I Thought I Was Recovering But I Was Still Trying To Be Thin...

For a long time, I thought I was recovering. I was eating more, I was challenging fear foods, I was trying... I mean that's at least what I told myself. Deep down there was still a part of me waiting to be thin. I was waiting for recovery to somehow give me everything my eating disorder had promised. I was waiting for the day I could finally look in the mirror and feel enough and I think that's one of the hardest truths I've ever had to admit because I wasn't recovering for freedom, I was recovering with conditions.

I wanted to eat but not gain weight, I wanted peace but only if my body stayed the same. I really wanted recovery but I still wanted my eating disorder rewards and this is something nobody talks about enough. Sometimes you can be physically recovering while your mind is still desperately holding onto the eating disorder.

I remember convincing myself that I was doing well, but every meal came with rules, every fear food came with panic and every change in my body felt like proof I was failing. I wasn't recovering because I still had rules, I didn't have full control.

I was trying to find a version of recovery that didn't require me to let go of the one thing I was still terrified of losing. After a while, I understood why recovery felt so difficult it's because I wasn't working towards getting freedom, I was trying to keep my eating disorder at arms length. There was a part of me that was still hoping my eating disorder had been right all along, that if I could be just a little thinner, a little more disciplined then maybe I would finally feel happy.

That truth was devastating, I had already spent years chasing that feeling and it never came, not even once. Every goal I reached simply created more and every number became a new target. Every achievement became something I needed to maintain, there was never any peace while I lived with an eating disorder.

Eating disorders don't have a finish line... I realised something, the version of me I was fighting so hard to became didn't even exist, she was fantasy created from my eating disorder voice.

I had spent years believing thinness would heal things it was never capable of healing, my lonliness, my anxiety, my sadness, my pain but no amount of weight loss was ever going to fix that. The hardest part of recovery wasn't eating, it wasn't fear foods, it wasn't weight restoration. The hardest part was grieving the belief that being thin would finally make me happy.

If your body was never the problem then your body never needed fixing, you don't need fixing. Your life needs recovery, your mind needs recovery. Those things deserve so much more than another diet, another rule or another year lost to an eating disorder.

Looking back now, I realised the moment recovery truly began wasn't when I started eating more, It wasn't when I challenged a fear food, It wasn't when I gained weight. Recovery truly began when I stopped waiting to be thin before allowing myself to live.

With Love, Niomi 🤎

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