Dealing With Weight Gain In Eating Disorder Recovery

Weight gain in recovery is essential but not easy.. I have been gaining weight lately as part of my eating disorder recovery and so I thought I’d write a bit more about my experiences with and thoughts about weight gain.

Weight gain is something we don’t talk about a lot, unless in a negative way and yet if we want to recover, overcoming the terror of weight gain and letting it happen is kind of crucial!

On previous recovery attempts I never really acknowledged or addressed the fear of weight gain and at those times I only ever gained weight in a very controlled, slow and really quite disordered way (little wonder those recovery attempts failed).

This time, I’m gaining faster than I ever have before and due to this it it taking my eyes a while to catch up with my growing body, which also currently feels a bit alien to sit or move in!

I am finding though that I am slowly adjusting and I don’t always now feel as big as I did say a week or two ago, even though I am actually bigger!

At the moment I do try to prevent anything that might trigger unhelpful thoughts, such as the gaining too fast, too much, look ridiculously huge thoughts that could spell a tricky day in recovery.

I avoid wearing anything that is triggering.

I live in elasticated waists, dresses and tunics… more skirts than trousers as that stops the feeling of clothes rubbing against my thighs where they didn’t used to and I am in big baggy t shirts or sweaters!

I also practice feeling good about the growth in my body even if I don’t 100% believe it!

I visualise myself as being even bigger than now and the better life I will live in that body to make myself more excited about further gain!

And it works… I do sometimes now feel real excitement at getting bigger.

When the eating disorder pipes up with ‘…you will gain 10lb overnight’, I try to retort with ‘well that is kind of the point!’… and then shake my growing booty in ED’s disbelieving face!

I also try to embrace the word ‘fat’.  I don’t see fat as a bad thing.

I turn fat from the evil that society would let us believe it is and instead see fat as fabulous & fat as life giving!

It’s not always easy though… weight gain is a process of adjustment but why not turn it from an evil necessity in recovery to a positive wonder?!