Recovery is life

my main goal throughout recovery was for a happy future. i imagined myself dating the perfect guy, we'd go out for meals and eat popcorn at the cinemas. id have my own house, that i would have worked hard for after spending 3 years doing my dream course at university. id make new friends and be like the social buzz of everything, be involved in everything communal and basically be this queen of england or something. obviously i know i'm not going to be the queen anytime soon, due to the lack of relatives in the royal family and the fact that i say 'put t' kettle on love' or 'ite mate' it just isn't in my favour. buuuuuuuuttt, what is in my future for sure is university, im hoping to go to the university of Manchester and study there for 3 years doing Primary Education (i know i know, why the hell would i want to spend the rest of my life in the company of screaming, diseased children? but its fabulous k). i really wanted to live in halls at uni, i

My whole anorexia started with being addicted to exercise. I have been for years and i didnt even know it. It was never a problem, id run twice a day because i enjoyed it and i ate eough to never loose weight from my activities! But once i started restricting my calorie intake i upped my exercise and i had to do it, it becomes your way of life. I planned everythig around my exercise routines and it became more of a chore rather than something i genuinley enjoyed. Its obsessive, its not just the feeling of 'oh i should probably go for a run' its the 'i cant do anything else until i have over exercised' its not just going for a run around the block until your tired and want to go home, its being so exausted but not having the ability to stop. It in itself is a disorder. Its not a healthy way to live. I struggled with exercising for years and even when i was bed bound id still sneak out of the house to go for a run, it came to the point were my dad would run after me a

i think the hardest thing for me about recovery is the dreaded body image. waking up and seeing yourself a completely different person to what you actually look like. but that is such bull crap. even at my lowest weight i never saw myself for what i truly looked like. fitting into tiny jeans and tops and still thinking i was overweight? its stupid really how messed up our minds get! its so unrealistic. the worst part is how we hate ourselves. why shouldn't we love ourselves? our flaws, our imperfections, our quirks, our personalities. some people look at us and see someone who seeks knowledge and happiness, is beautiful, has life behind their eyes. so why can't we see it that way? one day you can wake up and look in the mirror and absolutely love what you see, but then an hour later you see someone completely different staring back at you. its annoying and i'm fed up of it. so ive been trying this new trick, to just not listen to what my mind tells me. how to

I have an instagram account, one of those addictive recovery accounts and all i see day in and day out is people posting their food. But what catches my attention are the foods people eat. I follow over 500 accounts and there are about 10 accounts that i an truly say eat normal food and whatever they fancy. But what i do see is the same foods repeated by everyone, 'salads, questbars, lowfat sandwiches, chickpeas, protein powder, protein pancakes, protein and egg white oatmeal' i just dont understand! Its easy to get caught up in whats needed. Like wheres the chocolate, the sweets. The essential fats your body needs to survive! You are depriving your bodies of what it needs, it needs foods that you wont eat! How can you live the rest of your life when you have to measure out everything, get up at ridiculous hours to prepare your food. The answer is that you cant! You need to have normality in your diet. You need to wake up and eat whatever you want and however much you wan

Im one of them people that sits for hours and literally thinks about their entire life. I actually get really upset about it, like not because of who i used to be but because of the time ive wasted. In a way im lucky, i have suffered from anorexia for just over a year. Some people can suffer for years and years making it hard to look back on a life without anorexia. Even now im at a healthy bmi of 20 i still do struggle some days, some days you do want to be 'the thin girl' again but where the hell would that get me? In hospital. You can not live a life and maintain a low weight, it just doesnt work like that! In order to regain happiness you have to gain weight, you have to help your body repair itself! You cant restrict in recovery because thats not good physically and mentally! You have to allow yourself the foods you want to eat. And also facing fears along the way. Because right imagine yourself you have spent the night over at a friends house and you wake up in the

you are going to change, your body will change, your brain will change. this is fabulous, you shouldn't fear it. why be a bag of bones when you can have a bum, and boobs, and legs to die for and a healthy glowing face, and long thick hair like a lion and bright eyes and.. right you get the point. ask yourself, have you ever felt good enough? has loosing weigh ever made you feel good? has being severely underweight ever made you feel skinny or thin enough? no. your eating disorder feeds you lies. the worst part is that you believe them. your eating disorder is your friend right? wrong. when has it ever made you feel good, when has it ever showed you kindness. i cant count one time anorexia was my friend, or made me feel good about myself but i have lost count of how many times its put me down and made me feel terrible. learn to love yourself, you curves, your legs, your personality, your querky smile. you need to embrace it all. why live a life hating yourself whe