 Question. Is it possible to ever fully recover from anorexia nervosa? I've been asked this a few times and it's quite a controversial question and I just wanted to explore it a little bit really. I'm exploring this video today in a personal capacity as someone who has a history of anorexia nervosa rather than from a professional point of view, although I do have a PhD from eating disorders, it's here. But yeah, this is my personal point of view because actually I don't think there is a definitive answer on this. Now the thing is that some people are like really keen to say yes, you can completely get over an eating disorder, you can completely reclaim your life and it can be entirely in the past. I have a different view of this because my personal experience taught me that this attitude can make things go really badly wrong. So let's rewind a few years. I had been well-ish for a long time. Like maybe, I don't know, some period of years where I'd been relatively well. You know, fast forwarding a few years, I know I'd never really been at a healthy weight. I know that I had loads of eating disorder behaviors maybe that were still ongoing. But to all intents and purposes, I was pretty much engaging with normal life and doing broadly okay. But since I'd had a history of anorexia when I was younger, I had always been very, very structured in my approach to food. I have made sure that I maintained something, approaching a healthy weight wasn't. But anyway, I maintained the weight that I was maintaining by eating always religiously three meals every single day without fail. Now at this point, I was travelling all over the country working with different schools, delivering training and that kind of thing. And I would often find myself arriving at a hotel really late at night having travelled hundreds of miles and I would have to force myself to eat dinner. And it'd be like 11 o'clock at night and I'd travelled, you know, 300 miles. And the last thing I wanted to do was sit down and eat dinner. And I remember one day saying to myself, Pookie, enough is enough. A normal person, a healthy person, would not force themselves to eat a full dinner at 11 o'clock at night if they didn't want it because they were tired after travelling. They just wouldn't. It's okay. You've got this. You're healthy. Let it go. You can relax the rules now. I very vividly remember having this conversation with myself. Is it weird that I have that maybe? Anyway, I had this conversation with myself. I gave myself permission to relax the rules that I had around food that I had had for many years. And eight weeks later, I was passed out cold on the bathroom floor having lost a huge amount of weight and have very much in the grips of anorexia again. Now, does that mean that recovery isn't possible? Maybe not, because actually, on reflection, I was still very much struggling with eating disordered thoughts and feelings and behaviours throughout the course of the time when I considered that I was okay and I was maybe lying to myself and to everyone around me and no, I wasn't at that point clinically anorexic, kind of weight-wise, but in my head, yes, everything was still not quite right. So maybe it wasn't that, you know, recovery is not possible. It's just that it hadn't happened for me yet at that point. But having had that experience, now that I'm entering this more stable period of my own life now, hopefully, and I am at a healthy weight, I can't imagine ever not making myself eat three meals a day. And yeah, I have got backups, so I now am a little bit more flexible. So if I have, for any reason, that I can't have a meal, like either because I kind of mentally can't do it, or it's just physically quite difficult, you know, I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time or whatever, then I've got like backups, so I will have kind of food supplement drinks, or I always carry really high-calorie food bars around with me so that I can consume the right number of calories. So I have like other backup plans, but I do take really close attention to how much I'm eating, and also now that I exercise more, I pay really close attention to making sure that I'm eating enough to compensate for the exercise I do as well. So yeah, for me, I can't imagine not doing that anymore, and I'd be really, really scared to let go of that. And maybe that doesn't mean I can't recover, maybe that just means I haven't yet, and that this is a longer process. And perhaps if you ask me in another five years or another 10 years, I might feel differently about this. And I do know that there are people who do feel like their eating disorder is completely in the past, that they've left it completely behind, that they are completely recovered now. But I think even those people, if they were really honest, would probably say that this is something that at times of high stress, they might possibly be tempted to revert to, because once you've found something that works really well for you, even though that might be working well in a really negative way in doing you great harm, but actually at the time it's meeting some kind of need, it's really difficult not to go there in your head at times of high stress. So actually I think this is a bit similar to like drug or alcohol addiction, for example, where for me, I kind of need to really keep away from it. And actually similarly to the addiction thing with drug or alcohol, the idea that if you're an alcoholic, if you had a drink, then it might kind of tempt you back in. I get a bit like that with food. Like I do find if I... I have to set quite clear parameters about the time scales within which I need to have kind of consumed calories, because if I get that feeling of empty or that slight lightheadedness that comes with not having eaten enough, yeah, I want that more. And that, yeah, I feel a bit uncomfortable kind of admitting to that really, but at the same time, I think it's really important to recognize that, to understand that, yeah, this is a long and complicated process. I think in terms of making this kind of video useful and maybe more interesting and practical if you're interested because you're worried about someone else is that I think that me saying, I don't think that I have or maybe ever will fully recover from anorexia nervosa even if it's kind of really well kept in check, I think it's important to acknowledge that I think that it might be sitting there in the background, but much like someone who maybe like was an alcoholic many years ago and now considers themselves to be, you know, in recovery, that yeah, I can do the same. I can live a completely full and happy and healthy life where my eating disorder does not impact on my day to day other than that I take care to avoid being kind of triggered into relapsing essentially and I take care to make sure that I'm healthy and happy and well. And I think the other thing is just to note that the most vulnerable moment in terms of recovery is probably the point at which when everything starts to look okay. So like now I would say I'm potentially a vulnerable moment because I look well, things are going well, everything's pretty good. All the support that you have in place begins to really, really drop away because you don't need it anymore because you're doing really, really well, but actually sometimes that's the point when it becomes hard because you haven't got that coping mechanism anymore. All the additional support that was laid on has gone and so that's a potentially vulnerable moment and so it's really worth knowing that if you're supporting someone who is recovering from an eating disorder that just because things begin to look okay and they look healthy, actually don't completely step away because that might be the time when you are sort of most needed. So yeah, this feels like a slightly negative video because I'm kind of, yeah. So no, it's not all negative. I think I'm just being pragmatic. I think for me I'm saying that I'll always consider myself in recovery and I will be glad of each and every day when this goes well. I will be mindful that there will be days when it goes less well and that those difficult days are, you know, they need to be carefully managed but they are, you know, not insurmountable and that I always need to be aware to those kind of triggers and warning signs when things might then potentially go wrong and act fast and never, ever be complacent again and I think that's also something I need to ask of the people around me too. So it's not all doom and gloom. I think it's just pragmatic but that doesn't mean to say other people don't have a different point of view and I would be really interested to hear what other people think as well. You know, is this something that you've been affected by? Do you think that you have fully recovered or ever could fully recover? Yeah, what's your take on it? I would love to hear. Okay, one of my more rambly videos, hopefully interesting and perhaps helpful and food for thought. Anyway, it made me think if nothing else. Okay, take care. Please subscribe for new videos every Tuesday and Friday and I'll see you again soon. Thanks for watching. Bye.