I'm taking a vacation from my ED/recovery

I'm in the process of recovering right now from my ED (which went from anorexia to bulimia). My body is no longer underweight and I'm eating a normal amount of food for the most part. I still have times when I relapse back into my ED habits by binging and abusing laxatives/restricting the day after to compensate for it. Although my relapses are happening less often, they still make me feel like I'm in limbo with my recovery you know? So I'm either trying really hard to eat healthy/enough and exercise to tone my body and obsessing over that.. or relapsing. I find myself developing a new eating disorder in this recovery, orthorexia.. because I've become obsessed with just eating clean and being healthy. I know this is ironic because I still relapse sometimes and definitly don't eat clean when I do. So it's like there's this new cycle of my orthorexia and then I have moments into bulimia then sometimes anorexia then I feel bad about doing that so I go back to orthorexia and being super good with my eating/exercise. I feel that I need to get over my fear of losing control over my body. Although I just want to maintain my weight now because I feel comfortable and am not underweight, I still have that fear of losing myself to my ED again.

So the point of this long post is to say that as of tomorrow I'm going to try and take a small 2 week break from my ED recovery.. because I need to let my body be what it wants to be. I'm going to eat all my healthy foods but not become obsessed with eating clean. If I want a treat I'll have it and not freak out because it's a "nasty food." I'm also going to keep up my exercise and just focus on looking good. Most importantly, I'm not gonna weigh myself until 2 weeks from tomorrow (february 14th) because I feel that by then I'll be able to tell what my body wants to be at without my control.. and no food logging. I need to trust my body and learn how to just take a leap into the unknown. It's stupid because I'll probably gain weight if I KEEP on trying really hard to be perfect during recovery and then relapsing into binging/purging. If I can just be normal for the next 2 weeks and not think about food/exercise/health/weight I'll be ok.

Does anyone else feel this way? Like recovering from your ED is making you obsessive in eating enough and eating healthy.. almost like now you have a new ED?

You are mirroring my emotions, except I've never had issues with bulimia for my own reasons. A break from ED/recovery sounds like heaven, doesn't it? I say try it, see if it works for you. If not, it was worth a try, right? I would love to do what you're doing, but I haven't gotten to that point yet. Maybe in the future... I wonder what doctors think when their patients form another eating disorder while in recovery?

your idea about taking a break from obssessing over 'eating clean' is a great idea - but think of it as a break from your ED, not your recovery. recovery isnt about being perfect, or eating perfect meal plans. recovery is about getting balanced meals, yes, but it's about getting enough calories, and overcoming your fear foods, and learning to be relaxed and normal about food again. if you eat some chocalte cake or mint ice cream, that's okay, because you need the calories and mentally you also need to just enjoy food again. by no means make your whole diet junk food, but like lalabanana says, as long as you're eating regular healthy food 80% of the time, the other 20% can be just fun foods and desserts and such. everything in moderation and you'll be just fine.

it is normal for one ED to 'morph' into another as you try to recover. or sometimes the ED morphs into some other kind of self-destructiveness like cutting or promiscuity or whatever, because the issues at the root of the ED haven't been dealt with. the food issues need to be dealt with, yes, but also the emotions and traumas and life circumstances and thinking patterns which contributed to this issues also need to be dealt with or the ED will keep cropping up in new forms.

so while eating healthy is a great thing, obsessing about it is not healthy, is not a form of recovery, and can be in itself an ED. so like I said, taking a break from it is PART of recovery.

i know what you're going through - my anorexia has mixed and matched itself with orthorexia too... I became so obsessed with eating healthy - at one point i became obsessed with raw foodism - that i refused to eat anything in the house and would literally starve myself because i was afraid of eating bad/unhealthy foods. in wanting so much to be healthy i actually made myself unhealthy. just know that right now your biggest concern is getting enough calories, and if you eat some ice cream or peanut butter or cookies to help accomplish it, so be it. just make sure you're getting balanced nutrition, and then you don't have to worry a bit about letting 20% be desserts/fun foods. but don't obsess about percentages either. just eat. it is better to have a big fudge sundae once in a while than it is to starve and stress in the grip of orthorexia.

in the name of 'health', people with eating disorders can become vegetarians, raw foodists, whatever, but at the root of it health is not the real reason, ED is and it's an excuse to cut more foods out of your diet. don't fall for it. anything that makes you restrict more at this point IS NOT HEALTHY.

so, good luck in your 2 weeks of relaxing and not weighing - it might be a good idea to make that a habit, becuase it's a good mindset for recovery. you're not relapsing, you're actually improving in your recovery, so feel good about it. you go girl!