The Hardest Part

The hardest part of recovery is not the food. It is not eating three meals (and some snacks) every day.
It is not choosing whether or not to have cereal, a bagel, or oatmeal in the morning. It is not deciding whether or not to go for that extra walk, to push yourself hard, even when you're exhausted.
It's also not body image. It's not trying to love myself as I am right now in this moment in this flesh, and not X amt of pounds lost from now. It's not calming myself down when I see someone thinner than I am, who I want to look like.
The hardest part of recovery is facing the truth. It's facing the reality of the situations that brought you to the eating disordered hell that you are trying so hard to escape. It's taking a good, long, almost-blinding look at the painful things that food, exercise & body image were distracting you from.
The hardest part of recovery is looking life squarely in the face, seeing it for what it's worth, and accepting it as is, unconditionally.
For me, that truth has a lot to do with the love that I haven't gotten from the people around me. The pain that I am avoiding with food and weight obsessions is the pain of knowing that sometimes people don't love me the way I want to be loved.
It's the reality that sometimes- no-  most of the time, life is not exactly what we want it to be. People aren't who we want them to be, and our choices are not always the best.


Recovery is looking disappointment square in the face, and then eating and keeping your fucking food anyway.