The in-between: snapshots from ED recovery purgatory
Photo by Daniel J. Schwarz on Unsplash
Eating disorders have one of the worst survival rates of any mental illness, second only to opioid overdose (1). But still, most people do survive.
Few people talk about what survival looks like, though. It’s not as flashy as chronic starvation, dramatic binges, and devastating purges. So what does it look like?
Very few people move directly from the hell of acute illness to the promised land of intuitive and healthy eating. Most of us experience a prolonged stay in recovery purgatory: a place of confusion, false-starts, and identity realignment that that may look like survival from the outside but that feels like chaos from the inside.
Here are a few snapshots of what this “in-between” looked like for me. The story of my relationship with food has included all of these chapters at some point in time:
Be a Robot
One way to be an eating and functioning human being is to make food utterly predictable. Same thing, same time, every day. Cereal for breakfast. Bagel for lunch. Soup for dinner. Repeat. It’s not exciting or creative, but it suffices.
The Lunch Puzzle
I remember reaching a point where I was good at consistently eating breakfast and dinner. But lunches? I had no idea what they were or how to do them. I couldn’t understand them as anything more than a snack.
For years, I ate a plain bagel. Or drank a protein shake. Or had some trail mix. Pretzels and cheese. Fruit. A lunch that was an actual meal that contained protein, vegetables, fat, and carbs? How would you ever be hungry for dinner? I didn’t trust it.
Save the Planet
Like a lot of college students, I experimented with being a vegetarian. It was really just a form of restriction disguised as an ethical decision. I tried it for a while but mostly just wound up binging on cheese sandwiches and ice cream.
Menu Misery
When I was acutely sick, I’d bring some of my own food to restaurants. In recovery, I moved away from that. But I’d still spend a lot of time with a menu before going anywhere with anybody. And if these outings happened on the fly, I’d usually decline.
Weekends Don’t Count
A few years after college, I remember thinking, “I’ve made it.” I was enjoying other things in my life, and food was not my constant preoccupation. By investing energy in my other interests, I reduced my binging and purging episodes to “only” once or twice per week, usually on the weekends.
Of course, in hindsight, I see I still had a long way to go. But compared to a time when food had occupied every waking thought, this felt pretty good. For years, I thought that was as good as I could expect my version of survival to get.
The Scene of the Crime
For a long time, I felt really conflicted about cooking and being in the kitchen. It was a place fraught with emotion, tension, and trauma. And yet, I needed to eat! The compromise usually landed somewhere around rice, beans, frozen veggies, and canned soups. Get in, get out, and get on with it.
Game Over, Gluten
I made a decision several years after college to try eliminating gluten. Shortly after, I started CrossFit and learned about the Paleo diet. My breakfasts changed from cereal to eggs and my dinners from sandwiches to soup.
Despite the fact that my motivation for this decision was still weight loss, this is one of the very few specific moments that I can point to as a turning point in my recovery. I had accidentally stumbled upon one of the foundations of good nutrition: eat whole foods.
More Power
As my interest in CrossFit grew, and as the physical demands of my jobs increased, I began thinking more about food as fuel than food as fat. I began to care more about the weight on the bar than the weight on the scale. Even then, I constantly had to police my thoughts. It’s not eating “extra,” I assured the fearful side of myself. It’s eating enough.
Each of these snapshots represents just one of the many different aspects of my own experience as a survivor. And I am one of millions, each of whom has their own unique kaleidoscopic version of recovery.
Now, I don’t have to micromanage what I eat anymore because I trust my body’s signals, I know the “why” behind my choices, and I can manage emotions and stress productively. In fact, I actually enjoy food. It’s like being a kid again, except better.
However, it’s important that we acknowledge what eating disorder survival actually looks like as it unfolds—and it isn’t always (or often!) a place of complete food harmony and good health. Between sickness and health is the wide expanse of “recovery purgatory”—a world of trial-and-error, courage, confusion, and growth.
If you’re there, know you’re not alone. But also know that there is a world beyond it, and it’s not out of reach.
Chesney, E., Goodwin, G. M., & Fazel, S. (2014). Risks of all-cause and suicide mortality in mental disorders: a meta-review. World Psychiatry, 13(2), 153-160.