In light of my last post about “full” recovery from disordered eating, I’d like to share with you my thoughts of this morning upon awakening and looking in the mirror and seeing back fat…

“Oh crap. It’s still there. And it’s actually in ROLLS! Okay Esther…calm down. You’re 38 and know that women’s bodies change and morph as we age. But I don’t want it to! You don’t want to go back there…but maybe if I just did Bikram yoga 5 days a week instead of 3, it would take care of the back fat problem. Maybe if I went back to the 100% raw foods diet. Oh God…here we go again…Get a grip girl! Let’s face it, we’ve been there, done all that and look where it got us- nearly dead.”

 Memories of fainting on the exercise bike at the gym come flooding back to me. Being 100% “raw” and feeling miserable and hungry all the time, dreaming of cooked food. I share these raw honest thoughts I actually had TODAY with you (after having over 17 years of solid recovery from a life-threatening eating disorder) to show you that I am human, just like you and that even though I’ve come A LONG WAY on my path of healing, I still struggle at times with these thoughts.

I personally don’t believe that a person can COMPLETELY recover from a life-threatening eating disorder and be done with it forever. That hasn’t happened for me, nor for the thousands of women I’ve worked with as a therapist over the last decade. To me, this idea smacks too much of what I consider to be one of the major distorted thoughts that contribute to the development of ED’s in the first place- ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING. It goes something like this for most women I know: I’m either “ugly” or “beautiful”, “fat” or “thin”, “stupid” or “brilliant”, and the list goes on…

I feel that this type of thinking is the by-product of a society which is very materialistic at its core, and which puts high value on outward appearances. To be perfectly honest (sorry, can’t be any other way), I wonder why we even care about “full” recovery in the first place. It’s as if recovery is only worth having if it’s absolute, complete, PERFECT. Isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place? Trying to be “perfect” in how we looked? I know that’s only part of the story of what leads us to these dangerous places, but I think it deserves our attention.

It’s like me thinking that to be perfectly healthy, I have to be 100% vegan, or 100% raw, or that I have to do hot yoga every single day. I know that a lot of people have great success on such strict regimens, but for me and for the women I work with, this type of thinking just gets us into trouble. My problem stems from the fact that I am already too hard on myself, push myself to extremes, and end up overdoing things that are best done in moderation. It’s a very tricky balance to find for me- how much exercise is too much? How much is enough? When am I being lathargic and making excuses to not exercise?

Same with food- how can I eat a healthy and balanced diet while also not getting too rigid and stressed out to the point where I’m actually scared of food? When I allow myself to let go, what do I do when I overdo it? How do I know when I’m not eating the best way for my mind and body?

It seems to me that people want fast and easy cures to complex problems, and are completely repelled when they’re told that this is not how life works. I remember demanding such a solution from a former therapist one time and her answer was: “Esther- life doesn’t work like that”. I remember being completely deflated and then angry and thinking, “She’s wrong. I’ll find a quick solution on my own”. What happened? I banged my head against lots of brick walls for the next few years until I humbly admitted that, yes, life doesn’t give us quick fixes that work over the long-haul.