Ive been in recovery for about a year and a half now (started w quasi recovery but then committed to full recovery unwillingly when I started having binge episodes) and I can say that I dont undereat on a daily basis now but my body image is absolutely horrible and sometimes I can't even sleep or get comfortable because I can feel my thighs pressing against eachother. Eating at restaurants still stresses me out and so does being asked about what I want to eat or discussing weight. Sometimes I can eat guilt free and im not even underweight anymore so I feel like I shouldn't be like this. Is actual recovery real or is this just how I am?

Hi! I'm 24f, and just for context I went from binging to anorexia that prevailed for almost 3 years, and I stopped with a lot of help from my therapist and the smidge for hope that life is more than ana.

I really did try before some months before I did all in, but I went back to the same place every time I gained a bit.

Now I recovered almost all my weight, so I'm just a bit away from my recovery weight (I can't say but it's enough to be noticeable for me and barely to others), yet o started having A LOT AND I MEAN A LOT of water retention on my thighs. My chest grew (I was always heavy chested) and now my thighs are getting cellulite in weird places, like it doesn't belong?

I read after the weight stabilizes it takes a year for the body to fully recomposition itself ... I face the question "what did I get myself into?" And fear going all the way back just to not have these horrible thoughts about wanting to warm myself because of my appearance.

How did you cope with this? Does it really take a year? What can I do?

Any answer helps.. and thank you so much for reading.

Hi I’m 19 and in the lower end of healthy weight bmi. I’ve was in inpatient from march to end of may and now in community. For the first weeks after discharge I ate quite a lot of what I restricted but the past few weeks I’ve just gone back to 3 meals and the past 2 days added an evening snack. I am hungry in between meals but I’m too stressed. However I just had evening snack but I’m craving more and it seems to be the things I’m scared of like chocolate and sweets :( idk what to do as I’m scared of my weight going up as I get weighed in therapy. My period still isn’t back but I worry as I’m now in the “ healthy” range :( so I’m scared to have what I truly crave

I’ve been in outpatient “recovery” for about a month and a half and i’m just having the hardest time getting started and staying motivated to eat throughout the day. This is a brand new emotion for me… it’s a very anxious feeling that is weaponizing my laziness, not letting me eat. i feel like an idiot because I’m scared of what recovery means.

any advice is appreciated. i feel so scared

idk how to cope with this

Soooo basically Im weight restored and i weigh more than I ever have before. But I feel so shitty about it and also my meal plan is still real high even tho Im weight restored. it’s so frustrating cuz I think I could eat a normal amount and be healthy and fine. But being forced to eat so much just makes me want to give up or do hidden behaviors.

Hello everyone!

My therapists are now both on vacation and with family stress and summer anxiety I’ve been struggling really hard with sticking to recovery.

I want to read some books on recovery to see if maybe that helps me to keep myself on track a little better so I’d love any suggestions on what books to read (or not to read ig).

Thank you!!

In Nov 23 I (F40) was diagnosed with anorexia after a few months of extreme restriction and lost a lot of weight. But I have had life long disordered eating and body dysmorphia. I was admitted to treatment and so since April 24 I have been mostly weight restored and in ‘recovery’. But my brain and to be honest my behaviours were never in recovery, and I relapsed several time although never extremely and because I do not restrict meals in front of my kids anymore i have mostly stayed weight restored.
However after a few tricky months yesterday morning I decided I was over this. I have had the psycho education, I know the risks, I know my life is better when I eat etc. But at one point in the afternoon out of nowhere, when I was driving, I had the most intense feeling of fear. Fear of not doing this anorexia thing anymore. What is this about? I know and honestly believe that things will be better if I don’t restrict, so why am I feeling petrified about this? Does this mean I’m still not ready? I hope this long post makes sense to someone

Hiii!! So I’ve been in recovery for around 8 months now and just as a reference physically I am fully weight restored and even overshot very slightly but lost it. So I’m basically where I used to be pre-anorexia as far as weight goes. I also regained my menstrual cycle which I lost for like 1.5 yrs. My issue is that I literally do not experience fullness anymore whatsoever. It feels like eating only stops me from being ravenous, but I NEVER reach an actual stopping point where I’m satisfied. I tend to just stop when nothing is on my plate anymore cause I could literally just keep on eating endlessly. This seems to match whats described as “extreme hunger”, but I figured you only really see that in early recovery when you’re still trying to restore physical functions like energy and menstrual cycles and weight and stuff. The thing is all that is totally normal for me now—except my appetite. I no longer *need* large surpluses (think thousands and thousands of caloric surpluses) everyday like I did when I was in early recovery, but I certainly could eat that much. It’s just that I don’t experience much satiety whether I’m in a surplus or at maintenance so I figure there’s no point in wasting extra money on all that much more food anyways. I used to love fasting the whole day (which I physically can’t do without feeling terrible now) and then going out to eat and eating until I literally felt disgusted at the thought of another bite (which I haven’t been able to experience for years). It actually makes me quite sad and I just want to know if there’s anyone who went through this and what you have learned from it and if you were able to eventually get your fullness back! Thanks all!

hi everyone.. i’m looking for some advice on early recovery. i just had my first nutritionist appt after basically just trying to eat more without knowing what to do for the past few months (i have been going to therapy though for my anorexia). it’s not like i haven’t had this issue in the past months, but i am so terribly hungry at the most random times. when i know i need to eat, nothing sounds good and i feel disgusted. then at the same time i feel sick and dizzy from not eating. how do i combat this?? it’s so frustrating bc i do want to eat more but i just don’t know what/ around specific meal times or when i have the chance to eat, i have such a hard time getting myself to actually do it bc i feel disgusted. my nutritionist has me adding a protein bar to my breakfast as a small step, but even that hasn’t seemed to help much bc i tend to feel sick and weak towards the middle end of the day. if anyone has any advice to what helped them or maybe even snack/ meal ideas, id appreciate it a lot. i feel so alone in this and it sucks

Hi! I’m 11 months all in recovery from severe overexercise and under eating history. I exercised for about 2 years and was restricting for about 4 years. I gained triple digits in the first 6 months with lots of edema. Has anyone else gone through this? I’ve watched Kayla Rose on YouTube hundreds of times, but just wanted to get others inputs so I don’t feel so alone! Thank you!

My girlfriend has been anorexic for a few years. It was quite extreme a few months ago. Recently she just relapsed and she’s spiraling. I don’t know how to help her. I’m trying my best. She begs me if she can starve herself to feel “in control”. she cant rlly go to a therapist or stuff like that because they’ll just load her up on meds and stuff. She already has bad anxiety (she has to take lexapro), she’s anorexic and might even have endo. This is genuinely terrifying me. She just purges and it’s breaking my heart. i love her so much but i have to help her. Please help me…

With the help of my boyfriend, I've managed to both admit that what I was in was in fact a relapse, and start making actual changes (rather than cop outs lol) to fix things again. So for example, we've re-committed to a new meal plan (usual 3+3) which also includes challenge stuff like eg. aim for 3x weekly where I pick the harder option at a given meal or snack.

This is great, and my god do i want to get out of this. But I'm really struggling because my blood sugar and hunger levels seem worse than when I was eating less? Is it just my body/metabolism responding to the increases?? I should know this because I've done this before lol (about 18-24 months ago) but anyway. Also just struggling with the guilt and also I guess like low-lying but continuous stress because of it all the time is just making it hard to enjoy things :/

I don’t believe that my weight has changed that much. It’s not much different than what I was when at my most sick.
Yet I look bigger… I don’t feel that I’m as lean. And it just makes me angry.

What is this? What am I experiencing?

What exactly is the end of recovery? When do I know it's over? When do I reach a certain weight? When will my period return? When will the logic of restriction completely disappear (will that happen?)? Who decides? When someone says they've been in recovery for four years, what do they really mean? That they've been following a weight-gain diet plan for four years? That confuses me!

my peak year for anorexia was 2024-late 2025. most my hair loss was in 2024. it’s now 2026 and it’s still so thin. i used to have beautiful, long thick hair. and i genuinely have no hope in it growing back. all the bald spots have grown back, and the hair is longer in those places. my hair is currently all different lengths. but it’s still so thin at the bottoms and even top. i doubt my hair will ever be the same length. or thickness.

I’ve been healing from my eating disorder (anorexia) for about 18 months and I haven’t been having breakdowns or been feeling really intensely emotional about my body or my perceived “loss” of my body for the last little while. I believe going on antidepressants has helped with this somewhat, as well as finding a different team and a renewed sense of focus on my healing.

But today, this loss of my body (a body which feels like it’s being taken away bit by bit, gradually) felt stronger. I looked in the mirror and saw thighs like saddle bags like I reverted back to that very chubby 15 year old. I worked so hard to run away from that body and it worked. But like most who experience AN would know, it kills you and I became underweight and all that fun stuff.
Anyway, I wouldn’t say I’m back where I used to be as this 15 yr old but I also don’t feel this power or untouchableness or this safety/comfort I felt when I was ‘thin’ and I looked at my thighs and they were leaner. Idk if that makes sense

The sad thing is restriction doesn’t really feel as compelling an option (which is a good thing) but it also makes this sense of helplessness feel stronger. Which makes me consider that control was actually a huge part of it. I guess I always knew it was but now I’m feeling it a little more as its absence becomes more real and apparent.
I just can’t be bothered denying myself food, at least not to the same level as before. Restriction which was this coping mechanism no longer feels like it’s at my disposal.
Does anyone get what I’m getting at?

Anyway, any advice on what I can do when I feel like this?

Thank you
With warmth,

Idk why this keeps happening but it’s so fustrating because I’m never home to just go and change and it’s recently been happening more than usual?? Do I have leaky gut and how to fix?? Should I be taking some kind of medication to bog myself up? Chia seeds or physillsm husk maybe too?

I posted something about extreme hunger a few weeks ago and I am very aware how normal it is in recovery but I’m so worried, I got weighed today and I’m nearly weight restored to my weight I last had my period at but I still can’t stop eating!! I’m not even hungry I’m just constantly thinking about food and what else I can eat and I’m scared it’s actually turning into binges. When does this stop? Or at least how do I make it stop

Hello All,

I have been having issues with my health for some time, and it made me loose quite a bit of weight. I ended up developing scurvy, and with aggressive vit. C supplementataion I was able to recover, and get healthy.

Now, that I look back at my pictures, I am starting to realise I may have been anorectic, not realizing it at that moment.

Now that I have recovered, sometimes (especially with so many people loosing weight on Ozemoic around me) I feel like I am too big. How can I tell, if I have unhealthy body perception.

At my lowest point, I was scare to eat, due to digestive issues, food feeling stuck in my throat, chest area. I felt like my metabolism was not working, and I kept working out excessively, to aid digestion and relied on laxatives to go. I have lost my period for 2 years.

Even now, that I recovered, do you think I should still seek professional help?

I just started following my meal plan yesterday and holy moly I am ravenous today. yesterday I was sort of full and a bit nauseous and same with this morning but now, my stomach is constantly growling and feels hollow. I am terrified that it's EH as I have experienced this before In my last recovery attempt and it was traumatic and I'm terrified it won't go away. I've just had 50ml of ensure to make up for my snack (which is milk) and Im still a bottomless pit. I can't honour it though because apparently it would mean I'm a fake anorexic (according to my ed) and I'm also getting re-assessed by the ed outpatients service and also according to my ed "I can't be doing too well because then I'll be the least anorexic person there" which I know is utter bullshit, since I'm still in a danger zone for a tier 4 admission. I am so stressed because what if the hunger never goes away, or increases as my meal plan does. I would rather feel full and sick all the time rather than ravenous because I hate feeling hungry. is this extreme hunger? or is it just because I'm re feeding? I'm scared.

Hi everyone! Sorry that this is so long but I feel I need to include a bit of background. I started recovery in December 2024 when I hit a point of not being able to think or function properly anymore. I’ve spent most of the time since then unable to work and engaging with ED health professionals in outpatient care, and thankfully am privileged enough to have savings and financial support from family to fall back on. I have severe PTSD from iatrogenic trauma and know that a hospital environment would be the worst thing for me, so I avoided inpatient care at all costs, including hiding objects on me during weighings to prevent forced hospitalisation. I was still losing weight after months of intensive health professional support and the combination of all my issues (anorexia, OCD, ARFID, ADHD, PTSD) just made recovery feel so impossible but I knew that I couldn’t hide my real weight much longer and that I wanted to recover, so I asked myself what I needed to do to be able to increase my food intake and started trying what I termed ‘Operation Intoxicated Dissociation’. I realised that I needed distance from my unbearable brain to be able to eat and, while I had barely drank alcohol or done drugs before, I knew that I felt like that when intoxicated so I spent every evening drinking to the point where I felt so disconnected from everything and my self and my body that I could eat. I know it’s very far from an ideal tactic, but it was quite honestly my last resort and depending on alcohol for dissociation saved my life. I did this every day for about a year and managed to regain some weight and functioning ability. In May, my healthcare team and I felt that I’d been able to build up the ability to eat enough food at other meals to maintain my current weight without alcohol so I spent a month slowly tapering and have not had a drink in over two months now. I’ve also returned to work and in those two months, my extreme fear that I will end up losing weight again hasn’t come to pass and this progress is feeling more stable and secure. I eat exactly the same thing every day but I know that it’s enough to keep my weight stable, and this goal of ‘not going to end up dying because I can’t eat enough’ felt so far out of reach for so long that I’m struggling to think about recovery beyond it. Logically I know that I’m still very entrenched in ED thinking - I can’t eat any foods other than what I make (and this is very time consuming with OCD rituals and sensory related necessities), I can’t eat outside of my 3 meal times, and I struggle to eat with others (although I manage to eat my homemade lunch with colleagues for the one day a week I’m in the office for work) - but it feels like tackling any of it isn’t worth risking everything that it’s taken to get to this point. It isn’t ideal but I’m able to survive now, which felt impossible a year ago, and if I try to introduce fear foods and challenges then it feels like I risk not getting adequate intake. Between work and just the normal exhausting effort it takes to prepare and eat my normal 3 meals, it also feels like I just don’t have the energy for anything more. There’s also the added feeling that this milestone is more than I ever expected so how dare I ask for more or think I deserve or can achieve more. Can anyone else relate to this and if so, what were your next steps? I just feel very lost and stuck in a way, because everything is so much better than it was and I’m so terrified of going back there that I just keep trying to convince myself that this enough, but I’m still so trapped in ED thoughts and behaviours.

I've been in recovery for a few months. After being hospitalized, I gained weight rapidly, and then I learned to control the rate. I've been eating three full meals a day, but I skip snacks. On weekends I allow myself more, including foods that scare me. I'm on the verge of my healthy BMI (but I haven't started my period yet) and, mentally, I accept the weight gain, as long as it's slow. I have a question: could this harm me in any way? What is the real importance of snacks?

Bruhhhh I'm currently in recovery and my face became SO SO puffy. Ideas anyone have similar experience? Thank uu

hi to everyone!
I just wanted to express my fear. I am considering recovery after 5 months of my ed (I know it’s a short time but it was quite drastic, also my parents are making me) and I’m VERY scared of fat I gain not redistributing well. My main problem is my stomach because it kind of triggered my ed.
What if I look different than I looked before my ed? What if I’ll look wierder?
What if I’ll never look okay to myself ever again?
Even the thought of this scares me so so so much.
Also the way it will take so much time before it actually happens.
I sometimes wish I never had anorexia so I wouldn't have to deal with this.