“I gained more than just weight.”
One of the biggest obstacles in recovering from an eating disorder is healing the body. It is going through weight restoration to get the body back to a healthy and flourishing state. It is finding peace with body size while experiencing rapid physical changes.
When blinded by anorexia, this was the most terrifying aspect of recovery for me. The disease convinced me that all I had worked hard for would be destroyed, leaving me vulnerable. And I believed that for so long. I thought that remaining in a compromised state of health would be acceptable because I would like the way I looked. I believed that if anything changed with my body, I would not be able to live the life I wanted to. I had the idea in my mind that I had to look a certain way, fit a certain body type, and fit into clothes a certain way to feel happy.
I was searching for relief rather than recovery. I wanted my life but I didn’t want weight gain. In my mind, these two things were mutually exclusive.
In reality, weight restoration leads to life restoration.
I finally realized I cannot live a life that honors God, loves my being, or promotes joy while in a depleted body. It took two years for me to accept this, and it took a lot of experiences with visceral fear, great failure, and many lost opportunities to have my eyes completely opened. As I gained weight, I gained life.
I gained the ability to be present in each moment and with loved ones.
I gained a smile that no longer brought physical pain.
I gained the energy to laugh, worship, dance, and play.
I gained peace.
My laugh was restored.
My beating heart was restored.
My brain was restored.
As someone with an eating disorder, it is difficult to see past the immediate body changes and discomfort of weight restoration. The body is the one piece of control that instills a sense of security when facing anxiety, depression, OCD, trauma, and fear. It is easy to blame the difficulty of recovery on the body and restoration.
Once you see past the lie of the eating disorder that you are nothing in a different body, you begin to see the recovery process for what it is. But that is a post for another time.
But I promise that with the truly positive body changes come positive life changes, and the small things become the sweet things that mean the most.
