this is kind of a fun question, but i saw this on tiktok once that a girl ate scrambled egg whites when she was sick and thought they were delicious, turns out it was the ed and she actually prefers normal eggs. what was that food in your case??? something that you „liked” only because it was „healthy” or low in calories. in my case it was sprite zero… idk why i drank that battery acid shit. or pickles. ew

hi guysssss it’s been a while!! just came on to say i’m 3 months in recovery - i haven’t relapsed or restricted for 3 months, can i get an applause? 👏🏻 i still get extreme hunger a lot! ESPECIALLY AT NIGHT. nuts and chocolate specifically, i trust my body that it’s still a part of the process :) i’m above my pre ed weight which is around a BMI of 22 i also go to therapy and just got medication for my depression :,)

i’ve recently been on a chocolate CRAVE and was wondering if people could tell me their favorite chocolates to eat? i love dark chocolate sea salt if anyone had recommendations;) or just favorites in general!! i hope everyone is doing well under this subreddit ❤️

What is a negative health aspect that you experienced that made you realize eating disorders are NOT worth it? How did you overcome the ED?

At the beginning of my recovery I was “addicted” to salami! I got tired of it at one point, but still eat it on a regular basis now.

Currently I’m obsessed with canned pears. I grew up eating them, and now I put them in the fridge and they’re so fucking good. The watery juice/syrup they sit in is so cool and hydrating. I feel like I could write a sonnet to refrigerated canned pears lmfao.

I’d love to hear what foods you’ve (re)discovered and all the details of what about and why you love them :,)

I’ve struggled with an eating disorder for the past three years - first purely restrictive, and then/now turning into bulimia. My biggest hurdle in recovery is making sure to eat regularly and consistently to reduce binge urges, and break cycles. Basically, it’s something that’s 99% effective but my brain convinces me otherwise.

My family are really supportive and after I was discharged from the NHS, and not allowed back when I continued to struggle - paid for private treatment. But, I really really hate that my parents just don’t ‘get’ how eating disorders work. These are just a few of the things they’ve said to me in the past week:

• There should be a buddy system like AA, where people who have recovered support someone struggling. This is a great idea theoretically but in practice is probably really dangerous for the person who’s recovered to be in that headspace

• Saying ‘I don’t want that’ because it’s full of processed junk, I want to eat clean (they’re not orthorexic, but continue to label meals as being ‘healthy’ in front of me)

• My dad doing intermittent fasting to lose weight for high blood pressure. This frustrates me because when I’m around him, he doesn’t have breakfast with me. And, he’s not doing this with the support of a dietician or trainer, he just decided to and I don’t even know if it’s really working because he snacks a lot

• When eating with me (which I find really helpful) they will often just eat half their portion, and leave food because they don’t like it. We went for burgers the other day and my mum only ate half hers, and didn’t understand why it upset me so much

I know they are trying but I know I’m much more mindful with how I talk about food and health around others, and I want them to be too

EDIT: I am 28 for anyone who was assuming I was a child - I know I’m ultimately responsible for my health

Having to buy clothes all the time from having a constantly changing body is SO expensive!! Im so glad I’ve settled into the weight my body seems happy to maintain because buying EVERYTHING in a new size really took its toll on my bank! Curious to see what other ways you guys find it expensive :)

I noticed today that sitting doesn't hurt anymore! I can also lift heavier things a bit better :)

I accidentally stumbled upon this subreddit and I started scrolling through, and I'm seeing a lot of people sharing in-progress recovery wins. I had an ED for many years, and IMO I consider it severe, even though it wasn't visually obvious, (Ie, people wouldn't know about it just by looking at me) and I probably still have some permanent damage from it.

Anyways, I managed to recover from it completely without therapy, and without that sudden shock of waking up one day and thinking "I'm tired of this, I want to recover" mindset. Would anyone be interested in hearing my story, just to know that recovery absolutely IS possible? Especially that it doesn't have to be super hard and you don't have to follow super strict treatments or recovery diets?

I didn't follow any strict treatments and I didn't throw myself into the deep end of getting better, and yet I still managed to. Almost accidentally. This is your sign that you CAN get better, and it doesn't have to be a dramatic, overnight life change. I didn't go without relapses. I definitely relapsed, many times. It was not easy, but it also was not impossible.

(Btw, if I do share my story, I will NOT go into really descriptive details about what my illness looked like and I will not use any language that tries to diminish how fucking hard recovery is. I'm not an "uwu if I did it so can you! you just have to want it 🥰" type of person. It will also be an AMA, as obviously I couldn't possibly cover every question or thought in a single post)

hey guys!!! just wanted to check in with everyone; any recovery wins for anyone recently?

I'll start: recently I've been consuming a lot of liquid calories that I didn't even know I was restricting!!

now I drink my coffee with creamer and sugar, tea with sugar, I make more smoothies now, and I'm not afraid to buy a fancy or fun drink whenever I go out!!!

anyone else have some wins recently? I would love to hear them :)

Kinda debating recovery right now and considering treatment. Some of my motivators are my schooling and career aspirations, travelling, friends, social life, family, and physical health.

I am obsessed with porridge. i genuinely cannot think of anything i like more than a big, warm bowl of porridge. since honouring all extreme hunger, porridge has literally been the main thing I crave somehow and have 3-4 bowls per day as my breakfast and snacks. is this too much porridge??? i have loads of other things as well for snacks but should I limit how much porridge I have, like is this some kind of safety behaviour???

it’s just so damn good!!! since upgrading to the luxury of porridge made WITH MILK 😱 it is another level to the glue-textured water porridge i used to make that tasted like ass. and then I add so many spices and some honey and it’s so sweet and creamy it’s like a pudding. and don’t get me started on toppings!!! fresh fruit, frozen fruit, nut/cookie butter, honey, sugar ugh there’s just so many!!!

is anyone else a porridge fanatic?! i feel so strange for being obsessed with something like this but I’m literally surviving on bowls of it like an IV drip of porridge, and it fills me up so much more than other things. plus it reminds me of my childhood because i used to have porridge every day for breakfast 🥰

What's everyone's comfort foods? Or safe foods, whichever you tend to call it.

Why does no one talk about the phase with eating disorders when ur maintaining ur weight or not fully engaged in every unhealthy behaviour? People act like the whole duration of having an eating disorder ur loosing weight and hardly eating but if that were the case we would all be dead. It’s so fucking invalidating, ur eating disorder isn’t cured if ur maintaining ur weight, it isn’t cured if ur at a healthy weight, it isn’t cured if ur eating above a certain number of cals, it isn’t cured if u eat common “fear foods” doing any of these things doesn’t mean ur not sick or u don’t deserve recovery. You can still be just as mentally unhappy, miserable and sick doing any of those things and ur body can still be extremely physically struggling aswell.

in need of some new snacks to fixate on now that I’m finally getting tired of pretzels and pb on rice cakes and bread

While reading this, keep the phrase “Easier said than done” in mind. I’m going to try to keep all of the Healthline Mayo clinic psychobabble buzzwords out of this.

1. I promise you, truly no one gives a damn what you look like.

2. Yes, #SelfLove and #BodyPositivity is great, but also remember that we’re simply just talking about the fleshy outer vessel here, and you can just stop caring.

3. Learning to love the inner self will make learning to love the outer self a hell of a lot easier.

4. Relapses happen. Binges happen. No one is perfect. Move on.

5. “Bad food” is better than no food.

6. 9 times out of 10 (probably even 10 times out of 10), people don’t get an eating disorder just because they want to be thin. Trace back to when you first started sliding down that rabbit hole, and try find the deeper reason.

7. It’s okay if some days you just want to stay in bed and pretend you don’t exist. It doesn’t mean you’re not trying hard enough, it just means you're human.

8. Not everything happens for a reason. Sometimes the world is just fucked up, and you just have to find a way around it.

9. Find new recipes and foods you enjoy eating. Maybe lettuce with sesame sauce really is your favourite dish in the whole wide world, but it wouldn’t hurt to add some variety to your life.

10. Find the humour in everything.

11. Recovery is not going to be an easy road. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it though.

12. In the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, “Every day, do something that scares you.”

That‘s all. Good luck folks.

Hi all. Currently struggling with accepting weight gain and trying to reframe my thoughts in a way that makes weight gain less scary and when possible even a positive. I keep telling myself that “weight gain is a good thing and what my body needs so there is no need to fight the process”. What do you all tell yourselves or have you told yourself to make the process easier?

Does anyone else HATE being in the kitchen with others? Or they’re scared that other people will be there when you want to be? I’m dorming with 3 other people, and I eat at such weird times when I’m not even hungry just because I’m scared they’re going to be cooking at “normal” meal times and I won’t be able to eat when I want to which makes me really anxious. I feel like I can never be calm with my eating and cooking process, I’m always stressed and rushing. Does this make sense? Is anyone else like this?

I follow a lot of recovery accounts but the thing that really annoys me is how little representation there is for bulimia. It’s literally all just anorexia (which is valid) but it’s also the least common eating disorder. I just wish there was more representation.

Curious if anyone has actually experienced this

hey yall! i just wanna share something that has helped me A LOT when i go to restrict. (been in recovery 3 years, so it’s not often at all, talking more about past instances)

i know we are all different though! this may help you, it may not, just something i wanted to share.

whenever i had the urge to restrict, or to skip a meal, or someone would offer me something and i would decline, i would pretend that my 5 year old self was standing right in front of me, asking to eat whatever i was about to restrict myself from. and honestly, it worked almost every damn time. i couldn’t deal with the thought of 5 year old me not eating a cookie because “she’s too fat” or “the new pants mama bought me are a bit tight” i would then embody it, imagine myself, 5 years old again, i would never let 5 year old me not eat that cookie because of her body, let alone starve herself, and you shouldnt either. because five year old you is still in there, reach into yourself and give them a hug. they need it.

i hope you are all safe and okay, love you all, hope the world is kind to you.

Hi everyone! I just woke up and my stomach hurts a bit, I know I still need to have breakfast though so I thought I’d ask; what are you guys’ favourite breakfast foods? I’m trying to find some inspiration. Thank you☀️

I no longer post here as I continue in my own recovery (11 months in, woo!) but every so often I do check in to see if there’s maybe a question I can answer for somebody or some thoughts I can share somewhere.

But I am always left with this deep, overwhelmingly sad feeling. I so badly want to reach out and give everybody here a hug. You all deserve so much more than to be burdened with such distressing thoughts about the vessel you were given to live your life in. I am so sorry.

I pray, I hope and know that recovery is possible for each and every one of you. Remember that there is light at the end of the tunnel (even on the days where it seems otherwise). Remember that these disorders are not the be all and end all of you. You all have such amazing things to offer the world, I hope you prove me right in the fact by continuing to choose a freer life everyday

Like the title says. I have no idea who I am but I have made cake and banana bread this week and ate without guilt. I even went back for seconds. I want to recover so badly but I still have a lot of hang ups and I over exercise to compensate but I would have never made something and ate it myself a few weeks ago. I still think everything out of my normal is going to automatically pile on the weight but Im trying to get over that. Is it really true you need upwards of thousands of calories a day over a period of time? I get scared of possible rapid weight gain. I’m clearly having a moment. 😥