What people don’t realize is that weight gain is only the first step in recovering from an eating disorder. The rest of the work takes place only once your weight has returned to what it was before the disorder began. You have to rewire your brain to stop fearing food, to stop seeing exercise as atonement, to begin accepting that you can eat as much as you like, whenever you like, and to stop believing that your worth hinges on your BMI. All of that can only happen when your body stops thinking it is starving. The issue is, so many of us end up in what is known as ‘partial recovery’. Our well-meaning peers and doctors tell us that they think it is time we ‘stopped gaining weight’ because we are within the ‘healthy’ range again. This fundamentally undermines all of the psychological work that needs to be done to fully recover from anorexia. We are still gaining weight, still thinking about food (our bodies are trying to recover from what is, on a biological level, a famine), but we are constantly reminded to ‘stop now’. Even when dealing with eating disorders, fatphobia is so internalized that we don’t realize we’re keeping people sick as a result. Nothing, not even continued mental illness, is as bad to us as being ‘overweight’. Often, what many patients need in order to fully recover, is to significantly ‘overshoot’ the weight that is normal for them. Only then does their weight stabilize and return to ‘normal’ over time (whatever ‘normal’ happens to be for their own bodies).

I spent almost three years in partial recovery, alternating between restrictive diets and eating as much as I wanted but being terrified of more weight gain. I even briefly had a personal trainer. She told me that an ideal body had to have a thigh gap, and that I should eat two whole mangos for breakfast. In a sense, I had just gone back to square one, but my relationship with food was even worse, and my body was still trying to recover.

When you’re recovering from anorexia, it is dangerous to lose weight really fast because you can relapse easily. When my high-school exams were done, I started having panic attacks regularly. They went from once-weekly to twice-weekly to daily. I couldn’t eat anything because it made me sick. I lost a lot of weight. By the time I started university, I was back to being underweight. I didn’t notice that my eating disorder had crept back in until after the panic attacks were under control. I think in some ways it was worse the second time, because it wasn’t so much about food (though I was eating a ridiculously low amount), it was about exercise. I took up running. I trained and ran a 10k and then I trained and ran a 16k. I couldn’t miss a run, or I felt like I couldn’t eat anything. Because I knew I was going on a week-long holiday without a gym, I ran 15k a day, three days in a row. While I was on the trip, I fainted in the restaurant where I was having lunch with my family. The second year of uni started and I kept running. I went to an International Dessert Night with friends and then ran 7k at 11pm to make up for it. My hair fell out a lot. In January, I was biting my nails in a history lecture when part of my bottom tooth chipped off. In February, I caught a cold that lasted two weeks. Then it came back. In April, I fell while I was running by the Union Canal and scraped my knee. It took over a month to heal. In that moment, I realized that I was almost twenty and it had been ten years since all of this started.

I didn’t want to do another ten like this.

I discovered the Eating Disorder Recovery Podcast and it changed everything. I learned to stop looking for a diet that would help me recover. I found Health at Every Size and the Body Love movement, both of which have been vital in me unlearning the myths we have all been taught about the relationship between weight, health, and worth. The only way to be free is to actually be free. My flat mates are both incredible and showed me what it was to have unconditional permission to eat. So, I ate. A lot. Then I ate more. I met wonderful people that showed me that no one is in my life because my Wii Fit character is happy. They want me to be. I kept eating. It was scary, and once I was back to what should have been ‘normal’ I was tempted to start dieting again. Thankfully, none of the attempts ever worked. I think my body knows better now than to let me decide what’s happening. It has been both magical and terrifying to see how loudly it can tell me what it wants. It doesn’t care about whether I or anyone else thinks it’s ‘too much’ or ‘unhealthy’ or ‘bad’.

It isn’t always easy, I can’t really tell when my body is going decide that it feels safe again, and every time yet another pair of jeans gets too tight, I am tempted to stop everything and start eating nothing but fruit for breakfast again. But then I remember that while I was gaining weight, I also started writing. I volunteered at a lovely café. I performed at a bunch of poetry slams. I had loads of adventures with friends. All because I had my energy and drive back. I can grasp what I’m being taught during class because my brain is finally getting fed enough to understand Foucault.

There are no rules now. If I want a grilled cheese and a strawberry milkshake, it’s what I’m having. Or, like today, if I want breakfast, lunch, dinner, and five chocolate chip cookies, so be it. Scary? Tough. I’m doing it anyway. I have created more awesome things in one year of feeding myself than I did in ten of never giving myself enough.

It’s three in the morning now and I’m still lying on the floor. I’m kind of hungry. I think I want another cookie.