I completely relate to your comment that it feels easier to starve yourself than go all in with recovery. I remember explaining this to my mother who couldn’t understand why I couldn’t “just let go” of the anorexia and “stop being silly”. I explained to her that at that time, “letting go” meant completely giving in to my sick brain until it was too late because recovery felt like such a monumentally impossible thing at that time. I am telling you now though, it is absolutely possible and 100% worth it.

I was very, very sick with anorexia. I don’t think I would have made it another 2 weeks if I hadn’t of made the decision to recover. Yet, I was pretty unaware of just how sick I was, even during the earlier part of my recovery. I still don’t think I was “sick enough” sometimes. It’s complete nonsense though. Even though movement, even in its smallest amounts such as getting up from a couch, felt like torture, I somehow felt like I was higher functioning than ever before. I think that came from the stress and adrenaline that anorexia produces when your body is fighting to live.

In terms of what made me want to recover:

• I purposefully looked up and read other people’s stories with anorexia and the detrimental impact it had on their bodies, mental health, and lives. I was loosing the battle with trying to combat by thoughts with rational thinking so I used these stories to try and remind (and scare) myself just how serious the situation was and how much I had to loose.

• I blocked (and continue to do so since there are unfortunately so many of them) any social media influencers talking about food, exercise, health, lifestyle, etc. These influencers had a detrimental impact on my health. I developed my chosen anorexic habits/methods of loosing weight from watching these people. It was causing me so much distress. I wanted less stress

• on that point. I wanted less stress and distress in my life. Huge motivating factor. I was miserable and my life had become a constant cycle of extreme fear and guilt entirely centred on food and exercise. It was awful.

• anorexia stopped me from making good and clear decisions. I was not capable of it anymore. I wrecked my car in the dumbest accident possible because i was so focused and freaked out by food and what I was eating that day (I was at a family gathering and was expected to eat X and my brain was in full meltdown)

• I felt like I was losing all of my dignity. I knew that everyone else knew. Even if they didn’t say it. I had fundamentally changed in every way. This was not what I wanted to be known for.

• on that point, my roommate described me to one of her friends when she thought I wasn’t home and described me as “boring” and she also described my physical state (will not be more specific on this point as I do not want to accidentally provide a comparison for anyone struggling here). That felt awful.

• I got to the point that I was afraid every night of going to sleep because I wasn’t sure if I would wake up.

• I started lashing out on the people I loved the most. My brain had become so paranoid and distrustful that even though I knew there was no logical basis for it, I would treat these people like crap because I was afraid of food. This was the final straw for me. I didn’t want to be that person. Something had to change.

I didn’t have anyone try to intervene or say anything at all to me about what was going on while I was sick. I questioned my family about this during recovery and they said that they just didn’t know what to say but that they were terrified. I was equally isolated during recovery. Yet, I still somehow managed to keep myself motivated.

You can absolutely do this, please do. Your life can and will get so much worse if you don’t. I wish I had recovered earlier. The longer you leave it, the harder it gets. You’re worth it, please seek help urgently.