My battle with anorexia came to a gradual end in around 2015, shortly before I met my boyfriend. I’d been unwell for around 3 years, after suffering a breakdown during my second year at university and having to suspend my studies for a year.

For me, there is no great marker as to when I felt I had ‘recovered,’ I didn’t wake to an epiphany that I could no longer live a life of starvation and obsession, but counselling and an understanding GP had slowly allowed me to move away from my unhealthy behaviours and back into a somewhat normality with food.

Yet for so long I used the word recovered to describe my relationship with anorexia. I never even thought twice about using this term. I was no longer actively anorexic, therefore I must be recovered. I don’t starve myself, overexercise or obsess over numbers, so I’m all fixed.

But in the last year, I have learnt that this word does not accurately describe my relationship with my old friend, anorexia, and I have shifted my language to incorporate the phrase ‘weight-restored’ more often than not.

Whilst I no longer starve myself on a daily basis, I have had multiple days in the last 12 months where I have eaten nothing at all, and it has startled me how quickly I can return to that mindset. Whereas on a normal day I love food and would count down the hours to lunch during boring days in my office, I found at times I could easily revert to an obsession with calories and survive filling my stomach with calorie-free fizzy drinks, often triggered by external stress in my life. I felt the buzz of restriction and the feeling of success at making it to the end of the day without food. I also regularly find myself considering my weight, calories in food, and how to sneak in exercise to try and reduce my weight. I have regularly paced area with the sole purpose of burning calories. Thankfully, these moments are often short-lived.

Whilst this is nowhere near my extreme behaviour during my throws of anorexia, and I’m not even slightly close to relapsing, I am now able to acknowledge that these behaviours are the result of my illness, and may not be present in a ‘healthy population.’ As such, I consider my anorexia to be under control, or in remission. It may well return one day, although I sincerely hope not, I have to admit I continue to experience some of the mental symptoms of the disorder, albeit not to the full extent of my previous experience.

‘Weight-restored’ for me is more reflective of how I feel. I am not physically experiencing anorexia; I am a healthy- (if not over-) weight individual yet I continue to have moments where anorexia sinks her destructive claws into me and I’m forced to fight her off once more. Mentally, however, I can go back to that space quickly, and just as intensely as before.  It takes a mammoth effort to silence these urges and to remind myself my life now is much healthier, happier, and freer.

This may well always be the case, and I may never feel comfortable using the term ‘recovered’ in future. And you know what, that’s okay.

L

x