I know days are hard and everyday is a battle but you're a warrior and you're so strong and you deserve a full life free of this. 

Fight for your freedom and fight for your life. 

I'm always here for support, please leave a comment or ask me on my tumblr- http://catchinghopesandfears.tumblr.com

Thank you for reading 

B x 

My story with anorexia.

Hello :)

It's been a good while since I have posted anything on this blog, I guess I just kind of forgot about it for a while with all the things that have been happening in my life.
I have been wanting to do this post for a while because many say that even if no one is interested it is good to write it all down and get it off your chest.

This post (as you may of been able to tell from the title) is the story of my own personal battle with anorexia from start to finish and so this post will be a long one so I won't get offended if you get bored and sign off half way through.

Before I begin I would like to quickly mention in the year 2012/2013 I suffered with self harming and depression and also this is my own personal story with anorexia everyone's story is different.

In May 2014 I decided that I was going to try and get my figure more to how I wanted it to be, my boyfriend at the time was really into exercise and fitness and watching him work to get his body the best it could be really inspired me to do the same. So I made a plan that in my two week period after my AS exams I would exercise everyday and start eating healthily and in order to do this I downloaded an app called My Fitness Pal.
At the start I really enjoyed it, I liked my fitness improving and eating healthily it made me feel better in myself and when I actually started to see physical changes in my body in spurred me on to do more and more.
Then I spent one weekend away to visit a University and I ate a lot of junk food because being in a car the majority of the time you can't really access 'healthy foods' and when I got home I discovered that I had put on 2lbs. I had this gut wrenching feeling of failure and I hated it and I hated myself and I remember standing on the scale in my bathroom thinking 'this can never happen again'.
So the exercising began to increase to everyday and became more and more intense and my food intake was a strict 1200 calories a day of good and healthy foods and I began to avoid foods that are known to be unhealthy such as chocolate, pizza etc.
Before I knew it I was sucked in, obsessed completely with exercise and food. My daily food intake was cut from 1200 calories to 900 and my exercise routine remained the same. I began to weigh myself after every meal and every workout and I became more and more unhappy with what the scale told me and so I cut down on my food even more.
By September I was eating 400 calories a day maximum, I had a list of foods that I strictly couldn't eat:
-chocolate
-sweets
-crisps/chips
-biscuits
-junk food (burgers, pizza etc)
-cake
-bread
-pasta
-any sauces (ketchup, gravy)
-carrots
-apples
-bananas
-pears
-salt and pepper
-red meat
-potatoes
-oil
-spreads (butter, peanut butter etc.)
-cereal
-normal yogurt (only no fat natural greek yogurt allowed)
-any food over 100 calories
and list of rules I had made myself:
-drink water before and after every meal
-chew your food at least 30 times before swallowing
-no food in-between meals
-no food after 5pm
I couldn't see what I was doing to my body all I saw was fat, I obsessively rubbed my hip bones and ribs to check I hadn't gained fat from just eating. I had no energy to go out of the house and my joints ached to the point where I couldn't stand or walk for longer then 10 minutes, every time I stood my eyes when black and my head spun and I had to grab onto a side until my vision was restored. I could no longer do the long intense workouts I once did so I obsessively did 200 jumping jacks, 100 burpees, 60 crunches, 60 mountain climbers, 50 high knees three times a day everyday.

I became a vile person to be around when your body is starving you don't sleep and so I was surviving off 4hours of sleep per night and 400 calories a day and so I didn't have energy to even speak I just snapped at my loved ones for no reasons until the point where no one wanted to be around me. I became severely constipated and used it as an excuse to abuse laxatives and took around 7 each day I became addicted to them as I loved the feeling of my stomach being completely empty. I couldn't eat something unless I knew exactly how many calories it had in it, and I went food shopping with my mum every week until the point where I couldn't physically go because where I had been starving for so long being around food triggered a binge setting in my brain where I wanted to eat everything. I didn't see friends because I physically couldn't and when I got home I collapsed in bed and slept. I was cold to my core all the time even in summer, I went to Spain where it was 28 degrees in the evening and had to wear a jumper.

I dropped from 9stone 10 pounds to 7 stone in 2 months. My bra size went from 34 C to a 30 A (with room). My periods stopped. My hair thinned out and began to come out in clumps. My body was extremely dehydrated and malnourished. And I didn't care. My illness told me that all the bad things were worth it because I was getting thinner and I was better person because I was thin, I wasn't a failure anymore and people loved me more now.

On September 13th 2014 my boyfriend of 2 year who I planned to go to University with left me, he couldn't handle it anymore my vile moods and obsessive behaviour was sending him into depression. My mum had broken down completely exhausted with the worry of if I had collapsed at school or died in the night. On September 15th 2014 I got admitted to a specialised eating disorder clinic and I have been in recovery ever since.

I haven't suffered with my illness for long like millions of others, but the development of my illness was quick and dangerous.
I am currently in recovery and face a battle in my mind every time I eat but now I am getting better I realised that I wasn't living back then, I was dying and I choose recovery over a thigh gap and hip bones any day because in recovery I have my life back, I laugh again and go out.
Anorexia took everything from me, the love of my life, my ability to have children, my family, my friends. But she isn't going to take anything else.

If you made it to the end well done !
Thank you so much for reading, if you have any questions please ask and if you think you are suffering from an eating disorder PLEASE TELL SOMEONE and if you need to talk to me send me a question on tumblr:
Keep Smiling you lovely people
B x

It's a mental illness, not a body type.

Hello :)
In this post I want to address a slightly more serious issue then that of my previous posts, something that affects me every single day at the moment and millions of others like me around the world and that is a very large stereotype that surrounds the illness of anorexia.

Imagine this. I put two people in front of you. One is a size 0, you can see their rib cage and their hips poke out and they have a thigh gap. The other is a size 20 with stomach rolls etc. and I ask you to tell me which one you think suffers from anorexia. Most people are likely to pick the person who is size 0 with great confidence, because of the stereotype that surrounds this illness.

People tend to view anorexia as a body type i.e. hips poking out, thigh gap, rib cage on show etc. when in fact this is not only very wrong but extremely dangerous. Anorexia is a mental illness, meaning it stems from the mind, which means that no matter what size a person is they can still have anorexia. Someone who weighs over 500lbs can be anorexic and on the flip side just because someone is very skinny, doesn't necessarily mean they have or ever has had anorexia.

As previously said this stereotype is a very dangerous one, as many people who suffer from this illness who don't fit into this stereotype don't have their illness taken as seriously and therefore don't get the care or attention they need and so their illness progresses until eventually they do resemble this awful and life threatening body shape.

Source

This idea that anorexia is body type needs to be banished and fast. It is not possible to be too 'fat' to have an eating disorder. Every case of anorexia should be taken with equal seriousness no matter what the size of the sufferer.

Thank you for reading
and remember it's a mental illness not a body type
B x