By the grace of God and the blessing of some amazing people in my life, the past month and a half since PHP has had so many baby steps and a few giant leaps towards recovery. Not everyday is completely wonderful, but the bad days are getting less frequent and I am learning to fight through them. For this post, I want to list some milestones I have accomplished in recovery, some very recent and others overall throughout it.

Today marks one week without weighing myself. Our scale is jank. It has been for ehh 2 years. I know it’s jank. I know it can be up to 15 pounds off from the doctor’s. Even so, it has been Ed’s friend. I couldn’t count how many times I’ve weighed myself in this disorder. I couldn’t count how many times I cried and beat myself up over that number on the very jank scale. Since starting recovery I haven’t weighed myself more than once a day and I haven’t had as many meltdowns, but it still it was a significant tie to this disease. This past week I broke free and I have no intentions of going back. I feel better not knowing my weight than I ever did seeing that number creep down.

I am continually thanking God for my lack of health issues relating to the ED instead of using that as reason to get sicker. It’s sad to admit, but in the depth of my ED I wanted to have some health problem. I wanted a heart attack or osteoporosis or something that would prove I was doing well enough in losing weight. I see how completely distorted these thoughts were now but I definitely couldn’t then. I am now overjoyed that I haven’t suffered much physically besides a period of iffy blood work and the dizziness/concentration issues when I was restricting.

I had my first healthy run in 2+ years last night.

Since the ED started and even before that, every time I ran it wasn’t in a healthy way. I counted calories/miles, was underweight, didn’t eat enough to sustain myself before/after the run, or pushed myself way beyond what my body was capable of. Yesterday was so different. I added this note to the treadmill over all of those things that were so important to me before. I have no clue how many calories I burned, how fast I was going, or how far I ran. I only have a rough estimate of the time but I am doing my best not to care anyways. I ate more than enough yesterday and I am not underweight like before. I simply ran. I want to run more again but I am not letting myself get sucked into the world of overexercising and calorie counting again. I want to exercise for fun and to be healthy. This is the beginning.

I am sharing my story tomorrow and doubling the number of people (outside of treatment/family) that even know about my ED. I know I’ve talked about this a ton, but it really is so important to me and my recovery. I feel blessed to have the opportunity. I hope and pray it will make some kind of impact in their lives. I also pray that having them know will help when it comes to snacks and meals at the church. This is such a huge step for me in recovery and as being a youth leader and positive role model.

I am applying to colleges for transfer soon and flourishing in my semester so far. This one isn’t as directly related to recovery on the surface, but I still feel a need to include it. Without recovery, I wouldn’t have the grades I do right now. There is no way I’d be able to focus and succeed. I also wouldn’t be thinking about transfer colleges because I would still believe I have no future. The fact that I have so many opportunities with my education and am able to make these choices is amazing. A year ago or even six months ago my parents never would have let me even consider staying on campus because I was too sick. I also probably wouldn’t be looking at Christian colleges either because my relationship with God was so broken.

I ate out for dinner without choosing a “lighter choices” meal OR researching calories before/after. Not going to lie, the second my parents said we would go to Chili’s for dinner tonight Ed perked up. He taunted me, saying that if I just get the least caloric entry and research calories beforehand I would be good. I wouldn’t get fat. I would be happy. Ed was definitely loud as I looked at the menu. It was a little bit of a battle. In the end, I won. I got a chicken sandwich and I ate until I was full. Ed screamed at me but I am so glad I disobeyed.

None of these things would be possible if I hadn’t started my recovery journey. I am still working hard everyday and each milestone I pass pushes me forward even more.