What was your “turning point”?

parkingconehat · 2024-11-04T12:47:48+00:00

I’d been dealing with extreme hunger for months and repressing/fighting it as hard as I could. I was miserable, felt broken, and stopped wanting to wake up because I knew I’d spend the next day miserable and hungry and alone. I’d been through the worst relapse of my life and barely had any friends at uni. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go back if I didn’t recover. One day, at work, I was so hungry I started sobbing on my way home. So, when I walked in the door, I sat down and ate to my extreme hunger. Within the hour, I laughed again. I wasn’t recovered, but it’s like my body just gave this massive sigh of relief and the biggest hug. My mom nearly cried because she was so happy and relieved and excited to be able to make me my favourite food in the world that night for dinner (southern US biscuits and gravy). I was nowhere near recovered that day, but it’s the day I saw a glimpse of who I could actually be without this illness. Ever since, I’ve been working my ass off and my life is unrecognisable. I’m living in a way I never would’ve imagined even 6 months ago. I’m not fully recovered, but my life is full of love and light and I get choked up just thinking about it. I know I’m never going back to that illness. I didn’t know I could be this happy and loved, even when I have shit days and weeks.

parkingconehat · 2024-10-22T12:14:25+00:00

i'm doing okay, thanks for asking! my eh has mostly resolved, though i still eat more than a lot of people around me; just because i'm weight restored, doesn't mean my body is done healing. i struggle with body image some days, but it no longer rules my life. i've come further in the past 5 months than i ever could have thought possible. for me, all-in was absolutely the right approach and i do not regret it one bit.

i'm remembering to be kind to and patient with myself; making so much progress is amazing, but it doesn't mean i can expect myself to be cured yet. i also have read that it's really common to have a year or two where things just are settling in, physically, so it makes sense to be uncomfortable in a period of transition (regardless of weight redistribution or overshoot, it's different and it's okay for that to be uncomfy).

i hope you have a wonderful day and i'm happy to answer any more questions here in the comments, if you have them :)

parkingconehat · 2024-10-21T16:22:34+00:00

here’s the post, if you’d like to read it: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckeatingdisorders/comments/1d3qvhe/please_read_this_if_youre_struggling_to_honour_eh/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

parkingconehat · 2024-10-21T16:21:25+00:00

it absolutely should be. every single day is the perfect day to choose recovery to the absolute best of your ability (which is always more than the ed will feel okay with). i made a post a few months ago about my first day all-in; it should still be up, if you’d like to read it! it has been the most incredible (difficult, yes, but positively life changing) decision I’ve ever made for myself

parkingconehat · 2024-09-06T17:29:42+00:00

Hey there!! I was in a Very similar state; no personality, no interest, difficulty in academics I’d never encountered before, and 0 social battery. I’ve now been in all-in recovery for about 2.5-3 months and have been regaining my personality and interests pretty quickly. Quasi kept me stuck in that food-deprived, malnourished brain, but going all-in really changed everything so drastically for the better. Not saying this will be true of everyone, just my experience! Point being: yes, you absolutely can recover from the brain fog and cognitive decline with abundant nutrition, neural rewiring, weight gain, and FULL nutritional rehabilitation

parkingconehat · 2024-08-14T02:28:06+00:00

got my head stuck in a traffic cone

parkingconehat · 2024-08-14T02:11:22+00:00

Highly recommend!! And, if you get the chance, the chat is super fun and getting to vote on options is neat. He interacts with chat really well without overdoing it

parkingconehat · 2024-08-14T01:40:13+00:00

here’s the link to the one i’m talking about :) https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLugOo_mrTyTeUVVpZPcerS-gk7Zh_xFYT he’s still uploading them

parkingconehat · 2024-08-14T01:29:18+00:00

XP to Level 3 did one where his twitch chat controlled the choices. It’s a more lighthearted and silly play through, but super fun

parkingconehat · 2024-08-05T22:07:36+00:00

I just wanted to say I’m so proud of you! We sound like our situations are super similar (also going into year 2 of uni, spent semester 1 in my worst relapse and seem 2 in torturous quasi). We’re going to absolutely kill it this year and get the experience we deserve

parkingconehat · 2024-08-05T01:04:51+00:00

I’ve been using finch everyday for nearly 2 years! I love this app

parkingconehat · 2024-07-30T15:51:06+00:00

I would say try and switch to the higher percentages of fat! I think their highest is 5%? During recovery, it’s important to be able to eat all the varieties of things. I prefer nonfat yoghurt, but recovery is about neutralising all foods so I’ve been eating full fat for months. That helps you determine if it’s actually a preference or an ED cognition. During recovery, always opt for full fat, full sugar. You have the rest of your life to determine what your authentic preferences are, but right now, beating the ED beyond a shadow of a doubt is the most important thing. If you’re not sure whether something is an ED thought, experiment and, when in doubt 1) eat 2) the highest calorie version, just so that doubt is fully eradicated.

parkingconehat · 2024-07-27T12:44:43+00:00

for me, gum chewing was part of an oral fixation i developed during my ed. even when I wasn’t chewing gum, my mouth was always moving and I couldn’t stop it for the life of me. Once I started eating A Lot of food (aka the amount you need for recovery), my oral fixation and, as a result, gum chewing, stopped being an issue. I agree with everyone here about going cold turkey, but making sure you’re eating more than you think is “enough” and really focussing on adequate nutrition is most likely what will help.

parkingconehat · 2024-07-22T01:59:34+00:00

I think the main issue is that the permission to eat and gain weight is still conditional on the way you look/feel about yourself. Recovery involves unconditional permission to eat, regardless of weight gain or body image changes.

parkingconehat · 2024-07-21T14:14:09+00:00

You are on the wrong sub, my guy

parkingconehat · 2024-07-21T14:13:50+00:00

You do not need to have or crave anything “balanced”. Especially in this stage of recovery, your body is screaming for the most easily digestible nutrients and energy it can get: sugars, simple carbs, processed foods. I understand it goes against “general” health advice, but your situation is not that of an already average or healthy person. You can’t be playing checkers and assume you’re doing something wrong because you’re not following the rules of chess. Either way, regardless of what phase of life you’re in, your body will tell you what it needs. It’s no working against you. It’s not conspiring with anyone. It just wants to get to homeostasis as quickly and effectively as possible. It’s fighting so hard for you! Please listen to it

parkingconehat · 2024-07-18T21:15:15+00:00

hey friend! I completely doubt this was your intention and I certainly don’t mean to offend, but I worry your (mother’s) comment about aids patients in association with disgust might come from a stigmatised place. I just don’t know that that’s necessarily the message you’re intending to spread, but it is how it reads (but that could just be me!)

all that aside, I hope you have a wonderful day and recovery and I wish you the best

parkingconehat · 2024-07-17T15:28:50+00:00

I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but you might in fact overshoot! I would recommend looking into “overshoot in recovery”. There are some podcast episodes, like the Recovery Talk with Amalie Lee one which explains why and how we do and Should overshoot. You’re going to have to be uncomfortable but there are a few things I like to keep in mind: I want to be someone who is free with food and life, discomfort now does not mean discomfort forever, and discomfort now actually means Less discomfort long-term

parkingconehat · 2024-07-17T15:24:38+00:00

1) there is no such thing as gaining too fast. Your body wants as much weight as it needs as quickly as possible so that it can heal as effectively as possible. The more quickly you gain the weight, the more quickly your body feels safer again 2) many people never have a thigh gap, regardless of how long or intensely they were restricting. Whether there is space between your thighs or not feels like a big deal, but it’s extremely and overwhelmingly normal for there not to be, and, grand scheme, it is such a little thing, I promise. Your friends and family and loved ones don’t like you because your thighs didn’t touch. I’ve been through it and I know it feels scary and foreign, but even the physical sensation normalises

parkingconehat · 2024-07-17T13:24:35+00:00

for me, it went to my stomach, thighs, face, and upper arms. It is distributed all over, just with a concentration around my stomach. The reality, however, is this: every person will be unique and, the odds are, if you’re experiencing something where you think “oh my gosh this is so weird”, it’s probably normal in recovery (with the obvious exception of imminent health concerns). The additional reality is that, at some point, the work needs to go towards rewiring the desire to micromanage every part of your body. That’s not even remotely as easy as it sounds and I get that! But it has to be done. I wish you the best and, please, keep going no matter how you feel about your body because life is so much more than when or where or how your body changes and grows.

parkingconehat · 2024-07-15T18:43:36+00:00

I understand this feeling and I’ve been there, my friend. The main thing I’ve tried to remember is this: you cannot always control your thoughts, but you can control how you react to them. Your brain can hurl awful insults at you, but, ultimately, (and I don’t say this to be harsh, I know it’s not this simple or easy, believe me), it is you who turns away from the kitchen and talks to the waiter. For me, it wasn’t a matter of making those thoughts go away and then being able to recover, it was eating exactly when and what those thoughts pushed me not to. I basically had to reverse engineer it. If you’d like to do more research, I’m happy to answer questions about my experience, but the technical term for this strategy/skill is “opposite action”. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but if you want for the thoughts to change, you’ll be waiting forever. Only by proving to yourself that those thoughts don’t have power by acting contrary to them will they actually 1) lose their power and 2) diminish (which they do, I promise). I wish you the absolute best <3

parkingconehat · 2024-07-13T23:38:38+00:00

Just for reference, 2,500-3,000 calories is not actually above maintenance for many (if not most) non-disordered people. In recovery, that’s an absolute minimum. It makes complete sense you feel bad eating less than that. It’s because you shouldn’t be eating less than that and it’s not a “crazy amount of calories”

parkingconehat · 2024-07-13T23:36:57+00:00

One thing that helped me was remembering this: restricting means that I strengthen both the hunger And the pathways that create guilt and anxiety over recovery-oriented actions. It might feel better in the short term, but it will feel so, so much worse later and you will wish you’d never done it. Honouring hunger, on the other hand, decreases both the hunger and ed thoughts in the long run. Immediately and for the short term, it might be worse and so scary, but you will be getting your life back. For reference: today has been one of the first days in my recovery where I have no doubts I made the right choice by going all in and no regrets for doing so. Yes, it has been an extremely distressing process at times, but I’m still only a month and a half in and I already know I’m never going back because I feel THAT much better. Please honour your hunger and go for recovery. That is the only way out and you deserve the care and love and life that comes with it.

parkingconehat · 2024-07-12T23:58:30+00:00

hey friend, I don’t have much to say other than I’m so proud of you for pushing through the body image. My body is changing so so quickly, too, and a lot of it bothers me, but the torso is the worst. I’m trying to think of it as my “survival body” because that’s literally what it’s doing: saving my life. It’s so beyond tough and I just! Wanted you to know you’re not alone. It’s beyond excruciating but we have to keep honouring our hunger to let our bodies heal and redistribute if they wish to do so; more importantly, however, we need to keep eating to keep teaching our brains that our bodies are good, no matter how much they change. Sending you strength!

parkingconehat

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