Love the whole me

Yesterday was one of those days that really tests the delineation between sickness and recovery. My boyfriend's parents came to visit for the afternoon, so we all spent the afternoon shopping at a local mall. I had met his parents only once before, so I did not feel comfortable eating around them. I was afraid of potentially marring the entire afternoon at dinner by acting strange, and I desperately wanted to avoid that. Eating in public, or eating in the company of someone I do not know, creates an extremely tense environment for me. I become paranoid that I am being watched and judged-- that my eating disorder is spelled out right on my face. This is something that is difficult for me to resolve, because the simple act of chewing and swallowing can become insurmountable under the right circumstances.

The afternoon at the mall, which began promisingly, did not end well. My boyfriend was of course quite aware of my reluctance to eat with his parents, so I trusted that he would wrap up the day as cleanly as possible. As we were standing outside Best Buy, his parents provided what I thought was a perfect opportunity to say our goodbyes and exit. Yet, my boyfriend suggested that we eat together. I could not believe it. Getting inside the car to drive to the restaurant, I asked, incredulously, "What are you doing?"

As it turns out, we did not go out to eat. As soon as I inquired into his reasoning, he decided to get back out of the car and inform his parents-- in God knows what language-- that we were not, in fact, going to eat. I was completely perplexed at this point. I could not understand what was going through my boyfriend's mind, and now I felt that he had ruined the image I had carefully crafted for his parents all afternoon. I was hurt; he, for some reason, was angry. He said that he had just wanted to spend more time with his parents, and why couldn't I have just gone out to eat with them? Honestly, I thought, do you really not know!?

I don't think yesterday was really ever resolved. Somehow my boyfriend had separated me from my disorder and had wanted me, minus my disorder, to spend time with his parents. He felt that I was just being difficult; that I was petulantly choosing to neglect girlfriend duties. Neither are the case. I am many great things, and some of them, in fact, are due to having experienced anorexia. I don't expect anyone to love anorexia per se, but anyone who loves me has to love the parts of me that are touched by the disease. One of the greatest difficulties in recovery is getting people to understand that nothing about anorexia is black and white. I am not completely overtaken by the disorder; nor am I entirely anorexia-free. I need people to love and accept the whole me, as I am.

Always looking ahead

My entire life I have been chided for not "living in the moment." That is because I always concentrate on what needs to be done and how I can best achieve it. This is a good trait for obligations like school, work, and finances; but it poses a problem when I just want to relax. I feel that I literally cannot shut off my brain when I'd like to, and it causes me a great deal of frustration.

A journal article I was reading the other day presents an answer to my problem. Entitled "Altered reward processing in women recovered from anorexia nervosa," the study explores the neurological reactions of recovered anorexic women to a game that tests the reward mechanism through a series of guesses that resulted in either wins or losses. While the healthy control women exhibited an increase in function of the area of the brain that is involved in the loss-reward mechanism, the formerly anorexic women were understimulated by rewards. Instead, their brains were active in the caudate region, which is involved in planning and assessing future consequences. Rather than living in the moment, they were busy looking ahead to the next round of the game.

I am always comforted to know that a certain way I am is not just a function of failed will power. Although I may always have an overactive caudate, I can use that skill to my advantage by planning for the safety and happiness of the people I love. If that is what gives me happiness over the pleasures of the moment, I am just fine with that.

My experience.part 5

V. The first day of college

I will never forget my first day of college. It was a bright, saturated August day in Alabama. My first class of the day was chemistry. I remember sitting in the lecture hall, hearing my professor discuss her surprisingly generous cell phone policy, and thinking just how much more freedom I would have in college, away from the tightly regulated atmosphere of my high school. The realization made me apprehensive, because in the absence of externally-dictated constraints, I composed my own regulative canon. I decided to forego eating that day until I had gotten through my next two classes, to minimize the anxiety caused by the loose structured college setting. I made it through philosophy, and then calculus, with the aid of six diet drinks that deceptively filled my empty stomach.

By the time I had gotten out of calculus, it was about 1:30 PM and I was dangerously weak. I decided, however, to push myself one step further and stop on the way home to get school supplies. I made it in out of Wal-Mart rather proudly, having passed the self-imposed tests of the day with flying colors. Yet as I approached the left turn at the four-way intersection that I had to make on every return home, I began to grow anxious, as I always did. Driving had always been one of my major anxieties, and I found this particular turn quite harrowing. I did not like yielding, because I was not that good at gauging speed and distance of approaching vehicles and was always more inclined towards cautiously waiting. Yet, I was often jarred into turning prematurely due to the aggressively impatient honking of cars behind me. Made anxious by impatient drivers and somewhat blinded by the intense sunlight of that afternoon, I pulled far out into the intersection, thinking that the truck I saw coming in the right lane with his blinker on was turning. Too far out to go back, I saw too late that the driver of the truck had changed his mind and was coming straight towards me. I accelerated into the turn, sure that I would still make it before the truck. It was then a speeding car in the left oncoming lane that I had not seen struck me at 70 mph on the passenger’s side.

When the car struck me, I had been listening to classical music on the radio. At that almost indescribable point of impact, I thought that the music sounded angelic. I did know at first whether I was dead or alive, but I will never forget what I thought at that uncertain moment. “I hope that I am dead,” I thought, wanting the pain of anorexia to end. But that fraction of a second was quickly replaced with reality. I found myself covered in a burning powder, shaking uncontrollably. A man came to my car door and told me to come out. “It’s okay,” he said, and he held me while I sobbed. “I’ve called the police.” I shook in his arms and slowly looked around. There was an unnatural green fluid oozing from my car down and down the road of the blocked intersection. I remember focusing on that green fluid, not sure what it was, but feeling that it was awfully surreal. Then I noticed just how much my face and arms were burning. I just held them up to the strange man and said in between sobs, “I’m bbburning!” I also noticed that my right hip was throbbing from a tremendous bruise caused by my seatbe;t buckle.

The firefighters got there first and told me I should not have gotten out of my car. I thought to myself, how on earth could I have stayed in there? They told the Good Samaritan man he could go, and I just said, “Thank you so much.” I really did not want to see him go, and I will forever be grateful to him for being there at the most horrifying moment of my life. One of the firefighters gave me his cell phone and told me to call my parents. I called my mother first, who was teaching at school, but her phone was turned off. I started to really panic because she was really the only one I wanted, but I called my father. He picked up and I did my best to get out the words that I had been in a wreck. He asked me if I was going to the hospital, and I asked one of the firemen. He said yes, and that an ambulance was on the way. My dad sad he would meet me there, and I hung up with my heart pounding through my chest. The haze of the surreal moment was replaced by a growing realization of what had happened. I realize now I never did look at my car, and when I later found out how much damage there was and close the impact had come to a lethal angle, I am glad that I didn’t.

Right before the ambulance arrived, the police told me that the woman who had struck me wanted to see me. I felt not an ounce of blame towards her, and I was passionately afraid that she might be hurt. When she came running towards me I was relieved to see she was fine, and we sobbed into each other’s arms. She just told me over and over, “I am so sorry; I am so sorry.” I told her, “It’s okay; I am the one who’s sorry” and I truly meant it. I harbored no resentment. Later I was told that I should not have said I was sorry, because that implicated me as the one at fault. I do not regret apologizing though, and I would do it again. The police then asked me a few questions about the wreck, but I honestly do not remember a word of what I told them.

I do not remember much about the ambulance ride except that I felt unfairly judged by one of the EMTs. She asked me to show her my driver’s license, which had been handed to me by the police, and said, “You’re awfully thin, aren’t you.” I felt further accused of being anorexic (the crime which I felt she judged as the cause of my wreck) and also commented on the prominent veins in my arms and wrists. I just told her it was because I worked out a lot, but truthfully they had been like that ever since I gotten so thin. I have never felt as alone as I did in that ambulance. I did not have my family with me, I did not know if I had been seriously injured, and I felt mistreated by the EMT. As much as I will forever thank that man who was there in the first moments of my wreck, I will never forgive that woman for treating me so indelicately.

Thanks to God, I had no injuries other than a deep bruise on my hip and some slight burns on my face and arms from the air bag deploying. In the days following the wreck, I was very sore and was told to stay off of my feet. Yet, even though I had come close to dying my greatest anxiety was not being able to complete my eating and exercise routine. If I had had my way, I would have been back to the gym the day after my wreck. I was used to living in pain, and I even found solace in it. Besides worrying about missing my first week of college, my sole concern was whether or not the lack of exercise was causing me to lose weight. It wasn’t until later that the full consequence of my wreck became apparent.

My experience.part 4

IV. The summer before college

After I graduated high school, I was the thinnest I had ever been. Mid-summer I had to make a difficult choice that led to even more weight loss. My father was out of town, and my sister, a competitive dancer, had a week-long competition in Orlando. Everyone was afraid to leave me home alone, so I had to make the decision to either stay with my uncle in Minnesota or go with my mom and sister to Orlando. I decided to go to Orlando, because at the time my mother was the only one from which I did not have to laboriously hide my suffering. But away from my food rituals, there was little for me to eat. I had brought what I could from home, but my rations were quickly depleted. At one point my mother got so scared and desperate that she told the hotel staff that I was very sick with anorexia and begged to have a microwave placed in the room. This way I could at least eat a little. I remember sitting in the corner of the room where all of the little dancers at the convention were congregated, watching my mom march up to the front desk, and feeling low enough to die.

Even though we were at Disney World, I didn’t feel the least inclined to go out of the hotel. I was so weak that the crowds and hot Florida sun only drained me further. I did go out with my mother and sister twice, but the events are a blur. I began to have trouble walking because my muscles were so tight and dehydrated; yet I still ran every morning at the hotel gym. I remember the excruciating pain of dragging myself there, feeling every muscle in my legs strain and throb from malnourished abuse and knowing that it was only going to get worse. It was also at this time that sitting down became painful. Every possible angle seemed to dig into my tailbone, which had become disturbingly prominent. I could no longer take baths without bruises. Still, my resolution was the strongest thing in me. It was a cycle of energy in, energy expended—but always more expended.

When we got back from Orlando, my mother was beside herself with concern. She took me to the doctor and discovered that I had lost several pounds that week. I was angry when I found that I had not lost as much weight as I thought. I had spend the last week eating even less, running even more, and feeling more physical pain than I ever had. I thought I deserved more. I wanted my weight to reflect just how broken I was, and I knew that I had reached a new, horrendous level of self-inflicted rules. At so many points in my struggle with anorexia, my obsession with weight was a result of wanting my body to match the wretchedness of my heart and mind. It was only very early in the course of the disease that I ever thought I looked good.

College was just around the corner, and even though my parents were apprehensive, I think they were both hoping it would make things better. I was never one to do well with idle time, being overly ruminative and self-critical; so I think they thought being busier might help dull the feverish workings of my mind. Truth be told, I had an ominous feeling that college might make me worse. I feared that the pressure and anxiety of choosing a career path would make me cling to my disordered safety-net even more.

My experience.part 3

III. Senior Year

I was so proud of myself that first day back at school. I thought I looked just as good as the girls at whom I had modeled my look. There was only one problem—their skirts were still shorter. After all of the energy I had expended in creating my perfect look, this was unacceptable. So, I rolled my already hemmed skirt. I truly believe that this is when the trouble began.

One day in class, I got my first detention. I was astounded and humiliated. My sin? My skirt was too short. This was patently unfair, for in that very same religion class sat the girl with the shortest skirt in school. I walked out of the room, dizzy with shame, and went to the bathroom to sob. I could not fathom how one girl with a skirt shorter than mine could prance around unimpeded for four years, while I, just days after implementing my new look, was found guilty. Left without a good answer for the injustice, I interpreted the incident as a personal stab against me. I had never been liked by my peers at that school. I was quiet and studious and, I suppose now, not very approachable in my severity. But I thought that, by looking thin and cute in a skirt that fit my petite little body flatteringly, I could gain a foothold in popularity. After receiving my first detention, however, I felt that my chance to do that was shot. This is when I believe I truly became ill.

As the year passed, I lost so much weight that my period stopped. Before long, my mother took me to a psychiatrist for the first time. I will never forget that visit. My psychiatrist was an overweight woman who actually specialized in overeating. She took one look at me and said, “Step on the scale.” When I saw my weight, I was pleased. I thought I had lost just the right amount. Yet, she didn’t let me enjoy the fruits of my labor for long. “If you lose any more weight,” she said, “You will have to be admitted to the hospital.” I shirked from her severe condemnation and said, brightly, “Well, it could definitely be worse.” Her response was cold. “Yes, but not much.” After her undiplomatic assessment of me, I applaud my past self for continuing the appointment with aplomb. I remember sitting up in my chair very straight, trying to look as unfazed as possible while tears were threatening to well in my eyes. Because I had just taken AP Biology, a course that I had both loved and excelled at, I decided to broach the subject objectively and scientifically, thinking she would find my calm demeanor and logic admirable. I asked her some questions about the biology of eating restriction and why it caused cessation of menstruation. I also asked her about how antidepressants, which she wanted to prescribe for me, really worked. I think it would not have hurt her to respond kindly, but she continued to be cold with me. “The biology is too complicated for you to understand,” she said, “And anyway, I don’t have the time to go into it.” My brave façade crumbled and the tears did come. She did not comment on my reaction and briskly wrote a prescription for Zoloft.

When I walked crying out of the office, leaning on my mom, I felt so broken. It seemed that everyone had found fault with me. My father said I was ugly, my teacher singled me out for noncompliance, and a medical professional had prescribed me a death sentence at what I thought was a fairly healthy weight. I felt so, so alone that winter, which only served to fuel my restrictive eating. In a similar yet more severe mindset than the one I had developed over the summer, I was committed to do something right, and for me, that was not eating. I did not consider myself anorexic until, after repeated medical visits, that label was thrust on me. I hold the medical community responsible for the escalation of my disorder and ascribe it more blame than even my abusive father. I will discuss why this is later, but let it suffice to say for now that the diagnosis of anorexia merely serves as added incentive to not eat. My reasoning after being harshly diagnosed was, “there is no way I am anorexic—I’m not thin enough!” I want to make very clear just how typical of anorexic reasoning this is, and how sometimes diagnoses may merely compound the disorder.


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After my traumatic visit to the psychiatrist, my already fragile condition plummeted. I liked how I looked, and I knew the other girls at school were jealous. I couldn’t imagine going back to a regular weight—I desperately needed the attentions it garnered. But that was less than half of it now. Mostly, I just found that I could not stop. It provided a kind of comfort and reliability that nothing else could. It was as if not eating made things simpler and cleaner. Eating was messy; I wanted simplicity. The irony was that not eating made things much more difficult, because my body had an agenda of its own. The angles of my body grew so sharp that my parents could not look at me in my graduation dress. We were all grateful that I had a robe to wear over it. A snapshot of me taking my diploma from the archbishop has hung on my sister’s wall ever since. My body is swathed in green, while my long hair hid my face. I wanted to get out of the ceremony as soon as I could last night. I didn’t care; how could all of the contrived pomp and circumstance mean anything to me while the physical and emotional pain of not eating held me raptly?

As graduation melted into the first few weeks of summer, I began to realize just how much the disorder had over me. I found ways to rationalize it, to mold my life around it and grant it sovereignty. I had to start thinking about college though, and oh God, how I just wanted life to stop while my internal battle was raging. I quickly realized that it was either college or inpatient treatment, so I strove desperately to hold dual allegiance. I had no choice but to go to the state university in town; I needed the comfort of home at least. I knew college would be difficult enough with the strain of hunger.

My experience. part 2

II. Fiddle Camp

I was absolutely petrified of going to fiddle camp. It involved so many things that made me anxious: being away from home, being among strangers, losing the rigid control over my environment that had always been vital for me. The details of my experience there are interesting but not relevant to my development of anorexia. What is important about my experience is my response. It has always been in my nature to want to perform well and receive praise. I didn’t get a lot of that at home, where my father doggedly focused on my “faults.” At camp, I decided I had two ways to stand out: I could either look good, or play well. I decided on the first day there that I was such a poor fiddle player that I had might as well throw in the bow. That left looking good, or equivalently, being thin. There was one girl at camp that I fixated on. She didn’t play very well, but I determined that because she was thin, the former was cancelled out. Around her, I felt so fat and horrible. That is when I believe I formally made up my mind to do whatever it took to become as thin as her. So, I devoted the remainder of my time at camp to eat as little as possible. Hungry and hot from the Tennessee summer weather, the final days there are somewhat of a blur. I stopped caring about my musicianship; indeed, I never played again after that trip. It was as if my love for music had been replaced by a foul hunger to whittle down extraneous layers.

When I returned from camp several pounds thinner, my parents were immediately alarmed. I remember my father telling me, in his characteristically unhelpful fashion, that my bony shoulder blades looked bad. My mother was more delicate in her approach, as she always was, but I could see that she was worried. I, on the other hand, was happy, in a distorted kind of way. I had successfully lost weight, and more importantly, I had gotten attention. With the summer drawing to a close, I knew I was ready to don my pleated skirt. The problem was maintaining my restricted diet, which began to make normally pleasant stimuli like music and pets jarring. I was absolutely dedicated to my new cause, but my depression grew as I lost interest in everything I used to love. I had always been withdrawn, but I started to isolate myself severely. This was not so much out of active choice than necessity. My new diet demanded constant attention, and I couldn’t allow myself to do anything to jeopardize it. I couldn’t and wouldn’t explain to others that the reason I couldn’t go out was because of inevitable meal times that could only be attended to in a specific, regimented way. I stopped eating dinner with my parents-- never a pleasant activity, as my father always took the opportunity at meal time to berate me for wrongdoings. I stopped taking music lessons, as that passion had died at fiddle camp. My life came to a halt.

My own experience

Hello all,

I have decided to share with you some of what my experience was like when I was sick. Maybe you will see yourself in some of what I experienced; or maybe just knowing that I went through the same thing is comforting. I intend to post it in segments, and I will start at the beginning:

I. The malnourished seeds of discontent

It is silly to say that anorexia is about food. Yes, in its early stages it is about food and a desire for positive feedback, but that stage lasts for only a fraction of the span of the disorder. Dietary restriction merely breathes life to a deadly, inchoate disorder that was always there. I know that this is what happened to me.

It began in high school; a nasty, cutthroat breeding ground for psychopathologies and inner crises. I attended a tightly clique-run school, where everyone had already known each other for years. It breaks my heart to remember just how young and full I was… full of life, full of food. Just a month before beginning ninth grade, I won a songwriting contest. At home among adults and my music, it did not occur to me that I would be rejected by my peers. More importantly for this story, it did occur to me that rules could be broken for some, but never for me.

It may sound trite to emphasize the dire significance of our uniform, but that matronly Land’s End attire changed everything. I remember trying it on a few days before school began, recoiling at the loose, ill-fitted folds on an awkward adolescent body. Our choices of colors for the polo shirts were unappetizing hues, like puce green and washed-out maroon. The plaid or pleated skirt had to be two finger widths above the knee. It fit tightly around the waste, ballooned over my thin hips, and ended at a disproportionate length on my petite frame. My only consolation, of course, was that all of the girls would be in my same, unflattering position….

High school is not fair, and merits and punishments are not doled out equally. I never anticipated that, being an immensely and equality and justice-inclined young girl. However, this is what I soon learned: the most unpleasant, pathologically narcissistic girls at that school could get away with having skirts uncomfortably short. They had their pleated skirts professionally hemmed to be an entire palm above the knee. Everyone saw it; the administration, I am sure, must have known what was going on. Dress code here was so strict, in fact, that the boys were often sent to detention for wearing the “wrong” socks. But those girls, nasty as they were, could get away murder. I did not try to break the rules right way, always having been conscientious and rule-abiding to the point of obsession. But I took note.

My skirt transformation began slowly. I began to do what some of the less brazen girls did—I rolled the waistband. But the waistband was so bulky that eventually, I got tired of having to perfectly hide my tucked-in polo shirt over the incriminating waistband. It wasn’t until late in my junior year that I got my skirt tailored. Fearing impunity, I did not raise it much—not nearly as much as the popular girls. I believe it was at this point that I became enchanted with recreating my image from barely-noticed to at least admired. This was the summer before my senior year.

I spent that summer fixed on one goal only—losing weight. It did not happen all at once; I’d cut out foods that I thought were superfluous anyway, like desserts. The Atkin’s craze was raging at this time, so I started throwing out carbohydrate items. This left me in a bit of a pickle, because I had never liked meat and cheese and eggs (really the only allowable items on this diet) very much. But I religiously made myself omelets, ate hamburger…all of this did not result in much weight loss, but the foundation was being built, irrevocably.

Towards the end of the summer I was forced to go to Mark O’Connor’s fiddle camp. I say “forced” because though at one time I had very much wanted to go, my weight loss fixation demanded so much emotional and physical energy that my music was becoming extraneous. I did not want to spend a week away that I could devote to exercise and eating routines. I also did want to have to “feel bad” about my competency as a musician. That is, I did not want to be placed among professionals that were naturally better than me, only to have one more thing about which to feel inferior. But my father forced me to go. He had spent $700; he thought it was silly for me not to go; I was ungrateful. God, how I wish I had not gone.

It is just "in your head," but not how you might think

People used to get angry at me a lot for being anorexic. Their reasoning was that I was just not trying hard enough to recover. Assuming that anorexia is a choice, or that it can be dropped at will, is a major misconception that is precipitated by society. I believe that although societal pressures on women may play a role in aggravating a predisposition for the disorder, I am certain that anorexia is in fact a result of neurological abnormalities. A few researchers like Dr. Walter Kaye of UC San Diego have proven that the way in which anorexics process information is different than that of "normal" people. According to Dr. Kaye, some people, primarily women, are predisposed towards developing anorexia. During puberty hormonal changes in the body, combined with environmental pressures, can vault that predisposition into a full-blown eating disorder. Dr. Kaye's research has shown that for patients with anorexia, not eating actually improves mood-- the opposite of eating's effect on most people. When a teenage girl predisposed to anorexia starts dieting, she finds that she feels better when she doesn't eat. Thus, she will continue starving not for some body image ideal, as society has told us, but because she just wants to feel better.

What does this all mean? I think it means that the answer lies in research. I will graduate college with a B.S. in Biology this December, and I intend to become as neuroscientist and dedicate my life to researching anorexia. I really think that the more we understand the way in which the brain works in people with anorexia, the better we can treat it. I hope that my commitment to research gives you hope.

The unspoken suffering

I think there is a lot wrong with how anorexia is treated by doctors and other professionals, but I think one of the worst tragedies is how once you've successfully gained back the weight, you are somewhat "off the map." It does seem to me that many doctors consider weight "a sign" of your health. That has most certainly not been the case for me. If anything, the most difficult part of my recovery came after I gained the critical weight. It was as if I was suddenly fixed-- but inside, I felt just the same. For me, the fact that I no longer appeared to be anorexic was an added indignity. It was not that I wanted to look like that again; it was that I wanted everyone to know that I was still suffering. I resented comments like, "you look so healthy!" because I felt anything but.

The fact is, once you have regained physical health, you are no longer easily identifiable as someone suffering from an eating disorder. That's actually great! It is now within your power to choose whether or not to tell your story and to share how you still struggle. I advise telling as many people as is comfortable. I have never regretted telling someone. Now no one thinks I am magically "fixed" but at the same time, I am no longer a walking label and I have the power to choose who knows about what I am feeling inside.

The most important concept I would like for you to glean from this post is that your body is not a reflection of your mind. You do not have to be emaciated in order to justify your inner suffering. I promise that if you share with the people lucky enough to be in your life, you will no longer feel that compulsion to "match" body and mind.

The danger of all things concrete

Today was one of those difficult days in recovery. I had an appointment with my psychiatrist, who makes a point of weighing me every time I see her. Generally I am not too focused on the weight; I know how I look and feel and that suits me just fine. I never weigh myself at home. But something about the number today really bothered me. I knew I had some hormonal activity, which likely contributed to the slight fluctuation, but knowing that didn't help. I became fixated on the event until I realized that it wasn't so much the weight that bothered me, but the number. Once I realized that, I let the obsession go and focused on more important things.

Numbers have always been a problem for me, and I imagine that they are for other anorexics as well. There is something about numbers and figures that aggravates my already obsessive nature. Numbers are so blessedly concrete-- the exact opposite of the cloudy amorphousness that is anxiety. That's why it's easy to think that if you just weigh this specific amount, or eat exactly just this much food, or wear this size, you can keep your anxiety at bay. Unfortunately, this can make anxiety even worse, because you have to work so hard to keep sizes and quantities exact, and what if--by some horrible misfortune--you stray from that number! I work hard, in fact, to strip my life of numbers. I have found that the fewer quantifiable constraints I place on myself, the better.

Numbers are only problematic not only because they stimulate obsessive thinking, but because they can be labels. If you think about it, why would you want to be defined by a number? Numbers like age, weight, and height are depersonalizing. I would rather be known for my personality or accomplishments than my physical dimensions. In the end, that is what we will all be known for, anyway. So don't devote your time and energy to numbers--they are no solution to anxiety, and they don't define you in any significant way.

The process of adding back

Anorexia takes so much away. I have lost friends, family members, and even passions in the course of this disease. Some things, like playing the violin, I can't seem to reclaim just because I am constantly reminded of why I stopped playing. It's amazing how long you can live passionless, fulfilling just the barest minimum of requirements, after you have lived with anorexia. But I have come to believe that one of the most crucial aspects of recovery is focusing on adding to back to your life. Sometimes you can't go back to the way things were, but you can add new things, things you have never done before. I may not be able to play the violin again, but I would love to learn the guitar. I think that anorexia thrives on minimalism and asceticism, so prevent that by filling your life with new people, hobbies, or experiences. I have found that this indirectly weakens the hold of anorexia. You learn that you do deserve more, and that it's possible to be happy again.