Letās talk food, nutrition, and overall health. For those of you who have been following me since I started this blog in 2012, youāll probably already know my journey and all Iāve gone through to make this much progress in loving and accepting myself as much as I do today. I struggled with bulimia for several years before I realized that what I was doing to my body was harming it so much more than it was helping it. I never thought that any long term effects of my disorder would carry on and affect my health in the future, but man was I wrong.
During the height of my disorder and relapse episodes during recovery, I lost a lot of hair due to malnutrition and an imbalance of electrolytes and hormones. My hair became weak and the hair loss was so severe that I could easily pull out a small handful of hair at any give time. To this day, my hair still hasnāt fully grown back to the luscious locks that I had before my disorder.
These photos are of me sitting in my dermatologistās office waiting for her to give me the results of my scalp biopsy and 5 blood tests I recently did to measure hormone, vitamin, iron, and electrolyte levels in my blood to determine what treatment path to do to treat my hair loss. Tomorrow, I have an emergency appointment with my dentist to retake X-rays of my teeth because she noticed how irregularly worn out my enamel is due to repeated purging from the past. And will then decide if I need fillings for almost half of my teeth.
No one ever tells you the after effects of having an eating disorder. No one tells you that even when you are recovered mentally, your body still may not be healed from the damage you did to it in the past, and that it will serve as a reminder to never treat it like that again. Though I know that it will take a while for my body to go back to how it was before, I am proud to be able to say that I am definitely so much healthier and in a much better place than I was a few years ago. The next time you feel the urge to relapse and find yourself saying āone time wonāt hurtā, I can assure you that it will, because my body is living proof showing you otherwise. You are so much stronger than your disorder. Healing is yours.