Rock The Curves In Eating Disorder Recovery!

I am not sure if you need to hear this but weight gain is actually ok!

Over the past few months, from when I truly started recovery properly, I have gained a reasonable amount of weight and I now have curves and lumps and I have bits of me that are unfamiliar and parts of me that are taking some adjusting to….

But you know what?  It’s okay to have curves and it’s okay to gain weight!

The process of gaining the weight in recovery which has involved eating a lot more food and resting more than felt mentally comfortable has certainly been traumatic at times and has involved doing things that felt completely wrong to me and my disordered self.  There were many many days and moments in a lot of those days when I did not think I could tolerate recovery and did not believe I could keep going.

Of course an eating disordered brain is usually terrified of any weight gain and any actions that have the possible end result of a bigger body… (even when we hate being underweight!) but the sad truth is that unless we allow the weight gain and commit to it, we just don’t recover.

It was only when it clicked in my brain just how radically I had to accept the weight gain part of the recovery process, that I was truly able to commit to doing everything it took to get better.

And that’s the part of any recovery attempts I’ve made in the past that was always missing.  I knew I had to gain weight but I never really committed to that fact or let it happen without my trying to influence the rate or how much or how the weight might look on my body…  Of course this was not helped by my experiences in ‘treatment’ where we were told that we could gain ‘too fast’ or were set target weights that were ridiculously low… (I am sure you know about the petition to change eating disorder treatment??)

And now I’m further along in recovery, I know I have probably (definitely) still got more weight to gain but that my body will decide when it’s done with gaining weight if I let it do what it needs to do to keep me well and if I don’t interfere.

Of course, I regularly have bad body image days but I also try to love my body and really appreciate it for the life it is now giving me and that bit more mental freedom I’m getting because I committed to recovery and I committed to weight gain when I did.

With this weight gain I am truly getting my life back after so so long of believing that that might never happen.  Fat on my body is making my life real and a bit more worth living again.

So if you are still terrified of weight gain and finding it hard to jump into the murky and terrifying recovery waters, take it from me: life is much worse living in that cold and malnourished disordered world than it is with a bit of flesh on your body…

Don’t fear the curves!!

Love your curves, love the fat on your body and rock your awesome curvy self!!