A year ago I was admitted to hospital. Today, I’m recovering and learning to live with my Eating Disorder, but those two words ‘Eating Disorder’ don’t tell the whole story and describe what I have learnt about eating disorders …

One year on, I have been reflecting what my experience so far, has taught me about eating disorders.

I’ve learned something I didn’t understand when I was initially diagnosed, that sometimes ‘eating disorder’ feels like the wrong name for an eating disorder, and we need better training and understanding of this complex disorder …

I couldn’t have known what the following months would bring. In many ways, that first hospital stay marked the start of a period where my relationship with food and exercise changed significantly and my eating disorder gradually took more and more of me and my life.

Today, I’m in a different place, not recovered. Not at the end of the journey. But recovering. And I can see things now that I simply couldn’t see then. That despite its name, my condition was never really about eating. Food matters. I know nutrition is an essential part of my recovery. But those two words, eating disorder, can make an incredibly complex mental illness sound like problem with food and hinder the support and understanding I needed from people to heal.

People could see the changes in my body and behaviours. Eventually, we could all see I was not well. But no one could see what was happening underneath.

I was overwhelmed. Anxious. I didn’t feel good enough.

I was trying to manage emotions I didn’t know how to hold.

When other parts of my life felt beyond my control, restricting food and exercising gave me the illusion that there was one thing I could control. Sometimes it became a way of punishing myself. The physical symptoms of this were visible, the mental pain driving them wasn’t. That is why better understanding of eating disorders matters.

We might wonder why somebody can’t ‘just eat’. We might assume someone is recovering because they look healthier. We might decide somebody isn’t ill because they don’t fit our idea of what an eating disorder looks like. Those assumptions stopped myself and others recognising my need also.

My eating disorder has a very convincing voice. It makes promises constantly. Restrict today and tomorrow you’ll feel better. Exercise and you’ll feel calmer. Do this and you’ll feel more in control. Tomorrow you can relax. But tomorrow always came, and when it did, it was never enough. I would wake up thinking about how I could restrict again. How could I exercise? How could I make sure no one noticed? The thing that promised me control gradually controlled my life.

It promised freedom while making my world smaller. It promised confidence while destroying my self-worth. It promised to quieten my mind while becoming the loudest voice in it. Tomorrow never came, only shame and sadness.

I also became incredibly good at hiding my illness. I could say id eaten when I hadn’t, I could exercise without people knowing, I could reassure somebody while already working out how I could continue the behaviour they were worried about.

That brought enormous shame because honestly maters to me. Recovery has helped me understand that I wasn’t trying to hurt people. The eating disorder has such a grasp on me that I was protecting a coping mechanism I had become frightened to live without. I could desperately want help while simultaneously resisting it. I could want recovery and protect my disorder at the same time.

The eating disorder didn’t just change how I ate. It changed where I went, who I saw and what I participated in, and made my world smaller. Something as simple as eating a biscuit with someone can create overwhelming mental noise. So sometimes it was easier not to go. Not to join in. to eat alone, to withdraw. But food is woven throughout our lives. The eating disorder made isolation feel safe while quietly removing me from my own life.

And there was another kind of isolation. I sometimes felt I had to prove I was ill enough to deserve compassion. There are illnesses we recognise more easily. We send cards and flowers. We tell people they are missed. We check in.

My experience of my mental illness sometimes felt different. At times I felt forgotten rather than missed. Excluded rather than supported. Judged rather than understood. And my eating disorder translated that:

See? You’re not ill.

If you were properly ill, people would care.

You’re not sick enough.

I could be extremely unwell while believing I needed to become more unwell before I had earned the right to be taken seriously. Recovery is teaching me that I don’t. I don’t need to become sicker to prove that I’m struggling, I don’t need to look a particular way, I do not have to earn treatment, and I do not have to earn compassion.

My therapist talks about learning to be comfortable being uncomfortable. It might be the best description of recovery I have heard. Recovery has meant eating more when my mind tells me not to. Exercising less when it tells me to move. Resting when sitting still makes me anxious. Breaking routines that become rules.

And it’s exhausting.

Sometimes doing what will make me better makes me feel worse in that moment. I’m learning that discomfort doesn’t necessarily mean I’m doing something wrong. Sometimes I’m uncomfortable because I’m challenging the illness. Feeling anxious and eating anyway. Feeling guilty and resting anyway. Breaking a rule and discovering I survive what comes afterwards. Sitting with the feeling rather than immediately trying to make it disappear.

Sometimes I win, Sometimes the eating disorder does.

I still have setbacks. I still have moments when I now exactly what recovery requires and struggle to do it. And sometimes I feel ashamed that I’m not even getting recovery right …

But recovery isn’t a test.

Its practice.

It’s doing something differently and trying to do it again tomorrow.

A year ago, I didn’t know how much smaller my world would become. I also didn’t know how much I would learn. Today, my recovery can look incredibly ordinary. Eating the meal. Having a snack. Resting. Being honest when I want to say I’m fine. Eating a biscuit and allowing it to simply be a biscuit.

Feeling supported and understood by those who have stuck with me.

There are still days when the eating disorder’s promises sound convincing. But I’ve lived enough tomorrows now to know how that story ends.

The eating disorder promised me control but gradually took away my freedom.

Recovery sometimes asks me to do the things that frighten me most. Slowly those things are giving that freedom back. I’m learning that I can make a mistake and still eat. I can have a difficult day and still deserve nourishment. I can rest without earning it. My worth doesn’t increase when I restrict and decrease when I eat.

This experience has also taught me that workplaces need greater understanding of eating disorders as serious mental illnesses. We don’t need to have all the answers, but the same compassion, patience and support we would offer someone experiencing any other illness can make an enormous difference. Sometimes simply feeling understood, included and valued is part of recovery too

A year on, I’m not recovered, I’m still learning.

Sometimes I win.

Sometimes the eating disorder does.

But I which direction I want to keep travelling.

One choice at a time.

One meal at a time.

One uncomfortable moment at a time.

One step at a time.

Back towards my life.