Surrender to Recovery

I feel as though by now, most of my posts go along the same line. But, I'm not sorry about that because hopefully, the more you read this same old line, the more you will accept it. Here it is...

Commitment to getting it done is paramount.

Yep, that old chestnut again.

You must do you best, or better than your best, to follow-through and make the recovery action. You do it, come rain, come shine, come tiredness, come fear, come extremely plausible excuse, come ED tantrum. Whateverthehell happens, you just do it anyway.

And it is important to note, that once you make this choice to 'Do It Whatever', it isn't as simple as opting for recovery once and it's all jolly linear or sunshine and rainbows from there. It's a case of choosing it every day until you don't have to because you're healed. One choice, one day, will not make your ED brain on board with committing. There will likely be some degree of fear for a while. Like a computer, you have programmed it to generate this response. Yet please hold hope that this entire ingrained disordered neural network is something that fully changes due to neurogenesis and plasticity with consistent recovery actions.

When looking back on it, I believe that one of the fundamental reasons that I felt stressed in recovery is because I lost sight of the fact that I was meant to be going against the things my eating disorder brain believed to be important and true. It was only when I fully did my best to commit to healing, that the stress reduced. I get it, this seems a little ironic. Because the idea of fully honouring your hunger and rest is the most stressful thing imaginable, right? I wholly understand. This was exactly my view before I actually did it. I thought it would be less stressful to 50% do it and 50% not do. I imagined that the 'One foot in recovery, one foot out style' recovery would allow me to escape the 100% anxiety. But, here me when I say: ding, dang, dong. I got it so fucking wrong. Half doing it made it harder. If you think listening to your ED partly, and trying to recovery partly, equals partly less stress, you are mistaken and your ED has led you down the garden path. Letting the ED have a foot in the door, (or even a toe) is where the stress really comes from.

I realised, if it felt complicated, I was doing it wrong...

Eating disorder recovery is not easy. No big surprises there. Yet, the vast majority of the time, it didn't have to be as stressful, difficult, or as complicated as I made it, or rather as my eating disorder brain made it. After a while of trying recovery (and so becoming pretty good at tuning into my emotions), I realised that any anxiety I felt was often a red flashing siren for "YOU ARE ALLOWING THE ED TO ENTER THE EQUATION."

For example, I used to find myself in the kitchen at 7am, wondering how I could

1) satisfy myself fully

2) Promote mental healing, whilst simultaneously

3) choose something which ticks all of the boxes of the ED Generated Snack Criteria (which usually involved limit physical changes!)

I was in turmoil. There is no possible peaceful conclusion to that. If you find yourself in the same situation, negotiating with your ED whilst "trying to recover", you are likely going to be in a pickle. You can never, ever hope to please both your rational side and your eating disorder.

If you are tossing and turning about what to pair with a chocolate croissant with to ensure it is:

1) filling,

2) balanced, macronutrient-wise

3) whilst all keeping it beneath that *magic* restrictive number

Once again, you are likely going to be in a pickle. You can never, ever hope to please both.

If you decide to pair a chocolate croissant with a banana and cocopops, for example, and your thoughts pipe up going something like

"mwahhh...this is too chocolatey",

"um, no, that's more than my usual"

"It's not enough of X macro."

"But I'm having X for lunch"

Or some combination of that type of ED generated shit, you have to remind yourself that your agenda right now is to make choices that don't weight suppress, do break rules, and are unrestricted.

Just a side note: You are not supposed to be trying to artificially “balance” your diet in recovery and trying to do so is overcomplicating a simple process. Need I remind you that if you have been restricting for a long time and if you are in malnutrition, your body is waaay out of balance already. Your cravings are your body trying to get back into balance by eating lots of sugar, fat, and useful stuff things that it needs. How dare you judge yourself for 'intuatively' not wanting brocolli. What bloody sense would that make?

If you are following your hunger, then your judgement is not required. If your body wants 3 chocolate croissants, then your body knows what it needs. If your body wants to follow this with cereal, then it knows what it needs. You can reduce a lot of the anxiety you feel if you make a simple rule not to allow yourself to question, second guess, or judge what you want to eat.

Allow it to be simple. Your body knows what it needs to get your where you need to be. Your Eating disorder, on the other hand, does not.

Trying to recover while also trying to appease your eating disorder is stressful. So don’t!

I believe that much of the anxiety that is felt when you are trying to recover comes from feeling as if you don’t know what to do or what the right decision to make is. This is why it can be really helpful to have some (possibly stern) words, mantras, affirmations or phrases to say to yourself that help you stay focused and ground you. If you are worrying about whether or not you are eating a balanced diet, you lost focus. If you are wondering whether it exceeds your usual, you lost focus. If you are pondering if it 'fits' with the rest of your days eating, you lost focus. Your eating disorder brain has got it’s foot in the door. In fact a good rule of thumb that my mum often reminded me was:"you are anxious or worried about eating, you are playing the game of trying to “recover” without upsetting your eating disorder." That game is impossible to win, so no wonder I felt so stressed. It's like playing chess with a blindfold.

Keep at the forefront of your mind, or scribbled on sticky notes around your house, or on black sharpy on your hand, that recovery is not about trying to keep your eating disorder happy. I know, I know. It's all so easy for this knowledge to be lost in the moment when you are faced with a food decision to make and all you want is to choose the most peaceful path. Unlucky, Sir or Ma'am. You have to consistently make choices that your eating disorder will not like. Funnily enough, as I mentioned earlier, when you relax into doing just that, this is when you will find your anxiety lowers. It is the trying not to “get it wrong” that causes the stress. So do the opposite, actively break all the rules.

If you feel like you can’t win, or that decisions are difficult, your eating disorder is in control

Another gigantic, crimson flag that I was trying to appease both parties, was that I was finding choices difficult. In these cases, my brain was almost always over-complicating things. I was allowing my fear to step in front of what should have been a simple and easy decision based on nothing other than what my healthy-brain and body was desiring. Unrestricted eating means that you eat what you want, not what you think you should have. It means that you eat what you want when you want it, not when you think you should have it. It means that you eat what you want in the quantity that you want it in, not in the quantity that you think that you should have it. The over-complication commonly happened when my healthy brain desired something that my eating disorder brain didn't want (or was fearful of). In these situations, a decision about what to eat felt like the most important thing in the world, as if I was signing a mortgage contract or agreeing to celibacy. I felt like I torn between two conflicting internal desires. When really, it was just a bloody snack.

If you feel like you can’t decide what to eat and the decision is getting stressful, step back mentally for a second and block all the thoughts of what you should eat. Again, here, a mantra or grounding phrase may be useful. Get yourself back to detecting what you want, not what you think that you should have. Remind yourself of your commitments and that you are NOT trying to please the eating disorder.

The more uncompromising I was about eating what I wanted, whenever I wanted, how much ever I wanted, rather than satisfying the ED's desires, the easier I found it to handle many decisions and situations in recovery. Sometimes even reminding myself that there was nothing complicated about eating unrestricted amounts of food and resting helped. It was entirely normal practice and what I managed, just fine, before developing AN.

Your commitments to:

• not suppressing your natural bodyweight (full weight restoration)

• eating without restriction

• stopping all compulsive rules/rituals

will make recovery less stressful. It will stop that stupid game of numbers, the balancing, the negotating and the turmoil.

My advice: stop “trying” to gain weight. When I was not committed to gaining weight, but I knew that I should be trying to, my food choices were very stressful. I wanted to eat more … but not “too much” more. This is anxiety-provoking as one is constantly in the middle of trying to please recovery and trying to please the eating disorder. This is literally an impossible position to be in. One cannot win!

Instead, commit to letting it happen and gear your behaviours towards that. Eat in a manner that honours your commitment, (whether or not your ED brain is screeching like a feral cat in a fight or not). You just have to do it. Alongside this, don't allow there to be excuses for not gaining weight. Every single person with AN who I've had the fortune of meeting or working with has drive and determination to get things done when they put their mind to it. Yes, this exact trait is perhaps something which they've used to their detriment in the past, but it can be totally flipped and geared towards a committed recovery.

Committing to recovery makes it actually happen because it gives you a North Star. A lighthouse. A focus. If you give energy to a "should I?, shouldn't I?" situation, you have already lost momentum. Because if you do go ahead and choose recovery, your ED will pipe up and tell you that you had the opportunity not to.

You can be at peace with your choice when you did not have the option not to choose the recovery orientated decision.

GO FOR IT.