 Hey gang, welcome to my channel if this is your first time here. Welcome back if you've been here before. Thanks for checking this video out. The videos on this channel can help heal more than 90% of any health wellness or body image challenge. So I encourage you to take a scroll through the other videos on this channel. There is something here that can help anybody reach any of their health wellness or body image goals. Today is a Q&A all about eating disorders. I had anorexia, binge purge, exercise bulimia. That just means that instead of vomiting you use exercise as a form of burning off, purging anything that you have eaten. I also had orthorexia. That is where you are absolutely terrified to eat anything unless it is 100% optimally healthy. I suffered for somewhere between 11 and 15 years with this. I am now fully recovered and I just wanted to help people. So on my Instagram, it's kick it with Kelly. Please follow me there. I share a lot of my stories that I do not share on this channel. So check that out. But I posted a story asking for questions regarding eating disorders because I wanted to do a Q&A. I found when I was going through recovery it was so hard to actually reach out and find people that were suffering or that had suffered the same way I did. I was in an outpatient hospital program where I learned all about recovery. So I've been there. I've done my own recovery work on the side myself with various books and such. And I just have so much to help people with. So if you know anybody suffering with an eating disorder, if you have one yourself, you are not alone. And yes, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And I didn't believe anybody when they told me this. And sure enough, one day, boom, it clicks and you're free. And it's not without a lot of hard work. It does take hard work. And I think when it comes over night, you've got to work hard. But it's so, so worth it. I can't imagine what life would be like if I still had that problem. I don't know if I would even be alive, to be honest. So here we are. Let's go. How and when do you know to start the recovery process? Each eating disorder and each person that has an eating disorder are so, so different. The reason why a eating disorder starts for somebody could be completely different than the reason why it starts for somebody else. Not only that, the way the eating disorder gets expressed through each person is totally different as well. And the origin of the eating disorder may have nothing at all to do with body image or food, believe it or not. There are some little kinks there when it comes to control issues or trying to fill a hole that you weren't able to fill with love or an unmet need from your childhood. Now you're trying to fill it with food. Another thing I wanted to touch on is that you could be overweight and have a serious eating disorder. Or you could look totally healthy and normal. I did for a lot of mine. Nobody knew yet I was suffering extremely on the inside. So you can never judge an ed by how somebody looks appearance wise. All I can speak from is my own personal experience. And I knew it was time to recover when I realized that the eating disorder was taking up more of my life than the parts of my life I loved the most. Like my friends, my family. I stopped going to family and events. I stopped going to friend events because I was so terrified of having to eat or drink or speak to anyone about not eating or drinking there. I felt absolutely out of control. And then I started noticing the things that I was missing, the time that I was missing with the people that I cared about. Scary physical things were happening too. Earlier on I did lose my period. I did start having heart palpitations and chest pains. I was getting very dizzy. My panic and anxiety was through the roof. What it was for me was realizing the mental capacity that I no longer had. My brain's gone. My brain space was completely engulfed with thoughts around food, thoughts around calories. Do I need to stay up tonight till 2am walking for hours to burn off what I eaten? Do I need to walk for hours today to earn something I'm gonna eat at a family event tomorrow? I could not live like that anymore. It was so not worth it. So when it's time to recover for you, you're gonna feel it. I think it's always time to recover. I think if you are even aware that you may have an eating disorder or disordered eating, the time is now. It's right then. That is when you start the journey of recovery because you know what? The longer you go, the way harder it becomes to climb out of that pool. So how to deal with bad body image during recovery. First of all, change your clothes. Go buy clothes that are larger in size, that are more comfortable. I started wearing baggy or t-shirts. You can still look completely stylish. You don't need clothes that are just hugging into your body. I remember the day that I went up to a medium-sized shirt and I thought it was just the end of the world. And you know what? It made my body look so much better to wear an appropriate size that I no longer cared that the shirt was a medium. I mean I also made sure about the quality of what I was eating. I still gave myself many liberties. You're not gonna blow up and gain a whole bunch of pounds and look gross or anything. Another thing that I did, I adopted a healthy exercise routine. Meaning that since my body was gaining as it should, because I was way underweight, I decided to go to the gym and start lifting heavy weights and turn that into quality muscle. Your body knows what to do with every single thing that you eat. You're not gonna gain a billion pounds and it will stop and it will then come back down as long as you continue on the right path, on the path that you're going with recovery. It will come back down to your natural set point weight. This is the weight that your body is most comfortable at and the weight that you feel you're best at. Not the weight that you look you're best at. That is subjective. It's the way that you feel that matters. I can't tell you how good I felt. Even mentally I felt so much better. Next question. How long does it take to gain the weight back? That's gonna vary with everyone. What are you doing during recovery? Are you still using some eating disorder behaviors? Sometimes during recovery that happens but regardless I'm not saying it's okay to continue using eating disorder behaviors because really you should not. All that you need to know and all that you need to think about is that you are going to feel amazing. Your body will take care of itself and will maintain its own healthy weight on its own. If you're eating healthily and you're eating normally and you're taking care of yourself and you have a healthy exercise routine, your body will be fine and it will maintain its weight effortlessly. I have tons of videos on this channel if you look through them on how to go about your lifestyle so that your body does maintain its own healthy weight naturally. Check those videos out for more info. What is a set point weight and how do I know what mine is? A set point weight is the weight at which your body is supposed to be naturally. The weight that you feel the best at, that it functions optimally at. You should have your period. You don't really know until you're there. Next. What happens if I overshoot my set point weight? Your body basically is being nourished again and it's scared. I thought it was dying for so long. It feels like it might be dying again and so it holds on to stuff and it's like let's hang on to this so that we survive. That happened to me. Was I terrified? Oh yeah. But I stayed the course and that's what makes the difference and now I have muscle. I am a healthy weight and my body maintains it just because my lifestyle is healthy and I really genuinely do enjoy a healthy lifestyle. If you find that you are not enjoying a healthy lifestyle, that you feel you need to eat things that are not optimal for you in order to maintain a better emotional state that perhaps drinking a whole bottle of wine makes you feel so good that you need to add that into your lifestyle. I encourage you to look at that very closely. You have to. Why is it that you need those things to be happy? What is missing in your life? Like you have to get really honest and really real with yourself going through recovery. You might want to get honest with yourself. Like instead of doing this, do you really? Because you can make it happen. What is the unmet need that you're not getting? You might think oh well it's because I need this. Keep going and keep asking because it's going to be really surprising. It could be layer over layer over layer over layer of things that you're not even consciously aware of that may have happened in your childhood that may have happened flipping yesterday. We don't even know but you have to get deep and go through it to find out. I have a way you can do that. I would tell you at the end when I'm through the questions. Worked like a charm for me. Anyway watch till the end and I'll share that with you. If I hate my body at a lower weight, how am I going to like it at a higher weight? This question actually makes me so sad. If you hate your body, why? Seriously, why do you hate your body? That's subjective. Think about it objectively because I don't think it has to do with your weight really. If you go way deeper, I really don't think it has to do with your weight on a fundamental level. And when you truly do recover and I mean really recover, you are going to love your body no matter what it looks like, no matter what weight it is. Did you know that your weight is the force of the gravity attaching your body to the earth? Weight is the force with which an object is pulled towards the center of the earth or any other celestial body. This force is called the gravitational force. Greater the mass, greater will be the gravitational force exerted by it and thus more will be our weight. What the flip and hack. Look at this photo. All of these women look completely different and they are the exact same weight. So no, I don't think you're going to love your body at a higher weight if you don't like it at a lower weight. Again, stage of the end and I'm going to tell you how to figure that out. What did you have to eat in recovery? There is no one-size-fits-all approach. I just tried to eat well without the paranoia and obsession with being healthy. Healthy fats, healthy carbs, like rice and quinoa, things like that. I made sure I had tons of vegetables and I made sure I had lots of healthy meats. As long as you are trying your best to incorporate all of the various foods, that's what really matters. It also comes down to fear foods. So another thing that you do have to do during recovery is explore the fear foods. What are your fear foods? What are you afraid to eat and why? I'm surviving on protein shakes, ice cream, water, safe foods. What are these rules that you have placed on food? Like this food is good, this food is bad. Why are we placing rules on that food? Why is it good and why is it bad and is it okay to eat in moderation? I nowadays eat everything. I eat fast food every now and then. I eat pizza every now and then and so for me, as long as I'm maintaining an 80-20 balance in lifestyle, so 80% optimally healthy, 20% of the time I treat myself, that is called balance. So you really do have to explore your fear foods and you do have to eat them. That makes a big difference in terms of how quickly you change. Next, how did you tackle fear foods? Okay, I didn't even know that was the next question, but handy that. I would explore eating them. I mean, how else are we gonna tackle fear foods? And that's it. That's those little brave baby steps we gotta take. You gotta confront your fears. I made sure that I did not count the calories on the days that I ate the fear foods and just making sure that I was eating still when I was hungry. What that did for me is it shut off that piece in my brain that was trying to add everything and subtract everything with exercise. You may have, which I did, lost sight of your hunger and satiety signals. So are you hungry or are you satiated? Are you full? And I no longer could hear those signals from my body because the eating disorder had overridden those for so many years. Make sure you have a support system around you that understands that you are going through something. They don't have to understand the eating disorder. It understands that you're going through something and understands that you may not finish a piece of pizza. You're gonna put it there until you feel okay to have another couple bites and you're gonna leave it there. The way it did work for me is that I would start eating the pizza. The alarm bells would start ringing. So all of a sudden I felt like I was full. I wasn't, but my brain was telling my body that I'm full out of the fear of eating the pizza. So when that signal happened and I felt physically full, I'd put the pizza down. Eventually that subsides and your body is hungry again. And so I would pick up the pizza, keep eating it. That may happen. Also it may not. And the biggest piece that you have to learn is compassion for yourself. Your body is not anymore able to communicate with you properly because your mind is trying to override the signals of the body. You need to have compassion for yourself. But that's what I did. I'd ease into the fear of foods that way. And then obviously the next day, I wouldn't really want any things. I knew I had pizza the day before and I was satisfied mentally with having satisfied that craving. And so I wasn't wanting it again or having pancakes for breakfast. Oh my gosh. Okay. Going out for breakfast, that was terrifying for me. And I stopped going out for brunch and for breakfast with my friends. And I missed that and I really love it. And so I would tackle that. So I go out for breakfast. If I couldn't finish it because I was too scared or I felt too full or I felt too sick, I'd pack it up and take it home. And then I found out that going out for breakfast, it didn't even matter. The eating disorder brain said that's a lot of calories in the morning. You're not going to get to eat for the rest of the day. And now you can't do anything for the rest of the day except for walk or run on the treadmill to burn those calories off. And eventually the eating disorder got quieter. And when I went out for breakfast, it gave me good energy, fats, protein, carbs. I had energy. I wanted to go for a hike after breakfast. So you see, once the eating disorder goes away, your mind starts to realize that these things are not scary. You can eat pizza. You're not going to want to eat it again tomorrow. If you have two pieces of pizza, you're not going to want the whole pizza because you're allowing yourself to have that. If you go out for breakfast, you're going to be cool. You're going to have energy to exercise during the day in a healthy, fun way. You're not going to be hungry enough to eat anyway until when it's natural to eat again and your body is already handled the breakfast part. At least that's how I went about tackling my own fear food. Remember, as long as you have an 80-20 balance, your body knows what to do with the liberties you allow it when it comes to food. Is it normal to binge sometimes and is binging guaranteed during recovery? It is normal for that to happen. It's absolutely normal. Like I alluded to in the previous question, it's the deprivation factor that causes binging. During recovery, it is 100% normal to binge, especially if you have been restricting your body and mind working a way that once something is no longer a bad food, once the food rules have gone away, you don't want that food or that quantity of that food the same way that you did before. It's just not as appealing. So once you do start tackling those fear foods, that will die down for you. And no, binging is not guaranteed during recovery. The best piece of advice I can give you in terms of what ifs is to go through the recovery because if you don't, you won't recover. And you know what? There is nothing wrong with crossing that bridge when you get to it. Next, should I go all in or gradually increase food intake? Okay, so for those of you watching that may not know what all in means, going all in means that you are going to be allowing your body to eat as much as it wants until you do get that full signal. It's just another way of getting your body's hunger and satiety signals to come back online for you. It's really what you're most comfortable with. I personally did not go all in. I also didn't believe it was necessary. And I also understood that it is going to wreak a bit of havoc, no permanent damage or anything like that, but it's going to wreak a bit of havoc on your digestive processing. If you're not feeding your body that much, or you know, you're just been having different behaviors, when you start just shoveling it in until you get that response, it's wreaking havoc on the inside of your body, your digestive system, the way your body is processing the food, it's kind of overloading it. I have a very respected and highly knowledgeable source about going all in. Her name is Stephanie Buttermore. If you're a YouTube fan in any kind of health and fitness realm, you've probably heard of her. She went all in. I will post her video down below for you to check out. She documents her entire journey of going all in. Check that out. If you're curious about all in and want to see really what happens, that's below. What I did though is I just started really trying to pay attention to my body's hunger and fullness signals. I just want to calm any fears that are happening. Say you do go all in and you gain a bunch of weight, your body will normalize itself and will balance itself back out and that weight will come off again if you maintain a healthy active lifestyle with healthy food intake over time. Next, is it normal to be constantly bloated and to develop IBS during or after recovery? Yes. That is 100% normal. I have an entire video all about IBS. I have linked that below as well. Yeah, it is entirely normal because like I say, you haven't been treating your body the same way in terms of eating or exercise behavior or if you've been vomiting to purge. Yes, when you do start eating more and you're eating more fibers and you're eating more fat, it is very normal to end up with a lot of bloating that will go away. Please, stay the corpse. I can't say that enough. If you stick through it, you stick through recovery, through IBS, through the bloating, you will come through that and your body will normalize. I think the biggest mistake that people make is not sticking with it because things like that happen, you blow it, you think, ah, this is not good. Regress. And then you slip back down. It's like three steps forwards, two and a half steps back. You're only taking half a step forwards and it's agonizing. I mean, my recovery could have been much shorter had I gone stronger at it. I did relapse a couple times. If you have any questions about that or anything else that I'm saying in this video, please comment below and I will be happy to answer those for you. It will pass if you keep going the course. How did your ED affect your relationships? Okay, I just want to give a shout out right now to anyone watching that went through my ED with me that was part of my support system that lived with me or was close to me when I had my eating disorder because you are a saint and an angel. I was not a good... Okay, well, Siri, I'm not talking to you anyways. It affected my relationships a lot. I was monitoring every single thing. I was Miss Cranky Pants nastiness, not okay. Once I was having a lovely evening, ordered food in Little Miss Ed Me, thought that I had ordered a locale veggie burger type of shenanigan. And I didn't realize until I was halfway through that burger, like I was so hungry on the inside that I didn't realize until I was halfway through that burger that it was not the locale veg thing that I thought I'd had in my mouth. It was actually a highly fat beef thing, a cheese I didn't want. You know, like you don't even notice this because your body is so hungry. It just wants the food. And I lost my mind. That's so not fair. But again, huge piece of advice here. You need to tell the people that you are affecting with this ED about it. It's not easy. It was incredibly difficult. But instead of just coming across like your cranky biatch because you're eating a burger that you didn't order and oh my god, it's the end of the world or your food isn't totally portioned. I mean, you need to be honest with people. You need to be open with people because that is the only way that they're going to be able to even try to support you. I'm not saying that anyone's going to understand you. Nobody could have understood me or my mind then, but you need to give them the chance to support you. Help me. Help you. It affects all of your relationships on some level or another. The most important relationship you need to be thinking of is the relationship that you have with you. How is your ED affecting your relationship with you? I can honestly say I didn't want to be friends with myself back then. Pay attention to that. Be fair about it. How do you know when or if you're ready to recover? I can honestly say that I just put myself into recovery. I didn't feel ready to recover, but I knew that I had to and I knew the value that I was missing from my life. Like, I knew the value of my friends and my family, the value of the time in my life. Are you spending the time of your life in a way that is making you happy and getting you to that dream life that you want? Are you spending the time of your life focused on calories and exercise and you just got away those scales? Is it worth what you're missing? Is it worth your health and your happiness because you're health and happiness? What else is any good without health and happiness? Just do it. Ready or not, you do it. How do you know if you're fully recovered? I knew I was fully recovered when this is unprecedented for me at the time, but about an hour and a half I've gone by since I had eaten and I thought, oh my gosh, I didn't even think about the calories that were in that. What? I thought that I was doomed forever to just be subjected to automatically counting calories whether I wanted to or not. It became so automatic. I memorized every single calorie and every single thing and you know what? One day and I went half. That's an eternity. I didn't even think about the calories and I thought, oh my gosh, I am recovered. Or the first day out of my recovery where I had a cheat meal and I had zero impulse to walk or to do any exercise, I knew I was recovered. I remember going for a walk and then thinking I don't want to walk anymore and going home. What? Because before I would have to walk until each calorie was accounted for and then some, that's how you know when it's no longer affecting you in any way, shape, or form. If it is still taking up any part of your brain you are not really fully recovered. You are fully recovered when it is no longer a part of your life or in your mind. Next. When did you start going to the gym working out again? You should not be exercising if you are not nourishing your body enough, especially to build muscle but to exercise. If you have an ED and you are not nourishing yourself optimally or properly, please, please do not be trying to work out. Yeah, obviously go for walks, do something light, do light yoga or anything like that, restorative yoga especially. As an example, I lost all my muscle. Here I am trying to put on muscle in the gym when I'm not feeding myself enough. That is putting so much stress on my joints. It's causing excess inflammation. I ended up with stress fractures on my shins but I went back to the gym A when I had my period back and B when I knew that I was eating enough to sustain any exercise. Otherwise, if I went stir crazy from not moving, which happens to me if I sit too long, I'll go for a little walk around the block or that's what I did. I did restorative yoga, stretching, things like that. But if you feel good and you feel strong, then you can work out again. How did you get your period back by eating? You get your period back by nourishing your body again properly, not over exercising. What was the moment in recovery where you thought I've got this? Never. Not once in my recovery did I ever have a thought like I've got this. Let's talk about neurology, neuroscience for a tick here. Let's say there's a train, AKA your thought process that has been running along this one track for a long time, a lot of years and here you are starting to try to build another train track for this train, AKA recovery. This train is not going to swap tracks until that track is built until it is completed. Basically, you're gonna still have those thoughts, but the key is you're constantly working on your thoughts, trying to figure out why they're there. You're working on your thought processes. It is exhausting. It is day in, day out. A lot of people do say that having a net is worse than a drug addiction because you can avoid a drug. You have to eat. So you are confronted with this all day, every single day. But one day I woke up, I noticed that all of a sudden my thought process had changed. All of a sudden it was like I no longer had anxiety or panic or anger or rage or irritability or depression. It just changed. I worked so hard on building that new neuropathway, AKA that new train track. My train swapped tracks and it went and it has not gone back. So it'll happen. This whole Q and A is my own personal experience. I'm not trying to teach. I'm just trying to share because I wish that I had someone to share with me. So no, I never had one of that. I've got this kind of, no, never had that thought. Some people might. I didn't. I hope people do. But regardless, you're gonna be fine. Whether you have that thought or not, I never did and I'm fine. So please, please, please stay the course. Most important thing I could be telling you. Is there a time you wanted to relapse and what kept you going? Yes. You know, until I was fully recovered. There was a lot of times I wanted to relapse. What kept me going was the life that I knew was waiting for me on the other side, knowing that one day my body would normalize its own weight regardless because I like to live a healthy lifestyle. I enjoy living a healthy lifestyle. Another thing that kept me going was knowing the relationships that I could have with people at the time I could enjoy with my friends. Going on vacation and eating whatever I wanted. I knew that was all waiting for me. And in the meantime, I was going through eight years of holistic health training and schooling and I knew because now I had the knowledge base and the education that one day my body would totally maintain its healthy weight like it does now effortlessly. I knew scientifically at this point that was possible. That kept me going. Also, you know, I would have died had I got along the same track and kept going. I would have died and that's a guarantee. So it'll be different for you. Find something that keeps you going though. You need to keep going. You got this. You know what the right thing to do is? You know what's right? You get knocked down. You get up again. Last question. What's the best thing you got out of recovery? That's such a good question to be the last one. I didn't even plan that. I got my life. I got a healthy body that absolutely maintains itself with the healthy lifestyle that I enjoy living, the healthy mind just being happy, having all of the quality time back and especially the space in my head, the brain space. Oh my gosh. If you only knew how much mental capacity was being stolen from your mind with an ed, it's insane. Like really? This was a neat phenomenon. I actually have way more hours in a day than I thought I did with the ed because not only was I so hyper focused on every single thing to do about food all day long, but then I was spending all of my time exercising for like if someone could have told me how much of a waste of time that was oh my lord what I got back was my life and that's worth it. Now I'm going to let you know the best key that ever happened to me. This book saved my life. This is called the eight keys to recovery from an eating disorder by Carolyn Costin. Carolyn I would say is the world's leading expert in eating disorders, the origins of them, healing them. This book is available in audio as well. I use the audio version. No ifs, ands or buts. You have to do the exercises in this book. If I didn't do the exercises outlined in this book during my recovery, I really don't believe I would have recovered because it's those exercises. It's so, so key to recovery. Seek professional help because there's so much support out there that you could be getting. I didn't even realize there were programs out there that I could have been in this whole time or the whole time that I had my ed. So now I'm so grateful that that hospital program even invites me to share my story, my journey, my opinions with people in recovery now and it's just so gratifying. So yes the eight keys to recovery from an eating disorder by Carolyn Costin. I have linked the Amazon link for that down below. Grab that. It's incredible. Oh there are more. Overcoming your eating disorder workbook, a cognitive behavioral therapy approach, CBT, works wonders. I also had overcoming bulimia workbook. You're a comprehensive step by step guide to recovery. I will link all of these books below but honestly it's the eight keys to recovery right here that made the biggest difference for me. So if you thought this video was helpful or informative at all, please give it a thumbs up down there for me because that lets me know what kind of content to keep producing for you. Please subscribe to this channel. Subscribing really is where the support does come from and I am so grateful to each and every subscriber. Please share this channel, help other people get access to legit quality info that can actually help them heal themselves and if you would like notifications of the next time I post any videos please hit that little bell notification icon down there and you will be sent a notification each time I upload. Until next time have super amounts of fun in your life and have super amounts of fun in your recovery. I did because as far as I'm concerned it's got to be a good time so I'll see you next time. Bye.