I am new to this forum and to sharing my experience, so bare with me while I give you the low down of my history with ED.

At a young age, I watched my mother indulge in fruit as a treat to herself and hardly eat anything at the dinner table. Not knowing she was suffering from a life long ED, I made fun of her until I found myself in the same position. I handle stress by taking control of the two things that I know I can control; how much I eat and how much I exercise. I would say my battle with anorexia began when I was 14 after a first love break up, and then with bulimia at 15. Bulimia was less about being able to eat food and more about disguising my anorexia. But with that I never got scarcely underweight, and that bothered me. I found myself in recovery and happy again at 17-19. Great 2 years, happy, not a care in the world. And then my pop got sick, I couldn't wrap my head around the way I saw him deteriorating into nothing. I also didn't realize this was the start of myself deteriorating as well.

Every morning, I would wake up go straight to the gym for a long period of time (sometimes I would allow myself some snack) and keep myself out of the house long enough so that my roommates would be gone and they wouldn't ask me to eat with them. I would go home take a shower and a nap and by the time I would wake up it was dinner time and I would eat some dinner just to show them that "I was eating." I did everything I could to avoid those encounters. I also began taking laxatives at this time, sometimes multiple a day. I felt so hollow inside, but I loved my body.

It wasn't until my second time passing out in the gym locker room 1.5 years later that I decided I needed to find some help. I saw a therapist, we met a few times but I graduated college and couldn't see her anymore. Then I moved down to the shore for the summer, I was in an environment that was the absolute opposite of what I had wanted for myself. Excessive drinking, junk food, and late night snacks all around me all the time. Half way through the summer I finally gave in and slowly felt somewhat like a normal 21 year old. But I wasn't happy. I saw my weight increase and I felt fluffy all the time. I was so ashamed of what I had done to my body over the summer. I became erratic and moody all of the time. My boyfriend of a year had no clue what I was going through. I finally broke the silence of what I was feeling and he was mortified that he did not know that I was experiencing all of this since we were long distance for a good portion of our relationship. After that I realized it was nice to talk to someone about it. It's been a year now that I have been in recovery but I am slowly relapsing.

Is it possible to just have a mindset relapse? I have learned to love food again and I have learned to forgive myself but I in no way love my body. I have tried to lose weight the healthy way, and I have tried to tell myself that I need to give my body time to forgive me and equal out again, but I have failed over and over nothing has worked for me. I am at a point in which I feel that I know exactly what I need to do to lose the weight and it is not healthy. I don't want to feel hollow again. Why do I have to sacrifice my happiness to be at an ideal weight? Why do I have to starve myself of everything not just food to love my body? I can't blame this on stress in my life because my life is pretty awesome. I don't know what to do. I don't know who at this point can help. It is scary how much ED can feel like a drug addiction. I know the long term affects of what ED can do and will do for my years of neglect but that doesn't scare me enough to cloud these thoughts. I know I am not alone with these emotions.