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This is me signing off.

My hair falling out really was a sign to me my body doesn’t want to lose any more weight. I decided to see a dietitian recently and while she wasn’t at all pushing me towards recovery, I decided I wanted to stop slowly killing myself.

There’s an awful lot I want to do with my life and anorexia isn’t going to help me meet these goals.

I know it’s going to take a while to shift my mindset after this six month relapse but right now I’m choosing to recover.

It took a serious shock for me to realize what I was doing to myself (my hair falling out in clumps) and without that prompt I don’t know if I would have hit this same realization.

A comment from someone on here that really helped me, and that I think anyone who is going through anorexia as an adult should think about, is that my body is NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE IT DID IN HIGH SCHOOL. My UGW was my high school weight. I’m 25 years old- I’m not supposed to look like a teenager anymore.

I also wanted to point out that I have only been relapsing for six months, I didn’t low restrict and mostly ate 1200 a day, and still, my hair started falling out and I had a scary severe episode of hypoglycemia. 1200 is the amount a 4 year old needs in a day and my body was telling me it needs more. I started experiencing these side effects with a BMI of 19- I am not underweight.

I don’t think anyone has the power to force you to want to recover and it has to be a decision you make yourself. I consider myself an extremely practical person and at some point for me, the facts and risks outweighed the benefits. There’s no use in being skinny if I’m bald. Or if I’m dead. There’s no use being skinny if the only thing I am able to do is lay in bed all day, and don’t have the energy to do things I love that enrich my life.

I don’t think this time was wasted and I’m not beating myself up for relapsing. I learned a lot about my body and myself. But I was going about it with blinders on. You know the term confirmation bias? I purposefully didn’t seek out any information that I knew would convince me what I was doing was wrong because I wanted to continue in blissful ignorance, until my body let me know that this had become an urgent, threatening situation.

There’s that one ED song clip that’s popular on tiktok that I think about a lot. “You can’t fool your body you can only fool your mind”. And it’s true, but I am grateful to my body for telling me I had to stop before something worse happened to me.

I hope you choose to have a real life someday. There’s so much out there. So many feelings to have and things to experience. And it’s hard to get that same fullness without the energy your body needs to participate.

I’m hoping I won’t be back, but who knows! I am taking things one day at a time right now, one meal at a time. I’m learning a lot about recovery and the side effects of anorexia. Sometimes I have felt overwhelmed and scared but I know this is the right choice for me- and on my good days so far the past few days eating more, I have been able to do more just around the house than I’ve done in months. I have less anxiety. I’m more engaged with my partner and I’m able to tell them the truth about what I’ve been going through for the first time in a long long time. These things make recovery worth it for me. This is why I am trying this. I am giving it a shot. I want to live.

My love to all of y’all. I hope someone reads this and it makes you think. I’m not telling you what to do, just what it’s been like for me. But I do want to tell you, it can be worth it to give yourself a chance, take that first step, and do your best every day.