Can you recover from your eating disorder?

Trisha Gura’s book, Lying in Weight, just arrived. Until I read about her book I had more or less decided that I wouldn’t buy any more ED books, since I am feeling very recovered from the 30 year long compulsive eating habit I had. But Scientific American had such a compelling interview with her, I thought I’d give it a chance, to see if it could help me further along my recovery path. You can check out her website here. BTW, I am not affiliated with her in any way. I bought the book retail.

Amazon link: Lying in Weight: The Hidden Epidemic of Eating Disorders in Adult Women

The jury is still out, since I’ve only just begun the book. But I wanted to share with you some ideas from the Introduction and a bit of the first chapter.

Can you recover? Dr. Gura (she doesn’t seem to use the title) appears to think that, even though you might have a “sleeping lion,” it’s not necessarily cured. Which begs the question of what is a cure anyway. In any case, the real purpose of the sleeping lion concept seems to be to point out that eating disorder publicity, both in studies and in the media, seem to have a very limited focus, primarily on young women and on a short time span, and on certain types of anorexia and bulimia.

That limited focus ignores most women with ED. First of all, Binge Eating Disorder has only recently become a clinical definition of an ED, yet there are many more cases of BED than of bulimia and anorexia combined.

It also tends to ignores women who are “subclinical,” who don’t fit the DSM-IV specific medical definitions of ED. For example, a classification of anorexia requires that the patient have not had a period for at least 3 months.

Some studies also ignore women after MOL 25 years old. One assumption proven false is that it’s a woman’s disease. Yet, women at age 40, 50 60, 70 years old have EDs. Much of what you hear in the media aren’t paying attention to this.

So here am I, a Binge Eating Disordered person of 48 years. Can I recover? Yes. I am recovered. Can I relapse? Yes, that’s why I’m working so hard to build new habits of self-care, since the primary relapse is stress due to new traumatic situations, like death, divorce, major illness. I want to have strong habits of doing other things to comfort myself, so that when the next traumatic event occurs, I’m as well-prepared as I can be.

1. I’m glad I recovered. I like not binging. I’m also not going to ignore that compulsive diseases can come back quite easily, and it takes work to even give yourself a fighting chance.
2. The positive self-talk that’s getting me up off the sofa works even on a day in which I do not exercise. I’m going to keep working at this.
3. Exercise seems to have a hysteresis of energy burning. I exercise regularly, then for a little longer, I experience the strength and energy created by the exercise.
4. There is noticeably less negative self-talk in my life. I see that I am a more clear thinker because of it.
5. My dreams are more realizable. I notice that I am doing many small things that I used to only hope for. I assume it’s because I’m not listening to any “that’ll never come true” voices any more.