**possible trigger warning** healthy weight loss gone wrong?

[breathing_123]

where to begin? I guess at the start,
when I was a teenager I had anorexia, I managed to 'recover', whatever that means, I never really had a healthy relationship with food, but I maintained a healthy weight and a healthy diet.
in my late teens/early 20's though this changed and I begin severely overeating, and although I was never diagnosed with anything like binge eating disorder or overeating disorder, I was considered morbidly obese, and 2 years ago at only 26 years old, considered pre diabetic due to my weight and poor diet.
I went on a radical health makeover, I saw a dietician, my gp, a nutritionist, my therapist, a personal trainer, and as a team we worked and worked on plans to get me healthy but without engaging my old eating disorder.

and so here I sit, a result of all that hard work, back in my 'healthy weight rage' but if they only knew. I stopped seeing the dietician and nutritionist months and months ago, content that I had this under my belt now.
and yet I don't, I am so scared every single day of my head and what my eating disorder voice tells me, what to do, what not to do, people tell me I look tiny now, and I know I am now a healthy weight, but I can't see it. to my head, I am still that obese girl who started on this journey all that time ago, to me I will never be good enough.

I don't want to end up where I used to be, I don't want to be back full circle, but I don't know how to stop this myself anymore, and I don't know how to tell the people who can stop it what is happening, because that part of my head still exists that doesn't want it to stop, oh the confusion, the hatred, the hurt it causes. it is exhausting, it is sapping me of everything I have to try and get through every day and I don't know how to make it switch off.

I thought I was free of this, and now I don't know if I ever will be? and that terrifies me, I work, I study, I have a life I never imagined I could have through years of illness, and I can't go back there, but how, how, how do I stop it.

sorry this has become such a rant, thank you for listening, xx Gem.

[Unbreakable.]

I am sorry to hear you are struggling.
It is great that you can identify disordered thoughts.
I can relate to how much energy they can use up and how much of your time those thoughts consume even when you manage to not act on them.
I would encourage you to reach out to your doctor so that you can get some support.

Regarding still seeing yourself at the weight you used to be- it can take some time for your mind to be able to see yourself as you are. A few years back I started losing weight and ended up weighing a lot less than I used to. It took literal years for me to actually be able to see that in the mirror. I was so used to being bigger and taking up more space etc that my brain kept showing me what I expected to see. But over time I could slowly start seeing that I didn't look like that anymore. I also found it easier to see that in photos of myself than when looking in the mirror. There was one photo in particular that almost shocked me because all of a sudden I thought I looked skinny. It was hard to understand and accept that. Especially as I had stopped losing weight by then but still looked big to myself. So wrapping my head around that new image of myself was quite a challenge. It is really hard to see yourself any other way than the way you expect yourself to look.

I hope you manage to reach out and get some support.

[breathing_123]

thank you, heartbreak kid, I have seen some photos of myself recently where I am definitely better able to see the difference than in the mirror for example, especially when I have done comparison photos, but I just don't understand why that link isn't happening.
it is kind of comforting to know other people have been in similar situations with losing weight and not being able to see it as I don't really know anyone who has been in that position, I just can't understand it and it feels sometimes like my head is playing a cruel trick on me.

I hope I can learn to see the differences because it scares me if I can't, I'll keep working up the courage to speak to my drs, it feels like every time I've made up my mind to I chicken out though, I guess I can only keep trying.

xx Gem.

[okiegirl2012]

I'm right there with you. I am having a hard time lately trying not to gain weight but at the same time not lose weight. I don't want to go back to full anorexia mode but I'd rather be too thin than too big. It's a terrible thing to go through/work through.