Why Isn’t Anorexia Recovery More Fun?

Why Isn’t Anorexia Recovery More Fun?

It should be. Because, if you consider the shift from torture to freedom, freedom looks a lot more desirable.

Unfortunately, our brains – not the greater, knowing part, but the day-to-day, functioning part – do not assess the torture as torture, but more as a way of arranging life for maximum comfort (despite excruciating discomfort) in a threatening world.

The freedom from the setup we have created over the years looks nice to the greater, knowing part of the brain, and it appeals to the battered body as well. In short, we feel tired as hell. And we are so damned hungry. Even those of us without appetites want to eat very badly. Those folks are asking, “Where is my appetite?” because, ultimately, they are hungry and have appetites. The torture just has done a very efficient job of burying some appetites underneath layers of denial and abuse.

We embark on recovery journeys when we have reached that point where we think we’ve had enough torture. Eating unrestrictedly are two words that pair magically to those of us who are starved. Furthermore, the idea of sitting down and watching television in our free time, or spending an extra hour in bed in the morning rather than go out and run, appeals to us just as magically.

Therefore, I ask, again, why isn’t recovery more fun?

I say, again: it should be.

However, I find recovery to be so difficult that at times, I fear I cannot go on. In my two years of attempting recovery by ceasing all exercise and eating as unrestrictedly as I can muster (with some failures but a lot of triumphs), I have incurred many physical discomforts, as well as a lot of interior tantrums stemming from the anorexic belief system. That belief system possesses such strength and endurance in my brain that it can insinuate any kind of thought to sabotage the pleasure I may feel at the freedom I have introduced into my life.

Also, the body has undergone such unfathomable damage through the years that it begins to sprout odd-seeming issues that subtract from the pleasantry of “freedom.” For example, a long-term, suppressed bodyweight causes muscle atrophy, thought limitation, low energy, and endocrine chaos. As we refeed ourselves, the awakening of some of these systems, as well as the repair-work on others, leads to a lot of physical discomfort. Some of us feel odd tingling in our hands and feet; some of us have difficulty regulating body temperature and swing from cold to burning hot over the space of 5 minutes; some of us (like me) break out in acne from head-to-toe, and yes, here I am, nearly 50, with the nightmares of adolescence coming back to haunt me.

All these bodily discomforts bring to light a host of difficulties that sap some of the “fun” we would prefer having as we eat all that we want and sit on our rear-ends for the foreseeable future. How dare our bodies interfere with our good times?

Well, I am afraid the anorexic construct in our brains bears responsibility for the extra difficulty bodily changes present. We can circumvent some of this difficulty by ignoring all the perceived inconveniences and discomforts, or pretending these do not bother us, but that pretense, by itself, requires a lot of work, which is taxing and, again, takes some of the fun out of the freedom we urgently chase.

Furthermore, the inability to face gaining past a certain weight poses another problem for most of us with long-term anorexia. We have made ourselves believe, over time, that our greatest fear in life is getting fat. We do not even fear dying as much as getting fat. Unrestricted eating and complete rest often make us gain weight rapidly, and as we watch ourselves grow larger, we simply cannot accept the fact that our greatest fear becomes true right before our eyes. This outcome – the perception that we are in any way over out best-looking weight – is the one thing we have avoided for years.

I want to insert here that what we perceive as our greatest fear: becoming fat, or even becoming a weight that is slightly over what we think is ideal for us, is a false construct, made up by a diseased brain. Of course, we have difficulty understanding that concept. Everyone around us fears weight gain, right? So our own fears are legitimate, n’est-ce pas? But I want to say, again, that no, in our cases, this fear is not legitimate; we have to make it illegitimate, preposterous, and unfair. Anorexia has seized upon a common social issue out there in the world —  bodyweight — and it has used that to its fullest extent in shielding us from other, irrational fears. Since we have invested all of our energy into staving off this one fear, we have hurt ourselves to the extent that this fear needs to depart our systems; like I said, it no longer applies to us.

But of course the fear still sits right there, until we have trained our brains not to think in terms of food and bodyweight anymore. This training takes time, so we live with the fear and skirt around it for seemingly many eternities. This cohabitation with one of our greatest phobias, again, does not generate much fun or levity.

In some ways, I want to invite us all to a pity-party on the difficulty recovery presents. After all, society does not really support our weight gain past a certain point, which furnishes yet another anxiety-provoking hurdle to cross as we continue this path. None of us recovering from anorexia wants to get fat; we fear getting fat so badly. And yet as our weight increases, often beyond where we think we function at our best, we feel not only the fallout of our worst fears come true, but the voices of society behind us saying, “Gee, you have gained a lot of weight. What’s the deal?”

So, we wonder: are we liberating ourselves, or just generating another set of anxieties to juggle? And to add to the pity-party buffet: we already come from tortured backgrounds, so these difficulties in recovery –  we just do not deserve them; we’ve been through enough.

And that’s true: we have been through enough.

Therefore, go back to the original, simple goal: liberation from torture. This process takes some time, during which anorexia bombards us with negativity. But, I ask that you keep in mind that, for God’s sake, eating unrestrictedly and lounging around the house for months on end can be fun. Yes, we may get bored, but almost always something will come along to sweep away the boredom. Yes, we may feel discomfort with weight gain, but this feeling passes. Yes, we have to shut out a large part of society, even some of our loved ones, for as long as necessary, in order to avoid the traps of diet-talk and bodyweight assessment. Yes, we have to carry around our greatest fear and yet pretend it is not there. These acknowledgements mean we are in for a lot of work, but this work only justifies all the more our need to sit and eat tons, for a long time. Our “time out, with snacks” offers the rest and nurture we have craved all along, and we should appreciate it as well as enjoy it.