I RECOVERED FROM ANOREXIA NERVOSA
Dolls, I have been so beyond excited to write this post. It was July 31, 2026, that I proclaimed that I wasn't in recovery anymore and that I had, instead, become recovered. I realised when I did my first road trip in a few months. For the first time since I'd been doing road trips, I pulled over to the nearest service station because I kept thinking about cheese and onion Smith’s chips LOL! I had eaten breakfast, but super early and by the time I’d gotten on the road, even though it wasn’t lunchtime, I got these chips. I didn’t deny myself a snack, nor did I deny myself the snack I truly wanted. I did the opposite of both these things that my brain had manipulated me to do in the past. I did it easily and without counting any calories. In that moment, I realised the significance of what I'd done. I called my mum as soon as I realised, and I pretty much screamed with excitement, saying, 'Mum, I think I'm recovered!' This blog is everything I can think of and more on how I reached a full recovery, because if this post helps just one person reach recovery, then it's absolutely worth every single word.
This is a blog post I wrote in the depths of my eating disorder, absolutely hating myself and my life.
I wanted to include this to express that I understand, first-hand, the depths of the despair, hopelessness, and self-disgust involved in an eating disorder. It's the most awful way to live. It's this cage that traps you, not just with its wires around the cage, but reaching into your skin and ripping you apart from the inside out. To say it's painful doesn't even begin to describe it. I just want to reiterate how I know that, how I lived it, and endured it, to show that this isn't just someone who was 'a bit sick', 'a bit underweight', or 'a bit ill'... This is somebody who went to her doctor to fill out an end-of-life plan because everybody was just waiting for her to die. My organs had completely shut down.
6 months ago, my godfather suddenly passed away. He was beautiful. He loved me so much. He took his role as a godfather so seriously; he taught me photography, took me on day trips in his car to go get lunch, explored, went to feed kangaroos carrots, and so much more. And I loved him. Though in the coming years, he would change, and sadly, we would slowly begin to lose touch with him. Though I believe in many ways we were justified in our decision because of his bizarre behavioural developments, I also feel that I gave up on him too quickly. And I do regret that, deeply. I wish that even if the love hadn't been from me, I would've tried getting him some support, something he probably really needed. Sometimes in life, we do things we regret so that we become better people. I feel that now I am not so quick to place judgment on other people, even if they have different opinions from me or act out of character. I believe that loving him allowed me to see that and find forgiveness and understanding within my heart. My godfather was only 50 when he died. We do not know for certain how he died, though we devastatingly believe it to have been by suicide. As you can imagine, I felt heartbroken by this news. I felt so much remorse: 'What could I have done differently?' and 'How could I have supported him more?' I realised that at 50, many people were having these thoughts and feelings about a man who had died much too young. And it hit me like a truck because at just 23, I began to wonder how many people in my life would be wondering the same things about me, not if, but when I died. The sadness burning within me was mostly because of my love for him, but partly because of the life I could see I was leaving behind, and the way it would linger in the lives of everyone who knew me… forever. 'What could I have done?' and 'How could I have supported her more?' would rack the minds of the people who see me every day at our local coffee shop, the people who said I looked well when I didn't, my family, the friends who lost touch because they couldn't watch any more, and everyone who ever thought ', that poor girl'. And there are so many people in your life who you don't know care but do. Personally, the thought of that physically hurt me because I could see where this was going, and I could see how many good people in my life would blame themselves forevermore. I couldn't stand that. Their potential pain became the present pain that was about to influence my future choices. Everybody had done everything they could for me; now, this was up to nobody but me.
Sometimes people say things that have a lasting and profound impact on you. My Bapa (my grandpa) and I have always had a special connection. Admittedly, our relationship plummeted over my decade-long battle with anorexia nervosa. In his worry and love for me, over the years, he said things that were often very difficult for me to hear. His concern was often disguised by anger and frustration with my illness. And often, this form of desperation didn't get through to me. It often ended in sadness and distance. Though one time, I came to see him, and he looked at me in absolute terror and simply said to me, 'Lukie, if you die before me, I will kill you.' Something about the way he said it, the fact that he was 79 years old and I was 23, just broke me apart. I saw his fear in a way I never had before. I truly considered his side and felt complete love for my grandfather, who had always loved me and who I'd always loved. I believe an instrumental part of my reaching a full recovery was changing the way I viewed comments made to me by my family. I began to dedicate my efforts to finding intention over delivery. People often say the wrong things when you have an eating disorder. I think when people who don’t know you praise you for the way you look when you’re suffering, it’s very confusing and hurtful. But what I’ve learnt is how to distinguish between ignorant people who’ve never experienced one and the people who are a part of your family and genuinely think they are saying the right thing to make you feel better. I have received so many absolutely inappropriate comments in both anorexia and recovery from people who don’t know me, and how much agony I’ve been in with my mental health. However, my saving grace in recovery has been learning to focus on intention over delivery. Whilst I think some people are genuinely malicious, I believe that, for the most part, people are not malicious by any means. Most people are truly lovely and are proud of you in recovery. Most people do not intend that at all and hope that they are saying the right thing. I’ve also found that people get most of their comments right, but make a really triggering word amidst it all. I’ve learnt to accept that if they knew how much that one comment would affect me, they would choose not to make it. This has helped me find so much peace. It has also allowed me not to let anorexia rule my day and my life. No, it doesn’t like certain words, comments, or phrases, but I’m done letting that dictate how I feel about the rest of my day, those people, the situations, etc. If I don’t want to be upset, I choose not to be now.
And now, the golden pawn in my won chess game: Stuart. I was referred to Stuart through a friend of a family friend. The mother's daughter recovered from anorexia, and she put her recovery down to Stuart, a mindset coach. Honestly, when you've suffered from anorexia for as long as I did, you hear a lot of people say, 'This helped me', 'I recovered! Tell her to reach out.' 'Has she been here?’ or 'Has she tried this?' It got to the point where I had tried next to everything. I had seen a dozen therapists, counsellors, and psychiatrists. I'd been to every private hospital. I'd been to every public hospital. I'd met and spoken with people who had recovered. I'd watched every video known to man. I'd tried absolutely everything, and when you've tried as hard as I had, you wear away at the edge, your heart breaks a little with every try that doesn't have a successful outcome, and then a little more with the next, and then a lot more with the one after that. It began to make me wince when somebody suggested something else because I truly felt as though I didn't have anything left in me anymore. I also felt so ashamed because I knew how badly everybody around me was desperate for me to keep fighting, and I just didn't think I could. Stuart was the last thing I ever tried, and I did it for my mum. I did it because with this mental illness, even when you think you're too far gone, you must always believe you are enough; if not for yourself, then for the ones who have never given up on you in the way you may have given up on yourself. And I thank God, my Mum, my friends, and my family that I did this for my mum because I genuinely believe that if I hadn’t met Stuart, I wouldn’t be writing this today. Stuart met with me, and he just gave me his all. He wasn't a mindset coach at all; he was a kind, dedicated, funny angel who I felt had my back. Unlike all of the other professionals I’d met, he wasn't interested in monitoring my weight, talking about my trauma, or discussing anything at all- in fact - that I clearly felt uncomfortable discussing. He didn't distress me, not once; he comforted me.
Instead of focusing on my past, he did something no other professional had ever done... He asked me about my future.
We began setting clear and specific goals about what I hoped my future would look like. And it became very clear and obvious to me that that future could not exist with anorexia in it. I know it sounds so simple, but it was just laid out to me in a way it never had been. My goals were so specific that there wasn't some wafty idea of a magnificent future; it was imaginative, but implicitly realistic. And so, there were no cracks to see through. There was no idea in my mind anymore about maybe or maybe not having anorexia for the future I wanted. I saw that to be happy, to drink wine in Italy, to dance with my mum, to fall in love, to own a house, and drive a car, I needed fuel, freedom, and other determinations in life besides anorexia. And he did it in a way that was never judgmental. Whilst Stuart gave this his all, so did I. Don't think for a second that I didn't tell him all my thoughts and feelings and wasn't completely honest with him. I remember one time he started discussing weight, and I freaked out, and I was honest about it. At that point, I couldn't imagine being anything more than my current weight. So I told him that, and he let me say it. He said, 'Ok, we will discuss this another time, when you are ready.' And the beautiful thing, Dolls, is I was never ready to discuss that deeply personal component of my life that had controlled me for years, and so we didn't.
‘My weight wasn't the point anymore; my happiness was. ‘
I love Stuart. And when I say I owe my life to him, I mean it with all my heart. This isn't sponsored in any way, shape or form, Dolls, but out of the goodness of his heart, he has dedicated an entire section on his webpage to me and wants to help anybody going through what I went through who is willing. I will link all of his contact information at the bottom of this blog post.
There is always hope. Anorexia is deadly and unforgiving, but it does not have to be the end. I want to elaborate on this because it truly doesn't feel that way at all, and hearing recovered people say this used to make me think they were lying or that they never truly had anorexia at all. In the thick of it, it does feel like a death sentence. I used to rack my mind, wondering how these people before me were saying they'd recovered, truly recovered. And you know what I believe the trick is? Just. Beginning. Once you begin, truly begin, and commit, every day will stop becoming restrictive and frightening and slowly become happy and intriguing. You will stop counting the calories, a long way down the track, potentially, like it was for me, and instead you will start counting the memories, the boys you want to kiss, the friends you want to have, the jobs you want to try, the places you want to travel. But even in the early days, when you might still be counting calories, or weighing yourself, or doing whatever it is you do, you will start to miss your life more than you miss the eating disorder. The more I began to be able to do in recovery, and see how it wasn't only not as scary as I thought but actually, really enjoyable and fun, the MORE I wanted to be able to do every day that went by without the eating disorder, as opposed to with it.
My intake became so restrictive that my Mum told me I was going to have to move out because she couldn't bear to watch me kill myself before her eyes. This was tough love at its finest, but it was an absolute essential step in my grasping the severity of where I was at. I knew my mum would never, ever, ask me to move out unless this meant she was absolutely certain I was knocking at death's door. My mum is the type of mum who has always said to me, 'Honey, if you ever, ever need to come home, my door will always be open'. This was unlike her. I realised how bad things were because when my mum told me this, my first thought wasn't 'Oh, I need to eat more to stay home'; it was 'I need to figure out where I'm going to live.'
I realised that I cared more about pleasing my eating disorder than I did pleasing my mum.
I had completely lost touch with my morals, values, and ethics. I felt so lost. At first, I hoped it would just go away, that she'd forget about her threat, or that it wasn't serious. But a week later, she had the conversation with me again and said, 'I want you to know I mean it'. I went to bed that night, starving. And I lay in bed and thought about everything: the end-of-life plan, the cardiologist, the GP, the liver ultrasound, the friends, the family, the fighting, the moving out, and I realised how completely unhappy and depressed I had become. In that moment, I knew I was choosing between death and recovery. Those were my options now. I did the bravest thing I knew how to do in that moment. I went downstairs to my Mum, and I asked her: 'FortiSip, Ensure, or Up and Go? (three different types of supplements, nutritionally fortified drinks). She said FortiSip, the highest-calorie one. And I went to the fridge, I took out a FortiSip, I drank it in front of her, and I told her that I was choosing recovery. That was the happiest I'd felt my mum be in years. The relief was everywhere. The light from her heart was shining like a perfect glowing candle. And I haven't given up since. But I want you to know that it doesn't have to get that serious before you choose to recover. If you don't choose to recover now, it will get to that point, and you will have lost everything from your health to friends to memories to life. And for what? To feel 'sick enough'? Look, I'm not stupid enough to trigger everyone by sharing what my weight was, but let's just say it was sickening, wrong, and sad. And my point in saying that is, guess what? I still did not feel sick enough. You will never feel sick enough until you die. A quote that really helped me early on in my treatment was 'The perfect anorexic is dead.' And that is so, beyond true. Once I truly reached the depths of anorexia, I realised that I would never feel satisfied until I truly looked like death because I still thought I wasn't skinny enough when people would stare at me on the street, beg me to eat, and write me goodbye letters. Something I need to mention now that perpetuated this sick idea of death and perfection is something that I believe everybody needs to be made aware of. I've ummed and ahhed about this because I am so deeply afraid of sharing this with sick people who are going to learn something they didn't know and try to find what I am about to mention. So I am doing this very carefully, and please bear with me. All I am going to mention is that there are places in the media that anyone can access if they want to, in which you can share, compare, and encourage eating disorders. This is critical for parents and carers to know not to 'ban' their children from the internet because there are always ways around that, and forcing someone into recovery is not always helpful. It is critical for them to know because sometimes it can be very lonely accessing this information; it can make you feel ashamed, embarrassed, and perpetuate self-hatred. I think people with eating disorders experience enough of this, and I believe the only way out of this is to talk and be open. If it starts there, then there can be open conversations about using this information and slowly (but surely) weaning off it. The second reason I think it's critical to discuss this is that it made me so much, so much sicker, and in a way I'd never been before. I saw behaviours I'd never learnt, I saw comments I'd never thought anyone would think to make, and I saw photos that deeply triggered and disturbed me. I want to mention this because a critical component in my recovery was absolutely abolishing that content from my life. I have never accessed that information since I've been in recovery, and I genuinely believe I never would have found recovery if I were still using it. In fact, I think it was so maliciously used and distributed that if I were to see it again, even once, it could potentially cause me, or anybody, to relapse. I do not think it is possible to recover if one is using this media.
After just one meal during my anorexia, I would feel so guilty. So, naturally, I assumed that in recovery, people always felt this horrid guilt.
I wish more people spoke about how even the sickest people can experience full recovery to the point where they don't feel guilty after eating ever.
I thought I would never have the brain capacity to be involved in a relationship or the self-confidence to let myself be with anybody. But everything about that has changed. I have found people who like me, not just for how I look on the outside, but for the person within that body. You will learn to realise that you are more than your body as you see people continue to love and care for you despite your body changing. One day, you will feel enough. Even during the times I feel insecure, finally, despite those feelings, for the first time in my life, I feel like I am enough.
Stuart's Links:
Phone: 0448 105 844
International Phone: +61 448 105 844
I have given this blog post my all, my everything, my tears, my love, my life, and my story. I will do anything and everything I possibly can to answer any further questions, provide any further clarification, assist, talk, and share with parents, carers, friends, family members, people wanting to begin their journey, recovering people wanting to be recovered, or absolutely anyone. You guys have supported me throughout my journey, holding my hand, encouraging me, and loving me. I am here for you forever, forever and always, because this is so important; this is about life or death, and this is about hope. And to achieve hope, we must encourage and never forget to choose kindness, love, and growth above all else. I know how hard this is, and I believe it takes a community. You do not have to do this alone, and I vow to never let anybody feel alone if I can help it.
Kisses,
COS x
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