The benefits of an eating disorder...

I know what you're thinking....there are benefits? Yes and I'm not talking about losing weight because remember weight loss caused by our eating disorder is NOT an achievement even if it feels that way at the time. And I'm not just talking about the benefits of recovering. I'm talking about the benefits of the whole experience, the benefits we gain from the battle, the benefits we gain in growing as people because of our eating disorder.

When you get to a point where you are sick of the eating disorder and are ready to recover it is easy to look at the eating disorder and see all the negatives and hate it for what it does to you. That's good because you are seeing the eating disorder for what it really is and it drives you to recover. But there comes a point when being so angry about having an eating disorder and hating yourself for it can have the opposite affect. You might have even recovered already but looking back with regret and sadness at that experience isn't going to change what happened and is only going to affect your happiness that you deserve now that you're free.
If you had a choice would you like to look back on your life with regret and anger, wishing that things had been different or would you like to look back with acceptance and happiness because everything you have been through has lead you to be who you are today (hopefully that's a recovered and happy person). It doesn't matter what we've been through in our lives, we all deserve to be happy and accept our lives as they are because no amount of worrying, regretting, or anger is going to change the past. But we can change how we feel about the past if we look at our experience in a new light.

So we have had/have an eating disorder, we can't change that. But as it's eating disorder awareness week I thought it would be the best time to try to look at our eating disorder from a new light and appreciate the person it has helped to make us today...

- Everything happens for a reason. I truly believe that every situation we face no matter how good or bad, happens to help us learn something new or change the course of our life in a positive way if we are able to see the opportunity or to meet new people who in turn affect our life. We might not see it straight away but there really is something to gain through everything we experience.
"We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations."

- We discover ourselves. Recovery from an eating disorder takes a lot of soul searching. You learn to dig beneath the ed and find out who you really are. Most people go through day to day life never really questioning themselves or as silly as it may sound getting to know themselves. They don't have a reason to. But we get that chance and we come through the other side being a lot more in touch with ourselves. When you understand yourself as a person I find it makes life more rewarding. I feel more like an individual and like a worthwhile person because I can see what makes me, me. I think for me the most important thing I learnt about myself or learnt to use from within myself is my spirituality. I'd definitely call myself a spiritual person which I never did before. Having that spirituality has made me a much happier person and I doubt I would have discovered it or realized it's potential if it wasn't for my eating disorder.

- We learn to love and respect ourselves. For most of us our low self esteem probably played a big part in our eating disorder. Of course many people without eating disorders and low self esteem often have a higher sense of love and respect for themselves than we start off with but do they stop to question it or appreciate the skill of loving and respecting themselves. Do they question if they could love themselves more? Be nicer to themselves? Or see it as a priority? We learn the importance of these skills and it is such a good feeling when you reach that point where you can accept yourself and feel good about yourself. We learn the techniques to increase our self acceptance more and more giving us the potential to have such good self esteem if we allow ourselves to.

- We become stronger. All I want to do to elaborate on this is share some quotes with you which I really think emphasis the strength we are able to gain through suffering.
"Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength."
"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along."
"In the midst of winter, I found there was within me, an invincible summer."
"Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you."

- We learn to manage our emotions and understand them. We have the opportunity to become emotionally healthy people who not only stop using food to deal with emotions but learn the healthiest way to deal with them. When we understand our emotions and why we feel the way we do they become easier to deal with. Now we understand them we are prepared for life. Of course they will affect us but we have the potential to be in a place where we can deal with them in the best possible way.

- We are able to appreciate other people's problems and understand other people better. When you learn so much about the connection between thoughts, feelings, behavior and life experiences you begin to have a lot more sympathy for people. I find I am now a lot less judgmental about people because you never know what is going on in someone's life. You are able to understand the layers there are to people and see beyond the exterior.

- We are able to appreciate life. When you've been through hell and back the freedom of recovery feels amazing. You are able to appreciate every breath of fresh air, every moment of happiness, every bit of energy you have, every moment of enjoyment, every thing that makes you smile. You are thankful for getting through to the other side to such a beautiful new world and you are ready to embrace it and love every moment of life.

So if I could go back and change my experience, would I? Probably not. It has made me who I am today and that is a much stronger and happier person. It has taught me to see life in a new way and understand life and myself in a new way. Recovery has provided me with skills for life not just connected to beating my eating disorder but in continuing to be a happy, healthy person. So I won't look back at my eating disorder with regret but with relief and a sense of achievement because I got through it and it has given me so much to be thankful for.

Dear Jasmin....love your body

I wanted to share with you a letter I wrote as a recovery project. I'm writing from the point of view of my body. It's a really good idea to help you try to listen to your body and really think about what you're putting it through so hopefully you'll try it too. If you're body could talk what would it say to you?

Dear Jasmin
I just want you to know how it feels when you treat me the way you do. I know you can’t exactly help it and you know deep down that what you are doing to me is wrong but you do have a choice to stop it if you could just find that strength that I know you have.
I don’t know what to do with myself. I can never prepare myself for what you are doing to do to me because it is always changing. Sometimes you fill me with goodness and I am thankful for that because it allows me to function properly, to be filled with energy, and then I can do good things back for you like producing the chemicals you need to feel happy. I am able to feel peaceful knowing that I am not about to suddenly break down and can allow you to sleep peacefully in return. My muscles feel strong and I can cope with the pressures you put me under when dancing and allow you to dance to the best of your ability. I have everything I need to look after every bit of you even down to your hair, skin and nails making you look healthy and feel good about yourself. But when you don’t feed me properly I can’t do these things. Like a car with no fuel I do not have the energy and begin to slow down. If you ignore these signals and push me to keep going I will start to break down. Sometimes you fill me with so much that it hurts and I don’t know what to do with it all. You purge which confuses my hunger signals and I know that confuses you too because I am unable to give you messages properly on what your body needs.
Sometimes you give me so little I don’t know how I keep going. I feel like I barely am and that I will give up any moment but I try to keep fighting for you. But I want you to realise how hard that fight is. I feel limp and lifeless. Everything slows down within me because I don’t have the energy to keep it going. I try so hard to keep everything within going that I lose so much connection to the world outside. Everything is just there, a world behind a translucent screen that I want to be part of so much and I know you do to but I can’t see it clearly enough or feel or hear it enough because I’m surrounded by this bubble of pain, sadness and weakness that lack of food brings. I am there in a moment of time lifelessly, going through the motions, not really there.
I like exercise. It can make me feel energised and it helps me to release chemicals that can make you happy. It can help me move properly and gives me lots of strength. It is good for my blood and my heart but in certain amounts. Too much and it has the opposite affects. When you push me too far I don’t have the energy to allow you to feel happy. Even when you feed me, you are using more than I have so again I begin to shut down. I have to take energy from other places to keep going such as your muscles which is taking away my strength. My heart is put under more pressure than it can handle because the more I take from my muscles the weaker my heart gets. One day it will give up.
I know this isn’t how you want to feel. You want energy. You want to feel healthy and happy and I can give that to you if you let me. I can’t keep going this way much longer.
Love...your body

Stay strong everyone
Love Jasmin

Guest Blogger....Maintaining a positive attitude through illness

Here is a post that Eric Stevenson very kindly offered to share with through the clouds about maintaing a positive attitude through illness which I definitely agree with! My negative attitude about relapsing ended up actually causing my relapse and I'm sure more of you can understand that. Ever since my own recovery and through reading different books I have become very pro positive thinking and I think it can change your life dramatically and especially help you recover from your eating disorder. Here's what Eric has to say....

Individuals struggling with any kind of serious illness are prone to anxiety and depression. These are difficult problems to overcome, and can sometimes even cause enough stress to exacerbate the original illness. The good news is that the reverse is also true – having a positive attitude has been shown to help with recovery and mitigate the side effects of both illness and treatment. Staying positive is a difficult but important goal when faced with sickness.

There is no single mindset or approach that will work for everyone. Some people may take comfort in learning everything there is to know about their condition so that they can plan in advance. Others might find this amount of information overwhelming, and instead prefer to take it one day at a time. One man who followed the former strategy is popular science author Stephen Jay Gould. He was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an aggressive form of cancer that usually has a survival rate of 9 to 12 months. But he didn’t let himself be discouraged by that figure, instead focusing on the fact that his otherwise good health and positive attitude gave him the best chance to survive. He lived with mesothelioma symptoms for another 20 years before passing away from an unrelated cancer.

This is not to say that Gould’s positive attitude is the only thing that helped him beat the odds. Rather, his famous essay “The Median Isn’t the Message” is an example of one man finding hope in an unusual place: statistics. His story illustrates the uniqueness of the human spirit in finding ways to remain positive in the face of a frightening situation. Even for those facing illnesses far less immediately threatening than the symptoms of mesothelioma, maintaining a good attitude can have real, tangible effects on day-to-day life.

Eating Disorder Awareness Week...

Heyyy everyone...

So, today is the start of eating disorder awareness week and luckily half term for me (yay!) so I will try to write a new post everyday this week.

I just wanted to tell you all about New Looks new Beat watches. As you know I am a Beat young ambassador and this Saturday I went to New Look with some other people from Beat to kind of launch the watches and have some photos taken to start promoting them. They are £2 and the money goes towards Beat so if you haven't already...go and buy one!

I have lots of things planned for my blog this week including a guest blog but for today I'd just like to share a recovery analogy with you from the book 'The Rules of Normal Eating'....

Why is change so slow?
"Picture a hill of damp sand with a marble on top. If you give the marble a nudge in one direction, it will roll down the hill, forming a slight groove in the sand. Each time the marble gets nudged in the same direction, it will slide into the groove, and plunge downward.
Now suppose you decide that you want the marble to roll down the other side of the sand hill. You'll have to place the marble on top of the hill and push it in the other direction because if you don't, it will slip automatically into its old groove. If you push it only once or twice in the new direction, its inclination will still be to return to return to its old groove. So initially, you'll need to push the marble in the new direction over and over until a new groove is carved out. Eventually when your old groove and the new groove are about even, the marble will have the potential to roll either way. To ensure that it will always go in the new direction, you'll have to keep gently nudging it until the old groove fills up with sand and the new groove is deeply carved. Then the marble will naturally fall into the new groove every time.
Translating this marble analogy into behavioral terms, we have to repeat a new behavior more often than an old behavior in order to have the new one become a habit and the old one disappear. Behaviorists call this process conditioning because it conditions or prompts us to behave in certain ways. Of course most people are not linear learners and don't go straight from point A to point B. We try a new way, revert back to the old way for a while, then tentatively try the new way again. We're inconsistent, then we wonder why we're not changing quickly enough, after all our hard work.
Think back to the marble on the sand hill. What would happen if sometimes you pushed it one way and sometimes you pushed it the other? The old and new grooves would stay about even right? That's what happens when you try a new behavior or way of thinking, then return to the old action or thought. For example, if food makes you anxious, you try pushing yourself to eat when you're moderately hungry. Succeeding you feel proud of overcoming your fear. But the next time you feel hunger pangs, you ignore them and put off eating until you are nearly sick. Or you triumphantly pass by the jar of chocolate kisses on your worker's desk one day, only to find yourself sneaking a handful the next. Alternating like this for days, weeks, months, or even years causes you to feel as if you never change even though you're doing things right a good deal of the time. You prevent yourself from changing by reinforcing both the new and the old, achieving a behavioral draw.
Returning to the marble analogy, we could say that every time you revert to an old behavior, you're deepening the first groove,while every time you push yourself to practice a new behavior, you're not only carving the second groove more deeply, but you're allowing sand to erase the first one. Similarly, if you continue to press onward with a new behavior, the neural pathway in your brain that elicited the old behavior will eventually fade away."

Hope you're all ok
Love Jasmin

Another... Recovery quote!

I do love recovery quotes...(in case you hadn't noticed). I always found they were able to give me hope or a bigger feeling of courage when I was feeling low.
I just came across this one in my recovery flash cards which I have a massive pile of and I think it's a really good way of looking at the recovery process...

"Very slowly and carefully, you let go of the log and practise floating. When you start to sink you grab back on. Then you let go of the log and practise treading water, and when you get tired, hold on once again. After a while, you practise swimming around the log, twice, ten times, twenty times, a hundred times, until you gain the strength and confidence you need to swim to shore. Only then do you completely let go of the log."

Hope you're all ok
Love Jasmin