Recovery is life

you know when you just sit for hours and think about every aspect of your life (mainly when having a shower)? thats been me for like the past 2 weeks. like everything is falling into place, exactly the way i want. this time last year i was inpatient. i was sat alone in my room crying over having to eat an apple or something, but now, im a different person. im 5 stone heavier and the healthiest ive ever been. i feel confident and radiant. i have a boyfriend. we go on dates to restaurants and i order what i want. something that i believed would be impossible. i go out with my friends and get drunk. last year i couldn't even hold a conversation with somebody. ive attended interviews on my own and i have a place at an amazing university to do the course ive always wanted to do. i got a full time job, on my own. everything changes for the better, you just have to believe that you can do it. whats stopping you? theres nothing in the way except your insecurities. push them a si...

As requested on instagram I thought this topic was highly important and I should talk about it. weight gain is going to happen, the sooner you accept that the better. (that sounds really harsh but it is the reality of the situation) p.s i totally just burst a blister on my thumb that i got whilst sharpening pencils, the pain! anyway, your body. it simply can not function at a low weight, your mind cant work, you are freezing 24/7, your legs struggle to walk up a flight of stairs, your hair falls out and your skin turns grey and lifeless! Thats your bodies way of telling you how unhappy it is. why should we fear gaining weight? we arent even gaining, we are just getting back what we lost! we have been a healthy weight before so why are we so scared to reach it again? i struggled alot with accepting weight gain, but the more i focused my mind on other things and actually started enjoying what i was eating and what i was doing with my life the less i thought about it! i got mys...

okay so before my whole eating disorder began i was diagnosed with depression. i was stuck in this dark place mentally and nothing could bring me out of it. i lost my appetite completely and all i used to do was just lie in bed, i even missed college for weeks because i couldnt get out of bed. but its true when people say your intake is affected by your mood. its different for everyone, like when im in a fabulous mood and feeling really good i tend to eat alot more than usual and it doesnt bother me in the slightest. but when im in a really down mood i really struggle to eat. i loose my appetite and i overthink everything. its awful. but like i said, its different for everyone. but food really does affect your mood. did you ever notice when you were in the depths of your illness that you were the most annoyed, lifeless shell of a human? thats because you had no fuel to contribute to your mood. food gives you energy, the energy to contribute to a conversation, or to make you l...

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...