Monday, October 6, 2014

My First Six Months In Recovery...

As of today I am 6 months and 5 days into recovery. In that time I have been hospitalised/inpatient once, have gained a total of 18kg from my lowest and have been maintaining for about two months now. I am also 99 days binge free...

What I have found from being weight restored is that most people without an ED (even the people living in the same house as you and are around you 24/7) start treating you differently, like everything is alright and that you are completely cured... That is 100% false.

For me, mentality wise I am probably in a state much the same, if not worse then when I was at the height of my ED.. The only difference is that my body is functioning a little better than it used.

What a lot of people (even people with an ED, I know I didn't to begin with) don't understand is that an eating disorder is a mental illness just like depression and that weight loss is only a side effect of it, and as of today my anxiety/depression medication has been doubled...

My biggest regret in recovery would have to not be doing FBT properly.. Since I was over 18 when I first went into the system they really couldn't force me to do it. But my original plan after getting out of being inpatient was to do FBT and have my family take over all my meals and be supervised pretty much all day everyday (just like being inpatient, only at home).

I only stuck to that plan for maybe 3-4 days, and to be honest I really didn't like who I became when I was in those 3-4 days... I threw food, yelled and screamed and was just generally a completely different and horrible person. The compromise that me and my family came to was first to agree on meal plans the day before and I would prepare it under their supervision, though that only lasted a couple of weeks also. Eventually what ended up happening is that I took charge of all my meals (choosing and preparing them) and my weight was just monitored...

What I regret most about not doing FBT is that I am still petrified of food... I only eat a very limited amount of items and have very rigid guidelines (which my ED has set up in my head) that I have to follow in regards to the calories I have, what goes into the meals (especially lunch and dinner) and also the exercise I do and how I spend my day. I feel that if I did FBT properly I may be close to being recovered by now (or at least a lot further along then I am).

Things really have been spiralling down hill for me mood wise lately and its starting to affect my eating.. I'm still making sure I have everything I need but its just making the thought of eating and going through my day a lot harder and I just feel like my quality of life has diminished significantly.

I am still heavily involved in treatment, seeing my psychiatrist once a week, having medication reviews every 6-8 weeks and medical checks every 3 months with my weight being taken every time I see my psychiatrist.

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