u/jellyboneswizard

1393 guests, 999 park rating, $30,000 to spend and a paid off loan.

The best advice I can give:

Stick to coaster and ride types that allow tight turns (wild mouse, wild mine, Cheshire cats).

Give literally zero fucks about aesthetics

Don't bother with decor.

Just crank that badboy out.

This is just a curiosity thing: did anyone else go through a phase of psychotic minimalism in the later stages of their disorder? Just getting rid of fucking EVERYTHING and panicking if you had stuff out on counters or other surfaces?

I did. And I know it was part of my "take up less space" mentality. I was very, very nuts at that point, and it went on for about 4 months before I started my recovery. (5 months in now, btw 🥳)

I'm about 4 months in on All-In Recovery. Anorexiahad been in the driver's seat for 15 years of my life. I'd almost completely lost my ability to walk with a mobility aid. I'd had multiple episodes of psychosis, and 2 seizures. I was starting to hallucinate shadows when I realized I was dying. I started recovery that day, and I haven't looked back.

Having said that.

Last week, I started a job working production. A field I was too weak to sustain in the past. I have a super early commute, meaning my sleep is sacred. I'm eating at least enough to meet my needs. Things are going great.

Last night I realized, that middle and high school me had a dream of getting my ASE and my welding training so I could become an automechanic. I wanted to open a queer woman owned/operated garage. Looking into it, it's actually more feasible, affordable, and attainable than the other career path I was looking at before my epiphany.

You really don't see how much ED takes from you and makes your life harder until you start recovery. I promise, your dreams are out there for you to accomplish, but you can't take your disorder with you.

It irks me like you wouldn't believe to know that less than 10% of people with diagnosed anorexia are low enough on the BMI to "count"

But the atypical type is more common by a ratio of 9:1. Which has the rest of us in ranges at or above where the BMI chart has listed as normal.

How is my condition considered the abnormal one? If I were skinnier, it maybe would have be caught sooner - but it also maybe would have killed me faster. Who knows? I'm a tall woman.

If diagnosed anorexia has such a high fatality rate, it haunts me to think how many people just died because they never knew/understood what the actual problem was.

How is the vastly most common manifestation of a condition considered the abnormal one?

Without getting into detail, I'm going to be starting a job tomorrow that I'm very excited for. It aligns with my moral code, lets me make positive change, and pays well enough to thrive. And in this economy? This is pretty much unicorn territory.

Having said that, it's outside. On my feet. All day. 8 or more hours a day. I'm about 4 months in recovery from my AN. I'm learning to mind my cues, and listen to my hunger - but I need some guiding lights and advice to maintain myself in recovery mode while I'm getting used to a physically demanding career path.

How do I stay fed enough? How do I nurture my body to sustain the workload? How do I keep this increasingly steady, wonderful, glorious path on the right track while definitely enduring a lot more movement than I've been used to for a long time.

What are the best ways you invest in your rest? Your most restorative snacks? Comfiest shoes for long work hours. You know, that kind of stuff. The last thing I need is a relapse taking away the best damn opportunity I've come across my entire life. Because. You KNOW a relapse can/has nuke(d) every good job you've ever had. And this is a gonna be a good job. I can feel it. So hard. More than I ever have before.

I've been at this for 102 days now, very much All In. I'm trying to keep track of my little successes to help me stay focused on the goal, and to maybe show others there's benefit even through recovery. 29y/o female

I know all timelines are different, and that all bodies & eating disorders are completely unique, but here's what else I've experienced since my last update.

🌈 I went from being unable to walk around my house without my cane at the late stages of my AN, to playing on the trampoline with my niece & grocery shopping without even leaning on the cart today (I do still use it for more intense days or days I'm hurting but)

🌈 My face is fuller & my eyes are brighter, I look more alive than I did - and I'm starting to feel weird about my sick photos

🌈 I'm detransitioning, because I realized my gender dysphoria was just another way my "body kept the score" (still pro-transgender rights tho)

🌈 I'm wearing my clothes in ways I never thought I'd be okay with (tanks, crops, shorts, no pants around the house sometimes) because I'm not trying to hide myself anymore

🌈 I sleep -so good- (usually)

🌈 was actually able to fully enjoy family dinner at my parents with my siblings together today, for the first time in years. No pain, no cane, no shame around eating chips, hot dogs, cake, or orange juice

🌈 sex! Full stop. No notes.

🌈 not compulsively apologizing to people for the shit I did during my disorder (left a weird, probably creepy note aplogizing to my old boss & asking him to rehire me very early on in my recovery because I thought it was the right thing to do... t'wasn't. Just made things awkward. I'm not going back there ever again out of sheer embarrassment). Also stopping apologizing to friends who have no interest in being my friends anymore. Separate ways accepted.

🌈 getting out of the house

🌈survived a road trip, low pain levels (and ate at Casa Bonita IYKYK)

🌈 realizing who I want in my life going forward and who I can move on without

🌈 learning to be my own best friend

🌈 can think clearer - wow, I really was batshit nuts

🌈 not peeing as often

🌈 REGULAR POO

🌈 whiter teeth & healthier gums

🌈 clearer skin

🌈 so. Much. Less. Fucking. Pain... really, ya'll, the pain relief alone is worth crying while you force yourself to finish breakfast. 🌈

I wanted to know what the RadFem movement was about, now that I no longer ID as trans. So... my question is, how did the trans community go from "gender is a spectrum and sex characteristics don't matter that much beyond reproduction and medical function" to.... hating radfems for the same ideology?

It isnt that deep. It shouldn't be that deep. Sex characteristics vary on a spectrum too, and most radfems are completely up to date with that.

If gender is fluid and doesn't matter that much, how come all my self worth was tied up in how others perceived my gender? How come people are mocking my detransition already? I don't get it.

If I say that outright though, imma get called a TERF. My partner doesn't give a rats ass about gender constructs, and it's so liberating. I just... we lost the plot and made ourselves smaller, hyper-specifically labeled, and isolated...

Idk where I'm even going with this... it's just weird.

​

First off - I personally believe truly transgender people exist, I just realized I'm not one of them when I started my anorexia recovery 3 months ago. But now I'm seeing the pattern of, "Hated my body, puberty was traumatizing, suffered from disordered eating & body dysmorphia, held a lot of internalized sexism".

The fuck is with this pattern? Why is it so common? Do we know yet, or is this going to be one of those things that ends up being studied in our lifetimes?

When I confronted my ED I saw it coming from the "same place" as my transition, as well as the self-harm tendencies I've dealt with. My transition didn't come from a place of self-love like it should have, it came from self-loathing. Which seems to be an undeniable pattern, and I can't help but wonder how common it actually is.

I don't regret living as a man for 11 years, at all. It kept me alive when I couldn't stand to look at myself otherwise. I just wish I would have made the connection sooner, because there was a traumatizing, isolating element to all of it.

I only ever did T for maybe a collective year throughout my time as a man. After some -ahem- atrophy last time, I stopped & hadn't gone back on for a couple years. I never changed my name legally or anything, so I have less of a "mess" to clean up than others in this sub.

So what is it with the correlation between eating disorders and transition?

Let me start this by saying that I don't blame anyone who chose to cut me off - I was a real piece of shit in the throes of my disorder, and my closest friends had had enough. They don't talk to me anymore. That's okay. I get that, and I wish them the best. ❤️‍🩹

I'm really struggling with getting out of the house, because even though I'm in recovery, my energy levels and strength are still pretty low. It's been less than 3 months. I'm coming to terms with who I am (which is significantly different than I thought, gender is weird) and learning to accept myself. 🌈

To be honest, I'm terrified about trying to reintegrate into society. Finding new community. I've always been terrible at crossing the bridge between acquaintance and friend. The friends I do still have are distant, for other reasons (work, life, literal long distance). 🗝

Making new friends scares the shit out of me, I don't know how to do it. I have a new name and new (old?) pronouns I'm using, and I'm scared that everyone secretly thinks I'm trying to run away from the mess I made (or worse, I'm being forced to detransition (I'm not)). 💋

I just want to find a job & start building a community again, but it's hot and stupid outside. It feels like everyone fucking hates me still. It feels like I can't get a foothold to start rebuilding my life after I ruined everything from being, you know, batshit crazy. 🦇

Anyone have experience stories that might help me figure out how to move forward, forge new friendships, find work, etc?

I've been a practicing Witch for like 16 years, so here's what I'll offer to the table:

🌈1. You'll hear a lot about trusting and knowing yourself. This is because most people in this world have no idea who they are, and give their personal power away to others. We seek validation and confirmation from outside ourselves, and it undermines everything we do until we learn to be the unique individual we were born to be. A witch's anathema is insecurity, doubt, and a lack of confidence.

🌈2. Confirmation Bias is a hell of a drug, as we like to say on Tumblr. If you're looking for omens and putting meaning behind the mundane, you'll find it. Everywhere. Overwhelmingly so. Speaking from (several) experiences, you can & will drive yourself batshit looney if you don't give yourself the necessary grains of salt and reasonable doubt to ground you in reality.

🌈3. Blast upbeat music, clean up, & open your windows to cleanse your space. Burning herbs for the purpose can aid the process, but IMHO is completely optional.

🌈4. Your grimoire is a living document. You'll actually have SEVERAL of them if you stick to the Art. It cannot and will not ever be perfect. Copying exact rote information from online & in books will very much kneecap your practice. Making your own correspondences, adding information as you find & verify it, and understanding your Grimoire will never be complete will free you to just start making one.

🌈5. Covens come & go, self-Initiation is forever. However, initiation isn't something to take lightly, and (again, speaking from experience) can't be rushed. I only committed to my year & a day last August, and I've been practicing the Craft over half of my life. The way my life has changed since Dedicating myself to being an Artist of Magic is unfathomable and impossible to describe. That's why we call them the Mysteries.

🌈6. Write your own spells

🌈7. If you can't define exactly and precisely what you hope to gain/change by casting a spell, then you have no business using magic to accomplish it.

Hi yall. Back again with brother beef. We were texting about a week ago and he told me he'd been intentionally losing a lot of weight by doing some of the things I had been doing while I lived with him. I tried to express "hey. Be careful, I was actively dying from am ED while I lived with you, don't follow my example".

To which he replied, quote: "Huh? You cooked meals just fine and had an alright balanced diet. Plus amount wasn’t a problem as you’re clearly not a skeleton. You don’t like balanced dieting? Or improving physical fitness? What kind of eating disorder almost killed you? None of that makes literally any logical sense unless you were eating literal poison… I know the blue pellets in the attic look tasty… trust me they aren’t 😂" - end quote.

I replied with: "I told you I literally almost died, and you tell me it wasn't that bad because I wasn't skinny? Yeah, it was that bad. And because you wrote me off like that, I know you're not someone I can talk to about it. We can talk about other things.I love you a lot, but that was insulting. You do you, I'll support you. Just don't talk to me about diet and exercise for now, and let that be enough. "

Well. It's been a few days. This morning, I woke up to this message:

"No no no… just don’t ever message me again. I promise I won’t message you either… deal? Fuck any of this ‘boy who cried wolf shit.’ It’s always the same and attention seeking edgy self diagnosis shit from web md. You’ve always been a hypochondriac that could never make up their mind about a damn thing. I like you. I don’t support you. You clearly arent deficient of anything. I give yoh 100% permission to tell me “I told ya so” when you’re actually dead. Until then…. (As my ancestors would say) fuck off bruv."

......... I'm literally diagnosed by medical professionals with hEDS & anorexia??? Bitch??? I've been a diagnosed anorexic since high school, but it never came up because I was hiding it from everyone. Kinda how it works, "Bruv". I fought 2 years to finally get my hEDS diagnosis LESS THAN A MONTH AGO. Who the fuck do you think you are???

I know he's caught up in his own issues right now, and I'm honestly not even actually mad at him, I'm just hurt. Really fucking hurt. He's been lashing out at people like this a lot lately and I have suspicions as to why, but there isn't really anything anyone can do. I'm worried about him, and my heart took a huge hit from being treated like that first thing in the morning tbh...

Just. Had to scream that into the void, I guess.

Hi there, both my brother & I are adults with mortgages, for context. I lived with him for about a month during some of the darkest stages of my disorder in January, and was in a really bad way. At the time, I also considered myself "health conscious". Meal prep, gym membership, terrible decision making, you know.... 🤪

We don't talk a ton, but he told me recently he's getting back onto a "health" kick, and he bragged about losing X amount of weight over a rather short time. He informed me he took pages out of my book for meal prep & workouts, and I had to very politely navigate the conversation away from diet & exercise. I told him to be careful, and admitted I was in late stages ED & was actively dying when I was living with him. ❤️‍🩹

He came back with, "You weren't that skinny, clearly amounts weren't an issue. You ate a balanced diet & worked on your fitness." Then proceeded to minimize & write me off.

I tell you I almost fuckin died, and therefore want to not talk about diet & exercise ---- but you reply like that? Focusing explicitly on the things I tell you I dont want to get into? Little brother, please pull your head outta your ass.

Sorry. Had to vent.

Hi there! I'm new here. Doing aerials (specifically silks, hoop, and pole) has been a dream of mine since high school. I'm now 29, and have had some rough health issues for the past few years that prevented me from pursuing the dream. 🌈

I'm wondering what sorts of stretches and (very) gentle beginners exercise ya'll think could help one start off conditioning for classes in the future. I'm in early recovery from an ED, and have hypermobile joints, so it's critical I take things slow & steady. But there's nothing IMO more body positive and empowering than aerial dancing. ✨️

I have 0 equipment, low stamina, and pretty generally weak muscles, but I'm already getting stronger. I learned today that I'm not strong enough to do the monkey bars at the park anymore, so that's where I'm starting. I know that doing aerial dance will be impossible for me if I go back to my disorder - but I also know it CAN BE POSSIBLE if I'm nurturing myself the whole way through. 🌌💙💜

Being able to do this is my dream, my motivator, and what I believe will help me celebrate my body. I don't give a fuck (flying or otherwise) what my recovered body looks like if it means I get to finally learn aerials and pole. I solemnly swear to use any information provided in this post with self-love and body wisdom, and shan't cause myself any harm.

TLDR: looking for your gentlest, 0 equipment, 0 experience recommendations on conditioning for aerials at home. The most basic, ground level (literally) stuff.

Edit: wow, ya'll are fabulous and I'm so excited now. I can't afford classes at the moment, the gym nearest me is pricey & I'm still looking for work. But! I can do yoga & find a playground nearby!

Wanna know if anyone else has dealt with this. I haven't ever had a super consistent cycle, but I've been in recovery for a little over 2 months, and shark week hasn't made an appearance in over a month. I test regularly, am on BC, and use extra contraceptive care so I know it isn't THAT.

My period actually had stopped for a long time, because of my BC (maybe also my ED) then came back in my scary late stages of The Behaviors™️.

Anyone else deal with this?

The title pretty much says it. I'm currently in the process of making myself some macaroni because this just happened. My partner and I decide on a menu for each week, and our meal yesterday was 1/2 a combo i used to eat in my late stage/almost died. Baked chicken and sweet potatoes (with 1/2 a few more sides).

Yesterday, I powered through it thinking I was just overreacting - plus we had plans, so we needed to eat and run. I think the distraction helped.

Today, trying to eat leftovers for lunch, I instead gagged twice, had a panic attack on the kitchen floor, and called my partner to help me feel better about choosing to eat something else. 😅 note to self, I fucking hate sweet potatoes.

Only took 23 months to figure out. But alas. I'm getting to a point where I'm trying to get my life back.

tw from this point forward for disordered eating

My anorexia had been quietly progressing slowly for about 2 years, and triggered the spiral of my health that lead me to seek diagnosis. But I went another 2 years after losing a ton of mobility VERY SUDDENLY, and almost died because my DE wasn't picked up on (not even by me).

Because every piece of advice is dietary and exercise related, and because i was desperate to protect myself from the eventualities hEDS could being... I went off the deep end attempting to preserve my health, and literally almost died as a result.

When I discovered my anorexia was causing so many symptoms, I started my recovery. And I refuse to ever go back. Things have improved immensely, and I was kinda hoping I'd unintentionally gaslit myself into thinking I had hEDS - because then it could be undone.

2 months in recovery for my ED, after I blew my entire life up. I told my geneticist about my ED this morning, and he said even with malnutrition/DE playing a VERY LONG TERM AND LARGE part of my familial background- he still feels confident in diagnosing me with hEDS after meeting the criteria (thanks 4th grade leg scar).

I was kinda hoping it was all DE.

but now it's both, and I don't know what recovery is going to look like with both factors at play.

We are obviously much more than objects, but for those who might appreciate similie:

Trying to change the ways our bodies are shaped is like taking a sledgehammer to a Dodge Ram (sturdy pickup truck), with the intention of making it look like a Chevy Corvette (sleek sports car).

Sure, you can make a dent. You might even be able to make it smaller all the way around. But it's gonna sustain a lot of damage, and eventually you'll just destroy the engine.

Because you're built differently. Don't get pissed off about the year, make, and model of the vehicle you were given to experience this life. Just take care of it, because you only get one. Our bodies are fragile, and we can buy a new car, but we can't replace ourselves.