Week 5 and 6 Eating Disorder Recovery Update (Sam)

Wendy Hnatuik
Oct 13, 2022
3 min read

How it went

ree — A sensory friendly egg salad sandwich with a side salad

The past two weeks have been very hard. I had all my normal appointments, and our schedule has not changed. Regarding food, I have been working on completing everything on my meal plan. I’m still having trouble with this because of feelings of fullness and false beliefs, but I'm slowly getting better. Anorexia can be funny sometimes. One of the big challenges has been completing a side of vegetables with lunch. Vegetables are a safe food for me and should be no problem. But my brain is just finding this very hard. During these two weeks adding increases would have been too much to handle. We have also been trying to discover which of my behaviours surrounding food are due to autism and which ones are due to anorexia. The autism behaviours need to be accommodated so that the anorexia behaviours can be challenged. For example, when I eat an egg salad sandwich with lettuce, I will eat the lettuce off the sandwich first, then the rest of the sandwich. I do this because I don’t like the texture of the crunchy lettuce on the soft sandwich. To accommodate this, Mom has started giving me a plain sandwich with a salad on the side. This way my eating disorder has no reason not to eat food normally. Just to note, in public I will always eat food normally (although probably slower than most people) because I’m more concerned with trying not to draw attention to myself or bother other people.

ree — A difficult lunch: perogies with vegetables and hummus

For therapy, at home and with my therapist, I have been mostly working on identifying emotions, creating positive affirmations, reflecting on my strengths, and exploring self care.

As part of writing this blog I want to be completely open and

honest about my recovery. So, I had a breakdown this week. The amount of food I need to eat, challenging my thoughts, and eating food despite how my body feels was all starting to overwhelm me. Then mom was constantly asking me how I feel and tried to force decisions on me which I find difficult on a good day. It was too much. Afterwards mom and I sat outside and wrote notes back and forth because that was easier in the moment, and we worked through it.

I guess there were also some highlights. We had a squirrel friend come and join us for breakfast. This squirrel has been slowly stealing our garden tomatoes and that's okay, we have more than enough to share. He/she was just trying to demonstrate that it’s okay to eat as much as you need. We also went to Tim Hortons in between appointments one day and got ice caps. These were one of my childhood favourites, but I couldn’t have them for a while when I developed some health issues, and they became part of my fear foods. Anyway, my body is fine again and I’m slowly learning there is nothing wrong with having them. Finally, Mom, a friend, and I went to our local fall fair on Thanksgiving weekend. We looked around, ate food, watched the horse show, and went on rides. It was loud and I had to eat in front of people, but we had a lot of fun.

How I Feel

I feel horrible. I don’t even know how to describe how I feel. Over my life I learned that my worth lies in my weight and the healthiness of my diet. Now, I’m being asked to tear myself apart to get rid of these false beliefs, so I can rebuild myself stronger. I constantly need to do things (eat past the point of full, eat foods society deems “unhealthy”) that I know, and feel are wrong to challenge my beliefs. It hurts. But I try my best to trust my team that everything is okay.