#recovery from ed

[josiebelladonna]

for my first post of 2023~

january 2013, 139 pounds

——

january 2023, 264 pounds (lost a few over christmas; i plan on gaining about 15 or 20 this year, though, ha!)

there’s not a lot of pix of me from back then, and for a good reason.

there is another pic of me with that nirvana shirt from that era somewhere, and i cannot for the life of me find it. but it’s the one pic of me where you can really see just how thin my face was back then.

i was 19. 19 and scared shitless and angry, angry at herself for always saying yes when she really wanted to say no. 19 and very thin: heavy pixelation or not, you can see how slender my face is, how prominent my chin is, how slim my neck is. what she would do to be the early 2020s version: she would be frightened but intrigued. how did i gain all this weight? how did i get here?

and then i would tell her that i took a leap of faith and gained very slowly over a decade just by eating, pretty much: i mean, part of the healing process from anorexia is eating, but once you get comfortable again (and you will, very quickly, might i add), just eat anything and everything except for what we don’t like, and have it in bigger, multiple helpings, too. 

put cream in your coffee, but don’t forget to eat something with the coffee as well (made that mistake once on a school day, i’m never doing that again). give up soda except for special occasions because it’s not good for the skin and it’s always made us jumpy, too.

stuffings are very fun, especially on afternoons when you’re alone in the house so no one can be around to judge you: you don’t want to do them a lot for obvious reasons (hard on the digestion and it’s just courtesy), but it’s very euphoric when it happens, especially when you take the next step in outdoing yourself. you will find favorite foods to gorge on, like pancakes and big fat sandwiches, because they’re healthy but they also make you gain. you will learn little tips and tricks on how to gain healthily, like putting a teaspoon or two of heavy cream into your coffee along with creamer to add more good fat (it’s quite delicious, too), making pancakes with grapeseed oil instead of butter because it’s better for you and it also doesn’t smoke (and you wind up putting a shitload of butter on all 11 pancakes. yes, i said 11 😉), or eating a lot at around 3 in the afternoon and into dinner time to help you gain because of the way the metabolism works.

you’re also going to learn the power of balance: something fatty, with something sugary, with something full of proteins and good carbs, and you might want seconds, too. next thing you know, you have just eaten a bunch of food and you have a very full tum that needs to be gently rubbed—speaking of, belly rubs are incredibly therapeutic and sensual, especially when your belly gets as big as mine.

you’ll want more fried foods, too, like french fries, funnel cake, donuts, and fried chicken and waffles, probably because they’re deemed “sinful”: don’t buy into it. eat those things, they’re yummy! especially chicken and waffles.

sneak extra food when no one’s looking, too: remember we used to do that when we were living with grandma and grandpa and she would give us shit for wanting to eat and grandpa would dismiss her tripe as… well, tripe, and so whenever we were alone, we would take extra cookies from the cookie jar with his blessing? keep doing that but with other things besides cookies: after your second helping of dinner, especially if it’s pasta, sneak in some extra bites for a sort of third helping. have a second sandwich at lunch. hell, just have seconds and thirds—gonna be a while before we get up to fourths, though. but we deserve it.

you’re also going to start calling yourself a “gainer” and you’re going to feel comfortable calling yourself that almost immediately because you’re deliberately gaining weight solo and it just feels right.

you will quite literally feel your belly getting bigger too, like every time you sit down, you’ll feel it very slowly spilling out of your jeans or your underwear. next thing you know, it’s going to push your legs apart and want to hang down to the top of the chair, and it’s actually going to feel really good to you, like there’s something really sexy about having that much belly on you. you sit down and it wants to spill out every which way, oh—oh, my 😏

you will have stretch marks. you will have love handles (and how). you will bounce when you walk, and once you get up to this weight, your belly will resemble to a lava lamp, too, and it’s gonna feel good, like you’re going to be soooo in love with that bouncy feeling because it’s cathartic and hypnotic, and liberating. 

it’s very liberating being a gainer girl. everyone will tell you to lose weight and that the real hot babes are the slender ones. but you’ll be artist, cartoonist, comic maker, writer, reader, earth science buff, nuclear science buff, poet, athlete, wannabe playwright and meteorologist, amateur photographer, music fan, car nut, hockey player, baseball player, sorta socialite, and gainer girl all at the same time. you’ll be all those things and more, and our body is at the center of it all. and you’ll see very quickly that they’re sorely mistaken because hotness has no size, and it never should have had a size to begin with. you will also have a very odd but very sensual fascination with your belly button because you’ve repressed feelings about that, too.

also, don’t suck in your gut because there will come a day when you relax... and you look down and you can’t see your toes, and you’ll laugh your head off, too, like “oh my god, i have a potbelly now, this is so good!” because it actually looks really hot on us, and it’s going to look even hotter as we gain more weight. 

your body will get very soft and very round, but also very muscular and stout, and your belly will go from a flat, slightly caved washboard to being very round and tubby. moreover, you’re also going to continue to feel your ribs and your hips so you’re going to feel curious about... what lies beyond the 267 mark. yes. you will want to get bigger and bigger because it feels right. it’s what we’ve dreamed of, being chubby. we’re going to get very chubby. maybe even fat. we dreamed of being fat since we were a toddler (remember? we used to pretend to be fat with elizabeth and we’d joke around about eating too much like in some cartoons, and we’d pretend to live in candyland). trust me, we’re not going to be like mom or the rest of the family and be unhappy with extra weight, either: we’re going to be the black sheep, but it’ll be more than worth it.

and despite the snoring (easy fixes for that, almost too easy), the fact we live in a world that likes to body-shame no matter how big or small you are (there’s going to be this woman our age named meghan trainor who’s going to have this huge song next year that’s supposedly body positive... it’s not; it’s skinny shaming and misses the point about being a fab fat girl as well), the fact that clothing designers think anyone over a size 18 has no fashion sense (i’m still trying to get that), and the fact that you’re going to have to feed that big belly every couple of hours even in the middle of the night, you’re not going to want to trade it for the world because... i’m gonna be honest here, it’s like your body wants to be heavy. remember when we hit puberty and it was almost overnight we gained a bunch of weight and there was something kind of hilarious about it? and then we couldn’t believe that we dropped down to 139 pounds at age 19 after we weighed 175 at our high school graduation?

remember? when we were little, and living in the trailer park, and our parents only had so much money on them so we could only eat so much, and we were curious about life with more food available to us, and we would look at our belly and imagine it being big and fat and we actually felt tickled by the thought, remember that? remember in like 8th grade, when we would lay in bed at night, and we would run our hands down our poor, abused stomach and try to think of it as bigger and rounder? don’t repress that anymore: follow it. we imagined being fat out the gate, let’s make it a reality.

you are going to love your potbelly, and you are going to love it so much that you want it bigger, fuller, rounder, because you’re actually going to get really sensual and men and non-straight women from far and wide are going to look at you because they think you’re sexy (and knowing how society is, kinda daring, too): you are going to want to wear tight pants and tight shirts to accentuate its full shape because once a tomboy, always a tomboy.

and trust me when i say this, too: you’ll feel so much healthier with the weight. you know, we always heard bullshit like, “being overweight is a sure-fire way to give you heart disease, cancer, diabetes,” all that, growing up, but you won’t feel like that. in fact, you’ll find that it’s mostly bullshit based on eugenics and white supremacy and sexism—and you’ll find the whole thin obsession and diet culture are recent things, too: overweight, chubby, fat, very fat, and obese women were venerated for as long as humanity has existed, and we find out about this, the whole “breaking the glass ceiling” thing hollywood likes to employ becomes extremely strange. 

yes, there are risks associated with obesity, but that doesn’t mean it’ll happen, though, especially if you know your body and use your head (why i gained using good fats like peanut butter, grapeseed oil, and straight butter rather than junk food or margarine). if anything, it’ll be quite the contrary: you’ll feel nourished, and well-fed, and at peace, and you’ll feel sexy, too. your back might hurt a little bit, especially when you get close to 230 but it’ll go away almost as quickly as it came—remember when we were playing hockey and our hips and thighs would hurt all the time? you’ll see that that pain is worse than a little ache in your back from gaining 5 pounds. you will be living proof that this is actually very healthy for someone like you, someone who’s spent her whole life with very little to eat and a very small, malnourished frame when she knew in her heart that it was not her truth.

yes, people will judge you: they will be merciless, they will shame you, especially once your belly starts to bulge out from under your boobs in all its fattening glory. they’ll even be triggered by it (wtf, i know). but it’s really none of their business: they don’t know what it’s like to be us. they don’t know the extent of everything we went through. they don’t know how we feel inside or what goes on in our brains. they don’t see it as a form of healing, a form of making peace with your body and finding a reason to live, and a way of seeing yourself as sexy. they don’t know shit.

i’m getting repetitive with it, but you will feel very sexy with as your weight really starts to balloon and get high up like it is now. it’s a concept that we battled with all year long, because we had a lot of complicated hang ups that were going to be sorted out eventually, but you will have people checking you out and you’ll notice. remember when we were like 14 and someone next to us would say some boy was checking us out but when we looked, there was no one there? that’s a thing of the past, babe. especially since you are going to want to 

ahem.

model 

that 

big 

belly.

show it off, 

let it go

because 

you

are

one

hot babe now. you are a hot fat babe, babe. being overweight will give you the confidence you’ve wanted for so long but couldn’t get. and it’s something you’ve repressed your entire life and yet it’s a part of you, and 

you’re going to wonder why we didn’t get big sooner.  it’ll be fun. it’ll be delicious and devious and subversive but the best things in life are. we were thin our whole lives and we stared at the end of the road as a result: we will have so much more fun in the opposite direction.

plus, it’s wild to think that that nirvana shirt was like a circus tent on me back then. it was! i remember it hanging over my boobs and the way it rested on my waist made me look matronly, even at that slight weight. i wear it now and my belly hangs out of the bottom without fail.

come to think of it, i remember taking that pic and leaning back in the chair with my eyes fixed on the ceiling and muttering to myself, “i wish i could gain 100 pounds.”

like i said, i’ve pretty much always wanted to be fat, but back then, i didn’t think it’d be possible.

also, i don’t know if it’s from gaining so much weight and my face getting rounder along with everything else or just from getting older, but my eyebrows have this little point to them now: it’s very slight but it’s there. getting away from the madonna look and more into the actual karen carpenter look. godspeed, karen 🕊

[suburbansuns]

me & my dog by boygenius (2018) // letter to an old poet by boygenius (2023)

[bakedbakermom]

The amount of self-fatphobia I encounter in my female friends regarding holiday treats is too damn high and it pisses me off. Twice this week I have told friends that it's okay to eat more in the winter (or when the fuck ever) because we are mammals and that's what we're supposed to do and both of them were like, "Teehee oh that's a great excuse!" And I'm like NO IT'S TRUE your body is responding to rhythms deeper than our modern concept of shame and it's absolutely fine to honor them and listen to your body! You don't need to generate some excuse in order to justify eating and being hungry and enjoying food.

I have had to do so much self-work regarding food and permission to eat and learning to be okay with enjoying food beyond its purpose as mere fuel. Like that was such a huge part of my recovery. My nutritionist once held my hand while I ate cheesecake and cried. And every time I encounter (milder versions of) those same food-phobic fat-shaming feelings in people I love I want to burn down the whole world because WHY ARE WE MADE TO FEEL LIKE THIS!?

Can we as a society just. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. about dieting and thinness and the morality of certain body shapes and just live in these physical bodies with their needs and desires and cravings!?!??

[dangeroustaintedflawed]

ppl complain about other girls postin about ed’s n gore like this isn’t tumblr.com

[inkskinned]

im gonna start a fight; and, at the same time, i need you to take this in the most good-faith way possible, but:

videos that involve body-checking and intentionally (and uncritically) show a mealplan of an unhealthy number of calories are just a revamped version of pro-ana food diaries.

and yeah, i know there's arguments. i address some of them under the cut. but at the end of the day, we're just coming back to romanticizing mental illness; we've just found a better platform for it.

this is already something we've done. we knew it was wrong and tried to stop it. and tbh. it just wasn't enough.

there are people who argue "well, what if you have an eating disorder, you can't help it if you don't eat!" except that as someone with an ED; we are not infants. we know what we're doing. part of having an ED is that you are like, maybe too self-aware. even if we can't help our own food choices, we don't need to fucking romanticize the disorder - something we've been warning you about since 2013. there are hours of setup, filming, and editing that go into these videos. they do not happen to fall into place randomly. there is a reason they are pieced together to be beautiful, bright, inspiring.

there's this woman who pretty much only posts daily plans under a normal amount of calories, and everyone defends her saying but it's better than nothing! and i'm like. except she opens those with images of her showing off her body and provides no context in the video or caption that suggests that she believes what she's doing is unhealthy. she has hundreds of thousands of followers on a platform designed for young kids and teens. i refuse to believe that by accident her content just happens to be cheery advice on "healthy" versions of starving.

for any other symptom of mental illness, we would be incredibly enraged by this kind of placid acceptance of a "tips and tricks" fast-start guide. imagine if people posted pink & pretty videos saying "best places to cut yourself" as if it was a fucking storytime. we, as a society, are so fucking fatphobic that we would rather accept blatantly harmful displays of self harm than admit that we are obsessed with a hyper-thin body type.

i am not suggesting someone never talks about their disorder. i talk about mine. actually, it's a plot point in my book.

here's the difference: i recognize it's a fucking mental illness. i am very careful to never mention a specific weight, eating pattern, or calorie plan. i always make sure to position it as something that ruined my fucking life. i do not put cheery music in the background and hearts and sparkles over my worst moments. i do not film it in bright light. i do not start each passage with an image of a thin body followed by "here's how to look like her."

eating disorders should not be framed as aspirational. and the problem is that society worships the "after" image, so long as you don't get too sick. there is a reason so many people who quit being "influencers" will later admit - i wasn't eating well that whole time; an obsession with food was completely destroying my life.

we let any uncredited, uncertified person write the most backwards, fucked up shit about how to get the body you desire! because the underlying, secret belief is: well, at least they're thin! and the real thing that fucking gets me each time - they make fucking money off of it. their irresponsibility and societal harm literally pays off for them.

"why do you care so much." "don't like it don't look." "so what if people experiment with new ways of thinking of food?"

thank you for asking. we're about to get extremely personal. it's because when i was 18 i discovered "thinspiration"/"thinspo." and it absolutely influenced, shaped, and codified my pre-existing eating disorder. i went from having some troubling habits and traits to being incredibly unwell within what felt like a matter of days. there were actual pages designed to train me on how to have an ED correctly. it was all so suddenly easy. i was sick; and the nature of the illness meant - i wanted to be sicker.

it takes an average of 7 years for a person to fully recover. i know this personally - even now, 10 years from the worst of it, i still fucking struggle. i am so much happier now and i eat what i want and i literally don't think about food at all (19 year old me would shudder) and yet - i still fucking know the calories of plain toast with butter.

an eating disorder is one of the deadliest types of mental illness. over 1 in 4 people with an ED will attempt suicide.

and i'm sorry. i just do not see the exchange rate of "high rate of engagement" versus "the value of a human life."

[brother-genitivi]

sorry everyone, I'm very much alive 🏃‍♂️

sorta homeless, staying with a friend. got a house in my name from the 19th onwards so that's chill! chronically ill, too fatigued to do a lot of things but I'm trying 🤟 kind of accepting that I'm joining the disability club.

trying my hand at art again, but very very slowly easing back into it. appreciate those who reached out to me <3

thinking about you all. missed my moots :)

[uncanny-tranny]

When we talk about recovery, I think we have to remember that recovery must be an option for everybody, but it is an option, which means that not everybody will choose it, or be ready to.

Forcing people to recover when they aren't willing or ready to is just often just as cruel as whatever you deem they must recover from. You cannot recover for another person.

I say this because forcing recovery onto people is most likely pushing them further from recovery. You might think you're doing what's good for them, and that is admirable, but we have to have a sense of realism about recovery. Anybody can recover, but that doesn't mean everybody will.

[cats-healing-diary]

The thoughts are still there but ignoring them gets easier and easier. Don't give up u can do it, YOU DESERVE TO HEAL

[leclercsbf]

Oscar Piastri at the MotoGP via McLaren

[lousydrawingsforgoodpeople]

[angelmush]

one thing that has helped me w/r/t recovery and fatphobia is that even if i dont feel ready to address myself with compassion and kindness reminding myself that the way i treat myself because of my physical appearance will always inevitably carry over to how i treat and view others has honestly been so helpful realizing that getting over myself and my own fatphobia is a loving act and important socially not just internally. sometimes its easier to feel compassion towards others and then go, oh! i deserve the same thing. and by depriving myself of that i might make the mistake of judging and hurting others. anyways your recovery posts and food pictures are so wonderful and inspiring <3

1. thank u for taking the time to send such a vulnerable and honest message and 2. YES YES YES a billion times YES !!!

it’s a deeply loving and revolutionary act to address the beliefs that you consciously and unconsciously hold about fatness. as much as you might try, those conditioned feelings bleed into everything. they seep into our behaviors and in turn, wound us and the people around us.

you worded it beautifully. recovering and working hard on unlearning the ugly stuff undoubtedly makes us into kinder, gentler people. :-)

[featherymainffins]

Peace and love on planet Earth but if I see one more post NOT about recovery and, in fact, encouraging eating disorders in the ed recovery tag, I might just turn into a chimpanzee and tear everyone's faces off.

[allbuthuman]

.

[alprazogal]

learning that recovery is different for everyone has been a hard path. i thought i had to ignore all my disordered habits until they disappeared, but obviously they didn't, so i relapsed again and again.

then i started reading about addiction and how a psych team works with those kinds of patients, and i started to use that knowledge into my own recovery.

i will forever be addicted to starving. there will not be a day in my life in which i wake up and not think about my eating disorder, not think about weight loss nor counting calories.

however, i know the damage it made to myself, my body, and the ones i love. so i know i must stop one day at a time.

since i learned that i started being more compassionate to myself. started understanding that i had the habit of making those weight loss plans, the habit of counting calories, and that stuff. and that can't change fast. and it's alright.

i allow myself to count calories if i want to, i just try to keep them into a healthy amount, that's enough for me and my body. If i have a rough day, i can also make those weight loss plans i used to, i just don't force myself to follow them.

i found my eating disorder was rooted in trauma, and my ocd has much to do with it. so when i am triggered about daily life stuff, or i feel anxious, i find myself returning to this habit.

it's not easy to stop acting like you hate yourself when it's all you learned. it's alright. it will pass. just be compassionate and understanding. ed are also addictions, and it's not easy to battle it

[try-and-try-and-try-again]

Warning: Weight talk

I feel like screaming and tearing myself limb from limb because my weight jumped up again. I can’t cope. I knew I had a reason to feel disgusted by how my body looks and feels and I guess there’s my reason. I’m not eating differently to how I was in hospital where I was losing weight. If anything I’m more physically active now, going for more walks and having started volunteer gardening last week (which was intense enough to leave me in lots of pain but I guess that doesn’t take much in my case).

Medications have been changed. They changed my contraceptive pill a couple of weeks ago (to one which some sources say causes weight gain and some say it doesn’t and the GP said maybe it would happen but it was unlikely) because they discovered my history of migraines even though the one I was on was not giving me migraines any more frequently then I’ve had them for most of my life. I’ve been put on course after course of antibiotics for infections I’ve been having throughout the month. I had an allergic reaction on Thursday for which I was put on steroids, but only for a few days. I don’t know if they’re having an influence.

My carer said we’d talk to the doctor tomorrow about how to get me to lose the weight I’ve gained since moving in (1.2kg now) and also we’d go for more walks. Part of me was reassured by his promise but it’s a bit weird he said this as I’m still technically underweight. Whatever.

[simpforsix]

my mom is a dietitian. she's the reason i avoided diet culture, while my health classes basically promoted eating disorders. here's some important things i learned from her. TW: discussion of diets, food, and eating disorders.

you probably don't need to keep a scale in your house. unless you have health problems that require you to monitor your weight and it is recommended by your doctor, most people don't need to know what their weight is constantly. easy access to a scale promotes anxiety about your weight. i only get weighed at visits to the doctor, so i know my weight bracket. you don't need to know every tiny fluctuation. this is especially important for kids. growing up, i had no idea of how much weight i was gaining, so i was never able to associate my weight on the scale to my value. kids can't understand weight, and since they're growing they have to grapple with the societal notion that weight gain is bad alongside gaining weight because of their growth.

eating unhealthy food is better than not eating. i have arfid and a lot of my safe foods are unhealthy, but my mom keeps them stocked in the house while also offering to buy more healthy food to try. you need calories to live, and if the only way you'll get them is from "junk food" then eat the junk food. it's easier to add in healthy foods as opposed to forcing yourself not to eat anything outside of that.

sugar is not the devil that it's been made out to be. things like fruit contain sugar, but that does not make them bad. there is a difference between processed sugar found in candy and sugar found in fruits and veggies. you don't need to cut out sugar to be healthy.

fat is also not evil. things like avocados are considered "good fats". you need fat to live. it gives you energy and energy stores. also, being fat is not inherently unhealthy in the same way that being skinny is not inherently healthy.

carbs are good. complex carbs, like bread, give you energy for longer periods of time. by energy, i don't just mean physical energy. i mean the energy that keeps your bodily functions going.

calorie counting isn't helpful. unless you have health issues that require you to keep track of calories as advised by a doctor, you should not count your calories. calories are too simple to account for a good diet, and calorie counting often leads to disordered eating. you should focus on getting enough nutrients, and fuelling your body.

listen to your body. eat when you're hungry, whether that means meals or snacks. some people have issues with hunger cues, and if you have trouble listening to your body when it comes to diet i recommend seeing a dietitian. your diet is personal. some people need to eat more due to genetics, health issues, lifestyle, etc. you can't follow diets you see online and expect to see the same results as the person promoting them.

most fad diets do more harm than good. cutting out necessary nutrients messes up bodily functions, and most are done without medical supervision. they all claim similar things, but no diet will do the same for everyone. things like fasting often increase weight gain after a short period of weight loss. they also promote orthorexia.

nutritionists are not the same as dietitians. they don't require the same certification, they don't require the same education, and nutritionists aren't as regulated. dietitians are healthcare professionals, meaning they have to go through schooling and training and exams. people can't just call themselves dietitians. the same cannot be said for nutritionists. it's different depending on location, but most places don't require people to go through much regulation to call themselves nutritionists. they also don't face the same consequences. nutritionists can peddle fad diets and make outrageous claims without issue, but dietitians often work in hospitals and must follow the rules. dietitians also don't tend to run their own businesses like some nutritionists, which is an issue because it means nutritionists may have a financial incentive to support incorrect information. basically, if you need diet advice, go to a dietitian. nutritionist is a title that does not actually mean someone knows what they're talking about.