I am finishing this blog after a few months of neglect. My journey to recovery is nowhere near complete, but I have been doing a lot of learning and thinking about where I am in this moment, and how I can apply this knowledge to create positive changes. I started this blog to document my experience of eating disorder treatment, and how I was going to get through it. I went to treatment, I went to 12-step programs. I went to yoga classes and listened to webinars, but then I just went back to how things were before. I have realized that I have been holding myself back from rising above that which I think holds me back. I stopped blogging because I felt that I was falling back or detouring from the path to recovery, and I am ready to be done with that. I can't change what happened, but I can accept it as it is, and move on from it. You can follow me on that new journey here www.livewellwithsteff.blogspot.com.
But for those of you who followed me on my journey, I feel like I need to fill you in on how things have gone since I fell off my intention to post daily. I quickly got back into a cycle of bingeing and purging, which was then followed up by intense restricting. The yoga immersion was amazing, but it was definitely triggering. It brought up a lot of those things that I thought I had worked on in treatment, that maybe I wasn't quite done with yet. I have been thinking a lot about my mindset in treatment, and the disease model of treatment. While I do believe that addiction is a disease, I wonder about the impact of considering oneself to be sick. Am I sick because I have a disease? Or do I continue to have a disease because I think I am sick? Through watching various webinars from yoga teachers, and observing those around me who are also suffering, I have started to question how much power the mind has over our state of wellness. If I think that I am on a journey to recovery, what does that mean? What does recovery mean? Abstaining from those behaviours? A recovered alcoholic is one who no longer drinks, but does that necessarily mean they are fully recovered? I have found it extremely hard to abstain from certain foods, thoughts, and behaviours, so this is why I am shifting my focus. But, I digress.
Between bingeing and purging, restricting and exercising, my weight has shifted a little bit- I lost ten pounds then gained it back. My school work suffered- yet another semester where I was completely caught up in what I was eating and not on what I needed to be doing. I struggled with thoughts about what I would like my body to be- I went back and forth between wanting a fit, healthy body, and wanting a skinny, emaciated body. I read books about recovered anorexics to pick up tricks. I tried fasts and ketogenic diets in an effort to lose weight quickly. I set a goal of losing 30 pounds in three months. All of these ended in "failure" and negative self-talk, for not achieving these unrealistic goals I had set for myself.
I've come to realize that I no longer want to live like this. I want to be more than recovered, I want to be healthy. Food should be my medicine, not my drug. So, I am choosing to close the door on recovery, and start a new journey to wellness.
